365 Project, Week 51

The Penultimate Week. It’s almost been a year since we moved here. I can’t believe it. Time really does fly.

This week has been vastly more productive than the last three. The snow has gone (though more predicted for tonight apparently? I hope not) which just makes me feel a lot less lethargic.

I’ve done a lot of sorting out this week. Mostly of the virtual variety – folder sorting, email forwarding, back up setting up etc, of which there are no pictures. However…

New kettle! The height of excitement. The old one had been rattling for ages, and chose the most awkward moment to finally pack up – just as I’d offered to make my mum proper filter coffee.

Bad photo (really hard to take pictures of the telly) but I’ve been trying to finally complete this. Said I was going to do it in January but that never happened. Now looking to have it done before my hols, so I can start a fresh game during them. I’ve not got much left to do now

After the snow, we had gale force winds that blew our poor rose over. It was a hazard blocking our entire path until Mum arrived, armed with secateurs to trim it back. It’s not looking much better and no longer trying to kill me every time I leave the house. I hope it survives, as its flowers are beautiful.

And finally, a bit of real sorting. I have loads of clothes and I hate most of them. It was high time I threw a bunch out. That photo was after I’d done my preliminary ‘I’m not even really looking, just chucking out the things that really stand out.’ I’ve more than tripled that amount now.

And have a shiny, tidy wardrobe. Most of the things in here are work clothes and dresses, which isn’t very practical. But at least everything in there now fits and I like. And as an added bonus, I’ve clearly lost a bit of weight, as I was expecting to throw away loads of work trousers that didn’t fit me before, but now they do. So I was able to keep a couple of spares. Yay.

365 Project, Week 47

So it’s been a week of family visits. Which means bad board games…    

…launching the new year’s resolution diet as I train for a 10k race…

…a mistakenly bought Justin Bieber poster (hilarious)…

…a marshmallow party to say goodbye to Taylor as she starts her second semester at Uni…

…which as none of us actually like marshmallows, gave us the perfect opportunity to deface poor Justin.

365 Project, Weeks 39, 40 + 41

I’ve not really taken many photos these past three weeks. NaNo madness has had me in its grip, along with the aforementioned Week of Hell, meaning I’ve really not been doing an awful lot besides sitting at my computer or doing my work.

But, here are a few snaps.

Our new bed! Kingsize, because the Boyfriend is a space hog, with brand new posh goose down duvet and cushions. Our christmas present to ourselves and its so comfy and snuggly!

So this is my board I’m keeping track of NaNo with. Along with other things such as which books I need to read (didn’t stick to that.) The above picture is after about a week, while below…

I love that my desk is suddenly infinitely more messy. It rather reflects my mood and mental state after three weeks of NaNoing.

In between NaNoing and working, I’ve visited my Godchildren…

…attended a marshmallow party…

…thrown by this precocious young lady…

…which ended in hilarity when the Boyfriend sat on a cooked marshmallow.

I also went for Indian with Mum, but needed it so badly I didn’t think to stop and take a photo until the last chocolate was eaten at the end!

After, I babysat while Mum went dancing. The Boyfriend didn’t really get the concept of ‘calm them down for bedtime,’ instead winding them up by playing piano duets. Apparently they slept very well that night!!

Day 365 Project, Week 31

The weather is definitely getting colder, but there are still a few signs of the summer. One of the plants in our front garden is popular with the butterflies – it’s lovely to step outside and see them soaking up a bit of September sun.

And to brighten up the house a bit, the Boyfriend bought a beautiful bunch of flowers, after carefully choosing the colours he tells me.

I did some printing the other day and was slightly alarmed by the plumes of smoke coming out of the back of my printer. Definitely sticking a new one on the christmas list!

But the printer did work eventually, allowing me to start editing some stuff. I can’t concentrate on writing at the moment – too exhausted from work, so I’ve been trying to edit older manuscripts. Maybe I’ll have something ready for submitting to agents soon!

365 Project, Week 24

This week has involved a lot of time spent with my siblings, as Mum and the Step-Dad are away with the two littlies.

We spent one evening taking advantage of the sunshine by having an outdoor movie party with Mr T’s family. It involved a lot of sweets and Charlie and I fighting over a blanket. We watched The Muppets (which was rubbish) and This Means Way (which was also rubbish, but in an acceptable, explosion filled, entertaining sort of way).

Unfortunately, I came home from Movie Night to the world’s most giant, evil moth. Complete with red-eye. The Boyfriend being the total wuss that he is, made me get rid of it before he would even get in the house, so I had to throw it out of a window myself. Gross.

Later in the week we had a barbecue and Mr T bought a 3D puzzle Millennium Falcon, which we totally failed to make before our dinner was ready. It was really, really hard – all the pieces looked the same and there were hundreds of them. We did manage to put everything together by the end of the week, but even constructing the damn thing was difficult, and I never got a ‘finished product’ picture.

And when they did get home, the little brother treated us all by making dinner. You may think that’s cute, but I actually caught him chewing on a plastic carrot later.

Not many pictures this week, as the rest of the time I’ve been sat where I am now – writing. I won’t bore you with more pictures of my desk. But hopefully soon I will be ready with some updates on the Insane Summer Holiday Project. It’s going well so far!

365 Project, Week 23

So we’ve had some fun this week.

A pipe in our living room has been leaking slowly for a while now. So slowly that in all the general sogginess around at the moment, we hadn’t even noticed. But the leak got quite a lot worse, to the point of floods in our living room. Fortunately the Step-Dad was able to fix it, and the tissues in the above picture are meant to detect any recurring leaks.

We used a lot of towels to keep things from flooding though. This is just a small collection… fortunately we have a lot lying about from the decorating we’ve been doing, so we didn’t have to use our bath towels!

Fortunately, it does seem to have stopped mostly now. I suspect the remaining damp is more the water being drawn out of the wall by the dehumidifier. It’s certainly not wet enough for it to be from a regular drip.

On a more cheerful note, Ivy graduated this week. Taylor made these delicious graduation cakes.

I bought a new pair of sandals. They gave me a nasty blister on my toe when I tried to walk them in today, but they are great because…

Tada! Blue skies. Over England. After two weeks of solid rain, this is very welcome. And I’m very pink. It’s lovely.

365 Project, Weeks 21+22

It’s been raining pretty much non-stop for the past two weeks. Our garden, already a mess, is taking on all the qualities of a quagmire, and the skip that’s meant to be full of the excess mud and broken slabs of concrete has just been slowly filling with water instead. The Boyfriend’s summer project is turning into a bit of a mission, but at least our desire to have a garden for the summer isn’t going to affect things – so far there’s been no sign of a summer anywhere.

But there’s nothing like a nice creamy hot chocolate to dispel your wet weather woes. Although it’s more of a winter thing, really, I always like going to Costa’s for a nice hot drink after the rain – it reminds me of my very first date with the Boyfriend.

We spent the weekend on our H date, enjoying a relax. The rain didn’t really matter when you were sat in a nice hot spa complex, feeling thoroughly relaxed.

With pressures at work considerably eased in the run up to the holidays, I’ve had some spare time to get on with some things I’ve been wanting to do for ages. I went to the Writer’s club in my town, and deciding it wasn’t enough to only go to once monthly meetings, Carole, Taylor, Ivy and I decided to have weekly meetings on all the weeks in between. I’m embarking on a totally mad summer project, and I need all the motivation I can get. Part of the project involved a bit of musical composition, and I’ve made a good start on that.

We haven’t been shopping properly for ages, which resulted in some interesting attempts at cooking this week. This Quorn mince had clearly seen better days, but it was quite amusing.

And no week would be complete without your little brother dressing up as a parrot…

…or a mushroom shaped like a bum…

The grim weather was out in full force on saturday, just as I needed to walk to the shops. I can practically read the opening hours of the local supermarket from my front door but I was still completely soaked through from walking there and back.

I needed another one of those Costa hot chocolates, but had to make do with a glass of smoothie. Here’s to next week being a bit sunnier. Just a bit… please?

365 Project, Week 20

What better way to start the week than with a sacrificial burning?

The sacrifice in question is an old doll of Ivy’s. A staple of her childhood, and loved to death – to the point it was re-dubbed ‘Dirty Marilyn’ – Mum had decided it was high time Marilyn had a good send off.

After the fuss Ivy kicked up about the Boyfriend’s attempt to burn her stool a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to see her sit demurely through Marilyn’s soaking in lighter fluid. The Boyfriend got the honour of dropping the match.

Whether it was her synthetic fur wrap, or the copious amount of lighter fluid used, she went up very quickly. The fire was very satisfying to watch, though the smell quickly drove us indoors.

I am well aware that this blog is turning into a catalogue of my run-ins with mousetraps and exam desks, but I couldn’t resist a photo of my latest mishap – earned when I fell of my bike last sunday. What can I say? I’m very accident prone.

We had two birthdays this week. Carole’s and my baby brother, Dyl. I took no photos of the birthday girl, but the birthday boy’s cake was pretty impressive.

And this photo is really poor quality, but I just love the boy’s cheeky grin as he models his new bag, a present from Nan and Granddad I believe.

So, all in all a nice week. Though we’ve had plenty of the above weather. Here’s hoping for a bit of sunshine next week!

365 Project, Weeks 18+19

So, I should really stop going away at the weekend and coming back too tired to upload these… But here we are, weeks 18+19. They’ve not been good weeks for photographs…

Monday of the first week, we had our piping in the garden fixed, which means all the rubbish piping that was ripped out has been left to make our garden even more attractive… One day it will be nice, but for now, and the foreseeable future, it’s looking like a building site.

Fortunately, there were plenty of cakes left over from the party to keep my spirits up.

I decided to do a bit of cooking, after being given my weight in mushrooms by Mum. I laid the table nicely, bought posh red wine (and drank leftover Archers alcopops myself), though it was very difficult to photograph without getting the garden in the picture!

I made Mushroom Ragout with aromatic polenta, which was actually quite easy and quite fun to cook. Usually I hate cooking, but it wasn’t the sort of dish where you’re waiting forever for things to happen – while the mushrooms cooked down, you were busy making the polenta, so it kept me busy.

The Boyfriend said it looked like a river of poo on scrambled egg, but he helped himself to seconds, so I guess it didn’t taste like one.

We were away all weekend at a family do for one of the Boyfriend’s extended family. They live up north, so it was a long car ride to get there and back. I totally forgot to take any photos, as I was feeling a bit sleep deprived, and not really in the partying mood. We did have a colourful treat when we got back though – our rose bush had bloomed

Photo taking throughout week 19 didn’t go too well either. I got a few good nights sleep, but with the Boyfriend on lates, we didn’t really do much, besides the already discussed I Date. The next interesting thing that happened was Mr T’s birthday. He arrived to his own party late, drunk, and then had to put up a gazebo. It was great entertainment. After that I got too drunk, I mean, I was having too much fun to take any more photos.

Which brings us to today. Despite dancing my heart out until about 11 last night (not that late, I know, but it was really energetic dancing) I was up and ready for the triathlon challenge. The swimming went fine, but my bike riding was slightly hampered by the fact I haven’t ridden a bike in about 6 years. I know it’s something you never really forget, but my confidence wasn’t great, nor was my stamina, and the ride ended with me failing to bump up a (tiny) curb and falling onto the pavement with quite a bang.

My leg took the worst of it. My elbow wasn’t looking too good either, though the photos don’t really do either scrape justice. The Boyfriend, ever the sympathetic, on inspecting my elbow said, ‘Ooo, that looks really sore… no, wait, that’s just your eczema.’ I guess that means I’ll live.

I’m just glad I was wearing a helmet, or my face would not be looking too good right now. I had to duck out of the running after that, as I was both too shattered and too wobbly to really carry on, but I did get back on the bike and cycle the last little bit home. An achievement to be proud of, I think, though I probably won’t be thinking the same thing when I wake up stiff as a board tomorrow!

365 Project, Week 17

Despite my being on holiday, I have spent a lot of time this week with this as my field of vision.

I had always planned to get 20,000 words done before this week, and a further 20,000 done (to finish the current WIP) in the six weeks after, but I was on a roll over the weekend, and just kept writing. I’ve got five holes to plug in the manuscript, and proof reads to do, but I am very nearly done. In fact, this is what I have left:

So, two big things this week. Carole moved into her new flat, which we celebrated with alcohol, and when we got peckish, Chinese takeaway. The ‘spring rolls’ I requested weren’t quite what I was after…

In another eating disaster, the Boyfriend decided to microwave some camembert, after another failed attempt at making camembert fondue. It wasn’t very appetising.

So we got out the cookbook I got for my birthday and made african egg curry, which was decidedly more tasty.

The other big thing to happen was Taylor turning 18. Mum made a zillion cakes, and we did our best to eat them. I helped to make the butterfly cakes pictured below. Well, I helped put the jam in them. It was something, okay!?

We were all a little caked out when it came to the lighting of the birthday candle, but the candle was pretty spectacular, so that was something.

And the Boyfriend got a bit trigger happy with the chiminea and nearly burnt a piece of Ivy’s childhood. Which she rescued just in time to save the seat, but its legs had already gone on the fire…

She guarded it with her life for the rest of the night.