365 Project, Weeks 13+14

It feels like such a long time since I last sat down to do this that I’m having to look at my photos to remind myself what I’ve been up to. It’s a little like trying to narrate a picture book when someone’s crossed the words out.

Week 13 started in a good and bad way. Good: it was May Day Bank Holiday, which meant a free day off for the Boyfriend and I, and we spent it doing a bit of cleaning followed by an evening with friends eating copious amounts of cheese.

The cleaning was necessary because, in a fit of oven induced rage, I pulled our oven out of the wall (not as aggressive as it sounds… it was in fact never attached to the wall) and behind was a sign of the filth that is inside the oven.

Yes, that’s the mess on the outside. Don’t try to imagine the mess on the inside. You wouldn’t even come close. Hence the ripping out of the wall.

The evening of cheese was spent in a friend’s garden, beneath a gazebo, with a chiminea to keep us warm.

The evening started well, but soon descended into hilarious chaos as the heavens opened, turning our Gazebo into a steam bath as the rain hit the chiminea and instantly boiled, and water dripped down our necks.

Fortunately, good company is all you really need to keep yourself warm, even if you aren’t particularly dry.

In preparation for the wedding on Saturday, I needed to cook a cake – and with the aforementioned oven issues, that meant going to Mum for some help. The Boyfriend distracted my little brother with some stories while we attempted to cook a cake.

The cooking soon descended into a slightly drunken takeaway dinner, as Mum consumed half a bottle of wine.

That left Mum to finish the cake for me, which she did, and we managed to transport it all the way to Bath almost in tact.

The wedding was beautiful, in a stunning location.

The occasion had the Bride’s personality stamped all over it, and it was a wonderful day, full of fun. And the Boyfriend was looking dapper in a new suit.

We arrived home to empty cupboards and, in a clear out, found these, a source of much amusement for Mum over FaceTime. She’s going to grow them in the garden, and I hope will make us something delicious with the potatoes she grows.

Spoiled for time with friends this week, we went to play snooker at the local snooker club. I played pool with Carole, because I suck at snooker. I suck at pool too, but it was fun anyway. I wish I’d been a little less tired, as I felt my already infinitesimal skills were hampered even further!

To go with our oven issues, we’ve had a bit of a DIY disaster. Our bedroom curtain pole fell off the wall due to some old, crumbly plaster. The Step-Dad made a valiant attempt at reattaching it, but it wasn’t to be. While we wait for the time and the parts to do the bigger job, we rigged a temporary curtain.

Because our new oven wasn’t arriving for a fortnight, we spent a lot of time eating takeaways and meals out. The old oven’s position in the middle of the floor didn’t make the hob easy to use, and we weren’t able to move the oven because it was hardwired. Dining out at Wetherspoons gave us another opportunity to spend time with friends, and for me to relax my overworked brain with some children’s puzzles!

Saturday was my birthday, and though the Boyfriend was at work, Not Quite were doing a fete and I was going to my third wedding, I had a really lovely day.

But to top the weekend, and the fortnight off, our oven arrived today. While we have no food to cook in it, to be perfectly honest, I am just glad the ugly hole in our kitchen is filled. I got a cookbook for my birthday, and I can’t wait to try out some new recipes.

365 Project, Weeks 11+12

Things have been a bit of a blur the past couple of weeks, hence the consolidated post. I spent last weekend at a wedding and was so physically and emotionally drained by the end of it – having driven down, changed in a service station toilet, arrived at the wedding, checking into our hotel at about 11pm after dancing my heart out, only to drive back the next day – that I didn’t even have the energy to type and upload pictures. Expect a similar situation next week when I do it all over again!

The wedding was beautiful and full of creative ideas, like a fingerprint tree to record the guests, and speeches that made me bawl my eyes out (hence the emotional drainage).

The couple getting married were friends from my Uni days, and it was lovely to see them again. And to pull a few of our trademark Uni dance moves in fond memory.

Work last week and this has been intense for the Boyfriend and I. We both feel like we’ve been through the ringer, and the Boyfriend’s health is only slowly improving after his flu, with unrelated but badly timed wisdom teeth troubles. We’ve hit that point where we feel like we haven’t actually spoken to each other in weeks, and I confess, I’ve not dealt with it very well.

The solutions has been lots of cake.

This friday, I babysat for Carole while she went for a meal with her parents. I took T&A to meet my little siblings. Chaos ensued.

There was lots of dancing.

While A bonded with Mr T.

And Ad impressed with her spelling skills. Note, she writes backwards because she’s a lefty. The words read Ofu and Tury, which if you think about it, is pretty impressive phonetic spelling for a four year old.

I jogged to Mum’s today to find her trying to encourage her tadpoles to escape into the pond, in order to thin their population in the tank so they start actually turning into frogs. Her chose method was to put the tank in the pond and watch what happens.

But all the jogging I’ve been doing (haha, not much) has had a bit of an adverse effect on my poorly toe. The new nail is growing underneath the old one, pushing it off. Hot baths and exercise have forced it very loose. I got fed up of it snagging on everything today, and performed some surgery.

I’m less horrified by the amount of leverage I’m getting on that nail, more by how hairy my toe is. I am seriously going to have to get the tweezers on those!

365 Project, Week 10

It has not been a good week.

After a blissful holiday, things at work kicked off with relentless speed – I was in three out of five days much longer than my contracted hours, which is a pain in the backside any time, but this week I was also called in on Saturday to do some extra stuff. I get paid for it, but having a one day weekend is not nice. I keep thinking I’ve got tomorrow off, but sadly, I don’t. I’m not going to be happy when that alarm goes off.

To add to my woes, the Boyfriend has been poorly this week. Not Man Flu poorly, but genuine flu poorly. He woke up one night hallucinating that he was in a plane crash and just kept telling me he was going crazy, while his temperature climbed. Poor bean. He’s rubbish with illness, as he refuses to not go to work, despite my constant nagging, and so made himself worse. Fortunately he had Thursday off anyway by nature of his shift rotation, and got a chance to recover.

So, this week was going to be a series of pictures of the garden, which the Boyfriend was meant to be clearing. In the end his dad did it, because we’d already ordered the skip, while the Boyfriend lay on the sofa feeling sorry for himself. Instead of pictures of the garden, I’m going to give you a series of pictures taken at my little sister’s fourth birthday.

After a week of having a poorly, miserable boyfriend, I was glad for a bit of light relief. The birthday girl herself had hit over excitement mode, and promptly hit me round the face with a frisbee (not accidentally) on my arrival. However, the baby brother was in a good mood, and amusing himself by walking round in his dad’s enormous shoes. This cracked the Boyfriend up, and prompted him to help the little brother into a pair of Taylor’s boots, which cracked him up further.

It was probably smaller sibling abuse, but I was just pleased to see a smile on the Boyfriend’s face.

365 Project, Week 9

After the excesses of Easter, we decided to start the week with a healthy meal. It was also partly because I forgot to put my fresh spinach in the lasagne I made last week, and so it needed using up. It was a very healthy meal.

The little ones were finally well enough for hair cuts, and I’d been promising to go with Mum for ages, as part of a Mother’s Day present, so we all went together. Taylor, Ivy and I got our done in a bid to persuade the littlest sister that getting her haircut wouldn’t be painful or scary. It took the little brother calmly getting his trimmed before she consented to having ‘just a tiny bit’ cut off. It was a major victory, won by a very patient hairdresser, for Mum, who was getting tired of the baby hair tangles.

The Boyfriend and I enjoyed a meal out at the new Indian in town. We were both a little tired to make the most of their bring your own booze offer, but enjoyed their beautifully presented and delicious food.

Continuing our healthy kick (and our use up our old food kick) we had fruity pancakes. The fruit being the healthy part.

Unfortunately, the pancake mix we had was American Pancake mix, not regular pancake mix, so the pancakes were a bit of disaster. But given how much we drowned them (well, everyone except this one I happened to take a photo of) in grapes and strawberries, I don’t think we actually tasted pancake that often…

This week also saw me finally giving my Godson his birthday present – a trip to Attingham Park. We meant to go to Attingham Park Farm, but couldn’t find it. Fortunately the Park had a lovely mile walk that the ‘Toggler’ could manage, and the boy enjoyed being pushed in some swings in a play area. And we saw some Tamworth pigs, for our animal fix.

This weekend my Stepdad got back from visiting his parents. His mother recently got an iPad and has been enjoying using FaceTime as a method of keeping in touch with her family – some of whom live as far away as Switzerland. The Stepdad introduced the idea to Mum, who thought it was the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen. I was with her while they were setting it up, and phoned her when I got home. She promptly burst into hysterical laughter for about five minutes.

The webcam style conversation reminded Mum of the days when I was about 14 and used to talk to my friends over MSN with webcams on. This was pre-broadband, when there was significant delay on the cameras – you’d have a picture frozen for a few seconds, and then it would jump a few seconds later to another still picture. Mum used to take advantage of this to try and put different silly hats on my head when I was chatting – the idea being that one second I would look normal, the next I would have a silly hat on. This amused her endlessly.

I got wise to it after a while. The computer room in those days was down the end of the corridor, and I used to point the camera down the corridor to show my mates that Mum was commando crawling down it, silly hat in hand.

Today, while I was talking to her on FaceTime, someone finally enacted some revenge.

(P.S. I don’t know why my face is exactly the same in all three pictures… I’m not some sort of manikin, I promise!)

365 Project, Week 8

This week was a week of new things. Fitting, really, for Easter week.

We had big new things – piano finally arrived safe and sound. It has a few kinks from the delivery, and needs to settle for a while before it can be tuned, but in two weeks or so, I’m hoping to have it working perfectly.

I also got some small new things – these shoes, which I have needed for ages, and finally went out and bought.

It was also a week of some depression, which I combatted by keeping as busy as possible. Which meant cleaning. I got this out of my oven, just by wiping it….

But of course, in true Easter fashion, it was also a week of cake and family. And there’s nothing that cheers you up when you aren’t in the best of moods like a carrot cake.

Or a cow cake…

We also played a little Cranium. This is my model of big foot, which the Boyfriend did not guess. I was a little disappointed.

And just to round off the week, here’s a picture of my little brother (and Mr Taylor) in a box.

Happy Easter everyone!

365 Project, Week 6

I can’t believe it’s been a week and I haven’t posted anything. Truth be told, it’s just been too nice out to be sat in front of a computer – that and when I have been sat in front of a computer, I’ve been doing the other sort of writing.

This week, I had no to-do list, at least, not until the Boyfriend left me this one. I particularly like the last order.

If there is any improvement in photo quality from now on, it will be due to the fact that I finally got my phone upgraded to an iPhone 4, which comes with such fancy features as a flash and zoom for the camera.

My phone isn’t the only thing to have improved this week – the weather took a significant turn for the better, and I spent a lot of the weekend outside in my small, but perfect garden.

We also did a bit more DIY and fixed the skirting board in the hall, filling the gap where it bowed away from the wall. Mum’s Pampered Chef cleaning tool made an excellent device to fill the awkward crack beneath the radiator.

Speaking of radiators, the old ones have been living in our front garden since they were removed, but we finally got them taken away by the scrappy today, giving us our dishevelled (but at least more attractive than two dirty radiators) front garden back.

 

The Boyfriend had an accident at work, and burned his neck, poor thing. He, of course, needed much love and attention and frequent administration of Savlon.

My only mishap at work was finally putting my foot through my much loved shoes.

 

A Chocolate Jigsaw

My favourite presents are those that are so totally random, you had no idea you wanted one until you were given it. My friend Carole (of CaroleFindsHerWings) is particularly good at finding such items. About two years ago now she gave me a chocolate jigsaw for Christmas, and I figured it was high time I did it.

Having only a small kitchen, and limited culinary resources, I took it round to my mum’s where there are such luxuries as pyrex bowls. (I exaggerate, my kitchen isn’t quite that bad, but it’s not far off.) My little sister is of an age where cooking is starting to interest her, and she loves to help, so I got her to help me make it.

Washing our hands ready to start!

We broke the chocolate into little pieces, ready to melt it. I had to do most of this, as the little sister’s hands weren’t really strong enough to break the chocolate – though she did enjoy licking the melted chocolate off her hands after she tried.

Ready to melt

I had to do the melting, but she got a chair to stand on and watched the proceedings, very interested. She thought it was very funny when the chocolate started to go gooey. (And when I burned my hand trying to take the bowl out of the pan of hot water…)

Stirring the chocolate

When the chocolate was melted, we poured it into the jigsaw mould, which wasn’t easy due to it being very thin and quite flimsy. But any spilt chocolate was chocolate Addy could eat, so I don’t think she minded too much.

Yum!

After that the jigsaw had to go in the fridge for a while. I’m not sure we left it in long enough, as the chocolate was a little soft when we took it out, making it difficult to break it into the jigsaw pieces, but oh well. Addy couldn’t wait any longer!

Ready!

Well, it almost worked...

Sharing with the family

This was part of my Day Zero List Challenge.

Race For Life

Anyone who knows me know I’m not the biggest fan of getting off the sofa and actually doing something. In fact tonight, in a bout of forgetfulness and cold and flu symptom induced idiocy, I completely forgot it was aerobics night, until Mum phoned me at 6 o’clock (when the class was due to start) at which point I was sat watching telly with a whole pizza on my plate about to tuck in.

However, and largely because I do regularly eat whole pizzas by myself, I am trying to get into running. Changing my eating habits would be hard – I figured starting an exercise regime would be the lesser of two evils on two counts. One, it would probably be easier than dieting (I really like cake) and two, I thought it would be better for me in the long run.

So, as long time readers will know, I joined a gym, and except when I completely forget to go, I’d been having a reasonable time with it. But our gym is small and stuffy and not terribly motivating, and it costs a lot of money. When my membership comes up for renewal in september I won’t be forking out £300+ quid for another year.

To this end, I am trying to get into running.

Now, perhaps foolishly underestimating our ability, Mum and I signed up to do a 5K Race for Life a few months ago, figuring by the time we got to do it, we would be fit enough. Now, a whole catalogue of things have transpired against us – including my dodgy hip injury and various illnesses, but we also didn’t train as often and as hard as we should have.

However, when we came to do the race last sunday, we were both very proud of our achievements.

It was a beautiful day – a little bit too hot for running up a great big hill, for my tastes, but I couldn’t complain about the beauty of the summer sunshine and the location, Weston Park. The sight of 3000+ women dressed in pink was very motivating and despite some trepidation, I was excited to get started.

We ran (very slowly) for a good 1.5K. Which in itself was an achievement, as many of the ‘joggers’ underestimated themselves considerably more than we did, piling to a halt at about 200m. Dodging in and out of the crowd was difficult, and after a while proved impossible as the terrain turned to hill and narrowed considerably. I got cut off from Mum and was unable to catch up with her for the rest of the race, which was a bit of a shame, but as she so succinctly put it: by the halfway mark, we were in no shape to be talking.

It didn’t seem to take very long to get round, and though I walked a fair way, I still had the energy to do a mad burst of proper sprinting running at the end. Mum had already made it to the finish a few minutes before me and cheered me through the finish line.

It was an emotional and inspirational day, and I have surprised myself by wanting to do it again. Which to me suggests that I might actually be getting into this running lark.

To that end, I’m not going to tick off the ‘Run 5K’ on my Day Zero list until I can do a Race for Life and actually run the whole way. We’re going out for a jog this saturday to pick the training regime up properly. This time next year maybe we’ll be thinking about running 10K!

(Picture ruthlessly stolen from QWERTYmum who did a much better write up than me. I blame illness.)