A long day...

and it is not over yet lol.

We have just got back from a flying visit to Lincoln to see my mum. Just over two hours to get up there, some gardening - basic because that's all I do. Then a hoover around, out to Whisby's nature reserve for lunch and then back down to London. Her leg is healing well, although it is painful as she is just starting to weight bare again. But hey, that is so much better than being in a wheelchair all the time.

Now I have time to get the washing on, go and pick Holly up from work, make dinner and then head into Hammersmith to see The Proclaimers. I bought their new album a few weeks ago, which I have played to death. Then I found Restless Soul the other day and have been listening to that instead. Although the reviews were not as good, I actually prefer this album.

Maybe tomorrow I will have some time to scrapbook...and a lie in - yay!

These were the two pages based on Shim's sketch for the Banana Frog UKS birthday crop class today. I'm looking forward to seeing what people make of this sketch...I had fun with it and it is quite unusual and fab to work to.



Thanks to Anita Mundt for these photos of me. I love that draping a piece of black material over my cupboard door makes such a difference.



I love these photos of Holly; a couple of them are quite old and just taken at football matches when the mamager was giving the team a talk afterwards. The middle one is more recent, taken a couple of months ago.

Busy time

Where has the time gone again? It is sooo long since I last posted, lots of things have been happening but no time to catch up. I will try and catch up with some back posts but for tonight, just a quickie. Its been a busy day at work but really just paperwork and lots of phonecalls...jobs but nothing to go to today. They still continued an hour an a half after finishing - the downside to being contactable by mobile.

Anyway I am home now. My dad is here; we are going to his brother's funeral tomorrow morning. A sad time, they didn't really keep in touch so he didn't know his brother was ill. He could have said goodbye but no one told him. So he is sad and this is the last of his immediate family.

Have desparately been catching up with housework, washing and ironing. All I seem to do is pick up stuff from downstairs and take it upstairs. Every morning and evening. Without fail. The same stuff just magically reappears. Does this happen in other peoples houses? One day I will find out just how many calories I use up, running up and down the stairs countless times a day. It must be lots but it doesn't seem to make a difference lol. Maybe it has something to do with the wine and the chocolate!

So what else have I been up to? The last couple of nights I have been making a couple of pages for the Banana Frog UKS Cyber Crob class that Shimelle is running. So that has been fun and I will post them when I can. Now I have to work on magazine pages lol.

A busy weekend...

doing nothing but housework!

Two days spent catching up on the jobs that I keep putting aside and then never doing plus a real blitz on cleaning my place. I aches all over - how can housework do that to you? But the place looks great and I feel so much happier now that I have got rid of lots of clutter. I still have a few jobs to do like sort out the books for the charity shop and finish my tax return but I feel good!

I took a few more photos for Shimelle's 'Fill my little World' class at Ickenham in two weeks but I need to get them downloaded and find some more ready for printing. I didn't think that it would be so hard to get a hundred or so photos together that depict my life but it is definitely proving so. And I want some extra ones incase the ones I have chosen don't work with the album. This is one time when 40,000 photos on your PC is more of a hindrance than a help. I just can't find ones that I know I have taken!

What a beautiful weekend it has been even if I haven't taken advantage of the good weather. I love it when September is as warm as it is right now....just a shame we didn't get more of it during summer itself.

Some LO's

I am not really doing that much for SI at the moment but these are my two pages from the current issue (which has some great stuff in it this month). Also a page I did for Banana Frog...

Exams...

Oh my...I have so much catching up to do I'm not even sure that I will remember everything that has happened over the last two weeks or so. But for today...

I took the day off to be with Holly as she had a couple of exams. The first was her driving theory test and the second was the UKCAT apptitude test that she has to take if she wants to study medicine. Well I have been nagging over the last few weeks and Holly has been working on both although the Uni one can not be revised for, just examples practised.

So we went up to Watford first thing and although we were early, Holly was able to take the theory test straight away. I wasn't allowed to wait at the centre so I found a little cafe nearby and waited...

Great news, Holly passed the theory test, 49/50 for the Highway Code and 49/75 for the hazzards section. We had a couple of hours to wait until the next one so we went into Watford to my favourite coffee shop 'Presence' and had a civilised breakfast, Whilst I worked on my tax return (main reason why I haven't done anything else over the last few days lol) Holly worked on her examples. Then it was time to head back up to the test centre for the second exam...where the receptionist informed us that Holly could have sat the second one straight away but he didn't realise she was doing two until she had left! Oh well....I left her for the second one and rushed back home, hung the washing out and other bits of housework, then walked back up to the test centre again. I must have walked about 5 miles today which has to be a good thing right?!

Holly was waiting outside. I think that she was just happy and relieved that it was all over and she didn't have to stress about it anymore. Her overall mark was 615 out of 900 which is right in the middle of average (that being between 500 and 700)so hopefully it will be OK when it comes to applying for medicine.

After walking Holly back to school I went to Borders where I spent a couple of hours looking through the various photography books before settling on one by Tom Ang. I did find a really good one but it was £25 so I want to see if I can find it cheaper on Amazon. This one is not too large so it will fit in my handbag if necessary.

Then it was to Tescos, shopping, back home, time to clean out the kitchen cupboards and fridge before putting the food away, dinner and back to sorting out all my paperwork so that I can work out my tax return. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute - again lol. At least all my paperwork is in order; the current stuff filed and old stuff sorted and put away. Now I can just work out my figures and get it sent off before the deadline.

This is going to be another busy weekend. Anita Mundt (from the SIDT)is coming over for a visit next week and is going to stop with me for a couple of days. I am really looking forward to meeting her but I DO need to get my place cleaned up before she arrives as it is looking somewhat messy! So Roy is on cleaning duties, not sport on TV and remote control protection duties this weekend and we can blitz the place together! Plus I have bags of stuff needing to go up to the charity shop, the dump and in the loft which I just never seem to get around to doing. Well that is going get done as well lol.

OK, so that was today. I shall try and catch up on some back posts later.

A lazy day

A very lazy day! I got up at 7am to put the washing on, then went back to bed and slept until 10.30am. Even when I got up I didn't do much....watched back episodes of Greys Anatomy with Holly then went up into Watford to get her a new school jumber and some trousers and shirts for work for me. We were having such a cool time shopping (yeah right!) we completely forgot about Holly's driving lesson - it was now 5.10pm and her instructor was picking her up at 5pm...oops. A quick phone call and he met us near to the shopping centre so Holly still got her lesson which was good because between her work experience, holiday in Spain and the car going into the garage for 2 weeks, she hasn't had a lesson since the start of summer.

I think it went well...she had a big smile on her face when she got back and said that Gary only had to brake a couple of times for her when she didn't on the approach to a junction! I'm glad that I am not there to watch any of this...it is totally different when it is your child out there...

No scrapbooking for ages now. I popped round to see Laura and she showed me her latest page which is fab...and done whilst they are fitting a kitchen! I can't even manage one on a day off lol. I don't think I will have much time this week either. I have jobs booked in tomorrow and Wednesday, plus I have to go into town tomorrow morning first. Then I am off to Manchester for Thursday through to Saturday for some work meetings. But then it is Sunday and the Ickenham Crop - yay! Not that I will be ready though.

Talking of being ready...I have spent a couple of hours tonight going through my photos for pictures I can use for Shimelle's 'Fill My Little World' class in October. I am so looking forward to her class but I know from past experience how crap I am at getting organised! So I have around 60 6x4 photos, 20 5x7, a 10x8 and some 2x2 to find. All about what's in my life right now. I've found some of family and friends but now I need to find some of my house, where I live, the food I like, hobbies, places I visit.... and I want to have spare ones, in case I can't use the ones I pick for any reason. Like they are the wrong orientation, they don't go with the papers. So many decisions and not that much time left!

Watford and Lincoln

I spent the weekend in Lincoln, visiting my mum who has not long come out of hospital after an operation to rebuild her foot. She will be in plaster for at least 3months, the first 6 weeks are non weight bearing....possibly longer. It depends on the first check up.

So I went to see Watford play on Saturday. They won 2 nil against Ipswich - my 'favourite' club as a child. We all have our Premiership favourites although in those days it was Division One. Mine was Ipswich because of Paul Mariner (who these days runs a coaching school in the US I think?). I never saw them play though....just Gillingham my local club. But you could dream as a kid. Now I have seen them play lots of times, but it isn't quite the same lol.

Anyway, great game. Ipswich were quite poor and Watford brilliant and they deserve to be second in the table. Well they deserve to be top but Coventry put paid to that!

The drive up to Lincoln was not too bad, around 2 1/2 hours. My mum is fine, doing really well. She has a light weight wheelchair for getting around in and can do pretty much everything at home.

The next day, my sister Eileen and Josh came over. They are going to stay for a few days. We went down to Whisby Nature Reserve for lunch which was very nice. We did plan to go for a walk but it started spitting with rain so we headed back instead. I stopped for coffee then headed back home. The thought of Sunday evening traffic wasn't too enticing but actually it was a pretty quick run back all things considered.