Long time no see

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted! Much has happened, but on the other hand nothing particularly notable has happened either! Confused? Me too!

It was himself's birthday on the 19th. I keep telling him he's doing ok for a 110 year old! LOL... that doesn't impress him much.  He got loads of money which he put towards buying himself a lovely Canon 300D DSLR camera. He still has enough left over to buy himself a few accessories to go with it too.  I guess it means tho' that I will inherit his little compact that he got as a birthday present a few years back... although I'm looking enviously at the DSLR.  Perhaps I can convince him to let me borrow it?  Maybe if I get myself on a course? Hmmmm... I don't think he's going to let me touch it for a while never mind letting me take it out of his sight to a course where I might try to do wierd stuff to it!  Saying that, the poor man has yet to find the time to properly read the instruction manual. Believe me, it's a bit more complicated than our point-and-shoot compact!  Mind you, there is an upside to it being HIS camera.... it means that now I might be able to get IN the photo rather than being the one taking the photo.  Maybe I can actually start on the scrapping item known as a BOM? (A Book of Me for all you confused non-scrapping people out there)  Up to now my problem has always been that I'm the one behind the camera rather than infront of it.  Finding photo's of me for a BOM has been a problem so far!  Hopefully not anymore!

Must say thanks to all the friends and family who contributed to the camera, I'm sure we'll all enjoy the benefits even if some of us aren't allowed to use it!

On another topic entirely, there is a little discussion going on on the UKS forum at the moment about whether or not people would sell framed Layouts.  It's got me thinking... do you think people would pay to have their treasured photo's nicely scrapped and then framed to hang on the wall? Would they pay for a whole album to be done?  Would you? How much would you pay to have your memories preserved? Let me know your thoughts as this sounds like an ideal way to spend my time and maybe get a bit of pin money in.  Not sure it would be profitable enough to do as a 'career' tho'.

I'm off now methinks. I have to wake herself up or else we'll get no sleep tonight! I promise I won't leave it so long next time between postings.  I have a new LO that I want to show you anyway, but need to get a better photo of it. Perhaps himself will let me use his flashy new camera to take it?? Or perhaps not!

Sleeping Beauty

This morning herself has been a whirling dervish, a two foot high Taz... creating havoc wherever she goes!  She has not been in my good books either, mostly due to the mess caused.  The final straw was when she got hold of the glass of water on my bedside table and emptied it's entire contents onto the bed! Which means extra work for me as I've had to strip the whole bed to let it dry out and will have to put new sheets on and remake the bed later today.  It's not a job I enjoy doing at the best of times...

I got the young madam to help me tidy up the mess she'd made, by packing up all her toys.  During which she was whinging the whole way. I figured it was just because she had been told off.  After most of the tidying up was done she went to sit on the floor on the upstairs landing while I finished off. When I turned back to look at her ....

Bubbles!

Yesterday morning herself and I went to Tesco's to do the monthly shop, boring yes I know!  Still, it had to be done as we had nothing in the fridge and even the larder cupboard was looking a little bare. So despite the snowy conditions we got in the car and drove to Tesco's. While I was there I found some Mer-Matey bubble bath in the kids section, which I thought herself would enjoy. Boy was I right!! She loved them and had a great time trying to eat them... don't ask me why? Who knows what goes on in her little mind?  Here's a few pics:

Unfortunately she enjoyed her bath so much that she didn't want to get out! Which ended up in tears; at least they didn't last too long as she was deposited into her bed not long after. I'm rather looking forward to scrapping these photo's... should look good!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Here's a blog prompt from UKScrappers today that caught my eye. Thought it might be a good one to try out...
"What changes do you plan to make in your life in the coming months. Do you like or loath change?"
Changes I would like to make are rather different to changes that I'm going to make. Firstly, I would like to put an extension on our house that could give us a study/scraproom downstairs and another bedroom upstairs. The change I'm going to make is that the spare bedroom is going to do double duty as study(scraproom) and guest bedroom.  This is going to involve ripping out some really dated fitted wardrobes, stripping wallpaper, ripping up carpet and then painting, laying laminate floor and installing some desks and shelving. Secondly, I would like to have someone to do all the housework for me so that I can spend my time doing the stuff I really like. However, I'm going to be following the FLYlady (www.flylady.net) to learn how to break the housework down into more manageable chunks.  I'm hoping that doing it this way will mean that I can actually do the stuff I like too! Some other changes I would liketo make are:

1. Lose weight
2. Finish decorating the house
3. Move back to Inverness
4. Have another baby
5. Find a job I can do from home
6. Go back to college to finish my Fine Arts studies
7. Re-model the back garden

Somehow, I really can't see me actually accomplishing all of those in the next year.... but I will give it my best shot!  Change isn't something I have a huge problem with. In fact, I love change! To the extent that every 2 years I start getting restless and wanting to move house... that isn't normal is it?!  But then, who is?!

Re-decorating

As you can probably tell I decided that the black background was too dark and gloomy. As the sun was shining and spring flowers are starting to appear I decided that a fresher look was needed.  Although my decision was also influenced slightly by the fact that TypePad has decided not to like my previous banner  - the one with the lovely sunset was not allowed on my page apparently. So I played around with another photo that I'd taken in Scotland and made this nice new one. I hope you like it!
I have to confess too that I finally succumbed and bought some more olives today. Half the bottle has already disappeared!  I'm sure we have an olive-eating pixie in the house cause I certainly don't remember eating that many!

Poem

Thanks to Eleanor on UKScrappers for sending me this poem. It's apt! The cravings are still there but not as strongly now.... just trying to ignore them as I don't have anymore olives in the house and don't really want to go shopping especially!

Olives
Sometimes a craving comes for salt, not sweet,
For fruits that you can eat
Only if pickled in a vat of tears —
A rich and dark and indehiscent meat
Clinging tightly to the pit — on spears
Of toothpicks, maybe, drowned beneath a tide
Of vodka and vermouth,
Rocking at the bottom of a wide,
Shallow, long-stemmed glass, and gentrified;
Or rustic, on a plate cracked like a tooth —
A miscellany of the humble hues
Eponymously drab —
Brown greens and purple browns, the blacks and blues
That chart the slow chromatics of a bruise —
Washed down with swigs of barrel wine that stab
The palate with pine-sharpness. They recall
The harvest and its toil,
The nets spread under silver trees that foil
The blue glass of the heavens in the fall —
Daylight packed in treasuries of oil,
Paradigmatic summers that decline
Like singular archaic nouns, the troops
Of hours in retreat. These fruits are mine —
Small bitter drupes
Full of the golden past and cured in brine.
A. E. Stallings
The New Criterion
June 2006

Strange Cravings...

Nope I'm definitely NOT pregnant, believe me I have tested and have proof. There is not going to be any new additions to our family any time soon.  So why am I craving?? Anyone out there with medical knowledge who can tell me, I would be most grateful!

So here it is.... I hate olives. Never have liked them and always avoid them like the plague.  I bought a 400g jar of them from Tesco's just before Christmas for the simple reason that my parents were coming for Christmas day and my parents love them. I figured it would be a nice little snack to have with a light tea in the evening.  As it turned out we were all so full from lunch that tea never happened, so I was left with some food, including a jar of olives. The rest of the food got eaten over the course of the week between Christmas and New Years but the olives got shoved to the back of a shelf and I was resigned to the fact that in a couple of years time I would discover the jar of out-of-date olives while I was desperately trying to find a tin of tomatoes. 

Then suddenly last week I started this craving for olives.... don't know why, it just happened. I remembered the poor un-loved jar of olives in the back of the cupboard and opened it thinking that I would probably have one little olive; decide I still hate them and end up throwing the rest of the jar away.  Well, it didn't happen like that. I ate the whole 400g in the space of 36 hours.... and I'm still craving olives.

This morning I decided to rummage through the larder cupboard again to see what I had and found a tin of anchovies. They're ok but have to be put with loads of other stuff to take the edge off the saltiness.... but I had them this morning on toast with melted cheese. It was rather nice actually, but surely not normal?

So there you have it. Why am I craving? I have no idea, but I'm rather enjoying the odd combinations!