Happy Birthday Iain!

Today is Iain's 50th birthday! We went round for tea and cake this afternoon and to wish him Happy Birthday. His party isn't until Saturday but it was good to celebrate with him on his birthday. Our family, eldest to youngest, is Norma, Kay, Iain, me and Robin. However, Iain turning 50 brought home to me that I only have another 3 years before it's my turn! Yikes!! Hope you enjoyed the rest of your birthday Iain!

Faith brings in the cake Blowing out the candles (sorry Iain, didn't have a better one to show)

Happy Birthday brother :)

xx

This and that

Yesterday was a productive day! For a while I've tried to avoid going in to Hugh's room. It's not been right since we moved in, due to a lack of storage space, and has been in need of some TLC. Yesterday, I made a start on it because I don't think Hugh had a clue of where, or how, to begin. It felt overwhelming. Clearing the floor and putting stuff away, or getting rid of it, was the first task - followed by an attack on his, desk. The paperwork/magazines/junk had accumulated and there wasn't even room to put his computer on it. Not any more - the mail has been opened, sorted, recycled and filed. You can now walk around without stepping over things. Mission accomplished!! Hugh certainly wasn't prepared for what had happened to his room when came home from work, but he seemed really pleased and did thank me. Jon asked if I'd taken before and after photos and, to be honest, I hadn't thought of it. These after photos will have to do! First view as you enter the room

A wider angle ;)

Looking from the window end toward the door

I didn't attempt to tidy the bookcase with all his games/dvd's/cd's.

On Saturday we had lunch at The Broadway and Claire joined us in her lunch break. Jon's brother Mike and his son Darren and my nephew Kyle and his partner Emma were also there. I needed a photo for Saturday and had my camera in my bag so I got it out. Emily got her camera out and so did Claire ;) Nothing like being prepared!

Mike, Claire and Emily (ready to take a photo)

Not sure Wile E Coyote was enjoying Claire's attention (see his HELP sign!!)

Emily composing another shot (and also trying not to let me get a photo of her!)

And finally, to end this post, my orchid has flowers again. I have never been very good at looking after houseplants and normally killed them within weeks. This orchid was just about dead before we moved house so, my friend, Alison offered to look after it and nurse it back to health for me. I got it back just over a year ago when we moved into this house. She did a great job and it wasn't long before I had flowers. They lasted ages but eventually died off. In the last couple of weeks it's started flowering again. It's like seeing a little bit of sunshine when I walk into the kitchen! I think this is probably the longest I've had a houseplant, so orchids are my new favourite!

Hope you all have a good week this week

xx

Wednesday ramblings

Yesterday I went round to Mum & Dad's to help Mum with some stuff on Elements. Mum's reason for not scrapbooking is that she doesn't have photos. Yesterday, I downloaded over 5000 photos from her folders into Photoshop Elements and showed her how to tag them ;o). No more excuses!! This photo was one that we saw when we were scrolling through and it's a rare one where I don't mind me in it. I don't know about the rest of you but I hate photos of myself. I have a few issues - I don't like being overweight and don't like the way I look so I don't want to be in photos. I know as a scrapbooker how important it is to have photos with me in them - and I'm working on it (slowly)! Some people are naturally photogenic (my Mum being one of them) but unfortunately, that's not something I inherited from her! You can guarantee if someone takes a photo of me my face has a weird expression or it just looks forced. Not a pretty sight! I repeat -I'll work on it, but it's not something that comes naturally to me. Anyway, when I saw this photo I knew straight away the type of layout I wanted to do with it. I looked through the notes from Cathy's Design Your Life class and this sketch worked -Week 11 Sketch 2 for those of you who have done the class. I'm pleased with the way it turned out and told Mum I would post it when I finished. Now Mum, I want to see what you do with yours ;o) This morning has been fairly productive. I've done two loads of laundry and got my ironing up to date. Always a good thing! Jon and I went to The Broadway for lunch today and Claire came down to join us in her lunch break. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos! I'll have to use the one above as my photo for today. A couple of weeks ago we started making up a menu for the week on a Sunday evening. We did it for a while last year and then for some reason, we stopped. I went back to having to think what to have for dinner each day and it was a pain. I'm loving having the menu back in place. I know what I need to buy when I go shopping and each morning I just look to see what we're having and pull what I need from the freezer. This is something I have to try and continue with through 2009. Emily has just got home from school so time to end off. Have a good evening. xx

It's time ...

for me to update my blog again :) Thought I'd do a quick recap of what's been going on since Friday. We had a good weekend, nothing too hectic. I hadn't seen my sister, Kay, for a couple of weeks so we decided to meet up at Nero's on Saturday morning. I picked Mum up on the way and we were there just before 9am. (I was taking Claire in to work so there wasn't much point in going home and coming back again). Neither Mum or I had had breakfast so we decided to get something while we waited for Kay, Theresa and Tyler to arrive. I had looked in the Weight Watchers Eating Out book to see what was lower in points and settled on a Bacon Breakfast Panini and a capaccino. When we'd been there for a while, Tyler started getting restless and I was drawing pictures. It's been a long time since I've drawn helicopters, trains and diggers but he didn't seem to mind my attempts ;o)

He's certainly growing up fast and at the end of the month it'll be his 2nd birthday - not a baby anymore, that's for sure.

Sunday morning was another frosty one and as I was going out, I noticed the frost on this spider's web. Unfortunately you can't see it that clearly but when I zoom in and see the crystals hanging to the threads, it reminds me how wonderful nature is. It also reminds me to sometimes stop and look around me and actually SEE what there is. Yesterday was a wet and windy day. Didn't start out too badly but slowly and surely got worse! We had our usual weekly shopping trip and coffee and I had time to get home and unpack before heading off to the dentists. Half my tooth broke off when I was eating ice cream (SOFT ice cream!) about 10 days ago. My dentist wasn't back until this week, hence the wait. I'm relieved to have it sorted and to be able to eat normally again. I had to wait till 3 o'clock before I could eat again and prepared dinner while I passed the time. This was the scene from the kitchen window - after the dry, clear weather we'd been having, it was a bit of a shock to go back to miserable rain.

Jon has taken this week off work and last night informed me that he would like to go for breakfast today. It's been a while since we went out for breakfast - about 6 years I guess because he suggested a restaurant that closed down that long ago ;o). He was up and ready to go by 8.30am and we walked into town with Claire - who had to walk to work seeing as I wasn't going to be driving. Breakfast was good and we went to get the paper and a new battery for Jon's watch before heading home again. We bumped into Dad at the top of town and had a quick chat before carrying on. There's a stretch of road we walk down to get down home that has a pub and some offices. We'd passed the pub and were walking past offices when I glanced down and in a basement, seen from the road, this is what I saw. I had to take a photo because it certainly wasn't what I expecting.

Row upon row of wine bottles. Jon's idea of heaven ;o)

All for now.

xx