365/348 Edible

Mmmm so many things to eat at this time of year.. though today not feeling too festive as poor Kate has come home from school sick.. not the usual 'sick of school' .. hahah!! .. and I had just been listening to an article about this awful winter virus and talking to her about it, but seems we may be too late. 

At least we are a small contingent at home for a few days and can use a bathroom each to limit the effects.. shame though as we girlies were planning to go to see Great Expectations this evening..

..although I know you aren't meant to eat anything I do like to try and keep some sugars going in.. so I asked what she fancied..fruit pastilles..ahh a hard call, but true to form, rummaging in a bag of wrapped presents, my guess was right, a tube of pick'n'mix complete with tootie fruities, fruit gums and the fancied pastilles!  It was nice too, not a bag stuffed in the tube.. a tube full in its own right.. ahh the little things of life!

..evening report now, isn't it odd how when looking after someone who is a bit poorly you feel kinda off colour, but you're not quite sure if it's real.. my motto is to keep eating! .. and JB has made some chelsea buns for us in the office ..secret Santa tomorrow but poor Col is stuck in the Midlands, I found him a great call for the morning (not a really popular wifey at the minute!)

365/347 Obligations.

Well today we have all been aware of our obligations. Col has driven from Derby to Newcastle and done two busy customer calls too. I have been booking him nicer hotels but they seem to be hard to find come rush hour ..it is a toss up between a more civilised evening and a easy find hotel .. mmm x

Jordan has a busy few weeks with working a restaurant kitchen and her three coursework A levels .. she has a month worked out to make sure she doesn't renage on a promise.  We have two carol things this weekend too so I am looking forward to those x

So my pic shows some of Cols calls and Jordan's itinerary and my ongoing Christmas list .. which is going well, lots wrapped and maybe a dozen bits to get ...no doubt I will still rush come 21st .. esp as I have the girls next week while M&D get some 'them' time xx

365/346 Look up

Yes a frosty morning but the bluest of sky in Hayle at 9am xx

365/345 That Tree!

Quickie this evening, nice lazy time getting to grips with Facebook for a bit.. JB made lasagne for tea and I had Lilly for couple of hours afte school..I really missed seeing her the last week or so..she is such a star. 

We had a conversation about whether I was part of her family or not and I let myself get into immediate and extended, so if she soaked all that up she will be dumbfounding the staff at school again this week!

Too much nice food about, all that mulled wine tea, spiced berry punch and Jordan's buns.. Well, once they are eaten we can resume sensible eating.. About 3rd January I think!

The tree looks much the same but the back hedge is very wintery, I don't like it when you can see through to the road.   Ross has made the cabin look festive with lights outside.. Sweetheart x

365/344 Lights

Well it's another catch up day today. Col is away for the week from tomorrow on a huge round the country trip, here to Reading, Newcastle and all places in between! Before he goes we are filming four new product videos, he will surely be tongue tied by the end.  I try not to smile when he is doing it but it is kind of surreal watching him talk through the products to an imaginary customer!
The drum trolley we have demo-ed so many times at trade shows and discussed on the phone, we both just get a dry mouth and feel like we spitting feathers as the description comes out!

Well it was a rock'n'roll Saturday night in these parts ...I did the ironing! Thanks Anne for the advice, I should get more non-iron stuff. I do wash and dry in my office kitchen so 50% is folded when warm but Col and Ross notch up a good few shirts between them in a week.. and there are about 6 of us washing and bed changing so it is a bit of a task!  Also it's hard for others to sort it as I am the font of all knowledge when it comes to who wears what underwear!

Lights.. awhh we like lights! There have been white fairy lights on our kitchen ceiling since our party in May!  Add to that our little red garland across the breakfast bar and then a new little battery set amongst the nativity in the sitting room.. plus the net behind the dresser which is a fixture now to save the pre-Xmas frenzy!

Yes I am becoming quite a laid back thing these recent years, well it's all too much hassle to be bothered too much about what happens in a day, just try our best and relax , eat drink and smile more!  Mind you having a bunch of more grown up kids certainly heps as they all do their bit. haha April is ironing Ross' shirts as I blog! ;-)

I'm not sure if anyone is a Mr Bean fan but we always laugh about his Christmas episode where he had the dinosaur leaning in on the nativity scene.. Jordan has a few nice nativities and this year I made sure one of the meerkats (Bader) and the old standard diver were watching over Mr Bean style..

...and finally if anyone should venture to these parts this is the display which is situated just outside our front garden at the entrance to the village..

365/342-3 Comfort-mundane

Not two words you see together very often, though maybe some people get comfort from the repetitive mundane things in life.. ummm.

I have been uploading my phone pics to Google+ in an attempt to stop loading onto Picasa and using up my allocated space, I can't really work it out as I have deleted stuff off Picasa Webalbums but do not seem to see the new space.. oh well G+ it is.. hope not too many people are looking as some of the pics are pretty./..err...mundane?!

Comfort food.. certainly these Chelsea buns are on my list.. a little something Jordan rustled up last night.. before her second baking day today.. this girl has potential!

Mundane.. nothing more ordinary or boring than two boxes of ironing on a saturday noght.. well I know how to live! (to be fair I had a great day at Just Scrapbooking, a small posse but lovely relaxing times and April came too and we resolved to 'do more'.

365/340-1 Corner-curly

I tried so hard to upload this last night, but it wasn't playing ball on my phone!

This is Lyla at the hospital,, waiting on a check-up for new baby brother or sister. (all good there.. just need to coax it out of breech in the next six weeks!)  There were two doors and three corners so she loved hiding in them, an I knew the word, so hey presto!

 She also sports a cut eye, hit the corner of the desk! Double prompt word score!

JB had a great birthday, we ate out at the Seafood Cafe and later went on to the Hub where she and Ross worked in the summer and surprise surprise another ten people there waiting for us.. cake, drinks, presents, friends what more does a girlie want?
(mmm, well cooked swordfish perhaps.. but prima donna chefs just won't listen will they!)

Only Zac was missing, well Tom too but he was poorly and babysat instead, so we will try again for the full Bingo Card when Zac is back over Xmas .. x  We sent him this message from Dad while we were out..

Today has been eventful. We are having three phase power pout in and we had no electric from 10am til almost 5... amazing the things you think of doing and then realise you can't as you need power.  So much of our lives are internet based now, banking, email sales and shopping!  The office and workshop used a generator for a while but by 3 it was dark, all the cars had been wahsed and tidy welding bays sorted so we calle dit a day.. call it a Christmas shopping day! 

Col had a better idea for me, he made me a fire indoors and I wrapped alomst 3/4 of my presents!  Still slightly odd, by daylight and with no TV or radio.. but it was nice and made me think of why my folks used to get up early and go to be early in winter to use the best of the day out working on the field.

I did venture into the office a bit.. the guys had been planning some work and ended up using the white board for their own kind of air hockey!!

(or was it curling..ta da!)

Well it will be a day to remember for them!

mmm, curly.. well howabout this lovely cloudy curly sky I stopped to photograph on the way home this morning.. it looked better than the picture to be fair..

365/338-9 Curved-couple

Well this is the most curved thing I saw yesterday.. the dash of my car.. almost poetically curved!

Today has been so so busy. We are hoping to build a new unit to rehouse our manufacturing and Col wanted us to see a new building a friend has built.. it is huge and we were suitably impressed. Now to sort some funding.. and that's the hard part, getting money back from Europe which we pay them every day but can only get back once we have employed God knows how many consultants to show us how... bring on the UKIP vote we say!

This evening is the eve of Jordan's birthday and she was out at her baking evening class so we set to and decorated the house for Christmas. Ross was at football and he got in just as April and I needed the tree (it's an artificial one so we can have a tree for three weeks before the 'real tree' (holly) gets cut a day or two before Christmas (that's become Zac's job since Col's back was bad .. and he's not sure how it happened, but maybe next year when he is sunning himself in the Pacific or somewhere he will miss it?? maybe Zac?)



Great couple.. x


We gave JB her presents as it will (as usual ) be busy at 8am, she had some lovely 'to keep ' things, a bracelet, starfish ear rings and some retro cushions.. oh and art and cook books of course!

Kate was funny as ever, reminiscing about being  Scrooge in the junior school play 5 years ago this week (when Lisa first told me she was having Lilly... ahh how time passes and children become so much part of the family!).. I have (hard to upload but I am trying!) pictures Kate pretending to be Scrooge as she put the balls on the tree.. she asked me to do the lametta as she says I have the degree for doing that (a tribute to the control freak I used to be!)

Quote of the day goes to April.. 'yeah I was a sheep in the school play.. I was also Mary's understudy.. but she always &*^%$*&! turned up..'

Story Telling Sunday: Coming Home

So, a moment this evening for Sian's Story telling Sunday over at ..High in the Sky

Back in 2004 when our five children were aged 7 up to 18 we were long overdue for a family holiday. Col had borne the brunt of working up our business for the previous five years and was in need of a get-off-the-world rest and relax.  Having never had a holiday all of us together with children not in need of fetching and carrying, I looked at ski-ing but resolved it was too much of a sport strenuous option (and expensive to kit out seven of us to boot!), then I looked at beachy places but it was going to be long haul to get hot weather in the depth of a European winter.

Colin had harboured a love for the Maldives from his days out there working (yes, working... good work if you can get it!), so I researched some all Inclusive options which turned out favourable vs skiing for seven and we pushed the proverbial boat out and went to Kuramathi in the Maldives.   We got exactly what we needed : sea, sun, sand, snorkelling and so much food and drink it was just what we all needed.

I couldn't believe the blue seas, the amazing coloured fish and mostly that for once all my kids were in the same place at the same time, no teen taxi calls, no school runs, no friends over for tea, just us ! We became a bit of a talking point having an entourage of five children and even the lady in the spa had heard about us.. I nicknamed myself Mrs Von Trapp!

We travelled home on 21st December and arrived in Gatwick amidst carol singers and crowds flying in from Lapland with holiday reps dressed in thick coats and ear muffs...and there we were in board shorts and flip flops!  Quite surreal with a choir singing Silent Night alongside an airport sized Christmas Tree! 

It wasn't easy settling back down to a Cornish winter either as I still felt I should kick into Christmas mode, but kick in we did.  

Some of the people we met on the holiday had a third week booked and we heard from them when they got back... on Boxing Day that same year the Tsunami in Asia occurred and we found ourselves rooted to the TV all day scouring for news of this tiny vulnerable group of islands which had found such a special place in our hearts just a few days earlier.  

 

Some of the islands had suffered badly but our island had flooded pathways and some strange ebbing and flowing of the seas (which Col observed that he would have found very disturbing, either the earth had fallen off its axis or some great earth movement was occurring would have been his first thought!), and was otherwise fine.  It turns out that because the islands are essentially sunken volcanos the tsunami surge went round them with a swell rather than treating the land as a barrier as in Sri Lanka.. any other way would have been devastating as there are no areas more than a metre above sea level... they sure wouldn't have taken some of our English winter gales!

 

We love that place, so much so we have been back several times since and Lisa went there on honeymoon.. just waiting now on the next wedding in the family to see if we can have a communal honeymoon.. any takers kids???!

365/333-7 Another chasing of tail!

Catch up time again I'm afraid. I have been busy and even writing comments has been very scarce on the ground.. sorry everyone!

Day 333 Wednesday.. planning to go away the next day, my fruit was well stewed in the red wine and then the Cointreau (which I have just discovered is a great addition to a mulled wine / punch type hottie at this time of year!! )  So I set to in the morning and made my Christmas cakes, one for us and one for Pops, all gluten free. They look good so far!!  This is the whole cake before baking!

Day 334 Thursday ..Col and I set off mid morning (after I had done a hours work, oh how it comes in just as you are leaving the office!) with Kate to go to Watford for the final photo day for the Teen model competition she was in.  Long drive but nicely interspersed with a quick MacD and a shop (in Lipsy... ohh the gorgeous dress she bought at Col's choice.. so so gorgeous!) at Cribbs.  We are kind of deprived from decent shops this far west so everyday shopping at Cribbs for some is a real treat for us girls!  Nice when we can get it!

Years ago Kate cleaned the office and the loos and joked she felt like Paris Hilton on the Simple Life and came in wearing elbow length rubber gloes holding a bucket at arms length.. ever the diva.. so we booked into the Hilton!!  Well it wasn't much more than the Premier Inn and when the guys took her bags to show us the room she was really impressed.. here she is in her room at the Hilton.. not too much debris (yet)but she had only just arrived ;-)

But this is the kind of debris the rain keeps leaving in the lane just outside our yard!

Day 335 Friday .. Col and I did some nice browsing and some actual shopping in Watford (!) while Kate had her day.. a lot of hanging about, but nmaybe that's a taster for modelling , who knows.  We went back for the catwalk bit and the 14 girls all made such an effort, looked amazing and some of the shoes were .. well, for fear of sounding like my Mum, I don't know how they walked in them!   Kate didn't make it to the last three who go to the Clothes show next week but i would not have wanted to choose either. She wasn't down hearted, just wants to do more and have something else to aim for, so that's cool. All a good experienece, she met some great girls and we took some well deserved and enjoyed time out! 

I thought she looked fab, even here at the services on the ride home!

Not much assymetry in nature to be seen on our way home but here is a Cornish hedge, the trees are always screwed to one side with the salty southwest winds which prevail (bit of geography there!)

Day 336/7  Sat / Sun.. back to normal, but a bit like in the summer. Just me and Col, Kate seeing pals and working,  Ross away seeing mates and Zac, and JB back working in St Ives.  Healthy eating back on the menu next week (JB made some fabulous breads which put paid to my good habits!)

The fruit bowl over floweth at home...

 

and for Sunday I must show the random assymetrical orchid which is still flowering ..almost two years now..xx

Oh and as for Story Telling Sunday.. I may just be out of words.. it has taken me two hours to transfer some pics to G+ to solve the storage issue for my pics!!