365/70 Plant.

Well I am writing this on my new blogger format so I'm hopeful it will be a little easier and less sensitive.. I usually blog from my tablet and it kind of seizes up after a few paragraphs and I end up sizing it up on the kitchen pc (ahah and here I am again , tweaking as tablet refusing tp play ball with keyboard.. maybe it needs an update... Zacccccc!!)


How it was.. last year!



So... plant..

well the least tenuous link is the bit of gardening I managed to do this afternoon.. it was hardly really productive, perhaps revealing is the word to use.  To explain, Pops mentioned that the primroses were showing in the garden and I spotted some under the grass which took over my good intention of a flower bed last summer. A half hour later I had tugged and pulled about two wheel barrows of dead grass from around the bushes and revealed sprouting fuschias, primroses and hydrangeas...

all I need now is for Colin to find a new working area (those slates proved a perfect height for wood working the decking and may well do so for some time to come!) so I can pretty it up with some lobelias and hanging stuff for the summer..oh and I have plans for some bamboo to rustle and sing in my garen this year..

I was listening to the top 20 from 1968 this afternoon, tracks such as Cilla Black's 'Step Inside Love' and the Tremeloes 'Suddenly You Love Me'... and I was instantly transported back to a year where my brother was still living at home, when he used to play the 'transistor radio' in the bath before going out for the evening, how he, and consequently the rest of the household knew all the latest 'tunes'!  

Music is such a stimulus, like the tracks are planted in your brain and hearing them instantly links you back to the days when...

365/69 Fuzzy

.. no wonder my Colin suffers so much when he arrives home after a week out on calls.. it was a busy day today brain-wise.. lots to catch up on with the new email and office processing docs, Ross had done well standing in for us, keeing emails and phones at bay, but it is hard to be keen after even only two days away...even just being the passenger!

This evening I cooked a proper tea, with veg and stuff, after several days of eating out and eating 'fast' too so just needed to tick the real food box! Afterwards I sat down to write to Zac, to give him ll the news and chat.. but had a pear cider to help the evening along and now I have the biggest weary on!

...mm, thinking about the prompt I am rembering Fuzzy Felts.. do you remember them? Little felt shapes which would stick to a soft velcro type board.. it never was the same when they started making proper faces on them and stopped kids having to use their imagination was it?

.. so, in the absence of a picture of how my head feels, here is a library pic of those toys in a tray as I remember them!

365/68 Bathtime

I'll start with a tenuous link just in case I don't come up with anything better..its the end of a long day and a long luxurious bathtime would be very nice, though I think a fall straight into bed will be more likely!

Col and I took Kate to have some photos done for a teen model competition she got entered into. It was a great day, started with her having to arrive with her hair not done and no make-up...she doesn't believe us but she still looked great..and then she had a couple of hours with professional make up and hair, still Kate but suddenly a screen goddess.. ready for the photos..

.. the whole thing was a great experience, lovely people and so glad we chose a weekday as I can imagine it'd be busy at weekends with everyone wanting their family / baby / glamour shoots...it's such a big gift experience these days.. and it was good to combine it with the entry and also just after her birthday.. it's hard these days to make life quite exciting enough for teens, what with all the comparable teen stuff shown on TV!

365/67 Floor.

So I was away yesterday but I knew what the word was before we left .. did some shopping with our youngest whilst Col went to see a customer, should have taken some pics of some great expanses of tiling at Cribbs Causeway but my feet were sore and it just didn't happen..


... we stayed over in NW London and there was a TGI Fridays next door so we went there to eat before we rested our feet and legs in bed... and there it was.. the plate of food.. potato skins and nachos, all adorned with melted cholesterol...oops, sorry cheese.. it was grim..but if you look carefully at this picture, you may agree..


 ...that they may be perfect used for flooring? ... definitely a whole world away from the Seafood Cafe in St Ives with its exquisite food the night before..x

365/66 Cooking..

..or not.. not in this house tonight.. takeaway cancelled.. Seafood here we come.. x... and three hours later we are back home, belly's comfortably full and in front the fire with a suitable image...

... Kate's dessert, a nice end to a fifteenth birthday... I looked at her and tried to see in this gorgeous leggy teenager the bundle of baby and then the tition haired toddler and the gangly year sixer who so wanted to play Scrooge, despite being really quite poorly....and wondered how the next five, ten, fifteen years will change her, what kind of woman, mother, grown up daughter she will become...ahhh, this parenthood malarky, it never ends, its just the format which changes...xxxxxxx

365/65 Arranged.

The women in our family are the arrangers.. the men say they are passengers, happy to be on the women's magical mystery tour that is life.. well, that applies to the weekends and all things not too important, maybe because the men have to do all the decision making the rest of the time.

Years ago, one Christmas my brother and stepdad were talking about what was happening and Phil said that he wasn't sure yet, and my brother commented ' oh hasn't Auntie Edna organised that yet?' Phil said he didn't know what he meant, but many years later, after the annual sitting round at her house, on uncomfortable chairs looking at Christmas Cards received and playing Scrabble with no TV on etc, Phil realised what Ken meant, that my Mum was a softie and what her big sister said goes and she would have her Christmas gathering by hook or by crook!

Turns out my niece and maybe at least one of my daughters has similar genes, we love to have, or make that organise an event, a family gathering, the only good thing is that they normally involve music and takeaway!

And so, it has been arranged, tomorrow's celebration of Kate's 15th and Lyla's first birthdays. JB has made the cakes, I will provide venue and food and the rest will turn up, eat, drink and look pretty..I think that's about it..

365/64 Chairs.

Nice prompt! Our kitchen / dining room has roo many chairs, up to six diners, a futon seating 3 or 4 and also four stools near the computer and at the b'fast bar... but I guess as the full compliment of family is about ten then they are all potentially 'used', it's just sometimes it seems a sea of chairs when you look across the room! I have the futon in the kitchen end and the stools face into the kitchen so I spend my time bobbing to and fro, but itkeeps me at the heart of any conversation I guess, which is what I like.


We have plans.. oh, the plans..to extend the room and have a new kitchen / summer type room but this will be well planned with lots of seating for those conversations while I cater type times. .. by then there may well be a number of extra family members , partners and grandchildren.. not a reflection of impending marriages, more the anticipationof waiting a few more years yet.. but it is 'on our list' for this year!!


So, to the subject of chairs, the photos..the obvious choice is the arm chair which used to be my Dad's and when Mum remarried when I was 13 it went to my Auntie's house, where it stayed, cushioned, hardboarded when the supports went, and left to be quite sad for many years..

We cleared her house and Mum told me the chair was my Dad's and being quite pathetic about all things 'my dad' it came home here about six years ago.  
I'm not sure if it is about my Dad or the usual nostalgia-freaks desire to know and keep all things relating to their childhood, but either way, it was always kept aside when Col and the boys had their purging days cleaning out the sheds, having acquired the belongings of all our two families over the years.. (they used to put stuff in the black shed.. or the skip.. but had to call the skip 'the greeen shed' to stop my mum stressing that we may be discarding something she felt we had to keep..the route to the 'green shed' was behind the van across the yard and I'm sure even I would have been moaning if I'd seen the 'heirlooms' they threw out!)

A couple of years later Zac & Ross had the chair upholstered for me and although it still needs a good bit of waxing or TLC to the frame, it has taken residence in the corner of our kitchen and I love sitting on it..

Another little chair came to mind though.. a little doll's house wooden chair  which my ex-father-in-law gave me once, probably when Lisa was small, something he found in a house clearance. I had bought her a tiny cat at Dairyland I think and the cat sat in the chair on the mantle piece of all our houses. I think I'm the only person who has loved or notices it, I even had to search it out today as I had forgotten where it sits.. but I found it in front of some books on the bookcase.. haha, in front of my text books from Uni.... okay, so I did Social Policy way back when, but they hardly call me from the Govt to ask my opinion on housing policy or anything do they... but as Mum said, 'if you educate the mother you educate the children..'

365/63 Flat

My family are playing along with my prompts and we all frowned a little, wondering what options there were, especially when trying to keep it as a diary / blog chat too.

Well I went to Newlyn for our social scrap today, only 4 of us as Linda was poorly and the session was hastily made a go-er amongst ourselves.  But we did good, I got about three pages done for my new midi-album, even used inks and stamps and my favourite core papers. We chatted a lot, well I did, they said it was very quiet til I arrived, but I like to make some noise!! Not always an empty vessel though I hope...

So, everyone was busy and Col's dad is away visiting so it was very easy but favourite tea.. fresh tuna..with fresh bread and some rice.. I scoured the cupboards for the main accompaniment and then took this photo...
...despite the beautiful tuna, it is rather 'flat' without the Lime Pickle!!!! (not much left though eh!!)

365/62 Comfort

I generally know the prompt for the day ahead of the girls leaving for school, so JB at least offers her unique interpretation ... today she told me how comfy her new boots have become and despite feeling a little unsure of the style at first she really has grown into them and looks so comfy in her own skin these days..

I washed our sitting room fleeces today so they were prominent in my 'comfort' mind today. I think lots of people who have leather sofas employ the old faithful fleece when the days have added a chill to the leather...the first ones I had were chenille and left fluff all over the room, I soon learnt!  Kate let me take this pic of her cuddled up in front of the fire at teatime.  She's not home many evenings these days as she spends lots of time with her little chap, all loved up eh!

Life in the office is as comfy as we could hope, new Outlook, Office and Act are not too tortuous, especially on a Friday... but it was nice to end the week, come indoors, get changed into leggings and the extra pair of fleecy socks.. comfy! And a day scrapbooking with pals tomorrow, all kinds of everything make for a comfy life..which all to often we don't fully appreciate .. x

360/61 Grass.

Well I had just opened the curtains before I looked at the prompt, so the first thing I has seen was the rough and thick mossy grass of our front garden. A great lawn takes a lot of tending if its going to be a lawn, us, we have grass.. Zac was the main mower so the job will come to Colin again or maybe Ross and the girls.. at least its a ride-on. Pops' grass and the bit below the workshops gets done at the same time, so its almost a tractor and topper job! ..especially if we leave too long between trims.

Pops has a pond and lots more prettiness in his garden so I'm going to use some of his photos today, also to give Zac and Uncle Bill chance to see the new bird feeder on the decking over there. Pops loves to see the bull finches and the robins he feeds, also the buzzard and heron he gets coming round the pond.  He goes fishing sometimes in the summer with his pal Derek, I couldn't resist this picture.. kind of fits the 'grass' theme for the day doesn't it....

 

Office world wasn't quite as bad as I / we had expected but much of the day was spent still trying to get databases and emails to support each other.. I told the guys of my blogging about it and they reckoned there would be no damns and blasts, much more likely some 'bugger's and worse! The guys have taken on my 'daily word' and today they reckon I should have written about how the grass is generally greener... yesterday when the emails and server were still in a mode we were all comfy with....though to be fair I was very excited when I got a few glimpses of how good it's going to be....x