Some days you're the dog

and some days you are the tree!

Does it make me sad?

That I barely go out these days and have been given the chance for a girls night out tomorrow. Of course I've said yes but I think I'd rather stay at home and watch the Eurovision Song contest?

The reason I put a ban on myself

from doing anymore swaps until I fulfilled those that I am already obscenely behind with -
I guess anyone with any sense wouldn't have signed up for any swaps just after their marraige had hit the rocks but obviously I have no sense.

This is the very over due Spring Swap for MadMummy that she finally has with her. She tells me it was worth the wait but I think she's being kind.


You'd think I'd have ironed them don't you, well I did actually so there! But I realised once I'd wrapped them all up that I hadn't taken any pictures. So I apologise for creased shirts Steph.


Lot of bits and pieces and of course choccy.

Extremely blurry shot of the detail on the side of the dish. Did the dish survive in one piece Steph?

So one swap finally received, now I've still Beki's to finish up and the two giveaway shirts that I owe Mrs Twiggy (can you remind me what you wanted on your shirt Twigs) and Mrs JBJB. Sigh I am sorry ladies :(

I've got brain itch

You know that sensation when you've got a whole lot of ideas bouncing around in your brain, so many that they're causing a buzzing sensation that in turn causes an itch.

I've too many ideas and not enough energy or time to do it all.
I've been trying to design my next tatt for ages and all of a sudden a totally different tatt has entered my head, so now I'm trying to come up with the design for two new tatts. I have 6 already but they're all fairly small, these two are big uns.
I'm trying to sort out my craft room which still looks like the temple of doom, well it feels like it. If you move something then something else falls on you.
I'm trying to build up the energy and find the time to rip out the fitted wardrobes and carpet in my room but this also involves clearing out my bedroom plus finding the money to pay for new walls and new fitted wardrobes, oh and new flooring.
I'm trying to help big one through her exams. She's got her last one this Friday. Hooray!!!! She's in 4th year and taking her Standard Grades which are basically your GCSE's down in England and Wales.

AND

As you may have read in my previous post 'The You Know Who You Are Letter' you may have guessed that I might be having a bathroom refit. Well I'm hoping you assumed that and didn't just think I had a random bath on my patio. :)
So the work on it started over 3 weeks ago, they guy I've got doing it is a friend of a friend. He's a great guy and very particular about everything being perfect, which is unfortunate in this house as none of the walls are straight in fact not even the window is in straight! Anyway what with the extra work, his various other commitments it's felt like this has been going on forever but the end is in sight. My friend (who's his friend) was going to give me a hand to tile the bathroom to try and save me some money but she turned up one day but was called away. So I've done a wee bit but the very nice man has done the rest. Bills going to be bigger now but the tiles will look a whole lot better around the window than if I'd been left to it. LOL But I'm helping him out where I can as a fetcher and carrier, holder and drinks maker so I've not been able to get much else done.
I will be sharing pictures with you as soon as it's finished. I just wanted to be able to do the whole before and after shots so you can all gasp and coo appropriately. Trust me the before was grim and I've been living with that for nearly 8 years.

So that's why my brain is feeling all itchy but there is no q-tip big enough in the world to reach right in there to scratch it.

But why?

If someone asks me a question I always endeavour to give them an answer.
So Alex......

These are moobs.




Man boobs as modelled very kindly by Mr Nicholson.
Alex you must live surrounded by men with stunning pecs! LOL

Didn't we have a lovely time

the day we went to Dundee. Ok I know that's not the proper words but it's a bit far for me to get to Bangor LOL

Sorry for being a misery the other night but thank you for the support... all much appreciated. I guess eventually I will get used to them being there.

Anyway big one is in the middle of her exams so it's been books, exams, books, exams and I've been tied to the house for the last couple of weeks on a project that I will share with you if it ever gets finished.
So yesterday we decided we needed a treat and took ourselves off shopping to Dundee .

And what a day it turned out to be! The sun very kindly was beaming down on us and rather than pay silly prices for a lunch somewhere indoors we took ourselves off to M+S where I used my gift card to buy us a free picnic lunch. The ex would get £50 of vouchers every Xmas from his work and we would use it for treats or things for the smalls but one year we spent the lot on him so the following year he said I could get all the vouchers. To be honest it sat in my purse for quite some time (about 2 years) and I forgot about it but it has since proved priceless. When we have a day out now and it's a dry day we treat ourselves to some lovely picky things and have a bench picnic. Today was so lovely as we sat in the square that big one remarked we could be abroad.
We were obviously have far too good a time as we were soon joined by a wee visitor.




Once we opened the fruit selection he was joined by another wee friend.

I wonder what all the office workers out on their lunch breaks made of us, sat there eating our butties and taking photos of posing Gnomes! :)

Now I'm not a big shopper, our shopping trips usually entails the smalls returning with several bags and I'm the one with an empty purse but a big smile on my face. To be honest we're not big on shopping as a family and trips to the big shops only happens every few months or so.
So when I spotted this bag in Accessorize and was obviously displaying outward signs of pleasure. That is stroking it and sighing big one decided it was high time I treated myself.

I did remark that I could make one myself but the picture really doesn't do the bag justice, the gold owls sparkle!

So I thought that was me, my big treat done now it just a quick trip to Boots for big one to get something exchanged and then it was Primani and home. But no it seems today I was going to get all that birthday money I still had loitering about well and truly spent.

I have to admit the packaging did catch my eye but as it was a perfume I'd not smelt before I thought I'd just have a wee sniff. No harm is there, it's not like I was going to be buying any?



Wow! Now that smells good. The lady behind the counter, bless her must have sprayed nearly half the bottle in the air for me to walk through, so you can get a good sense of the smell she said.
Big one agreed with me that it was lovely. For those of you with fellas the male version is absolutely divine. Big one and I did debate finding ourselves someone who would be willing to be sprayed with it regularly just so we could snuggle up to them and just smell them. Obviously Johnny Depp would be the ideal choice. LOL
Anyway the final decision was helped when the nice lady said, oh you get this bag free with it.





Sold to the lady with the skull habit!

Join us

on our tour of Stirling Castle.





We took ourselves off to Stirling Castle for the first time this Easter holidays after 8 years of living in Scotland.
Was worth the wait though, don't you think?
All pics taken by either myself or wee one who is showing a great flair for photo taking. (Big one has her own digi cam) Seems between big one, wee one and myself we'll never be short of a great photo or two. :)

How is it

us Mums sometimes yearn for a bit of 'alone' time but when we get it we do things like this.

* Eat a whole pizza.
* Crack open a bottle of cheap and not partically pleasant, but it's tasting better after the third one, Lidl Cherry Schnapps.
* Sit listening to music that moistens the tear ducts.
* Mooch about on Facebook wondering how everyone else has a life and isn't online.
* Counts down the hours till the small people come home.

?????

Thanks to everyone for sharing their weird and wonderful spam with me, have to say I'm almost disappointed that I've never been offered one that can knock down walls though! That might have kept me entertained this evening LOL

Spam off!

It seems it doesn't matter if it's through our letter boxes or straight into our virtual inbox there is always someone trying to charm the money out of our pockets.
I'm just glad that the junk that comes through the house letterbox isn't the same as the online stuff though. Imagine having to explain this lot to the small people!

Inbox today.

* Someone offering a free bus pass - I'm only 40 for godsake!
* Apparently my Amazon order has been paid and I just need to open an attachment and get my tracking number to claim it - umm haven't ordered anything and anything I have ordered in the past has never been done this way. Point to me, attachment which is no doubt a virus or a scam is unopened.
* Some company offering to claim back the thousands I'll be owed from being mis-sold my loan - I don't have a loan!
* A company offering me pills that will enlarge my penis - again oddly enough something I don't have!
* An offer to buy viagra impotence medicine online - not something I was aware I was suffering from but then I don't have a penis!
* Another company offering me not just viagra but Canadian viagra - must be better than the usual stuff eh?
* And finally the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement agency have my compenstation payment - I wasn't aware I'd been involved in anthing I needed compensation for and where exactly did you get my email addy from SCDEA? Oh and just one final hint, when I worked for the police we didn't use MSN accounts as our email addresses. IDIOTS!

Put on your dancing shoes

I don't know about you but I LOVE music. I have music on at every chance I get. My alarm in the morning is set for the radio. Probably not one of my better ideas as I tend to just incorporate the music into my dreams but I have my mobile with annoying buzzy noise as back up ;)
Then it's down for breakfast and the radio is straight on in the kitchen. Every trip in the car is accompanied by either a CD or the radio. When I worked in the pub I had the tv constantly set to a music channel until the punters came in and wanted the news or.....boring sports on.
My ipod is full and rather than take any music off it I just need a bigger memory one :)

I'm always buying CDs, my kids think it's great as inevitably I buy one's that they like to. In fact not so long ago I noticed a huge chunk of my CD collection missing. I discovered it in big one's bedroom where she had been putting them all on to her Ipod. :)

Anyone looking at my collection will instantly see I have a bit of an eclectic taste, that is I don't just like one sort of music. But I had to draw the line at Miley Cyrus's album. I did the nice Mummy thing and bought it for wee one but it's not going anywhere near my ears thank you very much. But I do have to admit to quite liking a couple of Selena Gomez's tracks - reward for having a good school report. ;)

Big one told me about Spotify a while back. Well i say told me she actually downloaded it for me, showed me how it worked and it's great. A great way to check out an album (if it's there, not everything is) before you go the whole hog and buy it. Or if like me you only like a couple of tracks well there they are, no bother. I do have to warn you though, for this free service there are constant adverts but I just mute it while they're on, you can pay to have a premium account and then you lose the adverts but hey we're on a budget right?

Good old youtube is great though if you really want to get in the mood with the music and see the video too. It was during an evening with nothing much else to do that I came across this cover.



The Gossip - Careless Whisper (Cover)

I hope you like it as much as I do.

Thanks to youtube I had a great evening last week reminicising. The first concert I ever went to was Erasure in 1990 in Manchester. I loved them, had all their albums on cassette and even had quite a few of their tours on video. After spending an evening listening to all their old tracks (yes they are still going) I now want to get all their backlist on CD, damn shame I've already had my birthday and it's 7 months till Christmas.

Dear.....

Dear You know who you are.

The more you try to drop subtle hints about the 'state' of my garden just remember this. I might be 40 years old but in my head I'm still 19 so everytime you try to make me feel like I should do something you can bet I'll do the complete opposite!

The fact I have a bath and sink full of bits of wall on my patio just now might have given you a big hint that I'm having a new bathroom fitted! That is still ongoing so it will all disappear when the bathroom is finished. My house is not even attached to yours so it is not infringing on you and you can't even see it when your humungous caravan is on your drive.

I unlike some do not have an OCD about my lawn, trust me I have lots of OCDs about other things but how long my grass is or the fact it has bald patches does not bother me, I have too many other things going on just now to worry about.
See those 2 small people that hang around my house? They're my kids, they use the garden to play in. See that big, smelly thing that says woof occasionally? That's my dog and he uses the garden to play in, dig in and c**p in!
Oh and while we're on the subject of my dog could you leave him be and stop encouraging him to stand paws up on the stupid small wall you built in place of my much taller hedge without my permission. I have already asked you not to do this as he is old and is having trouble with his back legs. Get your own dog maybe?

And please stop trying to 'educate' me about the weeds in my garden, I actually like the more natural look for plants and just because some of the plants in my garden don't come out of the Dobbies catalogue doesn't mean they aren't pretty or I can't have them in my garden. It's my garden!

Stressed?

Now I know where I was going wrong all those years this is how I should have been dealing with those stressful moments! LOL

STRESS RELIEF FOR WOMEN!
I have used this method of stress relief for years and it always works.
It just takes three simple steps to get immediate relief!
Step 1. Go up to your source of stress and get a good grip on his balls.
Step 2. Squeeze hard!!
Step 3. Now SLOWLY count to 10 and then release his busted balls.
He will grab his aching balls and you will stand there with no more stress and a big smile on your face!

Not how I remember school choir

PS22 Chorus "I AM NOT A ROBOT" Marina And The Diamonds



I think we might have had a few more members if we'd been allowed to sing Top 40 hits :)

20p Madness and feeling blue

Remember I told you about my local charity shop ladies and how fiercely they guard their button boxes? Well the upside of that is when there are things in the shop that haven't been priced they make the prices up there and then.
I popped into the shop on Monday to drop off some books that I'd finished with and as always managed to find a few bits and bobs to take home. As you can see it was a totally colour themed buy, which to be honest I didn't even notice until I got home and took the photo.



Now books are always 20p unless they are a hard back and then the price shoots up to 50p. Guess where most of my books come from? Crazy prices...and eldest small person wonders why I exclaim "How much!!!" when I'm in a proper book shop.

Anyway where was I, oh yes the wee old ladies who just grab prices out of thin air when there is no price sticker to be found. Now I'm not sure how much they usually charge for knitting needles but I'm pretty sure I paid more than this last time but I just had to have these beauties, the colour of them is so fab! So there was no price on them, the books were 20p, the wool was £1.20 so it was only logical that the wee lady serving me grasped 20p out of the air for my needles. :)

I scream, you scream...

We all scream for ICE CREAM!

I took the smalls swimming, yes I expect my good Mummy award in the post any day. I do love swimming, I love floating about and almost feeling graceful. I love being able to carry both the smalls around in the water as it is pretty impossible out of the water especially as big one is nearly as tall as me now. I love that they carry me about in the water and think it's funny.
I do NOT love walking around in barely more than my underwear for everyone to see. I'm guessing I'm not the only female who doesn't like that bit of swimming too. Oh and the trying to get dry and dressed in changing rooms that are freezing cold!

After swimming I took the smalls to the ice cream shop....




Oh yes I scored multiple good Mummy points!

Wow oh wow

I was really stuck for ideas to give to my Mum for what she could get me for Christmas, eventually inspiration or desperation struck and I suggested she get me a voucher for something at our local beauty salon. I'm friends with the girl who owns/runs it. Well we've been drunk together a couple of times and she text me in the early hours of Christmas morning telling me her boyfriend had proposed on their (our) return from the pub on Christmas Eve. Awwwww. The ring is amazing by the way. ;)



So anyway Christmas day my Mum gives me an envelope which contained a voucher for a luxury facial. Very nice I thought. But then the envelope sat on a shelf in my kitchen. I'd pick it up from time to time and think hmmm yes I really should make an appointment to get that done. Then back on the shelf it would go. Well if someone had told me how amazing my skin would feel and look after one I'd have had that baby booked on Boxing day!
I had my face rubbed with creams and gorgeous smelling oils, my neck massaged and finally a parafin wax placed all over my face and then she left me with soothing music and fluffy warm towels in a dark room. Wow now that really is a treat - peace!

At least now I know exactly what to ask for next time someone wants to treat me. ;)

I've been a busy bee

I've not blogged for a few days as I've been helping out at my friend's shop. It's a brilliant wee shop called The Rainbow Hat. They run a stall at a lot of rallys, galas and fetes all over Scotland and they are a great couple. I just help out on the odd days when they have to go far afield and are doing it as family time.



Colourful isn't it?



They opened this shop about 18 months ago and people come from all over the place, even Englandshire, to shop



Anyway while I've been there this week I've had the time to do a bit of crafting. I know shocking isn't it? So far this year my crafting mojo seems to have been living under a rock.

Anyway I got a bit of knitting done.

Can you tell what it is?

I've also got some stencilling time in. These are for my newest wee neighbour born recently.



Sorry about the bad photos, I took them on my camera phone and the light wasn't so great.

Oh and just one quick question. Have you seen the advert on tv for John Lewis? Well I was just wondering why is it the lady in red get's taller the older she gets? By the time she gets to the old lady stage she's like a giant! Anyone else notice that? Or is it just me and my odd ways again? Hmm thought so.