Lost: One blogging mojo

If found please return to Taz, she kinda misses it.

Reward: Possible handmade gift if said mojo has her crafting mojo tagging along.

Thank you.

Pssst!

Have you seen that Taz anywhere lately?

Isn't that her over there?

Is it? Are you sure?

TAZ! TAZ! TAZ! TAZ!

If it is her she better have some bread! Leaving us here all this time!



Photos taken by Taz during the summer holidays when we actually had a sunny day!

Wordy Wednesday

On the Way to School - Charles Ghigna

I'll tell you why I'm tardy and I hope my excuse will do.
I stopped to view upon a leaf a spider and some dew.
She spun a web before my eyes with a soft and silver hue,
And when she looked, I looked at her and whispered, "Peekaboo!"

I think I may have startled her and so I waved good-bye,
But when I turned around to go, I met a butterfly!
I almost caught him in my hand to bring to class for you,
But when I tried to peek inside, away my treasure flew.

And that is how I'm tardy, but I had to tell you why.
It's all the fault of a spider's web and a sneaky butterfly!

Wordy Wednesday

This is She - Arthur Guiterman

On order that must be obeyed
I sing of a dear little maid;
A mirthfully serious,
Sober, delirious,
Gently imperious
Maid.

And first we'll consider her eyes
(Alike as to color and size);
Her winkable, blinkable,
Merrily twinkable,
Simply unthinkable
Eyes.

Then, having a moment to spare,
We turn our attention to hair;
Her tendrilly-curlative,
Tumbly-and-whirlative,
Super-superlative
Hair.

Forbear to dismiss with a shrug
Her nose, undeniable pug;--
Her strictly permissible,
Turn-up-like-thisable,
Urgently kissable
Pug.

Now, moving a point to the south,
We come to an Actual Mouth;
A coral, pearliferous,
Argumentiferous,
Mainly melliferous
Mouth.

Observe, underneath it, a chin,
Connoting the dimple within;
A steady, reliable,
Hardly defiable,
True, undeniable
Chin.

By all that is fair! it appears
We'd almost forgotten her ears!
Those never neglectable,
Tinted, delectable,
Highly respectable
Ears!

And last let us speak of herself,
That blithe little gipsy and elf,
Her quite unignorable,
Absence-deplorable,
Wholly adorable
Self

Wordy Wednesday

Father William - Lewis Carroll

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head--
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door--
Pray, what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father; "don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down-stairs!"

Wordy Wednesday

On the Ning Nang Nong - Spike Milligan

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Wordy Wednesday

Attention please! Attention please! - Roald Dahl.

'Attention please! Attention please!
Don't dare to talk! Don't dare to sneeze!
Don't doze or daydream! Stay awake!
Your health, your very life's at stake!
Ho–ho, you say, they can't mean me.
Ha–ha, we answer, wait and see.

Did any of you ever meet
A child called Goldie Pinklesweet?
Who on her seventh birthday went
To stay with Granny down in Kent.
At lunchtime on the second day
Of dearest little Goldie's stay,
Granny announced, 'I'm going down
To do some shopping in the town.'
(D'you know why Granny didn't tell
The child to come along as well?
She's going to the nearest inn
To buy herself a double gin.)

So out she creeps. She shuts the door.
And Goldie, after making sure
That she is really by herself,
Goes quickly to the medicine shelf,
And there, her little greedy eyes
See pills of every shape and size,
Such fascinating colours too ––
Some green, some pink, some brown, some blue.
'All right,' she says, 'let's try the brown,'
She takes one pill and gulps it down.
'Yum–yum!' she cries. 'Hooray! What fun!
They're chocolate–coated, every one!'
She gobbles five, she gobbles ten,
She stops her gobbling only when
The last pill's gone. There are no more.
Slowly she rises from the floor.
She stops. She hiccups. Dear, oh dear,
She starts to feel a trifle queer.

You see, how could young Goldie know,
For nobody had told her so,
That Grandmama, her old relation
Suffered from frightful constipation.
This meant that every night she'd give
Herself a powerful laxative,
And all the medicines that she'd bought
Were naturally of this sort.
The pink and red and blue and green
Were all extremely strong and mean.
But far more fierce and meaner still,
Was Granny's little chocolate pill.
Its blast effect was quite uncanny.
It used to shake up even Granny.
In point of fact she did not dare
To use them more than twice a year.
So can you wonder little Goldie
Began to feel a wee bit moldy?

Inside her tummy, something stirred.
A funny gurgling sound was heard,
And then, oh dear, from deep within,
The ghastly rumbling sounds begin!
They rumbilate and roar and boom!
They bounce and echo round the room!
The floorboards shake and from the wall
Some bits of paint and plaster fall.
Explosions, whistles, awful bangs
Were followed by the loudest clangs.
(A man next door was heard to say,
'A thunderstorm is on the way.')
But on and on the rumbling goes.
A window cracks, a lamp–bulb blows.
Young Goldie clutched herself and cried,
'There's something wrong with my inside!'
This was, we very greatly fear,
The understatement of the year.
For wouldn't any child feel crummy,
With loud explosions in her tummy?

Granny, at half past two, came in,
Weaving a little from the gin,
But even so she quickly saw
The empty bottle on the floor.
'My precious laxatives!' she cried.
'I don't feel well,' the girl replied.
Angrily Grandma shook her head.
'I'm really not surprised,' she said.
'Why can't you leave my pills alone?'
With that, she grabbed the telephone
And shouted, 'Listen, send us quick
An ambulance! A child is sick!
It's number fifty, Fontwell Road!
Come fast! I think she might explode!'

We're sure you do not wish to hear
About the hospital and where
They did a lot of horrid things
With stomach–pumps and rubber rings.
Let's answer what you want to know;
Did Goldie live or did she go?
The doctors gathered round her bed,
'There's really not much hope,' they said.
'She's going, going, gone!' they cried.
'She's had her chips! She's dead! She's died!'
'I'm not so sure,' the child replied.
And all at once she opened wide
Her great big bluish eyes and sighed,
And gave the anxious docs a wink,
And said, 'I'll be okay, I think.'

So Goldie lived and back she went
At first to Granny's place in Kent.
Her father came the second day
And fetched her in a Chevrolet,
And drove her to their home in Dover.
But Goldie's troubles were not over.
You see, if someone takes enough
Of any highly dangerous stuff,
One will invariably find
Some traces of it left behind.
It pains us greatly to relate
That Goldie suffered from this fate.
She'd taken such a massive fill
Of this unpleasant kind of pill,
It got into her blood and bones,
It messed up all her chromosomes,
It made her constantly upset,
And she could never really get
The beastly stuff to go away.
And so the girl was forced to stay
For seven hours every day
Within the everlasting gloom
Of what we call The Ladies Room.
And after all, the W.C.
Is not the gayest place to be.
So now, before it is too late.
Take heed of Goldie's dreadful fate.
And seriously, all jokes apart,
Do promise us across your heart
That you will never help yourself
To medicine from the medicine shelf.'

A sign

Literally!



This is the kind of stuff they don't tell you about in Emma's Diary! I just googled to check if in fact Emma still has her diary and I see there is now an online version. Show's how long it's been since I had a baby. LOL

Anyway I saw this in the PDSA shop and just had to have it for my kitchen wall.... well it makes me feel better even if nobody actually takes a blind bit of notice of it. :)

Just why?

“Commemorative tea towels are so 1981,” said GDHA, distributor for GE appliances in the UK, as it unveiled “the ultimate” in Royal Wedding memorabilia – a 5’9” side-by-side fridge freezer emblazoned with one of the official engagement photographs of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

Call me old fashioned but I think I'd stick to the mugs and teatowels!

Rock Paper Scissors

Do you remember playing this in school?



Have you spent many an hour reminiscing and wishing you could have taken it up in a professional capacity instead of the dreary career you found yourself in?

Well as the saying goes...

Only in America!

Just for you, look what I found.

America's Offical Rock Paper Scissors League


Words fail me!

But just in case you're now fancying a game - here's a reminder of the rules ;)



And no this is not a belated April Fools :)

April Fools!!

Well I hope that was sugar you had in your tea this morning and not salt and that there wasn't any clingfilm over the toilet when you were half asleep or that somebody didn't swap your hair remover cream with your shampoo!

April Fools - annoying or fun? Now there's a debate that could go on and on.

My beautiful small people aren't prone to playing tricks on their poor old Mum first thing in the morning and thanks to whoever started that you can't do any after 12 noon rumour by the time they get home from school it's all over. :)

We do like having a bit of fun in this mad house but we just don't limit ourselves to the one day of the year. ;)

Anyway here are a few hoaxes (not mine) that you may remember ...

Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity
1976: The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.


The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

UFO Lands in London
1989: On March 31, 1989 thousands of motorists driving on the highway outside London looked up in the air to see a glowing flying saucer descending on their city. Many of them pulled to the side of the road to watch the bizarre craft float through the air. The saucer finally landed in a field on the outskirts of London where local residents immediately called the police to warn them of an alien invasion. Soon the police arrived on the scene, and one brave officer approached the craft with his truncheon extended before him. When a door in the craft popped open, and a small, silver-suited figure emerged, the policeman ran in the opposite direction. The saucer turned out to be a hot-air balloon that had been specially built to look like a UFO by Richard Branson, the 36-year-old chairman of Virgin Records. The stunt combined his passion for ballooning with his love of pranks. His plan was to land the craft in London's Hyde Park on April 1. Unfortunately, the wind blew him off course, and he was forced to land a day early in the wrong location.

Whistling Carrots
2002: The British supermarket chain Tesco published an advertisement in The Sun announcing the successful development of a genetically modified 'whistling carrot.' The ad explained that the carrots had been specially engineered to grow with tapered airholes in their side. When fully cooked, these airholes caused the vegetable to whistle.

Big Ben Goes Digital
1980: The BBC reported that Big Ben, in order to keep up with the times, was going to be given a digital readout. The announcement received a huge response from listeners shocked and angered by the proposed change. The BBC Japanese service also announced that the clock hands would be sold to the first four listeners to contact them. One Japanese seaman in the mid-Atlantic immediately radioed in a bid

and one of my favourites

Flying Penguins
2008: The BBC announced that camera crews filming near the Antarctic for its natural history series Miracles of Evolution had captured footage of Adélie penguins taking to the air. It even offered a video clip of these flying penguins, which became one of the most viewed videos on the internet. Presenter Terry Jones explained that, instead of huddling together to endure the Antarctic winter, these penguins took to the air and flew thousands of miles to the rainforests of South America where they "spend the winter basking in the tropical sun."

Up here in the far North East

we've finally got some of these


No doubt darn sarf you're all already in your bikini's and sipping Pims :D


Two more days and I will have completed my post a day for the month of February challenge. After finding out about my Uncle etc I didn't think I'd be able to come and post everyday but I've actually found it helpful in giving me something to focus on. Not that my daily post have been that intellectual but hey this is my blog so you're not here for discussions on Egalitarianism or the Principle of extensiveness are you....are you?

I was glad to see so many of you agreed with my thinking that fast food places are NOT restaurants - not that I get the chance to dine in either of them much. Acutally that reminds me I must get the photos of the tapas me and Big one had while we were in Glasgow...

This is what

you look like when you try to burn the candle at both ends for too long!


Actually I don't even look that cute :)
And yes I made that odd looking little owl - poor wonky thing.

Some things never change

This is me at 23 months old. Christmas was stressful even back then!! LOL



Is anyone fed up of my post a day attempts yet?

There appears to be something in my cup

Or if you're feeling a bit more traditional


Or as a special time of year is coming how about these?



But let's not forget the true meaning of Christmas (if that's you're bag...bag! Geddit! LOL)


All available from Donkey Products


Honestly I'm not obsessed with tea even though this is my second post about tea bags this month. I'm actually a big coffee drinker.

I just couldn't resist sharing these with you.

A walk at the beach

The sun came back today! (yesterday was horribly wet.) So this morning we took the dogs down for a good long run at the beach.

We're currently looking after this handsome chap.

Excuse his messy chops but we'd been running around like mad things so he was a bit slobbery. :) His Mum's off in Turkey on holiday and her usual dog sitter let her down last minute so Jaz is having a wee holiday of his own with us. And she has very kindly given us the dog sitting money to put in our Malawi jar.

Today my darling Monster dog proved what a big pudding he is.


Have you ever heard of a dog letting their owners do this to them? LOL Daft thing he is, he kept so still and didn't attempt to move. Don't worry we didn't hurt him, he was only in the sand for as long as it took to put a layer over him and he was wagging his tail like a very happy dog when he finally could be bothered to move.
Oh before I forget I treated myself to some peonies at the weekend. On special at Lidl £2.49 a bunch. Quick go buy! Treat yourselves. :)

How much is too much for a cup of coffee?

This one is a little out of my price range.
John Lewis very kindly emailed me to let me know that they have this coffee machine on clearance from £999 to £750. Cough cough splutter splutter!

To get to my nearest Starbucks or any of the others is at least a 70 mile round trip so lets just say I'm quite used to drinking instant.

It does sound very nice though apparently it creates the perfect cappuccino, latte or macchiato, you just fill it with water and fresh milk, load the coffee beans, or ground coffee and voila a nice cup of coffee.
It even does that steamy thing that they do when you have all the frothy milk.

I did have a Senseo coffee maker but it was actually the ex's (a fathers day present one year funny how he always used to get good presents and I got flowers) so that left when he did.

Ah well for now it's me, the kettle and my instant granules. If I'm honest that big thing up there looks like a whole lot of washing up to me. :D But if anyone would like me to review one I'm more than happy to give it a go...just for you ;)

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

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!

When is a fish not a fish?

When it's my new toothbrush holder!


Another of my classically bizarre buys, how could I resist it at only £1. It's a mug but with the narrow top totally impractical to drink out of so it must have been part of a novelty gift set at some point me thinks.
Now of course the small people's toothbrush holders look very boring so I'll have to find something equally nuts for them.