Still snowing!

That was a shocker eh? Not!!

Anyway I think we've covered the whole snow thing before so I'll move on to something else more interesting.


Now while it's like this outside.

My back garden and yes the bottom of the slide is indeed buried in snow.

And your front and back door are about as effective as this.

An idea may be to take this...

and this...

And make this...

The jury is still out as to the colours but to be honest beggars can't be choosers. I bought the curtains many many moons ago and had made some bags out of the red pair so it was just a case of cobbling together what I had left to make them long enough. Yes I know they're too long at the bottom but that is because the draught at the bottom of the door is vicious.

So they may not be the best curtains in the world but for just now they're the best I've got. :D

How's everyone else baring up in the cold?

It's all in the distraction techniques on a wet Monday

The ex finally thought to let me know that they'd arrived safely sometime mid Monday morning - they flew Sunday evening. But at least I could breath a bit easier.

First full day and I knew it wasn't going to be good so I stuck my Ipod in my pocket, plugged in my ears turned up the tunes and set about doing some housework

Beds were stripped, dirty dishes from small people's rooms were collected and washed.

Well that didn't seem to be stopping the occasion eye wetness so I sat and wrote a huge to do list - man that was a bad idea! If I wasn't feeling sorry for myself before well I was now.

Then I remembered I had bought this on our wee camping holiday so first I had to clean the fridge....yeah ok maybe I didn't do such a great job of the cleaning bit.




Aren't they cute. I do love owls. Home Bargains the shop was, they have all sorts of lovely ones and the black bit is an actual chalk board. I wanted the robot one too but that one appeared to be all gone. Ah well.

Then I got back to finding things that no longer served their purpose, looked beautiful or were needed and I came across this.

An old memo board that had seen better days.

So I gave it a helping hand in its own demise and reclaimed the metal board from its innards.
Gave it a good scrub to remove the glue and what not.

Debated covering it in fabric and attaching hangers. But as I do have a bit of a thing for shiny silver I ended up just sticking it on the wall and covering it with all the latest little pictures the smalls have given me recently.

And yes then I sat and had another wet eye moment.

Then I had the joy of trying to source a reasonable car insurance quote, oh what fun that was. NOT! Drives me crazy that I have been a named driver on my ex's insurance for a million years with no claims but now I am back down to only one year's no claims. Cheers for that!
Anyway got fed up of very expensive quotes so attacked a huge pile of papers that needed shredding and sorting instead. Very theraputic

Thank you to everyone for your words of support and understanding. I know the girls will have a lovely time and their Dad will look after them and it won't be long before they home with all their news. I'm off down to Wales later in the week so my pals down there have a few plans to distract me further. And there is a possible meeting of two mad women from the blogsphere happening eh wifey? :D

Charity shops rock and my obsession with books

Well I really couldn't face another day of housework today. Bad me. So I took myself off to the nearest town to have a charity shop wander and to pick up an 18th and a 16th birthday card. With most people having a clear out over the Xmas holidays you can sometimes find some interesting bits and pieces but not this trip. :( Maybe the credit crunch is keeping people from parting with anything or people are just waiting for a good spring clean. What I did find though was lots and lots of wonderful books. Yep 4 bag fulls of books later and very sore hands from carrying them and I was ready to make my way home and try and find a spare inch of space on the bookshelf for them. Not much hope of that our bookshelves are positively bulging, I even have piles of books on the floor. Perhaps I need another sort out of my books and send some of the ones that I've already read or will never read back to the charity shops. Or maybe I should have a go at making something like this

or


Oh I do love my books. Reading a book is a great way to spend time all to yourself no matter what time of year it is. I've read books snuggled up on the sofa with a blanket and a hot drink, I've read books lying on the beach squidging the sand between my toes, I've read books thousands of feet up in the air (in an airplane obviously) I've read books on a boat, in a train, at work, in parks yep I've read pretty much everywhere. Did I ever tell you I was a bookworm?



And while we're on the subject of books there is still time to enter my birthday give away I will leave it open until midnight UK time and will draw it straight away. It's ok I don't go to bed early.
The winner will be announced on Friday 16th January.

Right now where did I put my book....

Fed up with junk mail?

then do what I do. Take all their annoying envelopes and recycle them into envelopes that are actually useful.

Step 1. Take an annoying junk mail envelope (


Step 2. Very carefully take the envelope apart, you can usually manage this just be delicately pulling but have a craft knife handy incase it starts to tear.


Step 3. Fold all sides back on them selves so in effect you are turning the envelope inside out. Then glue sides together, carefully we don't want the envelope stuck together completely.


Step 4. Voila...one perfectly good envelope that can now be used for a far better purpose than sending off for loans or credit cards or the such like.


I use a wee bit of glue to stick the envelope down when I'm posting it off and if you're going to try to re-use envelopes that have your own address on them remember to black it out for your own data protection ;)

Keep doing this and you will never run out of envelopes for sending fun things like cards and letters or paying school dinner money or out of school subs :D And they look so cool too!