Dolly's Dreamings

Are you sitting comfortably?

Gosh - not sure where to start today as I have so much I want to say and share LOL. So ... are you sitting comfortably as today's explore prompt was kind of about sitting. So that is where I am going to start.

 

Shimelle challenged us to think about where we sat and what it meant, so that is just what I have done and, as I am also starting a week in the life project today I have remembered to take lots of pictures of my day so far.

So let's look at seats first. I am going to start with the seat I am NOT using at the moment, but one where I seem to spend most of my waking hours during term time. This is my office seat at school. I actually have a beuatiful office. It is large (you can only see a small part of it here) and it has a small balcony and french doors. As it is on the first floor it is like being up in the trees and I have views of gorgeous woodland. Not that I actually get to look at the views you understand! Anyway, this is my work seat ... sat behind the desk.

 

I guess I always feel different sitting there than I do anywhere else as I am in ‘work mode’. I stop being Scrapdolly and am ‘Mrs Headteacher’, calm, in control, busy and focussed. Well most of the time anyway.

My office is filled with things I have made or that the children have bought me over the years. It is also filled with files and paperwork and filing cabinets but they are all behind doors and in cabinets and so the effect is of an interesting place to be. I make sure there is a lot to look at as it is room the children come into and they love to look at things and fiddle with them. They know it is a room where they are allowed to touch things, allowed to chatter and giggle and that is important. Inevitably, however, and there is no way round this, it is also the room where I have to see naughty children and explain what they have done wrong and help them see how they can make sure it doesn’t happen again. It is also where children come when they are upset about something and want to sit and have a chat and often a cry and some reassurance. Sadly this means an essential in the room is a box of tissues … and not just for children either!

However, it is not a seat I am using at the moment.

When I look round our home there are many places I sit, but I guess one of the most sat in seats is this one.

 

It is my scrap room and study. I do sit here to work occasionally, but largely it is where I am creative and in the holidays I spend a lot of time here. It has wonderful views across the garden and the heath beyond. It is always clean and tidy – I am rigorous about clearing away after every single project – and it has lots of things I love all around. It is a room I feel very happy in. On the opposite side of the room Nigel has his desk and editing suite so most of the time we are in the room together, which I love. I would hate for us to have separate studies. We debated it as we do have 2 studies but we use the other as a library

This is another place I sit – my seat in the lounge – well my morning seat. It is very funny – we have two sofas in the lounge and we sit in different ones morning and evening. I always sit in this seat for breakfast and in the other when we finally sit down in the evening. No idea why we switch or when that switch started … it just did.

 

You will notice on the seat next to me a cat blanket. I stress this isn’t because I worry about the cats leaving hairs on the seat or scratching the leather. I long since gave up worries of that nature. Seats hoover and the leather is scratched to pieces as we bought the suite three months before we bought the CFH and they scratched it – all accidentally – when they were babies. They have never scratched anything deliberately, but kittens are not good at retracting their claws and are very good at rushing round madly at 100 miles an hour with their claws out. Anyway it is not there for any reason other than the cats don’t like to sit on cold leather. Spoilt – surely not!

I thought I would share my bed too – not dressed up for the photo, just as it looks every day. I think we hit being really old last year when we bought a new king size bed that adjusts so you can have the head raised, the feet raised, both raised. I love it. So I often sit up in bed reading.

 

Other places I sit include my beloved sun lounger in the garden. You can tell I am a sun worshiper by the permanent tan. I love to sit in the sun and read. I am NOT a beach person – hate it – but love sitting in the garden. It is very peaceful, no road noise, just birds and planes.  The photo was me in the garden just an hour or so ago – yes with Starbucks …. Of course.

 

The seat I also sit a lot in is the car – so a quick photo of Nij and I in the car this morning.

 

 Finally the seat where I eat every meal except breakfast. I have porridge for breakfast and it is eaten in the lounge when I am not at work and int he bedroom when I am. (I am blessed to be married to man who has brought me breakfast in bed every working day of my married life xxx)

We have a perfectly good dining room but I am afraid we eat all of our meals in the kitchen unless we have company. For years - 17 in fact - I didn't like our kitchen. It was dark cherry wood and I had always wanted a white kitchen. Three years ago we changed it for light units and I love it. It is always sunny and one of my favourite places in the house.

 

 So - I sit comfortably and I hope you did too!

Before I go on to share my photos from what was a great day out today I had better share some scrapping.

I made a second page for my Explore prompt for the weekend, a page based ont he week's thoughts about perfection. It is another page to go into My Freedom album and so is another double page and I apologise as the digital join putting the two paper pages together isn't great, but you get the general idea.

 

 

 So, onto a week in my life ... and here is part of Monday.

My day has been great today as the sun shone and we headed out for a great walk in the sunshine. We had breakfast at about 8.30 (and now you know where I sat for that) and then headed off to Sandbanks.

I really do count myself blessed to live where we do. We have world famous beaches here and whilst we are not beach people it is nice to see them. people come here for holidays and yet we get to enjoy it all of the time. I love my home town of Poole.

Anyway, we headed off to the ferry to go over to Studland.  You can drive round (we drove back) but it is fun to use the ferry from time to time. It is an old chain ferry and is something I love going on.

 

The picture of me ont he ferry has the Haven Hotel in the background and .... interesting fact ... it is where Nigel proposed to me.

 

 

 

Once the other side, on Studland, we parked int he National Trust carpark by the Bankes Arms and walked down to Old Harry Rocks.

 

 

 

This is the view over to Knowle Beach and Shell Bay 

 

 

 

And here is Old Harry

 

 

 

 

 Sat ready to have my picnic.

 

 

 Our view whilst eating lunch

 

and the wonderful fruit salad that was part of the lunch

 

 

   

Just pictures of us taken by random people

 

an artist at work

 

Journey back to Poole via Corfe

 

Our local Town Crier who is such a nice man. He is coming up to 50 years service to the town of Poole. we had quite a chat to him.

 

I bought two new swimming costumes ready for my trip to Champneys soon, but the real reason we went to Poole was of course, these

 

 

Boo sunning herself in the garden

 

and her beloved Daddy doing the same.

 

So all in all a great day so far. I popped to the vets a little while ago to get more painkillers for Fiki who is suffering with his back and leg again and it was gorgeous to drive there and back with the roof down and Bat Out Of Hell blaring out. I am not sure what I am going to do with the Week in my life pictures, but if nothing else I will have a record of the day on my blog.

Today I am thankful for

A lovely sunny day out

 and just have to add the photo our neighbours have just e mailed - 2 herons sat in one of our pine trees this morning. Awesome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A very enjoyable night and a bit of adventure

My birthday eveningw as very enjoyable. We went out to Georgie Porgie's with jakki Gary and Alice and ate way way too much.

Georgie Porgies is a buffet restaurant - an eat all you want for £13.99. They have a great range of Indian, Chinese, Italian and Mexican food, loads of salads and lots of deserts.

The food isn't cordon bleu standard, but it was all nice, well cooked, not greasy and very nice. I tended to stick to crisdy duck pancakes, the most goregous chick pea dahl, a little chicken tikka and lots of fruita nd ice cream. But I was so stuffed; we all were.

The company was great and I had an intriguing present from Jakki - it says I am being collected ona  given day and am not to know where she is taking me and what we are doing. They ALL know except me.

Anyway, before we come to scrapping, some birthday photos.

The first few are me and then us just beofre we went out - I was busy dead heading my hanging baskets and so have a handful of dead fuscias whilst waiting for him to get the camera ready LOL.

 

 

 

and at the restuarant

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

We were so full afterwards that birthday cake was not an option, but this was my 'too full to eat another thing' birthday cake back at Jakki's .

 

 

 

Now who knew you could get 4 candles in a single strawberry!! It was a great night with good company.

Today Nij is at a big speedway event so I have been scrapping (well actually Fiki and I have spent 2 hours lounging on the bed reading and dozing but I did do some scrapping first!)

I caught up on my page - well one of them that I want to make - for my Explore class. the challenge was to use circular embellishments, which i had fun making from scraps.

I decided to make the page - well actually it is a double page - for my 'My Freedom' album which was from another of Shimelle's classes. It just seemed to fit right in with that album.

 
It is actually 2 pages and I have just put them together so you can see the whole things.

 

 

 
Today I am thankful for

• a relaxing Sunday just chilling

 
 
 

Magical Memories Prompt 5

Firstly let me apologise - I totally forgot it was wednesday so sorry for the lateness of the prompt.

It was done (prompts 6, 7 and 8 are also done ready LOL) just hadn't figured the day of the week.

Anyhow - here it is now - can't wait to see what you come up with.

Download magical_memorie_week_5.pdf

I have been working with Jakki most of the day, but did have time to finish of another My Freedom page.

I am not sure I interpreted this prompt correctly, but this is what I have gone with -a? sort of then and now (and I have since taken off the letters and put them back on straight but can't be bothered to rescan it - sorry.

I used 5 pictures of me over a period of some 42 years - scary to look at I know - and have answered the same questions for each picture.

It was interesting when going through my photos to see which periods of my life had very few pictures.

There were loads to chose from as a child, almost none as a teenager (and certainly very very few that I would want to own up to) very few in my 20's and then more in my 30's and now way too many in my 40's.

I put it down to usual teenage angst of not wanting to be photographed, and in my 20's pictures were still expensive and I for one didn't have a camera for much of that decade.

By the time I was 30+ I had my own camera and now I take pictures daily (not of myself I hasten to add!)

This was an interesting exercise to complete.

Now off to think of my title page.

Creativity

I think there is something awfully fitting about the fact that the layout I have really really struggled with for this class has been the one about creativity. Poetic justice perhaps. I just couldn't get the ideas to flow for this one at all and am not happy witht he finished result - but then I guess that the class is all about freedom and I am free to re-do it at any point if I really can't live with it.  

The bit I did enjoy was doing the journalling though and I am afraid I need to post it here! I did try and think through a typical page and the process I went through - and I kid you not, most of them are like this.

The Creative Process

1. Select a photo you want to scrap, re-size it and print, rejecting all ready printed pictures you have.

2. Get cross with Fiki, put him out of the scrap room and shut the door, ignoring the howls.

3. Think of a title - I know that is odd but the title usually has to come first to set the ‘tone’ of the page.

4. Select cardstock and patterned paper. NB This step takes ages. There will be lots of ‘uhhming’ and ‘ahhing’ and lots of paper will be selected then rejected in case you need it for another better project. It will involve getting cross and then just picking out any old papers because you are fed up.

5. Start layout by cutting papers.

6. Sort out the large Fiki-related bang was next door.

7. Ink and stitch different papers and backgrounds in place and mount photo.

8. Feel guilty that Fiki is now howling and so go and play with him to tell him you are sorry for shouting and the broken things really don’t matter. Let him back in the scrap room, telling him to be good.

9. Select embellishments and either add to the page or, more often, recolour them so they work with the papers that you selected which were not the ones you wanted anyway.

10. Add journalling either handwritten or computerised.

11. Put Fiki outside and shut door.

12. Cut or stamp or stick title.

13. Look for missing letter and be unable to find it.

14. Give up and go and play with the cats before you throw the page out of the window.

15. Spot missing letter stuck to your arm/foot/head/or in Fiki’s toy box as he stole it. 

16. Finish page, scan and stand on easel for Nigel’s approval when he comes home.

 

I stitched all the circles onto the page - which was a bit of a challenge across a double page! - and I have used three quotes printed onto transparencies

I am still not happy with the gaps and may well add other bits and pieces on to it when I have lived with it for a while.

Now - I have tried to post the video here but can't

This is a You Tube (one of a series) that if you are a cat lover (or I guess dog lover too) you have to watch. It is scarily true to life!

Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s13dLaTIHSg#

Magical Memories prompt 3 wild west pages

When I sat down to do my pages for prompt number 3 I have to confess I was a little horrified to realise quite how many pictures of various restuarants and food I had from the trip. I am pleased I had them but was surprised I had taken pictures. I am more organised than I thought I guess.

The first page of the double is really special to us. It is the most memorable evening we have ever spent and it was one of those purely by chance evenings. We had been driving and touring around Capitol Reef National Park - one of the least visited and where there is still real wilderness - and had pre-booked a night at Torrey. When we arrived at the hotel - a Best Western as we always use them - we were uninspired and phoned to see if we could make reservations at the next Best Western just a three hour drive away! We couldn't, there was no-where else and so we were stuck. On arrival our room wasn't ready - they said they could give us a room without a view but if we wanted a view it would be an hour or so and why didn't we go into town for a bit! Well, to be frank we couldn't see a view. I mean where were they going to put us where there was a view at all. But we stood for it and went into town. Now I am quite prepared to acknowledge that we may have missed it, but we couldn't find 'town' and my experience of lots of Utah is that there often isn't more than a general store and a gas station - and indeed that was all we found. It is quite hard to whle away more than 15 minutes in a  small town general store but we gave it our best shot and then went and sat in the car.

On returning to the hotel we were told our room was ready and were given a key and pointed over to a very uninspiring block at the far side of the grounds. This was the view from our balcony - which we agreed was worth waiting for (and later that night we sat and watched an amazing sunset from there are the sky and the rocks changed into so many colours)

Anyway, the hotel had a restuarant that looked awful and dull and so we headed just down and across the road to another we had seen called the Rim Rock Restuarant. And OMG - it was amazing. the restaurant was very rustic but beautiful and was literally perched on the edge of the canyon with windows along the entire one side. The views were amazing; the colours changed constantlyw itht he light, there were eagles swooping by (we were very high up) and hummingbirds feeding at the various feeders. The food was delicious, and then we saw soemthing fab. The native Americans called the area The Land of the Sleeping Rainbow because of the many colours in the rocks. There was rain over in the distance and suddenly a perfect rainbow appeared. It was the icing ont he cake - a night we may never have had and was one of the most special not only of the trip but ever. A real stand out magical memory.

The second page was much simpler and was all about the journalling. I picked 8 of the places we ate ont he trip - from a small Denny's and a real dive looking place that was billed as serving the best pizza in Utah and it did  to the Cheesecake Factory and a really nice restaurant in Cheyenne.

The blog prompt for My Freedom today is about books and reading. I am a real book addict. We have a library at home - it was a room I had always wanted to have and it is filled with books. I love it.

I read A LOT. I usually read three or four books a week, slightly more when I am on holiday and slightly less when I am at school, and I read anything and everything. I am not a huge fan of biographies and non fiction, preferring fiction really, but I read whatever I have. I like a nice classic such as Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, really rubbish chick lit such as Sophie Kinsella and even Jackie Collins and everything in between. Some of my favourite books are about early civilizations such as the jean Auel books and a series I have discivered recently by William Sarande about first Americans. I absolutely love Bill Brysona nd can read his books over and over. Just perfect observation, fact and humour all mixed together. I am currently loving Peter James and Jodi Picoult. The most recent book I finished yesterday was recommended by a  blog reader - The Five People You Meet In Heaven - and I loved it so much. Thank you for recommending it. I had 5 books for my birthday last week - that was one of them. I also had a Peter James, a Jackie Collins, the new Jeffrey Archer and Katie Price's autobiography. A real mix there then.

You might like to look at this list I shared a while ago and see how many of this top 100 you have read.

Have fun

Play pages and my month update

  It is hot hot hot and my scraproom is like a furnace. I have to keep the door shut as I have a Fiki - he is NOT allowed in.

We keep trying but he breaks too much stuff in here. Nigel's models are all on shelves in here and he has already done a fair bit of damage there.

Before it go too hot I made my 'play' pages for the Shimelle my freedom class.

I couldn't do the journalling as part pictures - it just wasn't happening for me - so I abandoned the sketch and that idea and went with my flow and this is what happened.

I find play really easy - work is the hard stuff! One of the most important things in my life is laughter and I am blessed with a husband who is a giggler and laugher too and with a best mate who is a laughter girl as well.

As ever I couldn't limit it to just a couple of pictures so I needed to squeeze more on and used a film strip again. I love film strips (I know .... you have guessed) because it means I can stick a whole mess of pictures in.

I found this double page flowed more easily than the others I have done and I think that is, in part, due to the film strip straddling both pages.

I have to think of it as one huge page and then cut it at the last minute down the join between the two sheets of cardstock.

I used some of the letters I have been keeping for something special. I made myself a promise to not keep anything for special so broke them out and stuck them on saying PLAY. They are lovely letters - really thick chipboard  - called Alphaletterz by ProvoCraft that I bought from Michaels or Joanns on holiday last year.

And yes - I succumbed to sewing on the page as well LOL

This is my page for the month in my life yesterday. We finally finished the patio. Nigel got out the new furniture and it looks wonderful ont here. It is also really comfortable which I can attest to as we had a BBQ last night to christen it all.

He also bought some solar powered lights which give a nice finishing touch. we have no power out there so they had to be solar powered and fair enough they are not bright - but they are kind of cute to see at night.

The page for 27th would look so much better if I had scanned it straight but such is life. It is straight really - I promise!

Today I sat in the sun as long as I could stand - which was not actually very long at all - and then retired to the cold shower again.

This is my page for today - which I know is early as there is more of the day left - but I don't think much of great importance will happen later.

Finally three cute pictures to share. The patio with it's new furniture. my new second patiio (well how cool is that - I didn't even have one now I have two!) and two fur babies catching the shade.

They are the same pictures as on the two month in my life pages but I wanted to show them bigger as well.

Have a great rest of the day and stay cool.

Patio perfection and the tales of Superhead!

  Well what an incredible 2 days these have been.

Some of you may remember that we were looking at having a new patio. Nigel drew out a design and we had someone round to quote for it. I guess we were lucky we were able to see the funny side of the quote! I mean almost £11,000 for a patio!!! I don't think so.

We couldn't afford it and even if we could we couldn't justify spending that much.

If we couldn't have the design we wanted - and it was the design that was making it so expensive as there was not a straight line in it and it was all eged and the cutting alone would have taken for ever, let alone filling in steps, building retaining walls etc - then we would make the best of what we had.

Our existing patio is too small and square, but it is what we have so time to make the best of it. It was filthy - the pine trees etc make it awful - and we hadn't cleaned it for two years. The edge was all pots full of my very extensive collection of dead conifers (I built that up over several years you know!) and the pots were all dirty and grimy too. There were weeds growing up through the cracks. It was a mess.

So two days of hard graft and it looks so much better. Nigel pressure washed it all, including the pots. You can see from the one he wrote his name in how vile it was.

We moved everything around and I went and bought new conifers to kill and we planted everything up.

We now have a useable patio that is clean and pleasant to sit out on. We have yet to unpack the new patio furniture but we will do that when we can move again! Should only be a couple of days before we heal!

The old furniture has now been put in a really nice spot outside the kitchen window that was just a dumpuing area and now is a second lower patio area.

I am really thrilled with it. We have worked hard but it has been worth it.

I have also worked hard on one of the two Shimelle My Freedom pages this weekend.

I am still struggling with doubles and could not get this to work at all. I had some fairly major gaps that needed filling.

I have adopted a very lighthearted approach tot his one and decided as I loved Superhead's body so much I would include her in the page.

As per the suggestions I wrote the journalling as converations. Some of my job is inevitably boring and mundane - isn't some of every job? I do, however, get some fairly bizarre things to deal with as well and so I have included a few of those too.

Now - I am off to heal my aching muscles with the best known cure in the world .... feet up, a good book and a glass of ice cold wine!

London calling and catch up

Had a fabulous day yesterday and will explain here. Firstly the pages sprinklled through this prompt are pages made for the month in my life book. I would call it a mini book but it is quite fat now!

We had promised ourselves a trip to London for ages and as we are having a holiday at home we took that trip yesterday. We drove part way up, parking at Sunbury and then getting the train in to waterloo. We usually drive into London, park and then do whatever we are doing. It was far cheaper to do this - the train fair and the low parking costs were way less than the petrol (the angst) the congestion charge and London parking. So much better.

We went to see what the chances were of going on the London Eye first and we were first in the queue for tickets and in the first car of the day. It was a hot sunny day and visibility was good. I had expected to be disappointed and although it was not earth-shatteringly fabulous it was a good trip and I am glad we did it.

The thing we really went up to do was to do the open top bus tour. We have done bus tours in a lot of cities, especially in the US in places such as NY, Dallas, Washington etc. I had lived in London for 4 years and had wanted to do it then. So yesterday was the day. It was nice to be on the top of the bus as there was a little breeze on what was a blisteringly hot day. We opted for the live comentary and were so glad we got a wonderful guide for almost all the tour. (He changed to have his lunch break and the guy we had for the remainder was not a patch)

He was a genuine cockney, incredibly proud of London, England and his heritage, very very funny and so unbelievably knowledgeable. It was a fabulous tour and we learnt so much and had a great time.

500 pictures later and we were off the bus, back on the train and we headed out to Staines to the Outback Steakhouse.

  Now the Outback is one of our favourite places to eat in the US. There are only 3 in the south of England and Staines is our nearest and so we were very keen to see if it was as good.

In a word, no

It was not a patch on the US restaurants, though the menu was almost the same. It was expensive and lacking any of the nice touches. I guess it is for the best. At least regular trips to Staines are not needed now.

The good news is that as a response to my blog about Starbucks I have since found out we have one due to open soon quite close to home ... and even closer to work. Mmmmmm - I can see THAT becoming a problem.

Now - for the first time in a couple of days I have had a chance to play and have been looking at the prompts from Shimelle for this week.

One of them really tickled my fancy and I have been having a play. I loved the concept of a superhero alter ego. I could do with one of those so I had a play at making my superhero alter ego.

So meet SuperHead

She would be totally unflappable in any situation no matter how bizarre. She would be able to dispense words of wisdom at any given time, whilst juggling a dozen alternate responsibilities as well. She would have true x ray vision, able to see into little girls minds and hearts to a) know who was telling the truth when two children fell out b) see where a problem with learning lay so she could ensure learning was right for every child and c) know who had chocolate when we had picnics so she could pick her seating companions well.

She would be able to mark with both hands simultaneously and regulation documents could be read, understood, acted upon and filed in a special 2 minute slot at the start of each day. She would be immune to putting on weight when consuming school puddings, could deter sales reps with a single flick of her cape, take 60 assemblies a term with no planning involved and would always have the right props available. Her ability to calm down anxious/irrate/upset/disgruntled parents would be legendary and she would be a marketing whizz One flap of her cape and rain would stop for every playtime and ensure no wet school trips or cancelled sports days. OFSTED would ask her advice and know they never ever needed to inspect any school she was in charge of as it would be exemplary. Oh and she'd be able to magically move school holidays around to suit her other commitments and never need to miss out on anything major like a friends wedding or a free holiday because it fell in term time.

Now I had two goes at creating Superhead. The first was the obvious play on SuperTed but let's face it - even when you squish him up his body ain't fab. It's fine for a bear but heck - we are creating fantasy here so my second attempt - sexy superhead is the one I am going for. I mean all of those superpowers above AND a great body. What's not to like!  Shimelle - thanks for such fun

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YUM

I hadn't shared this page as I wasn't sure when it was due for publication. Turns out it was ages ago LOL.

I was asked to do the take 5 challenge by Scrapbook Inspirations and this was what i made. The chipboard circles were great fun to use as frames once they were inked and embossed to make them shine.

I seem to have so many pictures of Emily eating ice-cream it looks like all she ever does.

It's not - promise!

The My Freedom prompt today was to write about your first job - and ask people to reply about theirs.

Mine was as cheap child labour!! Seriously - my parents owned a small family run hotel and as soon as I was old enough - 11 I think - I was part of the family running it. I was the waitress for evening meals. (They tried to get me to do breakfasts when I was on school holidays but let's be honest - it was never goingt ow ork now was it!) I loved it. I had the proper white lacy apron and could do silver service and everything. I got proper wages too, long before my friends were earning any money. And good tips. Trouble was the 'boss' was pretty strict and he made me save half of everything i earned. I hated him making me do that, but when I used the money as the deposit for our first house I viwed it a little differently and I am so pleased he made steady saving a  part of my regime.

I also went out, a few years later, to work at my Aunt's much bigger hotel. I would have been better to do breakfasts at home. I had to get up at 5.30, cycle there,be there for 6. Lay up, serve breakfasts until 9.30 then clean the dining room until about 11 then drag my poor aching body back home. It was hard work.

Don't forget - tomorrow it is time for Magical Memories prompt 3 and it's a great one.

One final thing -a  friend sent this link and it is just amazing.

Please please click on it - whoever set this all up is one clever person. Skillful or what!

Download BILLARDETDOMINO.wmv

Ouch I hurt!

It's been a beautiful day here today. One could easily be fooled into thinking ti was July and summer or something! Surely not!

I had a lovely time this morning just gently scrapping for no other reason than I had some pretty paper and was in the mood.

However, by lunchtime the sun lounger was calling and so I slipped outside for an hour and sat in the sun and read Shopaholic and Baby. I love Sophie Kinsella books as they are just an easy read that you don't have to think about, analyse etc.

Having sat and enjoyed the sun I then felt guilty and so even though my knee was bad I did all the strimming front and back (and it is quite a big garden I have since discovered) and weeded one of the larger beds.

 I can't move now. My knee has totally given out and whatever pesky little bits are floating around have been well and truly lodged in the knee for now.

I am looking forward to later int he week and having Nigel home. He is going in tomorrow then he is off. He is not even going to Speedway on Wednesday as it is my birthday! I love that guy.

The pages dotted around the first bit of this post are the most recent of the month in my life. I have to say i am really enjoying this little project - although am a little disconcerted that when I read back it is going to see like we eat out A LOT!

I also want to share the digital version of my Shimelle class Inspiration page. I am planning on doing a digi page for each paper double page spread as well. Why? I guess just because I can LOL

The blog prompt today was to tell blog readers about our favourite game. Mmmm - that's a toughie. Nigel and I play a lot of games (please keep it clean ladies - I mean board games and the like) We both love Trivial Pursuita nd have several versions plus boxes of extra cards. We love quizzes of all sorts and have a gazzillion quiz books and Nigel runs quiz nights for all sorts of organisations. We play a fair old selection of board cames such a Careers, Mine a Million, Risk etc and play MahYong, Yahtzee and Rummy a lot too.We also love Scrabble, Upwords and Boggle. Oh and I play my Gameboy and DS Lite every day too. I do the Brain Training every day to try and keep my mind from getting too addled.

 One of the fun games we have enjoyed playing recently is US-OPOLY! I had already posted this page but it merits being posted here too. We bought the photopoly game in LA last year thinking it would be cool to make as you personalise it with your own pictures. We have turned it into a game of US (meaning Nigel and I and also meaning United States) picking favourite hotels, restuarants, theme parks, national parks etc that we have visited. It is great fun to play and we had a blast making it.

It makes it a really personal game and we love it.