Ups and Downs

Things have been a bit up and down here on Walton's Mountain lately and I'm starting to get slightly dizzy from all the changes in direction.  I think the lack of chocolate may be getting to me...(see point 5.)

Things I Want to Increase:

1. The length of my hair and nails - I'm taking these Holland and Barrett suplements called 'Skin Hair and Nails Formula' which are huge and taste discusting even when you wash them down with huge amounts of water.  One of these days I'm actually going to throw up on my keyboard so any recomendations for alternatives would be greatly received.

2. How much I understand Travel Demans Analysis - I have an exam on the 15th January and although I'm super organised with my revision timetable, I really don't understand all the complicated equations.  Still haveing to refer to the instructions each time I use my scientific calculator has got to be a bad thing.

3. My bank balance - I completed my Christmas shopping yesterday so I am quietly smug about that, while also being left somewhat financially challenged.  Luckily I have my clubcard vouchers to buy lots of Chritsmassy treats from Tesco otherwise it might be spaghetti hoops on toast on Christmas day!

4. Time for scrapping - Sadly, all the scrapping stuff in the dining rooms has been piled onto the piano to make way for tedious text books and revision cards.  I hope to get a bit in before Christmas, but am finding it very frustrating.

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Things I Want to Decrease:

5. How much I weigh - This is the big focus at the moment and I'm bouncing around on my Wii Fit and scribbling in my food diary everytime I even look at a cake for too long so I will look pretty in my bridesmaid dress next September .  Currently, there are 292 days until the wedding and so I have plenty of time but as I plan to have Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day off, I need to get ahead of myself as much as possible.

6. The amount of clutter in my house - Honestly, I cannot understand how other people manage to keep their houses looking so lovely all the time.  I lurch from one mad panic because visitors are coming to another and I wish that I could have a tranquil organised house to come home to everyday.  I need a cleaner, or even better to give up work and stay home being a house wife.  God, I'd love that.  Truly.

7. How quickly time is passing - Isn't it the end of September?  No?  Well early October then? Oh.  Where the bloody hell has all that time gone?  While I'm not going to go on about the inevitable passage of time inching us ever closer to the sweet embrace of the crypt (although you know I REALLY want to), I'm not quite liking how fast things are passing me by and not quite ready for it to be Christmas (apart from the shopping!)

Early To Bed

My goodness, the time is just flying by at the moment. I feel like I could get travel sickness just by standing still but Alistair's Christmas shopping has been started and so hopefully mine won't be far behind. I'm having a lovely time chilling out at home today in my pyjamas (I know it's early, but I did get properly dressed for a couple a hours earlier but then I went out in the rain and got soaked) after another great but busy weekend.

I saw New Moon on Friday afternoon which was totally amazing, so much better than I thought it would be and even Alistair professed to have enjoyed it. I'm just wondering how long I need to leave it before I suggest going for again, I'm not sure I like my chances. Yesterday I had another flying visit to London to see my homegirls, make exciting wedding plans and begin the hunt for the perfect wedding dress which got off to a strong start.

Anyway, to the important stuff. Check out SBK's fantastic festive blog candy:

And speaking of SBK, here are a couple of layouts I've made with the gorgeous Webster's Pages. The Christmas stuff is particularly beautiful and has a great Victorian look about it which I love so take a tour round their shop if you're interested:

30 Years of Waiting...

...and my time is finally here. Guess what? Never mind, that'll take too long, I'll have to tell you. 

I'm going to be a bridesmaid!

Perhaps even more importantly than than (how self involved would I be otherwise?), this means that Lizzie, one of my very best friends in whole world is getting married to the lovely Jarrad.

Aren't they fab?

There's lots going on at the moment as we get all excited about venues, dresses, flowers, cakes, shoes  and invitations (think the episode of Friends where Monica gets her wedding book out) and so I seem to have got distracted from lots of things which I really should have done. 

I have manged to squeeze  in a couple of layouts though which I'll post as soon as I'm home in daylight to take pictures of them. In the mean time, I'm going to get back to panicking over my revision timetable - I'd better not plan on actually having a life until the 15th Janury.

The Road to Avonlea

Most things have fallen by the wayside yet again this week, but now the Road to Avonlea kit for November has been published over at SBK, I can share my layouts properly - hurrah!

More BfS this weekend, I promise.

Sneak Peaks

I've been hard at work on  layouts using the SBK's travel themed November kit - Road to Avonlea and thought I would share a couple of sneak peaks. I'll post the completed layouts later in the week.

The Chickens and the Eggs

The bookshop at the Cider Press Centre in Dartington has traditionally been quite a dangerous place for me to visit. They have such a gorgeous selection of lifestyle books there that I never fail to come away with a head full of ideas (and most likely an arm full of books) about things to do or make when I get home. A few years ago, I chose a book called The Country Living Handbook which contains great ideas and pictures of things to do in the countryside for each month of the year and I was quite intrigued by the section about keeping chickens.

I’d always been quite keen on the idea of keeping poultry, but if truth be told, I was holding out for a goose because I love their orange feet and beaks and can’t get enough of their honking noise. The book really sold me on the idea of fresh eggs though and while it was suggesting buying fertilised eggs to hatch at home, it also mentioned that it was possible to rescue ex-battery hens and give them a happy retirement home.

A little googling later and I’d discovered the Battery Hen Welfare Trust and got on their waiting list to adopt some hens. The BHWT work with farmers to provide new homes for their hens which would otherwise be sold off for slaughter and also campaign to inform consumers about the importance of insisting on free range eggs, not just in the actual you eggs you use but also in the prepared food such as biscuits, cakes and pasta that they buy. As it turns out, unless your cakes are bought from Marks and Spencer’s or Waitrose (who use free range in all their own brands), the eggs in your food are probably from caged hens.

However, there are some superstars including Hellman’s whi have just switched to free range in no small part due to the BHWT campaign and strangely enough, McDonalds also only use free range eggs in their mayoniase and yummy Egg McMuffins. The BHWT are now focussing their campaigning efforts on Mr Kipling as one of the leading producers of cakes in UK.

Armed with this information, I stopped eating food made with eggs from caged hens and also set about looking for a suitable house for our new girls as and when they arrived. When I stumbled across the Omlet website and the wonder of hen-house engineering that is an Eglu, I was hooked. A few weeks later our (pink) Eglu arrived and our first batch of hens followed soon after.

They weren’t the featheriest, strongest, healthiest or happiest hens you’ve ever seen but it was such a joy to seem them stretching out their wings, enjoying the sun on their feathers and scratching about in the garden, knowing this was the first opportunity they’d ever had to just be chickens, rather than part of an egg producing machine.

That’s not to say our ex-batts don’t lay us plenty of lovely eggs, but they sometimes have a bit of holiday, particularly during the winter months when they tend to focus a bit more on growing feathers which is fine by us. We’re now up to 6 hens and also have a lovely purple Eglu Cube in our garden too and we love to spend time with our hens as they each have such distinctive personalities.

Over the last year or so I’ve been working for the BHWT in my spare time, talking people through the adoption process, taking people’s bookings for hens and occasionally helping out with rescues the weekend which means I’m pretty busy in the evenings but it's totally worth it.

I don’t really want to go into the terrible conditions in which these poor hens generally live their short lives now as it would be a bit of a bring down but if you’re interested, you can read more about it here. Othewise, I would urge you to consider your shopping habits though, to see if you can become a caring consumer and cut out battery eggs from your all food (I warn you now, it does mean sometimes turning down cake). The BHWT also have co-ordinators all over the country and so if you think you may be able to offer some of our girls a happy retirement, get in touch. You’ll be so glad you did!

Current Sources of Fabulous-ness

A few things which are currently filling my world with light and happiness:

1.    Straight in at number one is the Twilight saga which has been occupying at least 75% of my brain at any given time since I first started to read it while we were on holiday – Alistair couldn’t understand why I suddenly had no interest in leaving the hotel whatsoever. I love stories that continue over multiple books anyway, but Twilight had taken it to a whole new level. I’m totally captivated by the beautiful love story surrounded by dark themes and gothic imagery, so much so that I found myself looking at Forks on Google Streetview to see if it might be a good place to go on our next holiday, although I was forced to conclude probably not. Needless to say, I’m completely in love with Edward Cullen and I can’t wait to see the film of New Moon which is out on the 20th November.

2.    The second thing I’m currently obsessed with is the Crabtree and Evelyn home fragrance in Noel which is only available for a few months of the year and as soon as I catch sight of the little red boxes on the shelf (I get the oil), I start hearing the jingle of sleigh bells and the rustle of wrapping paper inside my head. It smells of everything that is great about Christmas, a mixture of pine trees, satsumas, chocolate coins, mulled wine and mince pies and puts me in the festive mood whenever I come home to the scent of it. I buy mine from Place Settings in Topsham which is chock full of gorgeous things (as is Topsham itself for that matter) and well worth a visit if you’re in the Exeter area.

3.    On a more practical note, I’m totally in love with the little Innocent Veg Pots which I’ve been having for lunch the last few days. There’s a range of flavours but my favourites are the Indian daal and Moroccan giant couscous one and they’re full of lovely fresh veggies, beans and herbs and leave you with a full but virtuous feeling of being at one with nature and brimming with healthy loveliness. Essentially, they’re just grand.

4.    I’m not actually feeling super inspired in the crafty sphere right now, largely because of the state my dining table is in yet again but I’ve a very strong feeling that the imminent arrival of the Handwritten Fonts design card for my Slice will reawaken the slumbering beast of creativity because I do so adore handwriting fonts and can’t wait to be able to use them on my layouts and, with the added bonus of never ever running of Es (eek, nasty run on sentance). Making Memories have brought out lots of new design cards recently and other favourites include Farm Life, Mix and Mingle and Home Sweet Home(are you listening Santa?)

5.     Finally, and perhaps this should take it’s rightful place at number one, is this little fellow who we adopted from the Cats Protection League on Saturday, although we’ve only just lost out little Tessykins and still miss her dreadfully, we’re suckers for an emergency appeal for new homes and decided it couldn’t hurt to look, in case they had someone we thought would fit in with the rest of our furry (and feathery) family. I’d seen his profile on the internet before we left and planned to check him out, but I was not quite prepared for the huge, fluffy and purring ball which jumped into my arms as soon as I opened his window. It’s always heartbreaking to go to the CPL and pick one cat, when you have leave so many behind, but they’re so good at finding homes for them all we knew that he was the one for us.

He came in a from family who couldn’t afford to keep him because he’d been hit by a car and needed expensive surgery to pin his back leg in place and he’d been on cage rest for a couple of months before being available for adoption. I can safely say he is one of the softest, floppiest, cuddliest and most inquisitive cats I’ve ever met and he just follows us around the house trying to climb into various appliances and cupboards to see what’s going on. The other cats are still a little unsure of him and coming around very slowly, but Morrissey (we changed his name from Bandit) is taking it all in his stride.

This has gone on far too long now and I can’t imagine anyone is still reading. Hello? Anyone? Thought not. Anyway, because that was the day we got Mozzer (that seems to be what we’re calling him – all our animals have stupid nicknames – Elvie answers to the name Schnibble, Sophie is referred to as Snuffalupps, Clementine gets called Clomp or Wumpus and Tessy was always know as The Weasel), my Halloween pumpkin had a fairly dominant cat motif (i.e. was a cat) and this seemed like an appropriate arena in which to share it before I forget and Halloween becomes irrelevant (actually that may have happened already).

'You Must Remember This...'

This picture takes me right back to the winter of 2005/2005 when we'd just moved to Devon.  We were still exploring the local area and in those few magical free days between Christmas and new year, we ventured on to Dartmoor to enjoy the winter sunshine. The first few months after we moved were a bit of struggle for a number of reasons, but I remember this being the first time I was sure we'd made the right decision and that Devon was the right place for us to be. 

I love how tiny Elvie looks in this picture and how I'm bundled into my old university coat, because I couldn't afford a new one at the time.  This is the picture that Alistair has on his desk at work and so I know it holds happy memories for him too, although who knows?  That may be as much to do with the fact it preceeded our first taste of Molly Mac's ice cream (as much a Dartmoor institution as Hound of the Basketmeals) by just a couple minutes.  Now that's another very happy memory and maybe my story for another day.

Blogging For Scrapbookers

I have returned from my mini digital hiatus which was I actually rather enjoyed because it reminded me of a simpler time and was a bit like having an accident and waking up in 1973 (but with less Gene Hunt). All good things must come to an end though and it's not like I could really live without the internet, it's just that with the hinges on the computer having gone to hinge heaven, looking at the screen requires a great deal of commitment and possibly a PhD in the art of propping.

Anyway as my sidebar has been telling people while I've been away, I've signed up for Shimelle's new class (anyone who mentions my as yet unfinished LSNED will be escorted from the premises) which is Blogging for Scrapbookers and also very exciting. I'm really hoping that taking this class will encourage me to blog more often, without necessarily having a layout or specific photograph to share in order to record memories and details of my day-to-day activities and special events which I might otherwise forget. I also want to try to be more present in my life and take the time to notice, think and hopefully blog about the little things that make me happy (while glossing over the things that make me cross because I don't think I want to remember them).

I'll be adding a picture to this post later when I have access to more than just work related photographs so watch this space (unless you like pictures of roads, junctions and traffic lights in which case email me, I can make your day).

UPDATE - OK, here's the picture now.  Sadly not of anything scrapbooking related but it is a picture of the world's largest mirrorball (allegedly) and that green blur in it is me - hello!