Posy

Alfie

Meet Alfie! The newest family member. He is such a sweet little boy but I am exhausted already and we only got him on Friday! He is 8 months old and we are his 4th owners. We collected him from the rescue centre..it was a 2 hour drive and I worried that maybe I wouldn't bond with him and then what would I say to the lady - that I didn't want him? How bad would that have been, though she was quite prepared for us not to take him if it wasn't a 'good' match. Fortunately it was. I loved him on sight and the look in his sad eyes only made me want him more.

Then came the other surprise. Our sweet Posy actually hissed 15 times in 4 hours! This has surprised us because she has never hissed before (well a tiny one once when a huge dog came into the house) and we have another cat who walks into our home on a regular basis and she loves him. So the weekend has been somewhat stressful as I was frightened to leave them alone together, though there has been no fisty-cuffs yet. Infact there has been a gradual thawing on Posy's part and goes up for a quick sniff. He is lovely with her which so good.

Not so lovely though around the house! He never stops. He is obsessed with food, jumping onto the kitchen sides which is a big no-no in our house and tries to get into the bin. He seems to have no spacial awareness as he just launches onto anything or into anything like on his first night he leaped into the toilet before it was flushed! We had to rinse him off which hardly helped the settling in process! He is very playful too,  which the children love.

This is me trying to sew. He was leaping onto my fabric, walking over my pins. It was a relief when the children came home yesterday to amuse him and to help keep an eye on him! I haven't been able to take many photos as he never sits still..hey that might be someone walking into the kitchen!

I did take this though when he was curled up on our curtain for all of 3 minutes and I thought ah, lovely background!

Thanks for all your lovely comments about my linen cupboard though Tom is not keen with the idea of keeping the door open..you see it's in his room! Some of you have asked about the fabric at the back..well it isn't fabric but an old ( 5 years?) Laura Ashley wallpaper. I have managed pre-Alfie to make 2 cushions from Green Gate tea towels and a napkin and I actually think they are best that I have ever done! I'll show you tomorrow!

Linen Cupboard

Firstly, I am so sorry that it has been so long since I have last posted..bet you all secretly thought that Chris, having read my last post, had whisked me away to sing songs of my choosing! Alas, I have not heard from him yet but there is always hope! Given the look of the above cupboard I think he would give me a wide berth. But yay, it is no longer like that.. it changed to this..

..and then it changed to this..

..umm..much better don't you think?

I can't quite believe that I have my own linen cupboard. You see our home is very small and we don't have much space for storage. Infact I'll let you into a little secret. This cupboard was Tom's wardrobe hence all the girlie bits are able to be shut away by the door! He never used it so I thought that I would take it over and keep the children's bedding in it and it's bliss to be able to see all the bedlinen which was previously squashed into a drawer. Not a nice experience for a lady who actually enjoys starching and ironing her linen!

I keep opening the door and just staring..

I also have exciting news..very, very exciting (brace yourself Fe!). About 6 weeks ago I made enquiries about adopting a Persian cat from a rescue centre. They didn't have anything available but kept my name on file. Well yesterday I received a call to say that a ginger and white kitten of about 8 months was available! He is a little boy who is used to other cats and is very loving and gentle. We go to pick him up on Friday. It is apparently quite rare to have such a young cat in a rescue centre and as yet I don't know anymore about him; but I am desperately hoping we will bond with him and he will make Posy a big sister! So.. watch this space.

Tomorrow we take the children to Salisbury again to stay with Granny & Poppa for a few days. Yay and yay again! Anth and I have decided to stay home and chill..which will mean for me..sew, sew ,sew and sitting infront of my lit fire and going out to eat and picking up our new baby boy-cat(fingers crossed!)

I've even managed to wangle a trip to Shaftesbury on our way back, so this time I can enjoy the Green Gate shop without the sulky faces (though that is my most favourite photo ever!) Gosh, this has turned into a long post. Thank you for all your comments about my Chris post..some of you have even met him and sent me the wonderful photos...sigh!

I'll be back soon..

Quest to meet Chris!

As I've been doing my painting over these last few days I've had had my CD player on constantly (I just can't work without music, can you?) and have had my most loved songs playing. This of course means Coldplay and I thought I would tell you about the position 'Chris' holds in our family! Firstly, I want to stress that I am perfectly sane in most aspects of my life, but I find my admiration for Coldplay (particularly lovely Chris) leads me to do things that a 42 year old woman/mother should maybe think twice about. Take last Boxing Day..

A few days before Christmas I had noticed this billboard go up in our town...I told my brother Matthew , who is another Coldplay fan, and we had decided that on our annual Boxing Day walk along the beach we would stop and have our photo taken with our heros. Well, this is the nearest we would ever get to them!  It wasn't quite as simple as we had thought and it took a lot of climbing over rather dubious piles of dumped rubbish! We got some rather funny looks too. But hey, what a photo opportunity! I had thought about making my own calender and taking 12 changes of clothes for each month!

Matthew, is my youngest brother and he is a doctor (should know better too!) He and I are very close and share the same sense of humour..and spend our time laughing. He lives in Winchester so we speak on the phone regularly and recently he told me about another quest to meet our hero. This time I wasn't able to join him but this story really makes me laugh! Coldplay were playing at Abbey Road Studios and Matthew & I had entered a competition - numerous times - to win tickets. We didn't. Matthew decided to go and wait outside, you know like a 35 year old doctor usually does! He spent hours in the cold being jostled by the press and slowly the band arrived separately. He was able to get 2 autographs but still wasn't sure if Chris had arrived.

Suddenly a huge black car drew up and out got Chris...Matthew says that he had an overwhelming urge and he found himself shouting as loudly as he could..CHRIS..CHRIS!!   He didn't even turn around.. he probably thought that it was the press shouting. "Still," I said to Matthew trying to be positive "at least he had heard your voice!" What makes me laugh is him yelling "Chris!" He doesn't know what came over him. We laugh together and think up ways that we might get to meet him - the latest is in Matthew's clinic in his hospital he might put up a notice saying, 'If anyone knows Chris Martin could they report to a member of staff!' or ask everyone of his patients! Seriously, I hope you know that we are only joking. But - if you happen to know Chris...!!

Yes, Chris is a positive feature in our lives..and if I did ever get to meet him I would thank him mostly for encouraging Lucy to learn to play the piano but also for singing and writing songs that make me have to sing and sometimes move me to tears like this (it's the intro where he sings ' your skin' over again..kills me!) and this (his voice is so wonderful) and this(the ending..) and this ('nothing else compares'..'home, home where I wanted to go'...perfect because I do want to go home most of the time!)

I could go on and on and you have been very patient with me. It's funny to get to the grand old age of 42 and feel so passionately about certain music. And yes, last December at their concert in Earls Court, it was me who found myself suddenly shouting, "Chris! Chris!"

I just couldn't help it!

I passed!

Finally, after weeks of hard work and a 3 hour visit from an assessor - I got this letter only 30 minutes ago! I've passed. It hasn't quite sunk in yet...I've waited for the results longer than it took to do the 8 assignments! Gosh, when I re-read my posts it reminded me of the amount of work I put in. Hmmm. Was it worth it? Well, yes in some ways. My confidence has grown and that for me is a good thing, a very good thing - but I get less than 50 pence more an hour on the day I cover the teacher for the afternoon! Something wrong there.. but hey, let's not dwell on that. I'm a HLTA - one of only 3 in our school! Thank you to all you who left encouraging comments. I do love all of your comments and am often calling to Anth to read the lovely things you have said. I am thinking of printing them off (if I can do it) to stick on my fridge! I think of you as friends even though we have never met, and marvel at how alike we all are.

This weekend is more...painting! How did you guess? We have put tongue and groove (love that name!) or should I say wooden cladding, around Tom's room. I bought wood that was water damaged (moldy!) for much cheaper than it should have been. I really wanted wide planks, so it would look like the inside of a tree house, but that was going to be hundreds of pounds.

So, it was the moldy stuff! It is looking OK when covered with paint and I'm half way round. More pictures when it's finished. Have you any ideas what colour I should paint his chest of drawers? I was going to do a pale blue. The walls are light cream and his curtains are blue ticking - as you can see. His bed is black cast iron. Better get on with it and I can listen to my most favourite radio programme Jonathan Ross.   He is simply the funniest man - I just love him -  nearly as much as Chris Martin, but not quite!

Enjoy your weekend!

Big love of mine

It was book week at school last week and our class were doing Eric Carle. Now all his books are wonderful but there is a certain book of his that I particularly love - 'Papa, please get the moon for me'. It's a very simple story and I scanned a few of the pages so you can get the gist. I think it's about love. Big love. Love that would make you climb to the moon. Unselfish love. A giving love. Today I'm celebrating my big love - my enormous love for my husband! You see it's our 21st wedding anniversary today and I know that he would climb to the moon to bring it to me. I'm very blessed. When we first met I knew that I would spend the rest of my life with him and the sight of him (only yesterday as he was walking to the car) still makes my heart and tummy flutter! I don't want this to sound too perfect because we are not by any means - it certainly is hard when one of us has to be on the other side of the world from our families and we can only afford for him to visit every few years. But we muddle through and our children and our marriage is my greatest achievement. Our secret? We have the same faith, goals and values and we work as a team.

Simple... but then not so simple!

Yes, another one

I had thought that I would never buy another one of these again...that was until I found this one at Ludlow Racecourse Antiques Fair in August. I bought it because it is different to the others I have - and I like different! It has taken me this long to beautify it because, as you can see, it was covered in filthy, inky paper which I had to remove with tweezers from every tiny compartment- which of course meant transferring the ink onto me! I finished painting it on Friday and spent Saturday filling it.

I've still got a few more treasures to find to fill it a little more. I have only decided this year to paint them and I really do think that they look so much better as the white shows the contents better. The girls beds arrived on Thursday and they look lovely - so all my 12 months of fretting was a waste of time....well maybe not wasted because I did put a lot of thought into them and I got it right! They fitted with room to spare so the skirting board stayed on. Picture coming soon.

Thank you for all your wonderful Christmas book/magazine recommendations and lovely comments. I get such a thrill reading them. I love this blog thing! I'm wishing madly that this unseasonally mild weather will go so that I can light my fire. I'm desperate.. and I had already had it lit this time last year despite our visitors having to strip off and have the door open!

Anyway, I'm rambling now so I had better go and sort Alice out..she's been off school with a bad cold (it's this bloomin' warm weather!) and her nose is sore, Anth has gone for a lie down (man flu!)...and hark...I hear Tom sneezing now!

Help!

Christmas is coming!

Time seems to be racing by this year and my favourite time of the year is upon us. I quite enjoy spring, tolerate summer (just) but count the days until the weeks before Christmas. Yes, this is time of year I love best. I look forward all year to preparing for Christmas. I particularly love, and I mean really love, Christmas magazines. I keep my birthday money (which conveniently falls at the end of November!) to buy almost every December edition of the home/woman's interest section! Worse is that I mark off on the calender when they are published...Country Living, obviously is the one that has me hyperventilating most but the Christmas edition of the Radio Times (TV listings magazine) is one of my annual highlights. Have I mentioned before that I am turning into a bit of a TV addict? Mmm.. it's not something that I really like about myself but I blame Sky+ and my cozy corner on the sofa and  our real fire..who would want to go out and leave that?  Anyway, back to the Radio Times..I sit with a cup of tea and a pen and go through the Christmas and New Year programmes ticking the ones I want to watch. I feel a bit embarrassed confessing this, even more when I tell you that I have been known to argue with the shop assistants (very un-me!) when they tell me that they haven't got the Christmas edition and I then show them the advertisement that says that it should be 'out now!' This causes great hilarity with my family! The funny thing is I usually don't end up watching what I have previously ticked...but it is my little ritual. I love to see what the front covers look like too. I do cut out my favourite pictures for my Christmas inspiration books so the magazines are not 'wasted' and I then gaze longingly at them all year..waiting! Christmas music too, but I will save that for another day!

You can imagine my delight when I came across the above book last week. I was hoping that there would be an inspiring Christmas book this year and bought this from Amazon for the front cover alone! It arrived yesterday and it is beautiful. I have seen some of the pictures before (the publishers obviously use the same picture library) but it still is a lovely book.

This advent calender is one of my favourite things to make - the colours are wonderful. The ISBN is 1-84597-255-4 if you are interested and it is by Antonia Swinson.

If you know of any other Christmas books I would like, or magazines to feed my addiction, let me know - I would love some more inspiration!

Hoppy Spadge

What do Nubby Tope, Prettywigs Pattikin, Tippetty Nippet, Dr Bunfuz and (my favourite) Hoppy Spadge all have in common?   Why.. they are all characters from Woodland Snap, of course!

Here is my collection of vintage card games - and I love them! Unfortunately, it is only me who loves them because everyone else is reduced to hysterical laughter when they look at the pictures or read their names. So any chance of a pleasant game of cards is completely out of the question.. and yes, I do mean you too, Justine...remember Mr Shrew??!

They are lovely - the pictures (especially the Little Grey Rabbit) - the crazy names of Woodland Snap - and slightly less lovely are the quite alarming pictures of the Woodland Happy Families! Particularly the afore-mentioned Mr Shrew.

Anyway, there has been no time for games this past week - I have been so busy I should be renamed Hoppy Spadge! First I have had to work all week (I usually only work Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday) so haven't been able to organise the house after all the work that has been done. You can hardly see the floor - and that's not exaggerating! We had to drive up to Wales (Newport) on Saturday to get Lucy's passport (she is going on an exchange in Germany next week!). That took the whole day...and then on Sunday, the first and only day I had at home, I woke with a migraine! I still managed to get some things done but the girls' beds arrive on Thursday and we need to be able to get in the room..

I have a 'to-paint' list as long as my arm..so I'm counting the hours until I can be alone in the house, switch on Radio 2, and start to 'home-make'!