My head hurts and I feel like I am at odds with half of the world at the moment. There's a few people that I just don't seem to be able to see eye to eye with on anything, and it really upsets me.

Oh well.  Back to work again today.  It's been a majorily hectic week off having done Jenny's bedroom then had the shopping, washing, ironing and housework to catch up on.  I'm looking forward to my next week off from next Wednesday, I shall endeavour to take things at a slower pace and hopefully catch up on a bit of rest.

Now the weather is turning a bit colder, I'm starting to crave baths again.

Counting down the days ...

Tired and fed up.

Jenny's Room

Feeling really pleased with myself having finished Jenny's room whilst she's been away.  I've not been feeling too good over the past few days, but had to get it finished  while she was in Llandudno, so just had to grit my teeth and get on with it.

Anyway - apart from a disasterous bit of stencilling, which I've now painted over - it all went rather well.   She has her new bed and her new bookcases.  Just a new wardrobe to get next - she needs more clothes space so we were intending on getting a new wardrobe anyway, but I kind of demolished the old one a little bit when I was trying to move it to paint the walls.  It's still standing, but only just!

She needs to move all of her things back in out of the conservatory - I'd have done it for her, but she will know what things she wants where better than me so thought that was a job best done for her.  It'll be nice to have the conservatory back once again though. 

She also has a few pictures to put up on the walls to make it look a bit more homely too - and we're going to get some decals to brighten up the wall next to her bed.  But it's all done bar the shouting now.

So all done, and also a nice presentable guest room for when Jenny is at university. 

Oh, and she's really pleased with it too, so that makes it all worthwhile!

Here's a couple of piccies.

A nice new bed - much more user friendly than the high bed she used to have

Looking forward to seeing all her books on the shelves!

Renovation No. 2

Here's my lovely Rooster picture that I did with Frame No. 2.  I'm quite pleased with how these are turning out.   I bought the designs from a chap called Steve Haskamp who I found here.  He has some beautiful designs - please check out his page.

One more still to go. I have a couple of ideas but they're a bit more long and involved and I'm not sure yet if they will work or not.  Watch this space though.

From 0 - 60 in 10 seconds

That's  how life feels at the moment!

After a leisurely, and much needed, 4 months of taking things easy and pottering about - life has suddenly gone into warp speed.

I started back at work last week in my new department - Rheumatology.  It's great.  Sad as it may seem, one of the highlights is having my own printer.  Which works.  And is fast.  The team are lovely - I think I've typed for most of them now and everything seems straightforward.  My working hours have changed.  I work  Wednesday afternoon through to the following Wednesday lunch time (not Sat or Sun though). Then I get a week off.  Then I do the same again.  Not bad eh?  So I''m just into my first week off and I have soooo much to do.

House-wise things are very manic. Simon is trying to get as much tiling done in the bathroom as he can at a weekend.  I have a bath in my livingroom, and a toilet and sink in my hall at the moment.  He's hoping it won't take more than another 3 weekends to be completely finished. I  know I keep going on about it, but I am soooooo longing for a bath!!!!

Jenny is in Llandudno with her mates for the week so I seized the opportunity to redecorate her bedroom.  I've managed to do most of it in 2 days - tomorrow morning I'lll put the second and last coat of paint on the walls, and then get to with the stencil design. All being well it should be finished for her coming coming on Sunday.

As well as a bath in the living room, we have 3 flat pack bookcases.  They're for Jenny's room.  Like me, she accumulates books and is running out of space.  So we've invested in some IKEA modular cube thingywotsits which should be able to house all of her books and some of her nik naks with a bit of luck.

Great news on the Becky front.  She did better than she expected in her GCSE's.  She had a bit of a disaster when she sat them back in May as her friend Naomi had just passed away, and also Becky was really ill the week leading up to the exams.  She did great though getting 6 A's and 5 B's to add to the A* she got in Maths last year.  She's really pleased and we're very proud of her too.

Pepper our cat has been poorly.  We found a large lump on the back of her neck a few weeks ago, so Steve our friendly family vet took her in to have it removed a week last Monday.  While she was in he checked her teeth and two of them were rotten so they had to come out. He's not sure if the lump is just a cyst or something more sinister.  She was so sorry for herself when she came home from her ordeal.  She had to wear one of those plastic cone things for a few days until her stitches started to heal up, and we had to keep her in the house for a week, which drove her insane.  She sat by the cat flap and cried and my heart did little flip flops because I felt so sorry for her.  She's a long haired cat so looks very strange with a huge wad of it shaved off  and a long seam half way down her back where the stitches are.  For a little cat it's a major incision really.  Anyway, a week and a half later she has been out and about is back to her normal spirits.  Steve's been back a couple of times to check on her, and had to give her some more antibiotics because she has got a little pocket of air inside the stitches, so we need to keep an eye on that, but hopefully she will be ok now.  And her fur has started to grow back a little so hopefully she will look better soon too.

As well as all of the above, this week I've managed to make my first ever lot of jam. Hilary and Stuart next door presented us with 20lb of damsons last week, most of which are soaking in gin at the moment - but the excess I've made into jam.  I found a cheap site on the internet for jam jars, but when they came I'd ordered the wrong size.  They're nice and diddy though and I've used them anyway and took them to work for some for the girls.   I had to have a trip into Chesterfield in search of some normal size jars, but could only find double the size, so have ended up with 2 large pots of jam too.  Anyway, it all worked and is edible so I'm really chuffed and will definitely have a go at making some more soon.

Innocent Smoothies are running a things called the Big Knit.  They're asking folks to knit little beanie hats to go onto their smoothy bottles and for each one they will donate 25p to Age UK.  It's years since I attempted to knit anything more than a scarf a couple of winters back, but I thought I would have a go. Jenny put me onto it really, she is BIG into knitting and has inspired me to get involved.  So tonight I couldn't sleep so have sat and rattle off some little hats.   I just need to brush up on my pompom skills now to finish them off.

I'm tired now though. It's been a hell of a busy week, so I'm off to me bed. Goodnight!

Poppies

I've been getting a bit inspired this week to get back into making things. On holiday I found sound gorgeous little butterflies and dragonflies that had been made with dip-it fantasy film.  I did a search on the internet and one of the craft shops I use (Fred Aldous in Manchester) had a beginners kit which I sent for.  

It's brill. 

I've had some failed attempts at making butterflies, I think I need a bit more practice, but found out that I can make some fairly effective poppies-type flowers, which aren't quite so fiddly to do.

In situ

I found the perfect place to hang my new picture.   On with frame No. 2 now.

Here's a little something I made earlier

Back in June I dug out some old frames that I'd bought in a sale, meaning to do something with them.  Today I got around to transforming one of them.

Here's the before picture:

And here's what I did with it.

So one old frame picked up in a sale, one tester size pot of paint, two pieces of coloured card, some cardboard motifs, glue and a wee bit of patience!

One down ... two to go.

The Holiday

I was going to attemp to do a retrospective, day by day account of the holiday, but you know what, I just can't be bothered.  And while it was certainly interesting to us, I can't think of anyone else who would wade though 17 days of posts.  So - I've copied this account from a message I sent to a friend - it all just sort of tumbled out at the time, which means it's probably captured all the important bits.

Well, it was an amazing holiday! I hardly know where to start. The first week was really manic, visiting DC, Philly and New York. Washington was really nice - very open and all the buildings spread out with huge roads in between - although our hotel was out in a more residential area about 2 miles out of the city centre. Amazing to see the white house and capitol hill - and hard to take in that Obama lives behind those white pillars!! Saw Michelle's vegetable garden and bee hives that she keeps. Cheapest hotel we stayed in but best in terms of what you got for your money. Free buffet breakfast, free wi-fi (all the posher hotels made you pay extra for them - the only difference between the posh hotels is things are all in marble and leather rather than plastic and wood - and the service wasn't even better!). Anyway I digress!

New York was pretty much how I thought it would be. Ramshackled in some places and nicer in others. Did the Top of the Rock instead of Empire State and it was a fabulous view. It was raining when we got to the top and thought our visit would be wasted, but then this amazing rainbow appeared completely circling the building. My photos don't do it justice. Statue of Liberty was amazing and spent most part of the day there and around the area.  Highlight, of course, had to be meeting up with the NY Wasters & Associates on the Friday night.  Lowlight had to be the severe diarrhoea in the early hours of Friday morning. Thank goodness for Loperamide!

Philly I can take or leave, wasn't too impressed with it but glad I went nonetheless. Saw the Rocky statue and walked up the famous steps from the Rocky film.

Cape Cod was lovely and relaxing, we were right on an inlet which looked like a river which was at the bottom of the garden - lots of wildlife to see - baby rabbits in the garden and a huge marsh hawk that would fly by most mornings to say hello! Went to Marthas Vineyard - it was nice but the Isle of Wight is more picturesque and I think someone should mention that to the President when he's choosing his holiday destination for next year.  Also had a day whale watching off the Falmouth Coast and saw loads of whales - we were really lucky. Got some nice pics of their tales disappearing into the water and a few of them coming up for air and feeding.

Had a day in Boston and followed some of the Freedom Trail and saw Quincy's Market which was great. Visited the Cheers shop and got some souveniers for folks back home.

Then we went back to NY for the last 2 days which was more tiring and just did a walk around  Greenwich Village and saw the Flat Iron Building, and the biggest bookshop in the world (Barnes and Noble) - so that pleased Jenny.

All the train journeys went really smoothly, I'm really impressed with how organised they are with their transport systems - and how nice everyone was. America itself didnt seem as strange as I thought it would, I think because we're exposed to it so much on the telly over here, it was almost like visiting somewhere I already knew. I was surprised that the cars weren't all 59 Chevvy's mind you (too many old movies!) - loads of Japanese cars instead. Didn't see too many obese people either, but maybe they were all inside their homes!!!

Thorough enjoyed it though, but suffered terrible jet lag the past few days trying to readjust my sleeping patterns back again.

Well ...

today has been a constructive day. Had a good chat with my boss and I will definitely be leaving Gastro.  I'll be sad to leave the team -they've all been really great to work with and very supportive over the last year or so. I am however glad that I can stay at the hospital but move on to something new.  So I'm relieved and happy that there is a way forward.  I popped in to let the Gastro girls know my news and I'll make sure to stay in touch and pop back to see them often.

It was also Becky's Prom night tonight - so once I got home it was a quick turn around to get her up to Joanne's house where they were all being picked up by limo.  Becky had spent some of her hard earned cash on a bottle of champagne and a bottle of Bucks Fizz which we opened for them before the limo arrived. I'm not convinced any of them actually liked the taste of the champers, but it made for a nice photo and it was a nice gesture on Becky's behalf.

Times like this make me very proud of my girls. It does make me sit and reflect on how lucky we are to have two such lovely daughters.  I'm very proud of them both.  It does make me feel old though. It's incredible to think that Becky has finished school now and goes into 6th Form next year.  In 2 short years she will be zipping off to University and our little house will empty save for Simon and myself and how strange will that feel?

Here she is with her friends in all  their Prom glory.