Some songs I like :)

I've been using the bus a fair bit recently and after the last journey I've remembered that I can't read on the bus without feeling very, very sick so I decided that it was time to dig out my MP3 player and listen to music instead. Here are some songs that I'm loving at the moment (with videos of course!)



Love the video to this one - cute sock puppets or what?



Anya quite liked this one :)



Brilliant :) Very much my kind of music if I had to choose only one genre to listen to.



A friend introduced me to Gogol Bordello and I love them!



Boring video but the song is fabulous. There are version of the Stones doing this live but they didn't have the voices at the start which I like.

I have eclectic musical tastes! Oh and if you like these then I have more music I can inflict on you all!

Charitable giving and possibly being a hypocrite while shopping and generally in life*

Warning - this is going to be a wordy, rambling mess of a blog post - I was pondering it the other day in the car! It also has nothing to do with Swirlyarts but 'person behind the blog' and all that :)

As you may well know I do like a good charity shop - both to buy from and also to donate to. I had a huge amount of fabric to donate the other day and it goes into the fabric bins at my local supermarket. There is normally only one bin but this time there were two - one for a cancer charity and one for The Salvation Army. Given the choice (as I was) I chose the the cancer charity as I really don't like The Salvation Army stance on LGBT issues (the article is on Huffpost Gay Voices so there may be some bias there but you can see more on Snopes here) However I have been into their charity shops, have bought from them in the past and even donated fabric to their bins so maybe a little bit of hypocrisy there? There is a very small charity shop in Burnley that raises money for the Catholic Church. I go there although I'm an atheist and don't like certain aspects of the Catholic Church or organised religion full stop. More hypocrisy.

I'm keen on sustainable fashion where the workers are paid a decent amount of money but I also shop at Primark. I like the idea of Fair Trade food but often buy non Fair Trade food even though we can probably afford most things Fair Trade. I don't like Nestle's stance on lots of things but I do like Aero bars and Quality Street. I have friends who boycott Nestle but I don't even though some of the things they do are horrible. More hypocrisy.

Maybe I am over thinking things (me?? Never!) Anyone else a hypocrite?? Thoughts and ramblings of your own are welcome!

*and the longest blog title award goes to.......

Charity shop finds - part several thousand!

It seems ages since I have written one of these 'ta-da' bargains posts (although I can't actually be bothered to look back through my archives and check) so here is the first one of 2014 :) It's a goodie!

A large print* of The Chinese Girl by Tretchikoff, several books and some clothes :) These were gathered by visiting four charity shops although I didn't purchase anything in shop number 4 and I resisted lots of pretty cups, some pyrex and a funky ottaman.

The ASBO fairy tales appealed to me as I love fairy tales since a lecture about them when I was training to be a teacher - did you know that Red Riding Hood was once a morality tale about how young girls shouldn't wander round the woods by themselves as they might get raped by men (the wolf!) The next two books are for Anya to read as she seems to be enjoying more fantasy books at the moment (and I will probably read them too) The green one is Nights at The Circus by Angela Carter and I last read it for my A-levels many years ago! I wasn't keen on it then but I'm interested to see if I like it again. The second to last one will be an interesting read and the Caitlin Moran one is for a friend as I already own a copy and I said I would buy copies for my friends when I see them cheap!

Next the clothes :) The orange and black thing is a cross between what I would call a 'posh sweatshirt' and a top. Those thick kind of sweatshirts that posh women wear with chinos and loafers. I like the colour and the thickness of it and it has a big chunky zip at the back :) The blue stripey thing is a jersey dress and stripes are always welcome in my wardrobe, especially in blue and white. Then there are two school skirts for Anya (she needs to stop growing!) and the bottom dress is a summer dress for Anya - it has pretty cute out flowers - a broderie anglaise type thing but in large form!

Any bargains recently?

 
*I'm not sure what kind of print it is - it's certainly not on paper and seems a bit more like it's printed on wood. I'm doing some research into it :) I did read this very interesting article last year about the girl who was the model for this work.

Snapshots as I'm tidying :)

In progress shots........

Do note that I haven't taken any photographs of the floor or general rubbish that was in the doorway as that has still yet to be sorted but any progress is good right??

Erm, yeah.....

.....so I'm going to be tidying the craft room for a few days I think :)

This is the doorway - piled full of random stuff that needs to be put away. The red thing is a lid for a box that is there to stop the dog getting in to eat threads off the floor which he enjoys doing!

The view from the doorway - the black bags are fabric that needs to go to the fabric boxes in the recycling centre but they just haven't made it yet.

And this is why no ironing gets done in my house! It has been cleared now but only for fabric ironing :)

Anyone else having a new year sort out?

Ahhhh Nostalgia!

I was reading this post by Laura the other day about earworms and children's TV theme tunes and decided to go and look myself on You Tube for TV I remember from my childhood. Only do this is you have about an hour to spare though!



Fraggle Rock!!!! OMG I loved Fraggle Rock and loved the Doozers. I also might have got a bit scared when the Gorgs appeared (the big people!) And looking up fun facts just now I also remembered Marjory the Trash Heap!



Trap Door!!!! Bloody brilliant :)



Jamie and the Magic Torch - sigh. I tried so many times to get a helter skelter slide to open up under my bedroom floor but it never happened!



I didn't remember watching this one until I watched the clip then the theme tune came flooding back.



Count Duckula!!



The Shoe People - you can watch full episodes on You Tube too. I introduced the girls to it a few years ago! That and Dungeons and Dragons!



Terrahawks!! I *ahem* have a Terrahawks annual somewhere that I bought a couple of years ago!

There's also Superted, Thundercats, Dogtanian - I could go on and on! Do look at Laura's post too as she has some on there that I haven't shared such as The Flumps.

Do you have any favourite kids TV shows? If so do share!

52 books, 52 weeks - the last ones

Well I managed it - yippee!! 52 books in 52 weeks was the target and I actually managed  56 books so not too bad! Here are the last 6 books I managed to squeeze in :)

We have the complete Sherlock Holmes book but this is the only story I have read so far - I loved the connections between the original book and the BBC version. I'm going to wait until this series finishes on Sunday before reading any more.

This is a Kickstarter book that Matt bought (you can follow the author on Twitter here) and I'm not going to tell you anything about it other than to say it is brilliantly funny and you must go and buy it! Now. I had to stop reading it in bed as Matt was trying to get to sleep and I kept laughing out loud.

I didn't think I had read this book before but it turns out I had. It's not a particularly pleasant read but I would like to go and see it performed at some stage.

My love of Philip Pullmans writing is well documented (and surely it's time for my annual read of His Dark Materials Trilogy) and this young adults book is good. Not brilliant but good and I'm going to keep it for Anya to read one day.

Another Kickstarter book (this one was bought as it helped LGBT causes) and it was nice to see a book where lesbians and bisexuals in particular are treated as normal people and not as the usual stereotypes. The ending is set up nicely for a second book and I would buy more books with these characters.

Dystopian drama. Tick. Something ominous lurking. Tick. Hideous things happening. Tick. Nasty bully type person vs trying to do the right thing person. Tick. Needless to say I've already ordered the next four books in this series!

So I met and exceed my goal which I'm quite happy with :) I'm going to carry on this challenge but I'm not sure I'll be posting here* as a) I'm crap at writing reviews of books without major spoilers and b) you can see the books as I read them on my Pinterest Boards. This is the new board for this year although there aren't any books on there yet (I've started two but have yet to finish them!)

*I may do a couple of roundups every now

Well hello 2014!

*knocks dust off duffel coat and flexes fingers ready for typing*

Well how are you all? Having a good start to 2014 I hope? Christmas was good here with the requisite kitsch thrown on the tree and presents gratefully received. We stayed at home for Christmas this year and it was nice not to have to rush about as much (until after Christmas anyway!)

Anya bought me this as a Christmas present - what do you think she is trying to say?? It's not up yet but it will be soon :)

And the kitsch, glitter covered Mary and Jesus were given to me by my in-laws. I bought them for Pat and Owen for Christmas a few years ago (Paperchase) and immediately regretted giving them away/not buying some of my own. P and O aren't they kind of people to display these (i.e. they aren't tacky like me!) so I thought I might get them back at some stage. 2013 was that year and they are not leaving my house again! Jesus is currently wearing a woolly hat courtesy of some Innocent Smoothies bottles (as are the ceramic dogs from my last post)

I'm not making any resolutions this year as I always fail but the one thing I am doing (and have been for a while now) is trying to 'be me'. It sounds a bit contrived I know but it can be tiring trying to be different things for different people and acting the way people expect you to. Now I'm not going to start swearing like a mad women in inappropriate places (well at least not in front of children!) but I'm quite liking being me. Who that me is, is still under development but I sure 2014 is the year of me :D

Hope you are all having a good start to the new year and I'll be back soon with my last 52 books/52 weeks post - spoilers, I managed it!