May your day....

That is all :)

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.......

Random bits and bobs

1. I'm still unwell but now I know what it is - pleurisy :) Lovely! Antibiotics should shift it although the pain might still be there for a good few weeks yet (ouch!)

2. It's my 6th year anniversary of being on Etsy! Whoot!

3. Despite being ill I managed to do some work yesterday - sorting through my stock boxes and Flickr photographs to check if things were still available for sale. I have things on 23 pages and there are more than one thing to list per page so expect some shop updates soon! One thing dated back until 2010 - ahem. Who says I make things and photograph them and then forget to list them.....

4. I'm getting well under way reading the books I wasn't allowed to read last year. Basically we have so many books, that in 2012 I was only allowed to read books I hadn't read before. That meant I couldn't have my annual read of the Harry Potter books or His Dark Materials. Since the start of the year though I have re-read His Dark Materials and I am 30 pages into another firm favourite, Nineteen Eighty-Four (read whilst waiting at the doctors this morning!)

5. I did have another thing to add to the bottom of this post but I stopped writing this post halfway through when I realised it was time to go and cook frittata for tea and I've completely forgotten what it was. Imagine it was good though eh?

Phoar!

My little heart went all fluttery when I saw a post on Facebook about Stuart Maconie coming to the Saltaire Festival in September :) I LOVE his voice (so Northern and nice) and Alex will be wetting herself at this post - she doesn't get my fascination! Oh and I've said that Matt can come too. Off to buy tickets now.......

Do you like unlikely people? I have several more but I will talk about them another day!

Helping others

Good Morning! What a gorgeous day it is here today :) I'm not online much at the moment as I'm helping a friend to move house in not very pleasant circumstances so I am needed offline. To be honest though my blogging mojo has gone out of the window so I wouldn't be saying much anyway! Hopefully I will be back to normal (hah) next week :)

Pretty, bright envelopes - every blog post needs a picture :)

Have a good weekend and see you next week!

Plants vs Zombies

Have you heard of this game? My sister's boyfriend bought it for her for Christmas and she then introduced our dad to it. We were over at Mum and Dads at the weekend and he showed it to us - it's fab!

This is a screenshot of the game - the plants are valiantly defending the house against a zombie attack. You plant the plants and create a barrier - the plants shoot things at the zombies too and kill them. Anyway, the whole reason for this post is a photograph I took this morning which we thought was very amusing but you need to know of the game to find it funny hence the rambling bit first!

Zombie duck

Plant vs Zombie duck

I thought it was amusing anyway :)

Random bits and bobs

1. My blogging mojo seems to have disappeared at the moment and I'm not sure where it went! I don't really have anything relevant to share and because I have closed my shops for Christmas I can't bombard you with pretty pictures of things that you can buy from me :)

2. Pretty pictures - I have resisted the lure of Pinterest throughout the whole of this year and fingers crossed I can resist next year as I know it will suck up so much of my time! Here are some pretty pictures I have found elsewhere though.

From here

Isn't this cool? Maybe as a funky tattoo? :)

From here

This is just too pretty (even though I don't like snow!) Maybe now that we have a 4x4 rather than a crappy automatic I will like it a little more!

3. We are getting there with being organised for Christmas and we just have a few presents to wrap up. I haven't, however, written any cards yet. Better crack on with that really!

4. My house, however, is not ready for Christmas. It was beautifully tidy on Friday and then we had a party once school had broken up at 2pm. Lots of good food, very good company and well behaved kids but there are now toys everywhere!! 12 kids + toys = a big mess! I wouldn't hesitate to do it again though as it was such a fun afternoon/evening!

5. I have come to the conclusion that although I love a reasonably tidy house I am in fact, too lazy to tidy it myself. I need a cleaner/tidyer. Any volunteers?

6. I think that is enough random bits and bobs for one day. Byeeeeee!

Some vital statistics

Well not really vital but interesting to me anyway!

1. Matt and I have moved 574 National Geographic magazines down two flights of stairs as they are going to a new home. More space for books!

This photo represents less than half of them!

2. I have sewn 196 business cards whilst 'tidying up' the craft room. I want to have at least 400 on hand as I am trying to get organised for Saltaire.

3. I have sewn the last remaining bits of a pair of Next curtains (badly torn) onto some cards to make pretty greetings card sets. The bits have been languishing in my craft room for about 2 years and I made 35 cards.

4. I have uploaded 229 photographs to Flickr since the start of March and only 34 of them are visible to everyone. The one below is one of those visible.

Large Swedish Chef badge that sold at a fair.

5. I have lost 1 stone 1lb in weight (15lbs) since the start of the year. Slow going but I want the weight to stay off :) I still have a fair way to go before I am no longer overweight but I'm content at the moment.

6. I am finally taking the recommended amount of exercise per week for the first time in my life and I must say that walking is fun!

7. It is now 10.31pm on Tuesday evening and I am going to schedule this post for 6.15am Wednesday morning. Bye!

A few highlights of my week

Going to wake Tara up one day this week and finding her inside her pillowcase complete with pillow, blanket x2, a life vest and various teddy bears. She was being a snail!

Chicken Pox got bored during his photoshoot (his old photo's needed updating) and decided to have a lie down :)

When I was ironing the fabric for the baby quilt the girls stood and watched me. Anya then proclaimed 'So that's what an iron is for!' I held my laughter in until then had gone and then laughed my head off! Can you tell I don't iron anything?

Random bits and bobs

From my mind (and camera) which is here, there and everywhere at the moment!

An olive with a little hoola hoop hat on - lunches can be exciting you know! And yes I do realise that I am a sad little individual to even put a hoola hoop hat on the olive, let alone take a photograph of it!

Pink mashed potato for tea. We regularly have orange mash (with carrot) or green mash (with broccoli) but we'd never tried pink mash (beetroot juice) before. The girls liked it so that's good :) The brown bits in the mash are the skins - I never peel potatoes so the skins get mashed in with the insides.

My new toy! I got myself a proper guillotine as my last paper trimmer (a slide style one) broke in spectacular style after only cutting 100 pages. This thing has a lethal blade on it and the girls have been told in no uncertain terms that they are not to touch it. I was worried about cutting myself with it (not as easy to do as you would think) but instead I trimmed my finger with the scissors! Go figure :)

And this was my side of the front room after an enjoyable Sunday playing with my new toy and making recycled notebooks. Actually on Tuesday afternoon it is still looking a bit like this but rest assured as soon as I have typed this and hit publish I will be going to tidy it up and will not be distracted by shiny blogs!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway to win £25 to spend in my Folksy shop - you only have 10 hours left to enter :)

Happy October or Worlds Most Boring Blog Post!

I tend to write my blog posts the night before they go up so I'm typing this whilst feeling sick (and having been sick once - blurgh) I'm hoping by the time you read this in the morning I will be feeling better as I have a huge day of work planned.

What we have here is my google analytics page for all of my sites - look at the second to right column - they are all green which means that visitors to all of my sites are up :) I haven't seen them all green for a long time - 3 would be green and the others would be red! I think that if you click on the image it will open it up as a larger image for you - if you are interested that is! My Folksy stats are up 221% and I know a lot of that is down to participating in September Stars. I'm ready now for the October listing club! If you don't have google analytics set up then you should do - it's really interesting to see where traffic comes from and there is lots of information out there to help you read it and see what all the different bits actually mean!

Sorry if this is a bit of a boring post but as I said at the start I am not feeling well and the thought of editing pictures to add to this post makes me feel even more unwell. I'll edit this post in the morning to let you know how I'm feeling :) If you are interested that it........


Feeling much better now and work day is commencing :)

I'm too tired to post anything exciting today...

...so you get to see the crap I pulled out of my washing machine coin trap tonight after my washing machine wouldn't empty. See I told you it was exciting!

L-R Top to bottom

Big ball of threads
Lion rubber (!)
Piece of red plastic from the outside of a Babybel (cheese)
A piece of wood chipping from the park
A mini ball of fluff
A label from a piece of clothing
A sticker from a pack of Liberty fabric (ahem!)
A blue piece of paper
A nail (again !!)
A 20p piece. Anya was excited about this discovery
A sew on flower
And a grape stalk wrapped up with lots of threads

Finding this little lot has led me to the conclusion that I must check pockets much more rigorously than normal and that I should make an effort to empty the coin trap before the machine packs up and I have to empty ALL the water out of the machine through a teeny tiny little hole!

Oh and I have also discovered that going to the gym makes me so tired that I write boring blog posts. I'm going again on Friday - be warned!

Do you like to read in the bath?

And like me, do you keep dropping your bookmark into said bath?? Does said bookmark (be it an actual bookmark,piece of paper, tissue etc) get destroyed? Well fret no more fellow readers in the bath - I have the answer!!

The answer lies with these bookmarks from Alison at Tweed Delights. I ordered some things from her last year and got one of the bookmarks as a thank you gift and it is fabulous! It has been dropped in the bath on numerous occasions (normally to the sound of expletives that I won't repeat here) and every single time, whether it has been dunked for seconds or minutes, it has dried out perfectly. Every time. The tweed has stayed put, the cardboard hasn't bobbled - even the sticker on the back is seemingly resistant to water* Fellow bath readers, rejoice! I have found the answer to soggy pieces of paper and bookmarks!

*Conclusive tests not undertaken - not recommended to be held under water for long periods of time.

Seriously - go and buy things from Alison - she is nice :)

Owl

Look at this gorgeous owl - he was perching on a roof near to the park this week and wasn't at all phased by lots of people standing looking at him!

There has been some debate whether he is an eagle owl or a long eared owl - I have no idea myself! Matt tried to take a photograph with his phone but it didn't come out - this photograph was taken by Steven who is dad to a little girl who goes to nursery with Tara. So big thanks to Steven and Margaret for the photo. If anyone who reads this blog has any idea which type of owl this is then do let me know :)

Yeah!

I walked for 5 and a half miles this morning and ran for about 1 mile out of that - half a mile all in one go :D Very pleased with myself now!! Regular blogging will resume soon!

Rootin' Tootin'!

That's me there in 2nd place over at the Shorty Awards for #craft!! How exciting is that? If you are on Twitter and would like to vote for me (you do this by nominating me) then do feel free. I promise to say thank you :D

Britain's next top chicken model

Here are the finalists - we weeded out quite a few to get down to the last 6.

The catwalk got a little crowded at one point as you can see!

The twins think they are in with a chance.

Who would you vote for? Individual shots of the models coming soon when we know which agency they will be modelling for :)

Toys having fun!

This is the scene that greeted me when I went to tidy some Barbies away into their basket - Woody looks a little too happy in there!

See what I mean!

I think he likes the fact that the Barbies are nearly all naked :) I did think (briefly) about posing them in different positions but this is a family friendly blog after all! ;)

Pajama time

Well the heavens opened on the way back from school and we got wet through. Luckily I had been shopping today (along with dropping some stuff off at a local gallery which you can read about tomorrow!) and I had bought some new fluffy pajamas.

Here are our legs in our new jama's and the girls both have new slippers too (provided by Nana at the weekend) - unfortunately neither pair fit me so I'll have to make do with my old grey pair!

And here we are :) Matt also put his jama's on but headed upstairs to the study to do some work so I didn't get a photograph of him. Pajama's at 4 o'clock - what would the neighbours say? :D