Earth Hour Part Two

Well it is now 9.30pm and earth hour has finished for us here in the UK. I took a few photos.
This very dark one is the solar lights in the back garden. If you look closely enough you can almost see the shape of a lightbulb.

This is my daughter who was excited to be turning off all the lights, but insisted that she get to use the laptop - it was on battery power at least!

Earth Hour

Well it is Earth Hour tonight. It is only 7.30pm but we have already turned our lights off and wont be turning them back on until 9.30pm. I plan to take a photo outside to see if anyone has turned their lights off too. If you are you getting involved do spread the word and let me know. There is of course the usual debate as to whether this is just a "soft facist" approach or if WWF really do want to create more awareness as to caring for the planet. Even if people don't do it or want to get involved they are at least aware of of what WWF are trying to do. If I get any good photos over the next few hours I will post them up. Have a good evening.

study

Study is the word for the week. With the two youngest kids receiving their exam dates this week, GCSE and AS levels and Alice spending every waking moment finishing off her Graphics coursework. She hasn't even begin to finish off her Health and Social Course work yet. And on top of that I have my coursework from my ILM diploma that is ongoing. What busy brain boxes we have! LOL

Missing Sarah terribly. Just had a nice little chat to her, it is good to hear her voice. Every now and then I really need to hear her voice, it is not enough to converse by email or facebook or skype. All of these are great for a quick chat whilst we are both in the middle of something, but it is nice to sit and chat about your day sometimes. She is pretty busy with study and work but thankfully has sorted out the contract for her new living arrangements for July 09 when she has to leave halls.

Andy is losing so much weight we will have to buy him some more jeans. He has plenty of tops because they are easy to buy, but for jeans and trousers he still needs to go to the big man shop. He is down to 25stone now, nearly 10stone lost since September which is absolutely brilliant. He was really chuffed that he got to the 25stone mark for his 40th birthday last Saturday.

Andy and his twin on their 40th birthday last Saturday.

Below is me with my neice Abbie. She has just had her adenoids taken out and grommets put in her ear. She can hear really well now and says we are all too noisy which is quite funny. She has also lost one of her front teeth (she is 6yrs old) so poor love has been through the ringer this week.

My youngest daughter who is 15 and just getting into GCSE season wrote a poem. the following are her words - I wrote a poem today. It's called Reality's attacking. It started out as a poem. Decided it could be a song or a poem.. I suppose its about me. As in cos im so busy. GCSE's bla bla bla. It starting to sink in that I don't have long left and I need to do so much.. But yea anyway.. It's not great but there you are.

When everything starts
All at once.
It all comes apart,
Ready to jump.

Something’s attacking
From every side.
Everything’s breaking
Ready to collide.

This magnificent life,
Which you could own.
But catching sleep,
Life, you postpone.

Everything which
You need to know,
Out of your reach.
Life’s hollow.

Something attacking
And you’re begging
Just for some time
Reality attacking
Reality attacking

I think it is great. She is going to do Media and English Lit A Levels starting in September. I think she will enjoy them and grow even more in her great ability to write songs/poetry.

Nicole Young's interview

Nicole Young is one of the excellent designers from the Digital Scrapbooking Place (DSP). She was lucky enough to be interviewed by the The Daily Scrapper. Here is the link for the interview. It is well worth a read - very inspiring.
http://www.thedailyscrapper.com/2009/issue04/Interview-nicoleyoung1.html

I have entered the Lucky Draw. All I had to do was choose one of my favourite kits that Nicole has designed. A difficult choice, but all her kits are brilliant so you can't go wrong choosing any of them. I chose the Calling Cupid page kit - ideal for valentines or to make a great layout of a loved one - which, let's face it, is why we make layouts, digital or paper.

http://store.digitalscrapbookplace.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_18&products_id=9805

Enjoy.

busy weekend

Phew what a busy weekend. We went 1hrs drive away to help my sister in law and my nieces and nephew move their furniture from storage into their nice new house. It was a lovely house, three stories high, five bedrooms, en suite with one of the bedrooms, bathroom on the top floor and downstairs loo. Room for all 5 of the kids to have their own space which is a huge advantage to where they lived a few months ago. It has been a rough journey for them these past few weeks so it was great to be able to help them settle in. Luckily the storage place was just around the corner so we drove backwards and forwards with about eight car loads before stopping for a MacDonalds due to intense hunger! Then the vans arrived to move the heavy furniture like washing machine, wardrobes and beds. It took all afternoon and I think everyone was shattered at the end of the day.

We drove home, had a bath and a little breather before heading off for a 40th birthday party. Unfortnately the instructions to the venue were not brilliant and it took us an hour to find the right place, after going up the same road three times, gate crashing a 50th birthday party and then when we did find the right venue we still couldn't find the right room as there were three parties going on at the same time, we nearly gatecrashed a 70th birthday party that time! When we got there though it was great fun though. There was lovely food, a bar and a karaoke. The party was for Andy's old school friend, Andy is 40 himself in two weeks. So they shared jokes about it all being downhill from now and mid life crises. We had a great evening and left at 11pm.

On Sunday I went off to the allotment to sort out my compost heap whilst Andy went off to the gym. No he was not exercising, he just spent the whole time in the jacuzzi, sauna and steam rooms! When he got back we took some stuff to the tip and then came home and collapsed. I paid the kids a tenner to wash and hoover the car. They had just finished doing a fantastic job when we had a mini blizzard! Well at least the car is still clean, if not dry.

Millie has had an operation to stop her having babies so she is wearing a cone at the moment to stop her getting at her stitches. She is so active though I think the wound has opened a little. It is almost impossible to stop her leaping about in excitement. Unfortunately she can't scratch her ears so she sits beside us and pleads for us to give her a scratch. The look of pure bliss on her face is so funny.

I had my usual Sunday Scrappers chat this evening. The change in daylight saving time in the US caused a bit of confusion for us all. This is an international chat but the chat is based on the US time of 3pm. As the UK had not changed this meant it was 7pm and not the usual 8pm. It is crazy how the clocks change on different dates all over the world. This year it changed in the US today, it will change in the UK on 29th March and finally Australia will change on 5th April. This makes it very confusing for all concerned!

Jill gave us our challenge for this week. Luckily it is a replay of the old challenges as we have so many new people joining in on this Sunday chat. It is a good idea for them to try these out as well. My favourite one is the wordle one. Here is a wordle layout I did last summer for Sarah when she was due to go off to University.

1) Wordles http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com...ad.php/?t=32980

2) SketchDo a LO using a sketch by Sarah http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com...9&ppuser=22839/

3)Text http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com...ad.php/?t=33067

4) Headlines http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com...ad.php/?t=33431

Go ahead try one of these out, or at least have a look at some examples. I love looking at interesting web sites which offer new ideas to be creative.

I am also heavily into swap bot as you know and one of my swaps is to make a fabric postcard. I did a google images search for fabric postcards and came up with some amazing fabric postcards. http://cyberfyberexhibition.blogspot.com/ has some amazing examples. I wish I had been able to go. This is one of the winners, isn't it amazing.