Tree of Life

This is a Tree of Life ATC that I made for swap bot. I was really pleased with it, so much so I wanted to keep it.

These are all the goodies I have received in three days last week. What a great post week that was. It was very exciting to get so many intersting items. Thanks everyone from swap bot.

Wednesday

It is a boring Wednesday - work, work and more work! We are extremely busy at work at the moment. Our workload has increased and people are taking time off to use up their holiday before March 31st. So everyone is getting pretty stressed out. I just sit and plod along, you cant go much faster than you already are I figure and there is more to life than getting through a pile of work just find another pile has replaced it!

I took Millie and Barney for a walk this morning over the little patch of green that we have a few yards up the road. If I let Millie off the lead she gets to have a good run around, but she nearly always finds a bone and wont come back in! This morning she found a bone. Barney was chasing her for it so she was running off. So I took him home, leaving her in the middle of the green. She wasn't going anywhere because she was too busy chewing her bone. I got in the car, drove the 50 yards to where she was lying down and pretending we were going for a walk. Luckily she now associates getting in the car to going for a nice long walk and she quite happily discarded her bone and jumped into the car. I very calmy took her straight home and put her into her crate.
GRRR. She is going to be sterilised next Monday so hopefully she might calm down a bit, you never know.

Andy, Sev and I went to a Navy presentation and he has completed the application form. So now he has started his first steps towards joining up. I am pretty nervous about him joining up as there is a distinct possibility he might end up in Afghanistan at some point, but he is very keen to go ahead with it and has really researched life in the Navy. I suppose it is better than quiting college and doing some menial job that he does not enjoy.

For one of the swap bot challenges we get to take photos of our work place. Here are a few for you to muse over. Just a boring office with a limited view. :)

The limited view out of window. We look out onto a small courtyard that has walls on all four sides. Then one of the whole office. One of my desk. And the last one shows part of our Christmas decorations. One of the girls at work collects soft toys to decorate the office for Christmas, Easter and Halloween. This corner was for the penguins. We put up snow and wrapping paper on the wall so it looked less bare, but I didn't get a photo of the completed look as we were so busy at work - again! On the window ledge there was a huge collection of reindeer. People from all over the building come to admire our decorations.

Here is a layout that I have just completed of Andy. It is for the blended challenge for the Sunday scrappers chat on Digital Scrapbooking Place. I just love this picture of Andy.

getting fit

Went for my usual afternoon walk round the woods with Millie. It is great to keep fit this way. I have a nice chat with some other dog owners as our dogs play and run around. There are loads of benches with plaques to commemorate those that have passed on but loved the woods when they were alive. I realised as we chatted that I have been walking these woods for 20 years. I moved here 20 years ago this month. It is hard to believe. It is the longest I have ever lived in one place. I have said to Andy that when I die I want my ashes to be strewn around the woods and a bench put up to add to the growing number that are there. I love the woods so much and they are very popular for loads of the local people.

After dinner Sev and I went swimming. He was in fine form and swam 34 lengths. I was pleased with my 25 lengths in 25 minutes. Definetly improving my speed and felt fitter this week than I did last. I am keeping a swim log on the zoggs website - www.zoggs.com/

on holiday

I have had the past three days off work to use up all my annual leave before it runs out on March 31st. Have had a brilliant time, getting up late and crafting all day. Have done some finance homework for my diploma but it is just sooooo boring and dull I can only stand to do it for a few hours at a time before letting myself off the hook to go and "play" LOL.. The diploma I am doing is work based and thankfully only one subject is finance. The rest will hopefully be a bit more intersting. There is more information here about what the Institute of Leadership and Management have to offer. http://www.i-l-m.com/ So I am back tomorrow to finish off the third and final finance weekly lessons. Then back to work on Friday and then it is the weekend again. YAY

I have also started to get back into digital scrapbooking. I haven't done much for ages except turn up for the Sunday chat with all my friends. http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=290 I wouldn't miss this weekly chat for anything. I love the chat and we always have a laugh. It never ceases to amaze me being able to chat to people from all over the world. We set regular challenges and this week's one is to do a layout with a reflection. Nicole showed us how to make reflections on her blog - http://nicoleyoungdesigns.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-02-08T16%3A59%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=7

I had a go and this is my interpretation of a reflection.

Valentine's Day

I used to hate Valentine's Day, not having had a serious partner for a very long time. Now that I am happily married to my man of 6 years Valentine's Day is finally really lovely. He woke me up with chocs, card and heart shaped confetti. I gave him one of my handmade cards and a photo frame to put the recent professional photo of the two of us in. Then he made me brunch and is taking me out to dinner tonight. I am so very lucky to have such a wonderful caring and loving husband.

Sev is going to have his hair cut today. This is big news. Ever since he was a baby he had always had a number 2 hair cut (very short crew cut). Then when he was about 14years old he started growing it long. It is now down to his shoulders. It looks great when straightend but he rarely does this as he needs his sister to do it for him. So it usually is curly and sticks out a bit. I have grown to love his long hair and think it really suits him. However he is thinking of joining the Navy and seems quite serious about this great opportunity. He has an interview with the Navy next weekend and wants to present a good image so is going to have his hair cut to improve upon that image. Can't decide if I am happy about the prospect of his hair cut or not!!

It's snowing again

It snowed again last night. We had just been swimming when we came outside to go home at about 8.30pm and saw all the lovely white snow falling and settling on the ground. We got home and took the dogs out over the green and had a snowball fight. The dogs loved running around in the snow. I took some photos. This photo above is taken from the dining room window looking out into the back garden. I love it, it looks so magical!

This is Andy and me snuggling up together in the snow

Millie looks lost here!
Here is Barney keeping warm in his old man's jacket to keep him dry. Bless him at 14years of age he still loves to play in the snow with us all.
Millie looking sweet, chasing the snowballs that we were all throwing around.





Here are the kids, Sev and Alice enoying the short lived snow. The snow was almost all gone by the nex day.