Wow, another week over already!

Blimey that one went quick!

Apart from a slight wobble on Wednsday, its not been a bad week. Had a couple of days off  (and enoyed some glorious weather) and am ready to sart a new assigment tomorrow.  Shall be on the bus to work from now on, theres a bus from the end of next doors drive that will take me straight to my new work venue  (a Sheffield Hospital) so no parking or parking fees to worry about (its a nightmare parking up there and is very expensive).

Feeling much calmer that I have been for a while, found a wonderful new mantra during the week - Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.         

Found out this morning that friends and family who are caught up in the newest lot of earthquakes in NZ are all ok, and (thank goodness)  no-one seems to have suffered any property damage either. I hope the quakes will settle down for you now. 

As the week ended on a good note, I decided to 'pay it forward' on Friday as I had been inspired by Becksie and Ian over at ayearwithoutsupermarkets .  I really love what they are doing in this post, so I bought a couple of bunches of flowers and took them to one of the local Retirement homes (as per Becksie's point number 15), it made me feel great and the lady who took them from me was nicely surprised. Might have to do some more of these. Thanks Becksie and Ian.

Craftwise, Im doing some bits for Charity, we cant afford to give much, but I have time and some skill I am trying to do my bit that way. So (inspired by another post on Becksie and Ians Blog), Im making a Napkin as part of the Napkin Project. Ive not tried embroidery, so am playing it safe with Cross-stitch (thats a kind of embroidery isnt it?). Here is my work in progress, its on waste canvas which means when its done you can wet the canvas and then pull the threads out so you are just left with the design on the linen (clever huh?)

The other Charity project Im getting things together for is dressagirlaroundtheworld - I have two blog buddies participating in this, the aforementioned Becksie and Ian from ayearwithoutsupermarkets - see their post here 19-dresses and the lovely Jen over at mymakedoandmendyear who are all busy organising Sewing Bees etc to get people involved in making dresses.
Ive decided that make some myself but finding pillowcases is proving a bit harder than I thought it would be! So, as we were out Charity Shopping yesterday (or Op shopping as you Kiwis will call it!) I found some lovely skirts I can quite easily use.....

Gardenwise, we are getting lots of peas and lettuce, and Ive put in a fresh lot of radish in a pot (hopefully the slugs wont get to these).
Thats about all for this little update.

Bye for now.
Jo
:o)

Well Hello Strangers!

This post has been a bit long in coming (soz), but Ive found it a bit of a struggle to get going again. It felt like my weekly posts just seemed to be covering the same old ground, and I felt it was a bit boring.

Ive had a couple of rubbish months really, nothing specific (as in tragic event or suchlike) just generally feeling a bit pi**ed off with the world in general, and didnt want to blather on boring people senseless (goodness knows Ive only got a few readers anyway).Anyhoo, Im back (hopefully), so thought Id bring you up to date with whats happening in my little corner of the world.

Work on the kitchen/house has come to a bit of a standstill. We are awaiting some money from an inheritance which will go towards a new roof and windows. We have decided we want to take the ceiling out of the kitchen and open up the roofspace and are awaiting a quote from OH's bother (the builder) to see if its something we can realistically acheive or not.
Ive done some digging into NZ Immigration and have found that getting a Visa for OH (when we do go) will be a bit more straight forward than first thought (expensive, but straightforward).

Gardenwise, Ive got the veggie garden looking quite good, this was it at the end of May.... the white structure is to stop the carrotfly ruining my carrot crop.

Im getting regular crops of peas and lettuce now, Ive got plenty of carrots comming up and the potato plants are huge. The only disappointment was my radish crop was completely ruined by slugs.

While the Mother in Law was away for a week on her hols, I dug over her front garden (which has needed doing for years, she is no longer able to do it), and planted it up as a surprise for her. This is what it looked like when it was first done......

 This is it now.....

 

Also, this is her pussycat plant which we often find at her back door.....

 Craftwise, things have been a bit quite on this front. I have almost got a quilt top put togther for me, its just awaiting the border, and is made of 240x  'half square triangles'. I quite enjoyed this one as it was quite straight forward........

 

 We missed our annual trip to Mablethorpe with the rest of the family as our car decided to start playing up 25 miles out of Sheffield, so we had to turn back. It hadnt been on a run since November, and wasnt happy. It had passed its MOT the week before, and is OK for my short journey to work and back, but OH's other brother (the mechanic) has condemmed it, it wont get through another MOT without major work, so we will have to find another one before next June - yet another thing to pay out for.

So, its been a couple of months of ups and downs really, but things have got to start going our way soon, meantime we keep ploddin on, and on, and on.....
Hope things have been better for you.


Till next time
Jojo
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