I Think You’re Bonkers

The Ethics Trading Competition ends tomorrow at midnight.

Enter Here. 

You know you should…..

You could win 10 Homeopathy remedies - either a basic set or tailored to your needs. You could win soap nuts to try out - you know you need to try them right? You could win a beautiful wooden teddy bear jigsaw for your kids. (links to the companies generously donating these prizes are on the Comps page.)

Best of all you’ll be helping the British Lung Foundation.

My Mum has Emphysema. It sucks big time.

I’m sure we all have our favourite "causes" and I’m sure you all do what you can. Well, as a small business owner, this is something I can do, so I am blatantly using my blogs, website and any other avenue I can to try to help my parents in their fund raising efforts. Usually this will be simply a few bits for sale. But this time we’re going just a bit further. My Dad is doing a sponsored abseil and I’m running a competition to help raise money to add into that pot.

I hate seeing my family being ill and doing something helps us all feel just a little bit better about it. Hopefully we can make a difference to some lives too. We’re hoping to fund or part fund a Breathe Easy nurse - a bit like Macmillan but trained to deal with chronic lung conditions.

Want to win some Homeopathic remedies? Fancy trying soap nuts? Got kids who like lovely wooden jigsaws? All prizes have been donated by small businesses known to me.

Then enter the Competition here.  Answer a couple of questions, drop me an email - with a donation for the British Lung Foundation (Which I’ll pass on to my Mum and Dad for the South Wales Breathe Easy groups) and your name will go in the virtual hat.

Good Luck and thank you!

Well, my morning started with Dino shrieking up the stairs, "Mummy! The greenhouse is flying away!" It was too. Across the garden, tethered to the shed and threatening to fall apart. So, in driving horizontal hail and snow, he and I detached the cover and shoved it in the shed. It looks ok. I guess I put it up too early huh?

Then back inside for home made cards, some chocs, hugs and breakfast.

Lunch was interrupted by a young couple who’d dented their car and were a bit shaken up. But we were glad to help.

Hope everyone is having a great day! 

Gardening - lots of this happening, plenty of digging going on here.

The weather is lovely and it needs doing. The spud/veg patch by the shed (and now greenhouse) is about 2 thirds dug over. We’re doing a bit most days but the soil is very heavy and my back hurts!

The water butt has hit a problem. The outflow from the bathroom goes into the gutter downpipe - so the butt would be full of bath water. Fine if being used straightaway - but we won’t. Even the eco warriors at CAT say don’t store domestic grey water! So, plan B….

Meanwhile, we’re working on a HUGE painting of a blue whale so we can draw more animals to the same scale (5cm = 1m) and compare the sizes.

Monday is always the day we do shopping, pay bills and get parcels off after the weekend. But today, thanks to my new regime here, we did *work* straight after breakfast.

Dino’s reading is getting more confident - when he can be bothered. It’s lovely to see the look on his face when he does it though. Mimi is trying to work out reading and not getting very far. She just guesses and makes something up without really looking at the words. She enjoys it and it’s fine, but she’s convinced she’s reading! Then she vacated to play with my little ponies, toy animals and who knows what - but she was leaving me and Dino to do his work books. A page of maths and an exploration of what a dictionary is for today. I think I’ll need to get him a picture dictionary soon - he seemed quite taken with the idea.

Tomorrow we’ll be starting some comparative stuff on animals. We’ve been talking about BIG animals and tiny animals. So, thanks to David Attenborough - we know the Blue whale is the biggest animal that ever lived and that they can get up to 33 metres in length!  So, some working out by me to sort out a scale and we now have a plan!

5cms = 1m

Whale = 33m really but drawing will be 165cms.

This makes me 9cms tall!

Whale will end up on the stairs as this is the only place big enough for it.  Then the kids will draw themselves as a reference point and other animals, plants etc for comparison. I’ll take pics, promise!

We did get out in the garden after shopping. I grabbed a couple of climbing roses for the garden from Lidl - a red (pink) one and a yellow one. While out planting one of them - the other is going in a spot I need to work on tomorrow or Weds - I decided to get the seeds out. I have 3 pots with sunflower, leek and pepper in to germinate.

No, the greenhouse still hasn’t got it’s cover on and no the water butt isn’t fitted. The greenhouse/tent will be anchored on 3 corners to the fence and shed so should be fine even if we do get some more winds. I might well do that tomorrow, or Weds, or umm, sometime…..

Water butt has hit a problem. The downpipe from the guttering also takes the bath water. I don’t want to be storing bath water. It smells.  I have no objection to using bath water to water my plants but everywhere I look - even the tree hugging eco warrior types -  all say DON’T STORE BATH WATER. So, I need to divert the pipe from the bath outflow and put in a separate pipe to the drain for that. Then the butt can go on the guttering one.

In other news….

The council sent a bloke out to check the wiring in the house. He messed up the bathroom light. He’ll be back tomorrow to fix it. Grrrr. The washing machine started making a nasty sort of flapping noise, like dragging a stick along railings. Yes I checked the filter and the drum for sticks, lego etc. I can’t find anything. Anyway, an engineer will be out tomorrow to check it over. Either of them could be here from 8.30 onwards. Damn, I’m going to have to get up.

Thanks for having us Kirsty!

We had a lovely day. Kids played nicely, Mums nattered about this and that and drank tea. We all wandered to the park and on the way back my 2 hooligans reminded me that some work on road safety is in order! Still they all had fun and no-one got hurt.

Links for you Kirsty!

Spelling Time. - looks to be American, not sure what the words are yet but might be good.

BBC Jam. 

Thinking Blocks - that Mathsy one.  

Well, the sun was shining, why not!

But with the back still aching I opted for hanging washing out, chucking stray toys into a corner and starting on putting the greenhouse together. Opened the box to find it has a large flap at the bottom that will get weighed down nicely with bricks and it come with its own *ground nails* - look like tent pegs to me, guy ropes etc.  So, the frame is up. Cover is is still indoors, wit the pegs, ropes etc. Looks like rain tomorrow and we’re off out. Will finish over the weekend as the weather is forecast to clear up again. Then we can start planting!

Kids. Continuing with the stepping up the pace theme we did the usual reading and then sitting down working thing after breakfast. Dino’s clearly had enough now and rebelled.  But in true child led approach I made him sit there and finish. He was in a foul mood all day, poking at Mimi and causing strife. No idea what’s got into him, maybe more work will cure it? Mind you, she’s been whiney too.

So, a day off "work" tomorrow for us, but back to it on Saturday. I don’t tend to stop for weekends, but I do slacken off a bit.  

Another half an hour or so digging and my back seized up. One leg is giving way and it hurts. Must do more tomorrow if it’s dry…… Long soak in a hot bath tonight methinks.

Dino’s cracking on with reading, a little more reluctant today but the distraction of the council bloke taking a light fitting apart in the next room was a bit much for him I think. The pull of sunshine outside is a temptation too. But he did a couple of pages in the Sister and the spoon book before being pinned down to do some work books stuff - 2 pages of the english/writing one and 1 page of the maths one.

Mimi spotted letters in a book, did a page in her work book and then made shapes and towers with cuisenairre rods. 

Then they both watched Maths Channel on CBBC. Way over Mimi’s head but Dino was watching thoughtfully. He’s enjoying WhizzWhizzBangBang as well.  

I hope we can keep this up. It seems to be working. Up earlier, work straight after breakfast, then other stuff after lunch. Today was a quick nip out to the post office - the glitter glue dried over night! Then digging and gardening. Washing is almost dry if I can make my back hold up long enough to get it in.

Bangers and mash for tea! Pork and apple from a local butchers, Yumm.

Vampirates - Dino got it with his WBD token. It’s a big leap for him. A book with lots of words and no pictures. But I let him try. The style is unfamiliar but he had a good go before switching to This, which he found easier and hilarious. I think we crossed a bridge with the reading thing! Up to now he’s been on the repetitive reading scheme books, you know the sort, Here is thing, here is things sister, here is the damn dog. I hate them and he’s fed up too. But they’ve been brilliant for building his confidence and for rote learning some words.

We found bits for cards in tesco and made cards for Granny’s birthday on Sat - must get them in the post as soon as the glitter glue is dry! We were going to do some writing work but I have a headache and my back hurts. The sun is shining and the kids are trashing the garden. I tested out my birthday wellies (no laughing at the back there!)

I dug over half the potato patch before giving up and needing tea and a scone. No, we didn’t make them, they had a lovely yellow label in Tesco. Must make them with the kids though - we like fruit scones, and cheese ones and they’re easy. We’ve been making and enjoying griddle scones recently too.

Anyway, in the garden. The space for the greenhouse is clear but I still don’t quite trust the weather (wind) to put it up just yet. I do have to get into town to spend the rest of my birthday present though. I got cash from friends and there’s enough to get all the bits to fit a water butt to the guttering down pipe thingy.   Is a greenhouse, wellies and a water butt a ridiculous set of things to get excited about? Ah well, will get me out of the house and keep me out of mischief…..

Probably.  

Happy birthday to me.

Happy birthday to me.

Happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeeee!

Happy birthday to me.