Day 211 - 213

Well, it looks like the summer has taken another leave of absence from our part of the uk, and i am not liking it at all. The sunny days were such a reprieve and i could literally feel my mood brighten and i was so much happier, then, these last couple of days it has been back to grey skies and rain and overthinking and generally feeling blue. I must also confess that i am a total Scrooge where the olympics are concerned, i admit, i do not get what is so exciting about watching other people do sports? dont get me wrong, i do LIKE sports, when i play it! I suppose it is also because it all seems to be happening just in London and we really dont get any of the action up here and the only way we know that the olympics are on are the gazzillion different Team GB knick knacks in every shop. I think it would have been great to see some of the other coutnries represented and i may have been tempted to buy some souvenirs with ALL of the nations' flags on.. anyway, because of my general lack of enthusiasm where the olympics are concerned, i have obviously kind of struggled with the prompts.. but ive managed to get photos every day!

Heavy

I couldnt really find anything heavy, had i taken the photo a day later, i could have shown you all our weekly shopping bags :D but, as it was, i had to find something heavy for day 211. We unsuccesfully tried to keep our kitchen door open with all manner of door stops, folded pieces of card, wedges in the doorjam but all of those became Cooper victims sooner or later! Especially the novelty kind of doorstoppers, you know the ones that are shaped like animals or houses, died painful deaths by decapitation and gutting as soon as Cooper spotted them. This thing however is a solid metal doorstop and although Cooper tries to play with it, it defeats him and we now have a door that stays open!



Dive

I suppose i could have cheated for this prompt and used a photo i took the other day at the seaside, dh and dd diving into the sea while playing ball. As it was, i had to settle for a photo of cooper after he dived onto the sofa to claim his spot for a snooze.



Stronger

This word had me thinking in many different directions... there are so many examples of strength, but they were all rather hard to capture with a camera, so i grabbed these fisherman friends and, as they are EXTRA strong, it even counts for stronger

Day 208 - 210

Infinity

I actually did a little happy skip when i saw this prompt! We had planned a day to the sea side, it had been such a long time since wed been near the sea, we were all excited. When we still lived in essex, we took the sea side for granted, although i knew when we moved up here that i would miss the sea. There is something calming about the sea that i cannot quite find anywhere else. To just sit and gaze across the water, dip your toes in the surf and enjoy the smells and sounds of the sea can recharge my batteries in a matter of hours. We went to Weston Super Mare and i was pleasantly surprised by the lovely sandy beach.. we went looking for crabbies, the kids played beach ball and i just tanked up on happy rays. I then spotted a shell that looked like a number 8, the symbol for infinity...





Fire

I had to wait for dinner time for this prompt as there was no "fire" to be found... i had taken a photo of the olympic flame coming past our house, but that was taken back in june, so would have been cheating!





Rings

The plan was to find something awesome and brilliant for today's prompt.. and i ended up with our (now often featured) favourite wedding rings :) they would also fit for infinity i guess or my fire from yesterday could also be counted as a ring..

Day 200 - 207

So, i have done a LOT of soul searching this past week and, after getting over the initial shock and many tears and discussions, it boiled down to a choice: Let ONE person (and her horde of friends, all of whom are unknown to me) win and be the victim and buy into her bullying or, pick myself up, dust myself off and get back into something i was enjoying (despite the odd struggle here and there) and stay with a group of nice people i was lucky enough to "meet" through this challenge. As you can see, I am choosing to change how i look at this whole sorry story and hope to put it behind me. I need to learn to listen to people who matter and to not let people who dont matter get to me. So, for all those who DONT matter, if you dont like what you see or read on my blog, TOUGH, its MY blog, i put here what i want, if i want, when i want. And if you feel its ok to follow me around in cyberworld and then try and use things against me, then YOU are the one with the problem, not ME. To all my "friends".. thank you so much for encouraging me and for sticking around.

Airborne

Loved finding a photo for this word, i didnt want to go with the obvious (things flying in the sky) but everything i tried, didnt quite work out.. so i ventured into the back and found these raindrops that look as though they are airborne, even though they are trapped on a pretty spider's web.



Cheese

I was going to take a photo of one of the kids' trainers :) especially the boys'... but thought i've embarrassed them enough on this blog already, so i snapped a pic of the cheese when i made some cheese on toast for lunch.



Matched Pair

As a special treat, to mark the end of the last day at school and the beginning of the summer holidays, we treated everyone to a milkshake!



One

I managed to get everyone involved in this one, well, almost. Everyone is holding up ONE finger...



Three's a crowd

As a mother of two boys and one girl, i can attest that the sentiment is most definitely true! Two of mine can always be seen rattling around together (mainly the boys, but sometimes allegiances are formed between one of the older and the youngest) while the other is always left out. It has caused many an arguement over the years, and, needless to say, i did not get a chance to document this much lamented short coming of a 3 sibling family. Instead of stalking those three all day, i turned my attention to our little 3legged barbeque grill... i tried to get all three legs into the picture, but no matter what angle i chose, it always only showed TWO...



Nine

Despite looking out for Nines all day, this was the only thing i could come up with... nine pebbles in our garden showing the number 9.



1,2,3

My first thought was "ready, steady, go" but it turned into me taking photos of the beautiful weather at 1,2 and 3 pm.



Multiples

I had no idea where to go with today's word, until i settled down in the sunshine to crochet some more rows to my bedspread... the number of stitches are multiples of three and each row has a tripple cluster of tripple stitches.

Day 199 - busy

Busy





Rain

Day 197 - 198

Hero

Oh what a word :) it had me thinking in so many directions today! My initial thought was, of course, to my dh... he quite literally is my hero and the children and i have a lot to be eternally grateful to him for. Without his constant support, encouragement, love and patience, we would never have been able to start breaking free of our past. He readily accepted three "children" into his life, happily changed his entire life around for us.. of course there are days where we fight like cat and dog, something that breaks my heart every time, because i know it is just stress that is making us fight. Despite what some visitors to my blog believe/have voiced, we dont have much, but we have more than anybody could wish for: each other and hearts full of love for our family. I sometimes get bogged down and feel useless and stupid.. and i fall into the age old trap of listening to all the wrong people, taking to heart mean things that really i should give not another thought, but in those times, it is dh's words that bring me back to what really matters.. that we are a family and we have love and in our eyes, we are perfect for each other. Another little saying for those blog visitors (you know who you are): Jealousy is when you count other people's blessings instead of your own.

Anyway, dh is out working til late tonight and i dont think he will be too chuffed if i start taking photos of him when hes all tired... so i am going to show you all a photo i took of him way back in january when we took the children to a memorobilia exhibition at the NEC... meet my hero meeting HIS hero: Batman!!



So, with that out of the question as a most definite cheat, i had to look at other heroes.. i think i have quite a few.. Nelson Mandella, Dalai Lama, Buddha, Mother Theresa, Tad Williams and, of course, JRR Tolkien.. which led me to the heroes that have been with me since i was a kid.. The Lord of the rings and the hobbit have been my comfort read for as long as i can remember! I can honestly pick up a LOTR book, and it doesnt matter which page im on, i know exactly where in the book i am.. i have read both in 4 languages.. and, until i met dh, legolas has been a firm favourite to come and whisk me away! Here is one of the few books we have in this house (i bought it for 25p at the charity shop, just in case those followers are still reading my blog) I intentionally wanted a "well loved" edition, as that is pretty much the same shape my original book was in.. all battered, dog eared and truly loved.



Literature

This is still quite a strange subject for me. I used to always have my nose in a book, since i was 4 yrs old and taught myself to read! Then, when we left our old life behind, i had to of course leave all my beloved books. Now, whenever i pick up a proper book, i just cannot concentrate and even trying to read just one or two pages takes me a day or so. There are so many memories attached to books for me, i dont seem to be able to cope with them. I have tried 3 or 4 books, but soon realised that i wont ever be able to enjoy what once used to be a great hobby and stress reliever. Luckily, dh found a way around it and my viewpad allows me to get back into the world of books, without the flashbacks and bad or sad memories attached to books. So, my library consists of some old craft magazines a friend gave me and a couple of "arty" books ds2's art teacher bought for me. One book is about art journaling, but i must admit, i just can not get my head around it.

Day 192 - 196

Motion Blur

I stalked everyone today in order to get a blurry shot and what happens? everything comes out picture perfect.. hrmph. I finally managed to catch dd speed txting on her blackberry



Flower

Another prompt to show off Bertie the Bug in his weekly home :) I used to be adamant that i do NOT like flowers... but dh has other ideas and often brings home some flowers for me anyway and now im so used to having a bunch in the hallway, that it feels empty when i dont have bertie greeting me on my way in. So, this week he lives in a bunch of sweet williams.. i think he looks rather comfy and cheery in them :)



Motorised

This prompt actually made me realise just how many things in our lives are motorised nowadays.. I chose to snap the toy that i found in my Kinderegg today, dh brings one of these back for me about once a week, it's sort of a joke I say sort of because i still love opening my little surprise egg to see if i got one of the characters.. but im just as delighted when i come across the little toys you have to build. My uncle used to buy me these when i was little and i used to have a big collection of all the toys i had accumulated over the years. I think dh is trying to help me build up another collection, as i have gotten into the habit of building my toy and then putting it into a big vase that i dont ever use for its' intended purpose. And yes, we all had an infantile moment or two racing the little car across the table, only to get caught by somebody, who then proceeded to share in the delight as soon as they felt they were unobserved.



Cold

It really is hard to believe that we are in the middle of summer! I can remember long, sunny, warm holidays spent at the local open air pool with my friends... getting so sunburnt, i had blisters and gave my mother some very sleepless nights.. I think the impact climate change is having on us is quite remarkable and noticable nowadays though. The lack of sunlight makes me feel so depressed and i hate having to turn the heating on in the evenings, but i just get so cold. My hands are permanently like iceblocks, so today, i snapped a photo of one of my freezing hands (though they do come in handy when i want to give dh a bit of shock :D cold hands on a toasty warm back always get the desired reaction)



Shiny

This proved to be quite a hard word for me... nothing shiny i encountered was quite "right", so in the end, this photo was a last minute snap to get a photo for the day. It was dh's birthday, and, as hes really a big kid at heart (and a massive "superhero fan" though he denies that vehemntly, despite him telling me on a daily basis that it is only x days to batman) I bought him a matching batman cake and tshirt! The "shiny" part comes in the form of the horrid cake boards that these cakes are delivered on...

Day 187 - 191

Delicate





Broken





Modern





Past its' Prime

I am refusing to do yet more self portraits! i already have done THREE during this challenge! That is more than enough photos of me.. at first i had "past its' time" in my head (i since realised i wasnt the only one :P ) and took a photo of a cake that our neighbour gave us today, very sweet gesture until we realised that it was already 3 days out of date :D I hate wasting food, but it had cream in it and as i was not sure if they even bothered to keep it refrigerated, im afraid it went straight in the bin. Anyway.. back to past its' prime.. there are 1001 examples i could use around here, but the one thing that kind of jumped at me, quite literally, was my little bird planter out front. He really isnt in the best condition anymore, but i just cannot bring myself to throw him out.



Empty

I was sure that we already had this prompt, so i did some archiving and, sure enough, all the way back in January day two was also and empty one :) An unusual sight.. and one that never lasts very long!!! My empty washing basket, in fact, by the time i had put my camera back, there was already more washing in it!

Day 181 - 186

Dangerous

I am on the catch up blogging again.. and to be perfectly honest, i was not going to bother tonight either, but then today's word took on a whole new dimension. All day, Vlad has been helping me out by proving just how dangerous living in this household is, however.. all his precarious happenings have to wait! Because i found something way more dangerous than all the situations poor vlad found himself in! Yes, you see that right.. its the CLIPPERS!



Somehow i have over recent years become the very very very very reluctant hairdresser for the males in this house... cj had a bad experience with the barbers, so he refused to have his hair cut, as you can imagine, after a while my boychild started to look like a deadringer for his sister, so something needed to be done! This "something" arrived in the form of the aforementioned CLIPPERS. Bear in mind, that my formal training at university and work was in pen pushing and paper organisation.. nowhere did the handbook mention anything about CLIPPERS or hairdressing!! in fact, i have just checked the good mother's manual and it isnt even mentioned in there, to the contrary, a good mother is discouraged to use this kind of tool if she has no qualification to do so. Anyway, the family ignored my worries and told me to "just go for it" and so i did. To be honest, i have been doing quite good jobs and lately even managed to bring in some form of "style".

All this came to a grinding halt today! The DS2 casually announced at 3.30pm that today is PROM day! To start at 5.30pm! So,not only did he need to be cajoled into the shower, no, we also had to find a suit for the child... needless to say, the suit he wore for our wedding is now too small. But in the grand scheme of things, the suit is a minor distraction.. the BIG disaster came in the form of "mum can you cut my hair"! My reply "yeah sure in a minute", calm as a cucumber at this point i dig out my now familiar CLIPPERS, get them all set up and... dd has an emergency with a pop bottle! so, i plunk down the clippers, rescue dd and return dutifully to ds2 to proceed with his haircut, fire up the CLIPPERS, get set, ready and GO... just to find that the size guard hadnt clipped on properly and fallen off, so now ds2 was sporting a rather unfetching ungraded stripe right down the side of his head! OH Horror! What to do? Scream for the dh, he will surely know how to fix this disaster... his answer.. "well youve got to keep going now you started". I think my sheer look of horror made him rethink that answer and he dashed out... in the meanwhile i dont know whether to laugh or cry, so i do both. DS2 is being rather brave and galant about it all, reassuring me "that it's not that bad" followed by "oh my what have you done?" And remember, this is PROM night!!!! so we are quickly running out of time, with no answer to my dilemma in sight. To my luck, we are surrounded by hairdressers and barbers... you know the saying about corner shops and bradford? well, our little town is just like that only with hairdressers and dh found the place to put it all right for us. So, he whisks the ds2 off to have my haircut fixed... i get the suit and shirt and tie and shoes ready. Half an hour of agony goes by and the dh returns with a rather shorn ds2! We did manage to get him into his suit and to PROM and i managed to get a couple of photos too!



Dirt



shadow



grumpy



Gothic





Silhouette