The baking from Saturday's blog post of intentions:



The cherry & almond flapjacks were very good I have to say, the mince pies - well, same shit different year really. I hate my mince pies. In fact, I'm not at all convinced that homemade mince pies are worth the time, money and clearing up anyhow. I am sticking firmly to my shop-bought preference from now on. Sod it.

Today we got on with the timeline. We did the birth of the Jewish Nation, and it was fantastic to witness Oliver's joy at producing aesthetically pleasing work. He is genuinely enjoying this timeline, so I am dead chuffed with it.

laters.

do have a look....

....it's bloody funny.

http://www.52newthings.co.uk/the-52-new-things-list/

In a break from my blitherings, do take a look at the link above, it's a bloke who is trying (with the aid of suggestions) to do something new every week. My personal favourites are the walk home, the back, sack & crack and the colonic. Hilarious.

It is Mark' s birthday. It has started off with pressies (well received, I think - he is very difficult to buy for) and now he has taken himself off to the osteopath. Not as a result of the presents, I might add.


Oliver is off a-Pokemon-ing for the day, so I am left to my own devices. heh heh heh. Here are my intentions:


1. Get out all the gifts from the wardrobe thus far purchased for Oliver and make a list of what we have


2. Make mince pies (somethng I almost never do as they seem cheaper and easier and nicer than mine, but saw a recipe using ground almonds in the pastry, and think this will make all the difference. (yes Kim, I know you always do this....no one likes a smarty pants ;) )


3. Make cherry & almond flapjacks


4. Douse, sorry, feed my Christmas cakes with the last half of a bottle of brandy (the first half of the bottle already being in the cakes)


5. Squeeze in some exercise. I am uncomfortably aware of the tightening of my waistband and too-snug fit of jeans around my inner thighs. Problem is, for the first time I ever remember, I really just don't want to exercise. sigh.


6. Finish my second beaded bauble whilst watching Foyle's War. I love Michael Kitchen.


7. Ignore no 5.


8. Feel guilty for not doing no 5.


9. The usual drudgery: washing, washing up, changing the bedclothes......


10. Dye my hair. Well, cover the greying, darkening roots really. I have a box of 'natural baby blonde' waiting for me. How the word 'natural' can be incorporated into a box of hair dye positively bulging with artificial chemicals is beyond me...


This years tree:




Fabulouso.

'Tis the season....

and we're off. Yesterday was officially the start of the festive season, but due to the general business of Wednesdays, the erecting of the tree has had to be delayed. Much to Oliver's utter disgust and distress. When we were kids and had a real tree (miss the smell but not the clearing up) it didn't go up until a week before the big day. The goodies didn't go out until Christmas Eve. Last year I put the goodies out at the same time as tree went up and everything got scoffed by the end of the first week, earning me a bollocking from Mark. This year I'm planning a more staggered assault on the cellulite and general indigestion (the real meaning of Christmas obviously not being lost on me then) by putting out carefully selected and limited treats. (boring)

Yesterday's efforts:



The Advent Box




The Nativity scene


Today we have awoken to snow! Quelle delight. So the putting up of the Christmas Tree will take place on a snowy cold December day - a la Dickens, so I am forgiven by Oliver.


The morning dog walk


Although it looks as if I walked him at around 4am, this is not the case. I am just crap with the camera, and have the uncanny knack of managing to make a photo look as if it was taken in a completely different time zone than we are actually in.


see?



Also, I am now snapping photos of every aspect of our daily life in order to capture for posterity our December doings for my journal. Bit of a drag that I can't print them up, and since I need them at a smaller size than the norm, I have to get Photobox to send me my prints every few days (or it becomes hideously expensive).



And I beaded this




Hasta Manana dudes.

it's all about me

In a fit of rash creativity, I signed up for a swap on UKS (not again I hear you cry) - a fairy in a box swap. No, I don't know what possessed me either. Anyhoo, I have not taken part in any discussions on the thread about it, so frozen by terror at producing something hand made not from paper.... so here 'she' is in her beaded no-face glory.

Apparently I have to give her a name and decorate a box for her to live in too. Effin hell when will the torture end...

And here lies my entry for the Colour My World Art Journal:

This one is sunset colours, and I have used the lyrics from the Garth Brooks (who?) song 'Standing Outside The Fire'. Basically I think the message in it is do or die. Throw yourself in and get on with it or be a wimpy, insipid wraith on the edge of life. That sort of thing.

I struggled enormously with this one. I couldn't get any images to 'work' so have had to resort to typography. Quite pleased with it in the end though.

Also, I have finished (yes, you have read correctly) finished, a very under-used word over here at me and my amusings, my December Daily journal. It is now all ready for the beginning of the festivities on Dec 1st. Lovely. Bring it on.

Oh - and I placed a bet! A real live one online with a real live bookmaker!! Tee hee aren't I the daring one. It was on the next evictee on 'I'm A Celebrity...' (yep, I love it) and I won £44!!! How fabulous. Still, only a drop in the bottomless well of expense that masquerades under the name of Christmas.

And don't give me that old cobblers about the true spirit of Christmas and making your own gifts etc etc because I have made my own gifts before and it costs twice as much as popping into Boots on a 3 for 2, I can tell you. I can fully appreciate the true spirit of Christmas without needing to resort to sparse decorations and an orange and a couple of brazil nuts in our stockings. so there.

total eclipse of the son

For Cub Astronomer badge 'homework' Oliver has to find out about three interesting facts about two things from a list and present these facts with pictures. He hasn't kicked back too much against the potential 'work' involved with this task (yet), and this afternoon is diligently preparing his facts. He has chosen eclipses and meteorites. A 20p charity shop book has been helpful here, as it feels OK to cut up a book which cost me 20p, and he will probably not read again. (sorry if this offends the book-o-philes)

We started the timeline - ta DAH! We decided to start where our 'Story Of The World' book begins, with the earliest people (nomads) around 7000BC. Then we have jumped to the Ancient Egyptians at around 3200BC. Will probably do Greeks, Romans , Jesus, Saxons/Normans start of the Monarchy in Britain, Tudors, Stuarts, Victorians, the World Wars and our birthdays. Have probably missed out some vital historical periods in my whistle stop tour of the history of man, but hey ho, sure it will come to light.

Oliver went off to West Town Farm yesterday with Kim and Vanessa for some tree hugging and communing with nature. (I didn't go) but he has asked me if he can go again as he really enjoyed it. Sigh. Not at all sure if this is for me - it's all very outdoors and all. Still, I will give it a go in the spirit of motherly love and earthly joy.

a short history of the world (or not)

Today is the day that something is going up on this: (not sure what yet)

Yes, I got around to putting up the timeline! It has been up for nearly a week and I am frozen into inertia about where to start and what to include. Do we just cover British history? World history? From the birth of Jesus or before? One thing is for sure - it will NOT be to scale and I will not have enough room. Hey ho. Mark was surprisingly supportive of the project, given that I have nailed this thing to the wall with upholstery nails.... thought he was going to have a caustically tight-lipped and clipped few things to say, but he pleasantly surprised me. Oliver is, typically, not that interested but I am optimistic that once we start, he will see the point of it.

He has been using (quite successfully I might add) window paints to make his own designs. He made a knight (a small little pink person shape) and then made individual bits of armour to stick over the naked person. Very innovative I think, although there appears to be a bit of a scale issue. He did spot this eventually, but his pride in creating it has not been diminished.

For my own creative ends, I have been making a beaded bauble and made a December Daily album (pics to follow later) - this is a bit like the Journal Your Christmas from last year, but hopefully will not end up as big as last years effort, which is sitting in its huge fan-shaped majesty on the top shelf of my craft room, since I can't close the bugger.

What do you think of the new blog design? I can't seem to find anything more festive at the mo but will be trawling the net to find something more jolly next week - will be swinging into the holiday spirit on the 1st December - the advent box goes out and I am doing a card making activity at the hut. Oliver is pissed that I am not putting up the tree on the 1st (as has always been the case in the past) but this year the first falls on a Wednesday - my least favourite day of the week due to lots being on and I have to work. Will do the tree on Thursday 2nd instead, when we can spend the afternoon faffing over decorating it and watching a Christmas DVD. Ooh I LUUUURVE the Christmas season!!!!!

monday continued...

and, yes - victory is mine. I have battled the mattress and emerged triumphant. I have taken on the might of horrible chores and come out in front. All hail me.

Tee hee. Failed at McDonalds though.

Oliver did tremendously well today by getting on with his english, unsupervised and then knuckling down to maths with me, and also doing a little of that unsupervised, which he doesn't really like to do.

Have made an oven-roasted vegetable soup for tea, to scoff with garlic bread and played an epic game of Pokemon with Oliver, which I lost. Poo.

All in all, so far, today is a very good day.

diary of a day

Here is how I see today panning out:

1. chop up double foam mattress into 4 bits (very heavy otherwise and will not fit in car)
2. load into car (after clearing out general crap that already lives in the car and relocating to the garage)
3. clean up dining room now full of foam bits
4. have shower now I am covered in foam bits and sweating from the efforts of nos 1, 2 and 3.
5. do maths and english with Oliver (hmmm)
6. do general housework (dishes/washing crap)
7. go to dump via shops to get leaving present for Sylvie (Oliver's Spanish teacher who is buggering off back to Madrid)
7. give in to lunch at McDonalds (can't see me avoiding this if my timings are off....)
8. spend the afternoon pretending to watch interesting TV with Oliver but actually trying to sneak in a snooze before
9. giving Oliver his tea and taking him to a friends for her to deliver him to Cubs
10. going to work for a rest for 4 hours......

As I write, I have just sat down after achieving no 1 on my list. For this gargantuan task Mark had left me a Stanley knife. This was a bit like cleaning a toilet with a toothbrush so I abandoned that and got a Spear & Jackson saw to complete the job. Har har. report back later.....

I LOVE cold days...

...dark mornings, wintry (wintery?) afternoons, wet days, icy cold days, blustery leafy days, sunny leafy days, sunny cold days, but the most important thing here is that the summer (hateful hot and make you feel guilty for feeling indoors summer) is over for another year and the lovely, lovely Autumnal days have begun with the smell of bonfires, rustle of leaves underfoot and damp and chill which leaves you feeling all crisp and healthy when outside and cosy cosy indoors with heat and steamy drying washing and baking smells. I love it. And it has made me feel all freshly enthused about home teaching.

I want to blog a bit more about our lives at home. This year we are much more into a routine of 'work' and I feel much, much less guilty about the fact that Oliver may not be covering as much as he 'should' be. I generally feel very relaxed about how much we do in 'schooly' stuff, as I am quite confident in his ability to grow into structured learning if and when need be, but I occasionally feel the squeeze of outside forces in the shape of non home-schooled family and friends. I feel stuck in the middle of state-run institutionalised thinking and free as you like home ed thinking.

This is the room we generally work in:

Boring huh?

And this is our new bookcase (in the same room)

which I am inordinately excited about, as I now have 2 whole shelves for Oliver's learny stuff.

I had the idea of getting a giant pinboard for the wall to showcase pics/work/writing but then I read this today on another home edders's blog - DUH! Why didn't I think of this?! So will be shamelessly copying that one day very soon. Want to do a history timeline on it (also mentioned on the same blog) but I can claim that I have honestly wanted to do this for a long time but has remained on my ever growing list of 'things that I want to do but can't truly be arsed to do anything about at this or any point in the near future'.

And finally...

A couple of my layouts were featured on the Papermaze blog on Saturday, so that's nice. Also went to the Scrapaholix crop on Saturday - did two layouts, a gentle and therapeutic scrapping day...

high days and holidays (and a spot of cutting and sticking)

And here we are - returned from the glitz and glam of Butlins Minehead. Yes - that's Butlins Minehead, Hades of the holiday world.

Actually, it really was OK, though in truth it just could never have been as bad as I was expecting - and I can expect really bad stuff I can tell you. For the uninitiated, the place is huuuge and full to the brim of lots of nasty rough people tee hee. The pool was brilliant and the accomodation was pleasantly nice (since we are tightarses and refused to upgrade from scab class). And for the record - I didn't choose Butlins - the Sun newspaper break system chose it for us.... That said, we probably would go again because Oliver loved it (being a child and all) and we like to see him happy....

(I am hopeful of Disneyland Paris next year).

Art journalling:

Not overly happy with the style of this entry, but have been you-tubing art journalling, and I really wanted to go more scruffy and collage-y, so this is my next entry:

which is a bit weirder and wilder, and I am happier with this one. Find I am struggling with 'letting myself go'. Not normally an issue for me, but think maybe scrapbooking is making me too neat a crafter....

Have also started a cross stitch, which I haven't done for years and I forgot how soothing I found it to repetitively stitch. The one I am working on is a lovely Celtic image, will get a pic on here sometime soon.

Playing Boules at Dunster Castle:

Trying to get a nice head shot of Oliver. Pah.

He simply does not appreciate my need for decent photos to scrap. Reckon if I could see his thoughts at this point they would be a child's version of 'shove it up your arse'.

Mark enjoying the fair at Butlins tee hee.

yeah, yeah, I know

I've been a bit slack in the old blog department lately.

I never really feel inclined to post without a photo or two, and since I have been pretty crap at doing anything arty over the last few weeks, I haven't had much to share. I made an abortive attempt at Shimelle's latest offering: the 'Learn Something New Every Day' class, running throughout September, but that went to shite after less than 5 days, when I realised that trying to focus my mind on learning/re-learning and re-discovering something about myself everyday was just too big an ask and I got pissed off pretty quickly. My last entry would have read: 'today I have learnt that this class is just not working for me.' I found the prompts confusing and mourn the loss of another tenner down the drain. (and another lesson learnt tee hee)

Anyhoo, once I cleared my desk of this debacle, I got down to some real life scrapping - actually the thing I enjoy the mostest - and did this layout with my most recent pic of the boy:

and this one for the challenge over on Sarah's Cards:

I am pleased with both, and feel I have eased myself back into enjoying scrapbooking again.

a big boasty proud mummy moment

Just a quickie post. Had the Exeter crop on Saturday, and just didn't get into it really. I only completed one full layout! I was busy feeling over-anxious about Oliver, who I had left at Crealy for the day, supposedly at their Saturday Club. Turned out that Oliver was the only kid booked on it, and since no-one had bothered to tell me, they suddenly had one child to look after all day....

He was allowed to stay, and I was assured he would be able to join in some activities that were running on site, and that he would be supervised.

Anyhoo, when I arrived in reception to pick him up, I was met with a barrage of 'ooh, we love Oliver' from the girlie receptionists and the activity blokes were full of compliments about him. When he arrived, with the activities manager in tow, he'd had a brilliant time doing archery, abseiling and generally enjoying enjoying himself. Mr Manager said he was a 'fantastic advert for home education' and that he was a great kid. He said he had worked with kids for nearly 20 years, and alot of the home-ed kids he'd worked with had problems with social boundaries, but that Oliver was truly at ease joining in with other children and confident and chatty with adults. (he'd had lunch with the staff)

It is always lovely to hear compliments about your child, but to hear so many good things from so many people, it felt great - I am so, so proud of him. It is fab when he achieves things, and works hard to do something, but to be so highly praised for who he is - just for being him - that's just the best ever. And if he is flourishing like this and showing the qualities I dream of for him - then Mark and I must be doing something right too.

live in the moment

Whilst out and about this morning I was amazed (and not in a good way) at the number of people engaged in some mobile phone activity - either texting or gabbing loudly for the world and his wife to hear.

For frig's sake. (whoever frig may be) why can't people just enjoy the moment they are in anymore?? They seem so intent on being in everyone else's moment at the same time, they can't enjoy theirs....

Anyhoo, I bought some glue at the Range, and I noticed that I put a couple of things back which, right now, I can't really afford to buy. I never used to do that. This is, for those who don't already know, the first month since last year that I am in charge of my own funds - I am responsible for the money I earn, and for feeding us for the month. I was worried that I had learnt nothing - once a spender, always a spender, but - actually, I have known all month in my mind, my running bank balance and what I have available to spend. I have rejected the things I know I cannot buy within the money I have, I have sold a few things on ebay to give me a bit of spare cash and I have - surprise of all surprises paid some cash in to the bank to cover a cheque I had to issue unexpectedly. Now clearly, in normal-world this is no big deal, but in Janice-world, this is testament to a lesson learnt. Good for me I say.

Finally got around to finishing last months layouts, just did a bit of tarting up really:

And this one - really like the pinks and blues in this, not really my favourite colour combo of all time, but I am happy with the finished result.

Went to Knightshayes (NT) which was fabulous - I love the house and the gardens are so, so lovely there.

Then I took this photo:

which cost me my camera for the rest of the day as I thrust my hand out to stop Oliver from banging his head on the eagle's beak and the camera swung round and bashed on the bird and the lens jammed. Shitsticks. So you'll just have to trust me - it was all gorgeous. Got to playing a bit of hide and seek and when it was my turn (groan) I lay down behind some lavender bushes on some flagstones and prayed I would be found quickly. After I had coaxed my creaky body down to the prone position I became painfully aware that at my age I probably looked more like a victim of a heart attack than a young fit parent playing hide and seek. Luckily Oliver tripped over me before any do-gooders could rush in with a bit of CPR.

juggling and balancing

Yeah well, he was fine - OK?? Nothing to worry about. Paranoid Mum, that's me, you have no idea. He's been a couple more times, and each time I feel more relaxed about it. The girlies seem to be able to manage the kids pretty well from what I hear. Can't help feeling sorry for the kids dropped off there day in day out, obviously there because of parents working, whereas I have the luxury of taking Oliver there for his benefit, not the other way around. I really am very lucky in the life I lead....

Have completed this layout for the sketch challenge over on the Sarah's Cards blog:

Quite pleased with the end result - I like these papers (My Mind's Eye), they are very vintage, but not as easy to work with as I'd thought.

Also finished this one from the crop:

AND completed my entry for the green art journal in my Art Journal CJ. Really enjoying this particular CJ actually, getting to work towards a style. I want to produce my own journal of my innermost thoughts and fears, but want it to be really arty, and I'm just not there yet.

By the way, I am not very religious although this entry uses the lyrics from the song by Joan Osbourne which I heard on the way home the other day in the car. I have always liked the message in them:

If God had a name/What would it be/And would you call it to his face/If you were faced with him/...........

If God had a face/What would it look like/And would you want to see/If seeing meant that you would have to believe..../

I just like the idea that if you could see God, would you choose to because then you would have to believe in him.....

I had yesterday all planned (whilst Oliver was otherwise occupied) - I was going to toddle around the antique/secondhand places for some bits. My wish list was not unreasonable, I thought, a couple of bone-handled knives for buttering, a nice cup and saucer for tea in my craft room, a nice individual wine glass (I have recently managed to smash our last two...), and some more odd plates. Could I find any of these???? Could I buggery. AND it pissed with rain. AND Topsham (said place for antique finds - or not) was full to bursting with snobs. And old people. And worse - snobby old people. How dare they be there to spoil my me time.

And I can't even begin to talk about the cats and dog..We spend our time dodging round the house so that they don't meet, and this is one helluva small house, believe me.

And BREEEATTTHHHHHE. Now where did I put that paper bag.....