'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...