Pony’s and Paper (by sarah)

Today was quiet, everyone but me went away, I sent my eldest off into the icy morn without her tie because though we thought we had sorted everything days ago the tie had slipped our notice, the same as we forgot to go shoe shopping in the sales. She got to borrow one from student services and is not yet in trouble - we still can't find the tie!

Youngest had her first day at after school club and came back more hyper than ever, she arrived home after her sister which was weird!

She was a little tearful mainly I think because she will not sleep and of course school during the day means no naps, she was still a pickle when it came to bed time tonight. She is being good to the cats as her new years resolution - she got licked and not scratched today - this has cheered her up.

After chickens had been fed and watered Jean did homework and Mary played with her set up of play mat, palaces and my little pony, moshi monsters and disney princesses.

Dinner was still Christmas food - we are still in Christmas here and will be until the 6th. Jean announced that when ever she starts looking at religions and studying them all she can see is plot holes.

They then played minecraft together, Mary went to bed and we watched Steins:gate just the first episode with Alaric so he can start sorting his cosplay for the Comic Book Festival. Now I am awaiting the chest nuts he is toasting and yes I did not make it to the first Drink and Draw of the year - I'm not really sure the evening ones are going to be that doable for me anymore 🙁 but fortunately they do now have weekend ones as well 😀

So what did I do all day whilst my family where away?

Well I actually got to do all the rests that I am supposed to do, and inbetween them I managed to have an amazing almost the old me day... I wrote 1000 words of fiction, I sorted out cross posting and other blogging issues. I processed a few photos. I can get max 2 hrs of high concentration done and that is split up and broken.

With great effort I have stuck to calories (1600 until the end of the week and yes that includes the chestnuts), my arthritis is being a little act uppy at the moment which sucks but I'm good.

This means I have not done much physical exercise today but have done some.

I had the most lovely amazon delivery lady 🙂 Really churpy and happy, she delivered sparkly my little pony stuff for Mary's birthday which I will probably actually do the party for in February as I need more space to plan and do things than I used to - it the shift from being physically unable but mentally capable to the other way around - physically I am the best I've been as an adult but brain is a big fat raspberry (ie I just wrote the same paragraph in slightly differing forms three times because I had already forgotten I'd written it!).

Also there was origami paper - lovely lovely multiple sizes paper - but sadly the books I've ordered at various points with money and vouchers have still not arrived so I am stuck with the 70's falling to pieces project and what ever vids I can find!

Still I have started improvising and making up my own projects and to my utter amazement - today I came up with new ideas for workshops - I've been working on ideas I had already planned before the head injury and fortunately there had been alot of them - but this... this was brand new ideas with brand new skills and there was not one but two of them!!! With variants 😀

Yeah so origami featured in my day whilst "watching" the Hogfather - I was lonely so put it on in the back ground - again this is something I have not been able to really do since the head injury - I managed to focus on a project with background noise. I wanted the sounds because I was lonely - so happy about managing this 🙂

Day 20 – Two Hats (by sarah)

Today's painting was supposed to show that lensing/clarity you get with really clear ice - it did not turn out the way I had imagined but never mind!

I have a three year old who wont believe my laptop is not a touch screen and she likes wearing two hats 🙂 (photo)

Day 13 – Winter Blaze (by sarah)

I love the sunshine through the woods especially in the snow - though I have to say I am relieved to live in a warm house these days and we haven't had good snow for the last couple of years. I've been looking at the sky alot since starting the paintings 🙂

Also I have been listening to lots of the Celtic Women 🙂 Mary refuses to believe that I am not one of the singers but this is purely as she had curled her hair in one of the shows and has a dress like mine.

2014 – New Year New Fear (by sarah)

The festive period has been trying - it has by no means been the worst one we've ever had but there are catastrophic Christmas's and then there are just bad Christmas's - this is the latter.

Lot's of medium and small things have been going wrong - washing machines breaking resulting in 3 weeks of hand washing, a pain flare up for me, boiler breaking so not hot water or heating for almost two weeks, vomiting kids (at various points and for various reasons), tiles flying off the roof, Al getting sinusitis badly resulting in headaches were he couldn't look at writing etc..., a misunderstanding meaning the work I'd done for college was all wrong and has to be redone, spam attack on blog breaking my emails so I then don't see the requests for the changes etc..., kitten is being duffed up outside and has over cleaned her fur as it itched in healing meaning she has bauld patches, garden water logged so emergency stuff has to be done for Chickens, workshop roof leaking (again), there is more but it's pretty trivial and is only an issue as it's all happening together :/

But you know we have insurance for the roof and insurance for the boiler and so it is being sorted and we where given cash for Christmas by a few relatives so fixing things for the chickens was too bad.

For every thing that has gone wrong wonderful things have happened - christmas jumpers appeared in the post, I actually managed to go and attempt climbing (huge huge break through for the pelvis especially as it was my shoulder that stopped the climbing and not the pelvis!), Jean and me are really enjoying going to Games Workshop together to paint her little hobbit figures, I met up with a dear friend I haven't seen in a long long time, I have a beautiful little niece, friends brought round hand knits they had made the girls and chocolate and stuff, I sold poetry books at a level I wasn't expecting, I won an advent competition and massage oils arrived in the post from the local college and so on.

So I am really stressed at the moment and really fearful that things will get worse but at the same time I feel resigned and also on finding our dinning room roof is leaking this morning - to cries of 'It raining in my house! Oh dear broken!' from Mary - I am awaiting the next good thing and yes I am writing this instead of finishing of my course work but I can't do anymore until my emails are fixed and that is chugging away in the background on my laptop so for now I am off to eat some cheese and biscuits and discuss plans for the year with Alaric.

Happy New Year everybody.

Easter Snow (by sarah)

It's the Easter holidays and it is snowing so after dropping Mary off at the Nursery my dad helped me take some photos of the hills and things. This one is my favourite:

Followed by this one of cracking ice:

And then this one I took with the idea of portals or the Door to December:

I quiet like this one of a farm house as well - the sheep and colours say spring but then there is snow on the hills:

Then we have bleak landscapes mostly taken on extreme zoom!

Click through if you want to see bigger images or go to the here on my photo blog.