Books, Puzzles and Cards

A little round up of the past week is needed.

Back to last Saturday and we were toying with going to Winchester for the day.

The record fair was on and G likes to go for a mooch to see what he can find to add to his vinyl collection.

However in the end we decided to stay local as G was going to Portsmouth in the evening to see The Temperance Movement and one eye would always be on the time thinking about when we needed to get back so G could go out again.

We took S and her friend L down to the park instead.

They scooted and we wandered at our own pace.

I took my camera, but yet again I forgot to check it contained it's memory card so no photos to share.

We walked round the football pitches and strolled by the river and stopped for a while so the girls could run off more energy in the play area. 

Our route had been planned so we would finish at the shops.

 At The Veg Shed we purchased the parsnips for our cakes, then we stopped at The Songbird - coffee for the adults and ice cream for the girls.

Within the clutch of shops is a branch of Barnardos which is always worth popping into.

G certainly came up trumps in there.

For £10 he found 5 LP's and he was particularly pleased with ones by Cream and The Kinks.

My purchase was less exciting.

A pack of 10 Christmas cards reduced to 69p which will be perfect for sending to our neighbours when the festive season comes around again.

When we got home G checked on-line and found the records were worth a little bit more than he had paid and so this week I made sure I dropped off to them the 3 bagfuls of donations, mostly books and some clothing, from our latest round of delcuttering.

Talking of books I've made a good start on this month's book club read. The tag line describes it as 'A reimagining of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of the servants'. So far so good.

On Wednesday afternoon I had to go into work as we were having our annual first aid refresher session, so for the morning I made sure I had something to do to make the most of the time off I did still have. I planned on having a charity shop session primarily because I needed to buy a birthday gift.
When our friends G and M came over at Christmas with their young children M had been drawn to my new cat jigsaw puzzle. G text me a couple of weeks ago to say that since then the four of them have gone jigsaw mad.
As G and M are keen charity shoppers I knew M wouldn't mind a birthday jigsaw coming from one of them and I hoped that the 7 I had in mind to visit would turn up something suitable.
The first shop didn't have anything for M but I found a great book for me, a copy of Cath Kidston's Stitch for £2.00. 

The next few shops also drew a blank and then the 5th one was where I found exactly what I hoped I would find.
A 1000 piece jigsaw of Liverpool Street Station in London. To go with it I bought a bottle of London Lager. Fingers crossed he likes it.

Thursday was squirrel appreciation day which meant that there was only one choice of ear-ring that day.

Friday was a bit different this week as I had the morning off.

Once the children had gone off to school G and I took ourselves off into town for breakfast.

One of my Christmas presents to G was a mini poster of rock guitarists and he is on the look out for a frame. There is a shop in town we wanted to try for one whilst we were there but they didn't have anything suitable so that quest goes on.

I ended the week as I started it by buying another pack of reduced Christmas cards.

These were 29p and are for S to use for her school friends. 

Luckily she liked them so they've been stowed away with the others.