Days 34-38

Well the house didn't feel too strange for too long as S came home on Saturday. She found she was missing us too much and wanted to come home instead of staying with Nanny for another night. I went and collected her at 7pm after she had eaten and had a bath and was all togged up in her PJ's.

So I did have the day to myself and spent most of it painting S's bedroom. I can't remember when I began painting it, months ago I suspect, it feels like it's been an ongoing project for far too long. The walls were a pale purple but you wouldn't believe how hideous this has been to cover with the new shade of pink S chose.

I did manage to escape for an hour halfway through the day as G had asked me to post a parcel and as I had to pop out and do that I also popped into one of the local charity shops. Which is where I found this cute little mug. Best 50p I have spent in ages.

As more painting wasn't on the cards on Sunday with S back at home and G at work I asked her which playground she would like to go to. S chose the one by the shore so we had plenty of fresh air whilst enjoying being outside and we decided a little visit to the ice cream van would be a good idea too!
Back home we played together on the Wii, she was teaching me how to do the Scooby Doo game, but that was only after we had spent a little time creating a colourful streamer for the garden out of plastic carrier bags.

T came home on Monday after having the most fantastic time at Grandma's, the highlight being an open top bus trip to Stonehenge.
Monday also marked the fourth year anniversary of when my wonderful Dad passed away. This isn't a great quality photo of a photo, but here we are together on my wedding day.
I can't believe four years have gone by. He is with me everyday though, in my heart I carry my love for him.
I was swamped by grief for so long when Dad died, I didn't think there would ever be a normality to life again, but life does go on, it's just different because a huge and important chunk is missing, but go on it does.

Tuesday we went to buy T a new school jumper, one of the expensive ones with the school's name on it. 
Only we ended up not having to buy one from the school supply shop.
On our way to the shop we stopped in a couple of charity shops (I'm sure you wouldn't expect to read anything else) and there on the children's clothes rail was a practically brand new sweater in T's size for 50p!
I repeat 50p.
This now became the best thing I had recently spent 50p on! 
The school T goes to isn't local to where we have to go to buy the uniform so it was a real fluke to find one there.
After such a successful shopping trip we went to the cinema to see Brave and then for a meal.

Today was not the kind of day T dreams of. It started with a six monthly check up at the dentist and was followed with trouser shopping.
Not for school trousers, just normal every day jeans and chino trousers which made it just ever so slightly more interesting, but not by much. 
Back home the children amused themselves whilst I spent another couple of hours slapping paint on S's walls and quietly cursing the fact that the paint has run out and I need to buy another tin before this wretched decorating will be finished. I'm sure it'll all be worth it in the end!

Days 30-33

A short round up for the rest of this week. 

Tuesday was our car's MOT.

I don't like taking the car to the garage, it's very much out of my comfort zone. I know nothing about cars.

 The chap who runs the garage is very friendly and talks to me in a non technical way. The chap who works for him is more the sort, in my opinion anyway, who thinks a mechanic's workshop isn't any place for a female. When I dropped the car off I explained to him it was for the MOT and also some work on the exhaust.

'What makes you think there is something wrong with the exhaust?' he asked me, you can guess the tone of voice he used I'm sure.

I just smiled sweetly and said

'Because it's fallen off, I may not have great technical knowledge when it comes to cars, but I reckon that is a problem!'

The children were kept busy all day as S was at her friend's house and T had a friend over.

On Wednesday to hopped on a train to Chandler's Ford to investigate Hiltingbury Lakes. This is where we ate our lunch and played 21 dare. Apparently it's a game T plays at school.

One of S's dares was to walk like a penguin whilst quack like a duck. One of T's was to skip up to a tree shout out 'I'm a girl' and skip back again. I had to shout out 'I'm pregnant and my baby has the face of a duck'. Thankfully it was deserted!

Yesterday we headed to a local Country park to meet up with my aunt, two cousins and their young children for games and a picnic. T bought a (girl)friend along with him and she persuaded him to have a go on the mini roundabout! Just love this photo of him having a good old chuckle about the fact he is sat on a baby deer!

S chose the horse as it looked a little like a My Little Pony, she is nearly too big for these rides too!

And today the house is very quiet. T went off to Salisbury this morning. He is staying with Grandma until Monday and this afternoon, after some homework which needed to be completed in readiness for Junior school, I took S to my mum's as she is staying with her until Sunday. It feels strange!

Days 25-29

I'm not managing the post a day I wanted to do over the summer holiday but I am (kind of) keeping up with what we've been up to.

Back to Thursday we go now. 

Thursday was the day we always get during the break. A day of whinge and whine. A day of needling each other for no good reason.  A day when nothing can really be enjoyed 'just because'.

So this seemed the perfect time, when it came round to the evening, to try a gin and tonic. I don't drink a great deal of alcohol but there are a few drinks I would like to sample and this was one of them.

Never again.

I asked G if he had ever tried a G&T and he said he had, but he didn't like it as it was like drinking shampoo. I wished I had listened.

It was vile.

Friday was a much nicer day.
We took the ferry over to Hythe, we went in March last year and had a really good day and thought it was probably time for another visit.

S's new Meerkat was given prime window watching position in the little train which you can take along the pier.

It was such a beautiful day as this photo of the bunting along the water's edge proves

and I thought the bunting on the freezer cabinets in Waitrose was very eye catching too!

This was the perfect spot for us to sit and enjoy our ice creams

before we headed to the playground where after about 20 minutes it started to rain.

Which only added to the day because we got to see a, albeit very faint, rainbow.

Whilst waiting for the ferry G pointed out this message carved into one of the planks on the pier  

and next to it shows that thankfully....

As we were returning to Southampton a much larger vessel was leaving, the Queen Victoria.

No photos from Saturday as it was a day spent tidying. G wanted to clear out the attic so we did a trip to the charity shop with items we no longer needed/wanted and then we all lazed around as it was so hot and humid.

Sunday was even hotter but we had decided we were going out regardless. Just a few weeks ago we had been to Manor Farm for a WW2 event and they this weekend they were holding a Victorian Whodunnit event.

There were four woman in Victorian dress who we had to interview to try and work out who had stolen the church silver. T REALLY got into it and it was he who confronted the thief and she confessed all!
This was a note written by one of the suspects, left for us to read as evidence.

There were a couple of things we saw this time that we missed on our last visit. The pantry door was open so of course a photo had to be taken as I knew I wouldn't be the only one who would want to see.

I was wondering if this had anything to do with the Wartime Farm series which is being filmed at here.

My three most favourite pictures of the day, after the ones of the piggies.
My dream garden door complete with hollyhocks.

Free range chickens in the cottage garden.

A little robin who was flitting around the picnic tables seeing what he could find.

No photos from Monday. 
We spent 3 hours at the eye hospital for one of S's appointments and followed that with an impromptu meet with another lovely blogger. The plan was then to make our way into town to do some shopping but T received a text from school friends asking him to meet up with them elsewhere so I let him go off with them and took S to the park where she just happened to see two friends from school. So whilst she was off playing I got to chat to another adult for a while and everyone was happy. Result.

Day 24

With a rainy day forecast for Wednesday we decided that buying school uniform and then taking ourselves off to the cinema would be the way to go. That was until T started to chat online with a friend from his junior school he hadn't seen for a year. T found out that this lad had recently moved a little closer to us and at 4.45pm he asked 'could J come over and possibly stay the night?'

So school uniform buying was put on hold for the time being, J came over and the boys did computer game playing and S and I played with beads.

Most of these beaded sticks are S's creation, she did far more than me. I just love them! So zingy and full of colour.

Some are keepers and others are going to be given away.

Luckily a few of the beads were perfect for the bottom as they had just the right size hole to be snugly threaded onto the bamboo stick and then wouldn't budge, others I held in place with a dab of superglue. We started threading them a little way up so there would be a bit of stick to push into the soil of a pot plant. 

The last four we made we topped off with a bead with an initial on, one for each of our names.

This is the photo which inspired our making today. It's from a book called How Does Your Garden Grow? which was also the inspiration for our scarecrow. As S has a huge stash of beads from various sets she has been given over the years I thought this was the ideal craft to use them on. It kept us entertained for over 2 hours which I think is pretty good going.

The photo next to this in the book is craft idea made with plastic drinking straws. I wanted to include this as 
1. someone may want to give it ago
and
2. I made this with T many years ago, way before I had heard of blogging and when he would actually do the occasional sit down and make something with mum thing! If I had a blog back then then it would no doubt have been photographed and blogged, so recording it now is the next best thing.

Days 20-23

After our canal walking adventures on Friday we stayed at home on Saturday. The most energetic thing we managed, which I let myself get talked into this time, was a water fight. 

Sunday was another lazy day mainly spent at home. We did go out to the park for an hour. The long flower border was in full bloom and looked really lovely and the flowers were being appreciated by the bees and butterflies too.

We took a football with us and G devised games to play which involved kicking it through this gap. Do you like the manly stance he assumed for photo taking purposes?!

Yesterday S had a friend over in the afternoon and so she was busy playing girlie games and T tried to get me interested in his Sims games on the X-box. 

Today, along with my mum, we went to Telegraph Woods because it's somewhere she has never been to and the children wanted to see if the rope swing we discovered a few weeks back was still there. It was, but the rope has been shortened and couldn't be sat on as before so they just clung on and went for it!

We took a different walking route through the woods and discovered a hole in the fence onto a golf course which was deserted apart from two figures in the distance. More people out enjoying a lovely summer's day.

Days 18 and 19

In my last post I mentioned we needed to buy a special item at the shops for a garden project and here it is. A bag of straw.

No we haven't added to the Jumble and Jelly household with another pet,

we needed it for stuffing a scarecrow. To be honest this is something we were going to do last year and it never happened. G had lashed together 2 lengths of dowelling and I had bought clothing items from a jumble but that was as far as it went. Until Thursday when our very own Worzel Gummidge began to take shape.

He needs finishing off with a head, he is wearing S's sun hat here for the photo call, but he is in situ and looking very smart in his baggy green jumper and faux leather trousers!

In the afternoon I packed us up a picnic and we set off for the local park to eat and play games but half way there we decided it was so hot we would stop off at the pond and field instead. Miller's Pond has very recently been awarded Nature Reserve status

and the field where horses once grazed and the grass was kept low has now been allowed to grow. And very pretty it is too and it is alive with butterflies and bees

and a multitude of other insects, no idea what this is and it was only briefly on S's headscarf,

but it isn't now really conducive for picnic eating and ball game playing. So after we ate and attempted a quick game of catch we packed up and went for a little wander around the pond instead. 

Friday G was off with us and we took a bus to Titchfield to walk along the canal. The links will give you lots of interesting info about the area, like the fact the canal is believed to be the second oldest in the country.
 A nice little des res in the distance just at the start of what was to prove to be the walk with the worst set of directions we have ever had. 

The walk wasn't without it's highlights though. An owl's face and wing can clearly be seen in the shape of this tree.

We found a perfect spot alongside the canal for picnic eating and toe dipping and it was flaming cold!

This part of the canal was completely still and the water was covered in algae, it was so totally covered it looked like it had been carpeted.

We kept spying flashes of the most iridescent blue all along the canal until finally I managed to snap one of the dragonflies as it rested for a few seconds.

The second part of the walk took us through this field

and led to a very conveniently placed bench with said 'Rest and be Thankful' and we were.

Horses and foals in the last field we walked through

before returning back to the village.
S liked the pink door, I liked the blue glass.

Clicking on the above link for Titchfield shows a photo of the centuries old houses in South Street and is where this little oddly placed little window is.