Back to school

So the kids have been back at school for a week & a half...
That means time for cleaning.  (Sod spring-cleaning - the house needs a good clear out after the summer holidays way more than in the spring!)

Where to start though?  EVERYWHERE is an absolute pit....  I am soooo overwhelmed with it all.

AND I'd like to have the little boys room, the stairs & preferably the living room decorated before christmas... (which would of course explain the bizarre yellow squares all over the stair walls!)

And speaking of christmas - it's time to start thinking about that too....  so far I've got as far as putting together a spreadsheet of who to send cards/presents to...

Ah well - will come back to you when I've got myself a bit more organised!

Mud, glorious mud....

I know it's been over 2 weeks since Download, but I figure we've established by now that I'm a bit of a lazy mare when it comes to keeping my blog up to date....

So, how did my first camping experience since I was a teenager go?

Well, as the title suggests it was a flaming mudbath....
Tramping through 6 inch deep mud for over a mile from the carpark to the campsite is really not fun - especially when it's flowing like a mud river.... mmmmm, nice!  We were quite lucky that our particular patch was uphill - there were people who'd been there for a couple of days who were on lower ground & therefore literally camping in a quagmire....

Our boots!

And losing the tent at the end of the night was really really not fun - stumbling round in the dark for 2 hours or so is enough to make you want to tear your hair out.....  Although, judging by the amount of people in the same situation as us, it wasn't entirely our fault.  In fact I'd go as far as to blame whoever it was who decided that closing off the original route that everyone in our sector had taken in favour of making us go across the actual race-track was a good idea - complete threw us all...

(after this fiasco & the state that the track was being left, they didn't do that again...)

Not sure I'm ever going to do it again - if I do I'll be paying the small fortune to camp in the exclusive area where you can park your car next to your tent!!

But the music made it all worthwhile (& the guest area beer tent - discovering the Velvet Elvis cocktail was an absolute epiphany!!)

We did manage to miss a couple of bands through getting confused over stages but once we'd figured out what we were doing/where we were going, it was all good.

I'm not going to go through them all, other than to say Little Angels were as fantastic as they ever were, but Slash & Metallica were disappointing....

And here's the pics!

Little Angels

Me with Spike from the Quireboys

Tyla

Sebastian Bach

And just to show you that it didn't rain all weekend.....  

Me & himself - no idea who the randoms are!!



Tempus Fugit

So, I thought I'd just write a quick post before I go off to Download....
Then I realised that it's been a month since I last updated - a whole month!!  (not that anyone cares - it's not as if I'm hysterically funny like Stickhead at Slightly South of Sanity; or informative like the organising blog ladies)

Just shows how boring my life is that in the last month, nothing of note has happened...  Just my usual gripes about other drivers (who probably have the same gripes about my driving); kids being, well, kids; work; trying to get my house tidy (I have blitzed the kitchen so it actually looks like a kitchen rather than the tip it was...)

I did go to a workshop by the fantastic Pantera Blacksmith yesterday (& now I ache all over & have my ordinary class tonight, ouch)  The woman is a legend in the world of pole-dance - I'm so glad I got the chance to meet her.  I sooo hope I get to do another workshop with her at some point in the future...

But other than that, it's been same ol' same ol' for me...

But as I may have already mentioned - I am off to Download.  Here's hoping it's not raining.....

oh for goodness sake - more asbestos....

You may or not remember the asbestos saga (hold on, didn't I start my last post like that?!)

To bring you up to speed, we pulled down a fence at the back of the garden last year thinking it was just screening general rubbish (which of course shouldn't have been there in the first place, but hey) only to find sheets of asbestos.  It then took much to-ing & fro-ing to get the council to admit responsibility & come & remove said asbestos & rubbish....

Now when they did finally come, they said they were only allowed to remove the surface rubbish, they weren't allowed to dig...  Annoying, but fair enough.

So, as per my last post, the weather's finally nice enough (occasionally!) to let us get out there & start sorting out the extra bit of garden we gained by removing the fence.  We already found a load of junk last week...

Today, not only did we find a ton of junk buried out there (& a toad!) but yep - more fecking asbestos....
Guess that's more emails being fired off to the council....

Mind you, we've also found bones..... a couple of ribs & either a hip or shoulder socket....  I'm pretty sure they're not human but if we find a jaw bone I'll let you know!!

Sorting the garden

You may or may not remember me posting about finding a load of crap at the back of the garden just after we moved in last year (& the resultant battle to get the council to come & remove it).

Well, we did eventually get them to come & shift it - however, although they took the asbestos & the surface rubbish, they were apparently not allowed to remove anything under the surface, even though sheets of corrugated metal could be seen sticking out from under the soil...

I've finally got round to getting out there to start sorting it this afternoon - my good god.....

In one small section we've removed half a barrel (well & truely rusted away - I wouldn't be surprised if it had been whole when it was buried), several sheets of said corrugated metal, loads of bricks & a scary amount of broken glass (it looks like at least one flaming window's been buried out there...)  There was also an external tv aerial and the door from a kitchen cabinet.... (oh & we found a toad as well!!)

Why would anyone bury that stuff, rather than take it to the tip or getting the council to come & take it away??

No wonder they'd put a fence in front of it.....

Catching up...

I might have been full of the joys of spring last time we met, but golly gosh,it's bloody cold today!!
And what have I been up to since last time?  Well, whilst other people across the country were panic-buying fuel, I was panic-washing laundry....  yep, that's right.  During that brief but glorious hot spell that we had, I was catching up on all my winter  build-up of clothes.  3 loads per day I was getting done.  Which I know sounds a hell of a lot, but there are 6 of us remember & I don't possess a tumble dryer, so during winter &/or wet weather, I can't actually do a lot of washing, cos I've got to wait for it all to be dried on clothes horses/radiators...
The only problem with doing all this washing is that now I've got nowhere to put anything!!

But I'm glad I did get pretty much all caught up cos we've gone back to winter.  Snowing in fact!  Thankfully not as bad as Scotland & Northumbria, but still!!!

What else have I been doing?  DS3 turned 5 on April Fools Day (explains an awful lot about him, that does!) so I've been making mountains of cupcakes for his party that he had..  (delicious, even if I do say so myself!)

And due to the problem of lack of clothing storage, I've started decluttering it all...  I now have mounds of clothes to take to nursery & a shedload of nappies to sell and Freecycle....

hohum, what an exciting life I lead!!!

Full of the joys of spring!!

The weather's been glorious here - I've had FOUR loads of washing out today!! 

It's inspired me to start sorting out the back bit of the garden (which was clearly used as a dumping ground by previous occupants but we finally got the council to come & clear the majority of the junk...).  It's going to need a lot of work doing to it, but a little every (dry) day should hopefully soon see it right for at least planting some annual flowers in...

I've also just about finished the big boys' bedroom - I promise I'll put some pics up just as soon as I've got the coving put up!

And being full of the joys of spring, I'm ready to crack on with my habithacking....
I looked at my spreadsheet just now to see where I'm up to & coincidentally, the next step is to start customising the routines - which is just what I figured I'd blog about today anyway!!  Seeing as how 2 steps ago was to add in a half-assed housecleaning hour (or half-hour as I'm hoping to make it!) & the habithacker does hers on a Monday...  Now that doesn't work for me for a variety of reasons.  So I thought that I'd do it on a Wednesday, as I've got to get rid of all the rubbish on a Wednesday anyway to put out for the binmen on a Thursday.  Then I realised that I just don't have the time on a Wednesday...  Plus I like to change the bedding at the weekend...
So I finally figured, the best thing for me is to split it up - so now I'm doing some on Wednesday, some at the weekend but most of it on a Thursday (when I have the most time).  And that's going to work best for me, so I should actually DO it - which is the important bit about this whole getting organised malarky - making things work for YOU, not just doing what some book or website tells you to do....

Onwards & upwards!