The Gallery: Photography Resolution…

Reblogged from Resolutionary:

• 

Hey there! Hellloooo! It’s Kailexness! I’m joining in The Gallery from my Resolutionary Blog this week because, to be honest, it seemed daft not to!! One of my new years resolutions was to get my digital files sorted! My dear husband thought it would be a good idea to upload all our digital images into individual date order – it wasn’t, it’s a bloody night mare! So I’m having to rename all the files since 2007 and put them in year folders so they are at least viewable. My photo albums stop pre christmas …

Here’s a post I wrote today for the Resolutionary2012 blog, just in case you might have missed it

Garden Project 2012

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

 

It’s nearly February!!!! So it’s time to think about what crops we want where, to give in to my daughters desire for flowers and get out in the garden and be an Earth Mother.

I quite like the planning bit, given a cup of coffee and a quiet hour to work out what we are planting, where and when it needs to go in.

This year I have been much aided by Sutton Seeds, as a bit of a novice to the gardening world, I have found their seed packaging to have been most helpful. (Yes, it’s all down to the packaging, clever people!) We don’t have an allotment, just some large vegetable boxes and this year we are enlarging one of the side beds for a bit of extra room, plus potatoes & tomatoes in large bags… It’s quite a lot of space when you add it up!  But it is area restrictive, so the fact that Suttons clearly label their seeds so well is a win/win for us.

I am of the attitude that if you can’t eat it, don’t grow it, vegetables have such lovely flowers that I don’t feel I need to cultivate flowers for aesthetic purposes, my 5 year old daughter is of a different mind, she badly wants LOTS of flowers, so we let her choose some seed packets, I told her to look out for the packets that said “Easy To Grow” but we will see.

We have a bed in the garden that is along the edge of the Koi pond, during the summer we can’t see it from the house due to the mammoth  trampoline, just now it can be seen and will be until after Easter, so we had a bit of fun choosing Spring flowering bulbs; snow drops, crocus, daffs, tulips and the like, all dwarf varieties but in a few weeks we should see a splash of colour.

 

 

My hands were shaking from the cold a little there…

So we have begun, right now the potatoes are Chitting. I’ve gone for First Earlies and a Main Crop this year instead of our usual just first earlies, mainly because I love digging up the spuds and they taste so much better!!!

My next job is digging the hell out of the bed!

Ice ice baby

My son came home from nursery yesterday demanding ice to play with, I’m such a soft touch I let him make some and add some food colouring. His hands are going to be disgusting but he’s having a lovely time!

The Gallery: Phone Photos

On the way back from my nieces birthday party we had to practically drive past my Mother In Law’s house, it was nearly tea time, so we decided to pick her up and go find Pizza!!

The photo was taken in the MIL’s garden.

I haven’t crowed over the totally overwhelming gorgeousness of my small people for a while

 

Please visit come of the other participants in The Gallery at Sticky Fingers

Resolutionary2012

Last year I rehashed all my favourite blog posts of 2010 for you to savour, this year I’m just not looking back, if you didn’t read my drivel as it was published such is life, my mind is focused forward and there I intend to let it remain. Last year I was also determined that I would make no new year resolutions, this was probably because this time last year was not a good place in my roller coaster life and I figured January would make or break so expending energy worrying about unimportant stuff like getting fit and eating better wasn’t high on the agenda… Yeah, it was pretty tough back then! I’m very chuffed to say that this year has gradually got better on the issues I faced then, thanks to my hard working husband and some very special friends who are always able to lift my spirits, one in particular (you know who you are.)

This January looks pretty much normal and it’s with great relief I can say that… So on with some normal stuff like back to school, a drop of rain, mud and snow perhaps and a look forward to 2012 with a view to improving certain normal areas like health and fitness etc…

I have a great laugh surfing through Urban Dictionary, it’s the ‘word’ don’t you know, this week I stumbled upon the term ‘Resolutionary’ it made me giggle for ages as this is so me…

People who join a gym after the New Year, only to quit going within 3 months.

“I couldn’t find a free treadmill, the place was crawling with resolutionarys.”

Sound familiar?

So I thought, what if I make a few notes, record my progress on certain areas, like a diary of non-progress, would that be incentive enough to keep me going past April?

I don’t know but it’s worth a try isn’t it? If I just shrugged and said I’m going to fail then it will.

So Resolutionary2012 has been born. Let’s hope it helps!

Christmas Yumness!

I can’t compete with my sisters Christmas biscuits but we had a bit of fun making marshmallows on sticks!

I don’t think I fully appreciated how hard they are to make!

 

Family Traditions: No frenzy, no Sir…

This is a rule, a traditional rule in this house… It works well for us and makes the effort worthwhile.

Only one person may be opening a present at any one time….

Ever…

Honestly.

And yes, this means that we can make the present opening last all day, either side of Christmas Lunch, sometimes after tea and occasionally have some put bu for boxing day too…

We all watch each other opening our pressies and if we wish to, we stop to play. If one of us has to leave the room for any reason all pressy opening stops.

There is no frenzy and all presents are appreciated and examined before moving on.

 

Family Traditions: Nibbles for Santa!

My little sister made this plate for Santa after my son was born, of course the smalls will think we have always had it, it’s part of their Christmas tradition now.

I still think she got the milk bit wrong, I’m sure as magical as Father Christmas is he would be fine with a small port or a large brandy… he can be sloshed all Christmas Day like the rest of us can’t he

Family Traditions: Logistics….

How can Father Christmas get around the world to all the children in just one night and what happens as we have no chimney?

It’s a well know fact that in 4 days Santa will start his journey around the world, far from being impossible, this is a logistical possibility which is watched and enjoyed by our smalls every year.  According to NORAD he doesn’t experience time like we do, what is 24 hours to us might be weeks or months for Santa!  He starts on Christmas Day as it dawns in the South Pacific and then delivers his way across New Zealand and Australia then heads through Japan and onto the rest of the world… Of course, the children need to be in bed and asleep before he gets here! When they wake, they watch him deliver to all the children who have Christmas day start after we do.

It’s a complicated trip which we follow all Christmas eve with great interest, with intense discussions on time zones, calling out the countries and discussing the things the children there like to eat or what animals exist in the area that might see F.C pass over head.

You can find out more about this and enjoy it yourself here http://www.noradsanta.org/

We view F.C’s journey via our Wii internet on the telly, I think my daughter will be espeically pleased to see him arrive in Kentucky where her friend as gone for christmas as she’s a little worried that he might not find her!

We love that NORAD shows Father Christmas’s journey for the children of the world, it’s magical and I’d like to say THANKS! You guys rock xx

So yes, he can get here fine! The only problem being, is we have like so many houses these days, blocked up our chimney and stuck a huge bookcase in front of it!

So what do we do? We leave him out a key of course!!

 

Simple really!!

Family Traditions: The Tree and The Angel of Good Deeds

With 12 sleeps to go to the big day I have been musing a lot on our family traditions over the festive period, the job of making Christmas happen, work and be magical, falls to me in our house, as it does to many mothers all over the world, not Daddy’s fault at all, it’s his busiest time of the year.

I shop (which I hate) for both my family and his in the pressie department. I’m calendar manager, it’s up to me to make sure everyone is where they should be, when they should be, dressed correctly. I’m chief cook and bottlewasher too, so making sure I buy food at the right time to get £25 back from Morrisons is my chore too And I have to say *gloats* that there is one pressie left to buy and one King Herod costume to make, some lumpy cranberry sauce to buy (I bought smooth, it’s not the same you know).

Ta Da! *bows*

So now I can almost kick back, attend two nativities, have dinner out with friends on Wednesday and just chill a little…  okay maybe not, I get to make sure the magic happens…

So, family traditions… We have encountered a few already, my daughter and I sat down and wrote 45 Christmas cards… that was just the ones for school and nursery friends. I still have 40 odd cards to write to family and friends, I cut back this year.

We all went out Sunday and bought the tree, this is Daddy’s thing, I think cutting down a beautiful tree as a decoration is a little barbaric and putting it up inside your home is by far the most idiotic tradition I’ve come across… Any way… Daddy loves his big, smelly, beautiful tree and is a bit of a fuss arse in choosing (we visited 5 tree sellers, admittedly some of them wanted £40 for the dirtiest scrawniest excuse for a tree you have ever seen) We all have to agree on the best tree, although towards the end the daughter would have taken any darn tree just so she could have one! One garden center got my vote, they were serving mulled wine, mince pies and roast chestnuts! Yum! and the trees were nicer too *caching* tree bought…  It’s now taking up a stupid amount of room in our small sitting room.

So… the christmas decs got dragged out of the loft and the tree was made to look glorious as it dies (yep, I do have an issue with this tradition, I’m *dealing with it. *ignoring) and the children were given their new decorations which I bought from Bath Christmas Market, we buy something new every year, they put them on the ‘best’ spot and then were allowed to decorate the tree, with Daddy doing the high bits. I pulled out the decorations for the rest of the house and started placing them on shelves and hanging them. I also got out the metal Angel.

This Metal Angel was a gift from my step Aunt about eight years ago, I’ve never really found the ‘ideal’ spot for her as she stands quite tall and is bulky, she had to go somewhere high for the last five years as little fingers could get hurt on her.

Every year I take the Angel out of the Christmas box and she gets put ‘somewhere’ and then she can’t be found for a period of time even though we all look everywhere that Angel does a disappearing act, she’s off doing good deeds I like to think. One year she vanished for a whole 24 hours, this year it was only about 3 hours, she may have had a lighter load perhaps, she may still disappear some more. But go she did. Then suddenly she’s back, somewhere I know I have looked!

Every year, I’m baffled…

They better be great good deeds Angel.