Five On Friday

Five On Friday time once again and as usual I am joining with Amy from Love Made My Home. I am so enjoying participating in this weekly posting and finding out what others have been up to. I am a bit behind replying to blog posts at the moment but will hopefully catch up over the weekend.


After my somewhat long post last week I am short on time today so without further ado here are my five bits of news from this week.


1.  Our new garden furniture arrived and we are really pleased with it. We do have a parasol to complete the set but for now you will just have to imagine it as I just whizzed outside to take a quick picture this morning and didn't have time to assemble the parasol.

2. A walk on Monday and suddenly this river-water crowfoot has emerged out of nowhere it seems. Everything seems to be growing apace at the moment which surely means that Summer can't be far off (well let's hope not).

3. I did it! Weighing in at Slimming World this week I achieved my 5 stone weight loss. Really pleased but still a long road ahead. I haven't actually set a final target but in my head I know what I want to achieve and what I think is a realistic target so if I go by that I have another 2 st 1 lb to go so onwards and downwards.

4. I have been a wee bit naughty and have started another charity blanket without finishing the previous one. There is however a reason behind this - my friend contacted me and wanted me to teach her how to crochet a ripple blanket and as it was my plan to start a ripple blanket as my next charity blanket I decided that I would start it now as it makes it a lot easier to show someone if you are actually doing the same (well that is my excuse anyway)! I have made several ripples before but this one is a little different, I am playing with the colours a bit and making it an interlocking ripple. You will be able to see what I mean as I progress with it so will show you my progress sometime soon.

5. The next square for the Last Dance On The Beach crochet-along (CAL) was released on Wednesday and I have only today got around to trying it out, this one is meant to represent seagull footprints on the beach and was quite quick to crochet so hopefully I will be able to get all four squares done by tomorrow so I can get back to my charity blanket.

Please go a visit Amy's blog where you will find links to more Five On Friday posts.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope you all have a lovely weekend and I will see you all same time, same place, next week (if not before). 

A productive week!

I am joining with Amy from Love Made My Home again for Five On Friday.


This has been a wonderful week with the weather improving so much from what we have been used to of late. Unfortunately I have had to work three days this week so time has been limited to get out and about. How I coped with full-time (and more) work I just don't know! It does frustrate me now when we have beautiful sunny weather and I am stuck inside, however I made the most of the time I have been able to get out and have been for a walk in the evenings on my work days.


1.  As you can see I have managed to keep up with my 10,000+ steps a day throughout the week and am now on a 13 day streak, hopefully today will make it 14 days. My poor DH - I have been dragging him out during the evening if I am short of my 10,000 steps, sometimes he will oblige, other times I am going out on my own for a boring walk around the local streets.

2.  One evening we went for a walk around our local nature reserve - Rooksbury Mill. We go here fairly often but the scene changes all the time. Lots of signs of Spring this time around.

This is the second year we have seen swans nesting here, hopefully a successful brood will be hatched.

Lovely cowslips with the evening sun on them.

We stood and listened to this thrush sing for ages, such a beautiful sound.

3.  I paid a visit to the Garden Centre on Sunday to buy some more pots and plants to add to the ones I purchased on my last visit and then had a busy time potting them up. I planted the seedlings I showed you last week but as yet nothing is showing, I keep inspecting them daily hoping for signs of growth.

4.  On Bank Holiday Monday we visited my Mum and went out for a walk around my home village - always a pleasure as it brings back so many memories of my childhood. Unfortunately, it did turn out to be the one gloomy day of the week and as we walked rain was threatening all the time and we just got back to my Mum's before it poured down.

One of my favourite spots, it is always so peaceful here down by the stream.

I love this old barn.

A view of my beloved downs with the racehorse gallops in the foreground.

Hollowshot Lane, I have walked along this path many many times over the years.

A view of the far end of the downs from Three Corner Firs

You can see that rain is not far away now.

Couldn't resist taking these beautiful bluebells growing on the edge of a garden.

5.  And finally, some indoor relaxation time, I hosted our craft group meet up on Saturday and we spent the day crocheting, laughing and eating! I completed week 2 of the crochet-along that I am taking part in as well as working on my next charity blanket.

Week 2 CAL, all four squares now on my blocking board

Charity blanket in progress, this one is taking me longer than usual as I am busy with the CAL as well.

I have just started Week 3 of the CAL

I hope you have all had a wonderful week. Have a lovely weekend and I will see you all again next Friday. Please go and visit Amy's blog where you will find links to more Five On Friday posts.

A mixed bag!

The days seem to be speeding by at the moment, I cannot believe it is the end of another week and time to join Amy at Love Made My Home for Five On Friday.


I haven't really done anything terribly exciting this week, mainly due to the unpredictable nature of the weather we are experiencing at the moment. Tuesday was a glorious day but guess what - I had to work that day so didn't really get to enjoy it.


We did manage to get out on Saturday and enjoyed a lovely lunch at one of our favourite pubs - The Vine at Hannington and then enjoyed a walk over the delightful village green and out into the downland countryside. It was a real treat to see and hear skylarks, a bird that seems to have declined rapidly in recent years.

As you might remember we had the garden refurbished late last year and finally I had the chance to get to the Garden Centre to begin buying some planting and containers to turn it from a blank canvas into what I hope will be an enjoyable space to sit out and enjoy when the warmer weather comes. It is early days yet and there is still a lot more I want to achieve but at least it is a start - the little collection in the photo below cost me an arm and a leg so cannot buy too much at a time.

I am trying to choose mostly plants that attract bees and butterflies and I was lucky enough to be given the planting container below with butterfly friendly seedlings. I planted it up last weekend and already the growing rate has been amazing. It is indoors on a windowsill at the moment but will go outside to join the other pots when danger of frost has passed. If any of you know any plants that can be container grown that are good for attracting birds, butterflies and bees please let me know, I am very much a novice at this so any tips will be useful.

I have been mainly been entertaining myself by reading and crocheting this week, this is my latest charity blanket underway.

There are a lot of colour changes in this one so it might take me awhile, lots of those dratted ends to sew in!


Well that is my five pics for this week. Please pay a visit to Amy's blog where there are links to lots more Five On Friday posts.

November

Well here we are at the last day of November - I am not sure where this month has gone, it seems to have whizzed by so quickly and I still haven't done anything about getting ready for Christmas.


When I thought about blogging this morning I didn't think we had done much during November to blog about but when I looked through my November photos I realised there has been quite a bit going on.


As you know I have been going to Slimming World since the end of March this year and much to my surprise I was nominated for the Miss Slinky award at my group at the beginning of the month. I don't like speaking in front of people so I did umm and ahhh as to whether I should do it but decided to have a go. The evening started off well as it was my first weigh-in since my half term holiday and I lost an amazing 4.5 lbs bringing my total weight loss to 3 stone 9.5 lbs and gaining my 3.5 stone award. All the walking we achieved when we were away must have worked miracles. It was then time for the Miss Slinky part of the evening, there were four of us up for the award and we all had to give a little speech about our SW journey and why we were doing it and to my amazement (as I still have a lot of weight to lose) I won and was awarded Miss Slinky 2015. Here I am together with Mick, another member, who won the Mr Sleek award.

Unfortunately I have struggled for the rest of the month to lose more weight and maintained for a couple of weeks but hopefully after losing 2 lbs last week I am back on track. I really want to achieve 4 stone by Christmas.


We haven't managed too many walks this month for various reasons, mostly because of the horrible wet, windy, grey days we seem to have had for most of the month but we did achieve another lovely walk around St. Mary Bourne. Here are a few random photos I took that day, you can see that it was quite a grey day but it was good to get out and enjoy the countryside.

We have been trapped at home since the middle of the month as we had contractors in refurbishing our back garden. This was a long overdue project. We have found it increasingly difficult to manage the garden and to my shame it has been neglected for a couple of years now with very little being done to it so we decided to rip up the horrible grass (there was no way you could have ever called it a lawn) and have a patio and decking put in its place. Unfortunately the poor contractors struggled as the weather was not on their side and it is still not complete. You can just imagine the mud and mess as it started to rain heavily on day 2 and unfortunately as we have no back access they had to bring everything through the house to the skip on the front drive. They still have to come back and finish pointing in all the paving and lay a membrane and shingle/pebbles around the border but it has been too wet for them to do it. Hopefully we will have some dry days this week so they can return and finish the job and then I get on with the exciting task of buying pots and plants and patio furniture so we can enjoy the garden next year. 


Here are the before, during and now pictures, when it is all finished and I have it all planted up I will show you the end result but that could be after Christmas and into the New Year at the rate we are going.

All of this took us up to this last weekend and what an enjoyable weekend we had. On Saturday I hosted our little craft group that meet up at the end of each month, we usually go to Long Eaton to Colly's house but once a year they all come south and spend a day at my house and then in December we head to Coates, near Peterborough and spend a day at Tammy's house. We had a fun day and a little crafting was done between all the eating, drinking and laughing!

I love these days when we all get together and are inspired by what everyone is making. I chose to work on my Autumn Leaves corner to corner throw, I am over the half way point now and it will be good to start the decreasing soon and have shorter rows to crochet.

And finally, to round off the weekend, we were invited to my cousin's house yesterday to join in the celebrations for my Uncle's 91st birthday. My Uncle is incredible, he still walks miles and manages his allotment, I can only hope if I get to his age I will be half as fit as he is. It was so good to get together with family and my cousin and her husband produced a wonderful lunch and a good day was had by all.

We have another big birthday celebration to look forward to at the end of December, my Mum (pictured above with her brother-in-law) will be ninety on Boxing Day so another get-together with family and friends is planned. I am sure I will be showing you photos from that occasion after Christmas.


Well, this post has turned out to be rather long (especially as I didn't think we had been up to much during November). I am planning to catch up on my blog reading and commenting soon and hope it won't be too long before I am back with another blog post.