Saturday 31 March 2012

New bag

Check out my new bag. Ain't it gojus?

 

Wednesday 28 March 2012

A whole new way to shop!

It's entirely possible that I'm waaaaay behind the times but I have just discovered this whole snazzy get cashback while you shop thing and I love it! Before I buy absolutely anything online now the first thing I do is log in and see if there's a voucher or a code or how much cashback I might be able to get. And it amazes me that a lot of the places I buy from are already offering this to savvy buyers. I'm telling you it's the future! There's a smug part of me that thinks, well I might be spending x amount of pounds on some very expensive shampoo (what can I say, I'm an expensive beauty products type of gal) but if I buy through this website I'll get 5% cashback. It might not seem like much but if I take into account all the internet shopping I do throughout the year I'm sure it will soon clock up. 

I love it so much I'm going around telling everyone about it and now I'm blogging about it as well. You must all become savvy people that buy. Let's revolutionise shopping! Cos we all do it, sometimes out of necessity but often just because we absolutely love it. And we should be smart about it because money is in short supply these days and needs to be stretched as far as it can go...she says having just spent x amount on shampoo...nyeh, I spend a lot of money on my hair, it's my thang, don't shoot me for it. 

That's it really. Shopping is the best. 

Sunday 25 March 2012

2 to the shoe graveyard

Two more pairs this week hit the dust. My beloved (aren't they all?!) grey biker boots, right heel totally and utterly collapsed leading to giant hole leading to soggy of foot, leading to shoe graveyard. Second pair were my funky space trainers that were all gold and shiny and like space shoes. Surprise surprise the sole split in 1! 2! 3! places and another pair bites the dust. My current favorites are undoubtedly on their way out but in some weird way this is how I always intended them to be. I bought them cos they reminded me of Duckie shoes from Pretty in Pink:


My 8 year old niece thinks my shoes are funny. But what's not to love, buckles! laces! pointy toes! battered leather! 


Funny they may be but also muchly loved. Come on Duckie shoes, you can last until sandal time, I believe in you! 

Thursday 22 March 2012

Surprise surprise me duck!

Considering it's only Thursday the week so far has been bite me on the arse rubbish, so imagine my sheer and utter delight to receive a text on Wednesday from the gorgeous Tizz asking me what I was up to that very evening. Immediately sacking any work that I was doing I set to texting back with are you home type shouts of glee. And she was. Plans were made. Fizz was notified. The gang were back together, yay! I absolutely love surprises, especially when they involve visits from your favouritest peeps. 

First up we had tea where I somehow managed to serve up a deeelicious pasta bake a la staple...yep somehow, we know not how, a staple appeared in Tizz's pasta! An actual staple. Oh shame on the chef. What was more surprising was that she informed me it wasn't the first time she'd ever had a staple in her dinner! Oucheroony! Weird stationery in food aside all was grand. We chatted, we drank tea, we did more chatting, we ate some chocolate, more chatting, Fizz came round, more chatting...I'm sure you get the picture. And so on until hometime, which was pretty early for us but we were both so dog tired that we almost broke jaws yawning so hard. 

Even though Tizz was going home today she came all the way into town on the stinky bus to come and meet me for lunch. More eating, more chatting, goodbye hugging and it was all over, boohoo. And what's even worse is that I have no plans to go to our fair capital and she has heaps of work and fun stuff to do so it might be July before we see each other again. JULY! This is just too woeful to even think about for too long so I shall move swiftly on to say missing you already Tizz - mwah! x

Sunday 18 March 2012

Bang! Bang!

Yesterday was not your average Saturday because yesterday T and I went clay pigeon shooting. As you do. It was a Groupon offer and at a bargainous £12 each how could we resist such an opportunity?! Especially as it was something I'd always wanted to try after watching the posho toffs do it on 'Made in Chelsea'. 

In separate cars we headed off to the shooting ground only to weirdly find ourselves meeting up at exactly the same time, in the same gateway, in a teeny tiny village called Thimbleby. In trying to find the place we drove through the same ford twice (a first for Zippy, water driving - woooo!) and battled with several 4 wheel drive ho-ray Henry cars to get to the place. The guy who was teaching us was super nice and most importantly super patient to two very giggly girls shooting a gun for the very first time, not that you would think this from our photos, we totally look like we shoot stuff all the time:


 T went first and naturally managed to hit almost every clay that was pulled, including more than one pair. Jumping about with excitement and grinning wildly from ear to ear we were, it's fair to say, incredibly excited by the whole thing. I was next up and told Dave, our tutor, that he should have let me go first as he was now only building himself up for disappointment. However, that wasn't the case at all. I shot 4! And I shot one pair! Not too shabby at all *proud*

The equipment was heavy (the gun weighed in at 8.5 pounds), the ear muffs were tight, and the shoulder harness thing barely went round my ample bod, but the best of all was my glasses. The style of new glasses means you find yourself looking over the top of the lenses when staring up at the sky waiting for clay pigeons to fly by, so I got me a super nifty glasses pusher upper - so sexy, check it out...

You probably can't see too clearly but what I have going on there is an earplug with some sellotape wrapped round it so that my eyes are barely visible, sheesh :D

All in all though, it was a totally excellent afternoon! Much as I would love to take it up as a hobby at £55 a lesson that might be one that we have to shelve until we're super rich and have a 4 wheel drive giant beastie car, a Barbour jacket, some Hunter wellies, and a jolly big gun. Bang! Bang! 

Sunday 11 March 2012

Weekend of gorgeous

Friday evening at 4.30 I was outta the door at work and from that point onwards have had the nicest weekend in absolutely ages! It started out with a double date on Friday night. When I say double date I mean that there were 4 of us there, 2 of whom are a couple (that'd be us) and 2 other bods from theatre who are not a real couple but were for the evening. We took ourselves off to the new restaurant that has opened in our lovely village and had us the bestest evening. We drank lovely wine, we ate gorgeous food, we ate even more gorgeous puddings, we laughed and laughed and bitched and moaned and talked ourselves hoarse. Then we came back to our's, poured the shots of Amaretto and whiskey and continued to laugh and laugh and bitch and moan and 4 hours later when we all started yawning realised it was time to say na-nite. First ever non-double double date went off with a bang! 

Saturday rolled around to beautiful blue skies and warm weather. Warm enough to be out in the garden in a vest top warm. Beee-yoooo-tiful. We spent heaps of time mooching about the garden, pulling up weeds, digging over veg patches, and general tidying up like what you do in the first sunny weekend in Spring. Wavey went off to visit the ratbags and I kicked my feet up and read a magazine for an hour or so before we headed to an early evening film at our local independent cinema outlet to watch "Like Crazy" which was a very fine, very poignant film that didn't have a happy ending but it didn't really matter. We came home and ate yummy soup and drank some more wine and that was the end of Saturday. 

Today was even more beautiful blue skies and even warmer weather! I'd like to say we did loads of work in the garden but we didn't. We sat on the bench and enjoyed the sunshine, yippee! We visited the old folk, we did a bit more mooching, we bought a radiator for the bathroom, we painted some paint samples on the wall in the bathroom, and I baked a banana and gingerbread slice, which is low fat so we can eat as much as we like, more yippee!

Now it's Sunday evening. I've had more wine. A yummy dinner and can't believe I have to go back to work tomorrow. Bummer. But only 4 days at work this week as we have a day off on Friday and we're going to sleep in a castle! Heeee, very excited! 

Saturday 10 March 2012

Olympic (fun and) games

We'd planned on the whole London 2012 thing completely passing us by until we realised that we need a hotel room in London the night before our holiday, which happens to be during the Paralympic Games. And cue total nightmare. Most of the hotels would only take bookings of 3 nights or more, even the cheap crappy just a bed and a hole in the floor for your loo! I mean come on! What a load of phooey old nonsense! Mucho flapping around and pressing of many keys including the CAPS LOCK KEY AND THEN GETTING ANNOYED WIth myself... *deep breath* we've found a room! We only had to book for one night! And it's just round the corner from St Pancras where we need to be to pick up the Eurostar. 

We toyed with the idea of staying in the swanky 5* one that's actually at St Pancras, but you know what? It's full! Full! We had a quick skooch at the website and some of the suites cost £12,000. And it's full! Holey moley, that is one expensive Olympic Game ticket!

Now we just have to hope that we can find a train ticket down to London that doesn't cost the earth and will guarantee a seat rather than the perch outside the heavily used loo. Oh happy days...

Monday 5 March 2012

Snap(py) Happy

The estate agent guy came to take photos of my old house today to put it on the market. Not quite sure what I was expecting but he was there, ooh let's see, approximately 10 minutes. In out snap it all about! I had to chuckle. We've spent weeks doing it up, taking care to do the big jobs right through to the teeny tiny patching up that we hope no-one will see. I spent several hours in serious thinking time, visualising how I was going to tart it up, which colour I would use for accessories, we must have spent a good couple of hours in there cleaning yesterday, and he took 10 minutes! Sheesh. 

It's funny, when you're looking for a house you spend hours trawling the web, arranging appointments, going to see them for first maybe second viewings. And then when you start to buy it seems to take forever, all that red tape and paperwork you have to trawl through. But to put a house up for sale? 10 minutes. Who knew?! 

I don't really know what happens now. I had chance to ask a few questions before he was sweeping out the door to his next appointment like some kind of estate agent superhero. From what I could gather, he sends me the stuff with all the photos etc for me to approve, they put a board up, it goes on the internet and then I erm wait. Patiently. Obviously I'm hoping it does sell, and quickly would be nice. But I've made a promise to myself to not obsess about it as I reckon it could seriously make your mind boggle. It's a nightmare out there, the market has shrunk dramatically, the mortgage happy days when they were throwing money at people left right and centre no longer exists, and it's a buyers market. 

*Fingers crossed*

Sunday 4 March 2012

A day in the Castle!

We were at a wedding yesterday and it was a very lovely day spent with lovely peeps, eating lovely food, drinking lovely pink drinks, eating chocolate covered strawberries, and many other merriment stuff like that. The best part of all though was that all this took place in a castle! A big proper really really old castle with turrets and oceans of corridors that you could explore and try not to bump your head on the very low ceilings. Most of my photos are not of the bride and groom and wedding party but of the castle. Here's a few highlights: