Christmas Decoration Exchange

Thanks for the interest! I now have about 16 people signed up (although a couple may be the same person!! LOL I get confused with twitter, blog and real names!!) I'm happy to have a few more if you have not signed up yet.

You really do need to send me your address and email address though - you can safely use the contact page on this blog - or DM me on twitter for my email.

The plan is to create a sort of 'chain' each person will send to the next on the list - I won't announce who is sending to whom so it will be up to you if you reveal who you are!! Doing it this way means it doesn't matter if an odd number of people join, or if an odd number of people don't want to post outside their country.

It is NOT  a competition, however great or bad you think your decoration is it will be loved as it was made by you! and handmade is always best.

There is no theme, except Christmas, no one is to be offended by religious or non religious items - we are all grown ups (except me) The only proviso is that the item is to be hung on a tree so it needs to either light or small or both.

Yes, yes, I know it's only September....but...

.... it's cold enough to be winter and I've already started buying Christmas presents....oh stop judging me, you are only feeling bad that you haven't got organised yet!

(Why not get some CMT Christmas cards as September is CMT Awareness Month)

Anyway that made me think, long ago I was a member of a chat room and we sometimes did silly swaps (in real life! actual things, through the post!) and I've come to love twitter and blogging so much I wondered if it would work here too. Being in the middle of a global financial meltdown I realise no one has much money but something small and cheap to post would be a ray of sunshine in a gloomy world wouldn't it! Something like...

A Handmade Christmas Tree Decoration! We could all do that, anything from a picture we drew and laminated, to an elaborated felt sewn reindeer, with anything in between. Glitter covered pine cones, painted wooden stars, Festive Fimo Father Christmas, pipe cleaner shapes with beads, well you get the idea. Something lovingly made but not necessarily expensive (though diamond encrusted salt dough gingerbread men are fine too) and something small and easy to post...

We could do that right? and if we start now we have 104 days to do it.

So if you would like to send a decoration (and receive one) you can sign up below.


You will need to commit to doing it (no slackers - no backing out) you will need to be prepared to give me your address (Contact me here) and tell me if you are prepared to send out of your country or locally only.

All decorations to be finished and posted by 1st December 2011

Plenty of ideas to get you started here and all over the internet. So what's stopping you?

I don't think my blog is so popular that I need to set a limit! but just in case - I'll restrict it to first 20 people. Not sure I could cope with organisng more. I expect about 5 of us will play! LOL

My fridge, a meme from eons ago.

Way back when dinosaurs walked the earth I was tagged to blog about the contents of my fridge. Finally you can judge away. You will notice the kitchen is cream and brown while the fridge is silver. This is because I am cheap and the fridge is second hand, bought from a gay mate who needed to change it to colour coordinate.
So first off the fridge is gay. Then you will see it is rather full. Worryingly this is not our only fridge, we have a small one atop the freezer, and there are only 3 of us in the house (not including the dog).
So what is in the fridge? Well not butter, thats in the larder.
The fridge contains:
Mustard
Ketchup
Brown sauce
Mayonnaise
Margarine
Fresh vegetables (and half a cucumber)
Jam
Marmalade
Lemon curd
Half a tin of raspberries
Chutney
Chilli jam
Cranberry sauce
Fresh ground coffee
Olives
Pickled jalapenos
Pickled garlic
5 types of cheese
Beer
Wine
Cranberry juice
Organic apple juice
Milk
Free range Eggs
Sliced ham
Soya custard
yoghurts
Benecol drink
Left over cauliflower cheese
Butter wrappers for wiping round cake tins to grease them
It is not a tidy fridge.
The other fridge has beer, wine, spare cheese and a water melon. Oh and dog food
Was it what you expected? And what do you have in your fridge that you consider an essential and I don't even have...?

Luck

Can you be lucky?

Today I was thinking about luck and randomly asked twitter what they thought about luck. Is there such a thing? Can you be lucky? Or unlucky? Do you ‘make your own luck’? is luck not a thing at all…

Looking at some timelines on twitter was what made me ponder in the first place, some people seemed to have a timeline full of woe and calamity, illness, lost jobs, broken appliances, sick children, lack of sleep, lack of money, depression, - Wow! I thought, they are unlucky people!

But others had timelines of joy and happiness, kids passing exams, kids saying funny things, bargains bought at boot sales, fivers found in pockets, great jobs, lovely husbands, new pregnancies and I thought – Wow! They are lucky people!

But looking further into some timelines it became obvious that actually, the people were the same. The number of illnesses, missed buses, found money, unexpected phone calls, visiting in laws and the like were often very similar but, and this is the crucial bit, the way they were looked at and spoken about varied a huge amount!

I follow people who have cancer that consider they are 'lucky' people, and wealthy people that think they are unlucky'.

While I’m sure I could do a whole PhD on twitter and optimists and pessimists and luck, a very cursory glance leads me to believe what many of my followers also tweeted in answer to the ‘Can you be lucky?’, that while things happen, the way you approach them can determine if you ‘feel’ lucky or unlucky as a result.

So ask yourself, do you feel lucky?

The one with Jason.....and near nudity, and lust..oh and charity

So those people that know me well (and yes Twits I include you) will know that I have something of a crush on Jason Bradbury.

There are many reasons, he is geeky and clever and funny.........oh and he has a rather nice body. Luckily he knows I have a crush on him so I can blog about it with only minimal embarrassment. My husband also knows about my crush, he finds it funny.

We (as a family) have watched The Gadget Show for a long time and as my crush grew i started following Jason on Twitter. Jason is incredibly nice. No really, he is a really nice bloke. He is of course also an idiot! Always up for a ridiculous challenge, so I'm sure that when he was asked to Join the Swim he leapt at the chance, partly to show off his bod (he's such a floozy!) , partly for the unbelievable challenge but mostly for the charity it will help.

" Sir Richard Branson and Ronan Keating are taking on the ultimate challenge. They’re captaining a team to swim the gruelling waters of the Irish Sea and raise £1million for Cancer Research! 

The Swim is a celebrity-led challenge to cross the Irish Sea from Holyhead to Dublin in a 10-person relay. Almost three times the length of the English Channel, this 56-mile swim hopes to raise £1 million for Cancer Research UK’s lifesaving work.

Will this team of celebrity adventurers beat the odds to swim the most treacherous waters off the British coast? Richard and Ronan are to be joined by Gadget Show host Jason Bradbury, Snog, Marry, Avoid presenter and pop star Jenny Frost and have most recently been joined by Strictly Come Dancing star Pamela Stephenson.

In the time that it is likely to take The Swim team to cross the Irish Sea (40 hours), around 1,400 people will have been diagnosed with cancer in the UK. So Cancer Research UK is calling on everyone to get involved in The Swim and help raise £1million for the charity’s lifesaving work."

So are you still sitting there? are you in awe that a bloke that had such poor swimming technique a few months ago is planning to swim in the Irish Sea?! Well why not donate a few quid while you are still in awe, you know you want to! If you are as crazy as Jason you could even organise a swim of your own..

Let me know if you donate, or if you plan a swim, or just comment with "phwoar!" if you like these pics :-)

I mean, who doesn't like a man in rubber......or a man out of it!

About Cancer Research UK
• Cancer Research UK is the world’s leading cancer charity dedicated to saving lives through research
• The charity’s groundbreaking work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer has helped save millions of lives. This work is funded entirely by the public.
• Cancer Research UK has been at the heart of the progress that has already seen survival rates double in the last forty years.
• Cancer Research UK supports research into all aspects of cancer through the work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors and nurses.
• Together with its partners and supporters, Cancer Research UK's vision is to beat cancer.
• For further information about Cancer Research UK's work or to find out how to support the charity, please call 020 3469 6699 or visit www.cancerresearchuk.org

Laying in the Kids Field watching the world go by

With a couple of hours til the next band we want to see, DD has insisted on a spell at the merriment put on for the kids. She is playing on the crazy bikes near the Breastival Temple and Baby Chill Out Tent. We have eaten our weight in churros and last night had a fabulous pie with mash, from Pieminister. Now the barbecue at River cottage smells good, but i nned to leave room for WI cakes and tea later; should a festival really include this much eating?

luckily towing a trolley around is keeping me fit, excellent for the late night stuff when DD sleeps in it, and during the day i drop a side down and use it as a sofa.

today is fancy dress day, started rainy, now sunny and some great costumes around. A camel in a tutu just walked by.

we saw mr tumble earlier, and dick and dom. But later it's all about mark ronson.

oh and eliza doolittle, oh and house of pain ;-)

Comedy at camp bestival

Writing this while listening to some bloody hilarious standup. (Ben Norris) There is a phenomenal amount of swearing and sex jokes and my 11 yo daughter is loving it (as am i) we are awaiting the genius that is Matt Kirshen, but not all comedy is of the professional variety... Some thing i overheard yesterday

(on a 4yo reaching for a water bottle for a drink) "not that one Oscar, thats the vodka"

oh and Matt, yeah we would laugh if you bled, i'll be setting the traps as suggested.

In addition; names

I need to add Zara, Ruby, Sebastian, Jasper, Matilda and another Freya

I seriously love camp bestival

Prepare for lots of tiny blog posts, when signal allows