Sunday

Today I began by doing another bootfair. I am trying to make enough money for us to have a weeks camping before we go back to school. I really want to go to the New Forest, we will have to see.

At the bootfair I sold £31.50 of old items, mostly clothes after deducting the £10.00 pitch fee that is a profit of £21.50. Combine that with last weeks total I have made a profit of £58.20. That is roughly half of what I need to camp for the week. So time to get the thinking cap on for how to come up with the rest, considering we are going away this weekend to stay with family.


Once home from the bootfair I stashed the unsold items in the attic, I may do another bootfair in a few weeks if they are still running, depends on the weather as to how long they go on for. I had a little snooze and then I have  sat watching films and knitting. I have made this for Stephanie, when she returns from her Dad's house;

It is identical to the one I made for myself which she loves so much. I am thinking about casting her one on in the green wool I have left over from knitting her school cardigan as sometimes she wants a cardigan but her others are to warm. It doesn't use much yarn to make these, they are great stash busters and the pattern is really easy to pick up and put down when you have a few minutes.

organising

Today has been another organising kind of a day- well for Dylan. His granddad drove him to Ikea to get the furniture for his bedroom as I was looking after my niece and nephew while my sister went clothes shopping. Dylan is getting so grown up, he built the bulk of his furniture himself with just a tiny bit of help from Granddad. pictures will follow once he has organised his things onto the new furniture but his bedroom looks so much better for having smaller furniture.

I started the day with a 5km parkrun. It is my first time at one of these events as they are all at 9am on a Saturday and Stephanie normally has a swimming lesson at 9am. I was very pleased that I completed the course in 30 mins 32 seconds. This is a timed by chip event so the timing is very accuyrate and your results get emailed to you after the event. I was 39th person to complete the run today; 10th female and 4th in my age group. Not bad especially as lots of the runners were running club members. I really enjoyed the run, I would love to be able to participate more often but never  mind.

Once I got back I made these for my room;

 Then my sister dropped my niece and nephew off to me for the afternoon.
We had a fun afternoon involving watering the garden, shooting water guns at the windows/fences/shed etc, bouncing on the trampoline, reading, making dinner together and making tents from furniture boxes;

We decorated the boxes with various pens and paint together and lay in them looking at books. Once everyone had left I loaded the car for tomorrows bootfair. I do hope I can clear the majority of the stuff. The attic is looking half empty and the house is looking good I don't want to have to fill it back up.
I am now going to sit in front of the television and knit before getting some sleep for my early start.

Seven Sisters

Today I took myself off for a walk. It wasn't a particularly local walk but it is one I have wanted to do for a while. I walked the Seven Sisters cliff top walk at Eastbourne. It was a long walk at around 8 miles, it's off road so a bit tricky to map exactly, but look at the views;

I parked the car at a National trust car park- it's free this way as I have membership saving my £3.50 for a days parking. I decided to head off in the direction of the lighthouse first;

This is the Belle Tout lighthouse up close. This lighthouse had to be moved in the 1990's due to cliff erosion.. Whilst I was admiring the views from this lighthouse I spotted another one;

So I walked to that one too, I walked to the top of the cliff to see it, but I was too chicken to peek over the edge- it's VERY high up there. You can see how misty it is in those first pictures. After this I decided I wanted to walk in the other direction to get to the Seven sisters cliffs.

They are some very steep cliffs and the hills on them are steep too;

But they are worth the effort look at this;

 

Absolutely stunning. There were times when I couldn't see another human being for miles- it was lovely, very peaceful all you could hear were the wildlife in the grasses, the birds and the waves crashing on the cliffs below. 

 

BLISS!!

 

 

Thursday

Today has been mostly about organisation. Dylan has been organising his bedroom, I have sorted Stephanie's and my bedrooms. I have recycled lots of old pieces of paperwork etc and donated a bookcase to my sister. The carpets have all been shampooed I never cease to be amazed and disgusted in equal measures to how much dirt comes out of the carpets.

I have taken Dylan to his Dad's house for a week, Stephanie still has another week and  a day at her Dad's before she comes home.

What am I going to do with myself for a whole week? Well, I plan on getting the house finished there are 2 cupboards crying out for sorting. I am going to do another bootfair on Sunday and I need to do some planning etc for work before September.

That is not going to take a whole week, so I am hoping to go exploring local places; I have my national trust and English heritage memberships so I may use those to explore some of the places which don't appeal as much to the children, there are also lots of lovely places to walk not too far from here so I will probably do some of those as well. I would love to go away for a few days on my own, but there are not enough pennies in the bank so that will wait for another time.

The first thing I did arriving home alone was look in the fridge. There are lots of fruits and salads that need using up so I made this for dinner;

That's a cheese and onion slice from the freezer stash, and lots of the salad that needed using with a grating of cheese on top. The can of coke is left over from the bbq the other week.

 

 

I have a decision to make which you may be able to help me with. This is the storage chest from my bedroom. I can't decide whether to leave it as it is;

 

Or to cover it with a cushion and some of the left over material from making my curtains;

 

What do you think?

 

a finished something for me

I decided that I should knit something for me, I always seem to be knitting for others, not that I mind but decided it was my turn. The pattern was out of one of my mum's old knitting magazines. It says it knits up in a couple of hours. Perfect, I'll be able to do that. It is a simple pattern nothing scary or new to learn to do it. It is a new pattern but it is made up of  the usual stitches.
It didn't knit in a couple of hours though, either the magazine exaggerates or I am slow- possibly a mix of both. It took me a just over a week of knitting at least one hour a day. I am very pleased with the result;

fresh off the needles waiting for sewing

Sewn together and worn as intended.

 

Stephanie placed her order as soon as the pattern started to take shape- she seemed most put out when I said this one is for me LOL

She wants one exactly the same as mine, a pink one and a white one apparently.

Luckily the pattern is so simple I can adapt it from the adult sizes to fit her fairly easily. So when I get five minutes I will begin hers. I'll start with one the same colour as mine as I have that yarn out already.

Now I must go and get showered and ready for the day as it is my nephews 3rd birthday and I need to go and visit him. I'm being lazy today though I didn't wake until 8.30am. I'm normally in the gym and half way through my work out by then. Not sure if I will make it to the gym today now.

My new bedroom

I have been very quite the last couple of days as I have been busy decorating my bedroom.

Here is a picture of how it looked before;

Here is the finished room;

ignore the drawers, they don't go there!

The chest of drawers in it's rightful place;

 

I don't have a wardrobe yet- mine collapsed after being fixed several times. So in the next couple of weeks that will be rectified and the room won't look quite so spacious.

 

To do this room makeover I have painted walls and ceiling with white emulsion, cleaned every surface, including shampooing the carpet;

 

That is the dirty water that has come out of the carpet- gross it was only done a couple of months back as well.

I made the curtains out of material I was given a long time ago and I have used the old curtains as liners to make them thicker so should provide less light in the summer months when I don't want to get up at 4 am thank you Mr Sunshine! and help retain the heat in the winter as this is one of the coldest rooms in the house.

pinning the curtains ready for  sewing.

This is the bit I hate, spacing the rings at the perfect gaps to make the eyelets.

This makeover was done on a teensy budget- £12 for the paint and the new duvet set cost me £5 in the sales. Everything else I had in the house already. So a total of £17 to makeover my bedroom. I love it and can't wait to go to bed now!

beach day

Today is another beautiful summers day so we headed down to the beach again. As I mentioned yesterday we really enjoyed driving around the motorways rather than on them yesterday so we planned to do some 'off motorway' driving today. Unfortunately there was a nasty accident early this morning so lots of people had to do 'off motorway' driving. I hope no-one was seriously hurt.

We drove through lost of villages on route to the beach. We stopped at a couple of roadside stands on the way and picked up a punnet of cherries for £2.50 and 2 punnets of strawberries for £1 each. Lovely fresh local produce! We ate some on the way and the rest will be used in my morning smoothies and as snacks over the weekend.

When we got to the beach, a different one to the one I had intended to drive to (let's gloss over my sense of direction!) we found a carpark and for a beach front location it was v. cheap- I paid £4.00 and I could have stayed there until 11.30 this evening. Stephanie was disgusted that we didn't stay until then. LOL

We haven't spent a penny after that. We have had lots of outdoor, free fun;

Elaine,see what I mean by the similar attire! Maybe they are going through a cocoon phase! LOL

Spashing

swimming

burying each other. Dylan asked if he could have some of our popcorn, so Stephanie gave it to him. Think that makes up for some of the teasing she has received.

payback.

 

We drove home and unlike yesterday I didn't stop in a restaurant for dinner, I cooked when we got in. When I went out to water the garden I found a visitor

 

Meet Cherry, she lives next door but one, she is usually found sunning herself on top of my water butt.