more dog tails

" No "

"no I cant take it Off" 

"Ow"

"stop hitting me with it"

"just lay down"

"stop ramming me on the leg with it"

Yesterday Morning we had to go back to the vet. As the Spaniel was still paying a lot of attention to a certain area of his body. He has over cleaned himself and made himself sore. He now has to wear a collar for the next 5 days. 

We had a fantastic walk to the vet. There was an abundance of wildflowers around and that was lovely. In the vet, now the Spaniel went in and the Labrador would not move from outside the door to the consulting room. It was so sweet she was tilting her head from left to right listening to what was going on. 

Now he is blind, daft and wearing a collar. Therefore he is hitting his collar against everything including any human he happens to come across. He has managed to scrape both mine and LSP's legs as he has been rubbing it against us. last night we had a friend over so both dogs were confined to the kitchen for the evening. 

This friend did an amazing thing on Friday night. She walked 10 km across Cardiff at midnight in her pyjamas. No she was not drunk,  She was doing a sponsored walk in aid of Ty Hafan. Ty Hafan is a children's hospice in Wales and hundred's of women put aside time to walk in the freezing cold and rain for 2 hours in their Jammies to raise funds. 

Now when she arrived at our house, it was in chaos. Me, LSP and my sister had some of the contents of the loft in the sitting room sorting through charity and car boot stuff. We took 4 full bags of clothes to the charity shop and 6 boxes of car boot stuff to go to my sister. She is going to do some car boot sales in June and I am happy for her to try to sell our old junk. We were nearing the end of the sorting so having already walked 10 miles at midnight she then helped us move our stuff between houses. 

Whilst we were loading and unloading a young man arrived at our gate with a bunch of wildflowers. He had brought them for our youngest daughter, she was not here as she was not back from work and he could not stay as he had got a taxi to bring them. (how lovely) 

We had a nice evening of chatter over spag bol and trifle before she became our first guest in the spare room. This morning we have had a leisurely breakfast before starting our Sunday.  

Sunday afternoon.

This afternoon we went to Lechlade for a mooch about the shops, weather was poor so no Lechlade photo's as the would not do it justice.

We managed to find some books for the collection.

The where to eat in Wiltshire is from 1979.  It gives an amazing insight into the eating habits of the time.

The Hungry man, Sailsbury. Average prices, Lunch 80p, dinner £1.50-£4.65 including vegetables and after dinner coffee. " The menu includes good English food including, venison and duck a l'orange"!

Puppets Restaurant Marlborough, (now the pagoda) £7 all inclusive. House wine £4 a bottle. Food is served Creole style and the house speciality is spare ribs and lamb cutlet louise.

The old bell hotel Warminster, Specialities include, Wiltshire Duck and Apple sauce.

The Crown and Anchor, Ham near Marlborough, Average Prices £1.25- £1.85  wines 35p per glass. "An excellent variety of food   is served, from the traditional ploughmans to trout and chips in the basket".

It is very interesting, especially seeing how many of the places have gone. 200-300 year old coaching inn's that have now been converted to houses and flats.

"Before Baby Comes"
was prices at 1/6 and is credited on the cover as being written "by a Physician" on the cover and inside as being by "A Woman Doctor" was published by Glaxo... yes Glaxo the baby milk manufacturer, hmm i wonder if they mention it, oh yes they do! Now GlaxoSunshine milk has added vitamin D and they encourage expenctant mother's to drink it as well as nursing mother's and as a supliment to baby's of they are not getting enough milk and when a mother cannot produce milk it can be used on its own.

Expectant mother's should have 2 pints of milk a day. 1 as a drink and 1 in sauces and puddings. They recommend Sunshine Glaxo milk. It warns that no baby can be perfectly developed unless its mother drinks milk.  It is a fascinating book.

I picked up a 2nd button tin.

it is a very pretty Huntly and Palmer's biscuit tin. perfect for buttons.

We also picked up 2 unexpected things. the first was.........

yes a unicycle. a surprise pressie for youngest daughter.

the 2nd, was being overcharged. we had bought the books, the unicycle, the tin and some little things for the spare room. we were given a price and then he said another price £10 higher. I handed over the cash. but then re added it up and it was the original price less the £10. I hate to say it, I think it was not an accident and he was trying it on. luckily there were some other stall holders there who helped re count. i will not be going back to that place again.

Apart from that it was a good day and a good weekend. A perfect antidote to a busy week.

hope you all had a good weekend.
 

back to normal.

LSP is home, Work is finished for the week, and I have 5 days off. ahhh.

I have become a friend of latitude. its fantastic, I was able to track LSP all the way down to the house.

I had a hot cup of tea and dinner waiting.

Despite having driven 100's of miles home. LSP is now wrestling with the new gerbil cage.
Following the incident where Tiffany jumped out of the cage we now have a multi-roomed habitat. Officially its a space station. !!!!

Now I tried to assemble it myself while she was away but failed miserably. Far to technical for me.

I am just watching the soaps. Coronation street is quite sad, Lesley's story of early onset Altzheimer's is so very sad. It is such a cruel illness. I was in M&S the other day and got talking to the lady behind me at the till, her husband had Altzheimers and she was finding it very hard. we talked about carer's support and then before we knew it, it was time to go as I had got through the checkout.

I am so looking forward to this weekend. I am looking forward to getting the spare room finished. I cannot wait to post some pictures.

Talking of photo's. At the weekend when I said hello to my friends baby I took photo's. with the big camera, I enjoy taking photographs, of people, of things, of everything. well I posted them on facebook for her to see and she loved them. The best compliment for me was that a friend of hers thought she had hired a professional to come round and take photographs! I will be going back to take some with the baby's dad in as well.

so that's it the weekend is stretching out ahead of us....

In the morning, I will be doing the housework so that we have the rest of the weekend clear. LSP will have a lie in, there will be me, radio 4 and a feather duster...bliss.

Time for an ad break.

Well today I was working from home. I don't know what working from home means to other people but for me its about having some peace and quiet. I still have to get up, start work on time, be dressed and to be ready to go to the office if needed. Our office is so busy that home is a chance to crunch through some stuff. It means I miss out on the distractions from the office with nothing but 2 snoring dogs and radio 4 for company. By the miracles of modern technology I can still access my emails and everything. now 99% of my emails that I get at work are work emails (yes by boss is pleased) However we still get the odd funny one as well as the occasional send this to 20 people and something might happen (yes I hit delete). Now today we had a great one. It was an email containing old adverts. How fab. these are my favourites.

  

They are certainly of their time. I dread to think of the new mother getting drunk on blatz beer whilst breastfeeding! 

This weekend is going to be a stressful one. Then I am hoping for an end to one of our stress factors. Endings are always sad but often inevitable. An ending is always a new beginning. 

Tonight, I am going to treat myself to a nice hot bath with some lovely smelly's and my cook book, deciding what to bake on Sunday. 

Friday nights rock. 

xxx

Happy weekend everyone. 

Today I made Cheese Biscuits, They were supposed to be Cheese Scones!

That would be a scone fail!

I will try again tomorrow! Today started off well, we took YD to work this morning then had breakfast out. 

I had the strawberry and yoghurt granola with a capaccino 

lush breakfast. 

a bit of light shopping and then home. 

The dogs had some bones to chew on....

This afternoon I turned my attention to the dinning room cabinet. I love it, its my favourite piece of furniture in the house. It was our wedding present, we asked for vouchers and this is what we bought. We have had it 5 years now and I love it. it gives me so much pleasure and it is stuffed full of lovely things. 

a lovely variety of napkins, place mats, napkin rings and table cloths. 

and nice shiny cutlery. 

In the Sales we treated ourselves to some new glasses. 

We now have matching glasses for 6 people that is not Crystal (it has its place) we now have red wine glasses and white wine glasses, I feel so grown up. 

We had a lovely Christmas present of some amazing tea, with a teapot and cups. So I have cleared a shelf for them. 

How amazing is that!!

the teapot has pride of place in the cabinet.

The frost is hitting the garden and the colour is going. 

My Geraniums are finally being effected by the frost. 

So today was going so well, if you read this weeks posts you would know that I was planning to go to a party tonight! that was before LSP started to feel unwell. so we have shelved our Party plans and have our feet up in front of the sofa. I am watching "Take me out" Its nice no brainer TV an a laugh. 

my nice calm day tomorrow has also been scuppered by the toilet handle breaking. 

So its off to B&Q in the morning and a bit of DIY from LSP, (who has already sorted out a temporary solution) 

Well , I am off to put the kettle on and have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit 

(chocolate not cheese) 

happy weekend x 

Keep Calm and Carry on.

Never has that famous phrase been needed more than this week.

 I cant tell you why dear reader, but lets just say, I would not repeat the last 8 days for all the tea in China. 

So we have had to face each day new, keep calm, carry on and be there for each other. I have not felt much like blogging, or cooking or doing any of the things that normally make me happy!  

 In the end it has been the support of those close which has helped the most.

Monday to Friday happened....we got through each of the days, keeping calm and carrying on.

So today is the end of the weekend, the end of the week that we do not want to repeat!


So enough about the week, what about the weekend?

Table top sale....

where we purchased 2 amazing printers tray's which I have a plan for.......
Then in the afternoon some baby play.

yes, she was great therapy! We need to assemble a toy box as we amused BFL's baby with 2 wooden Ducks and 2 Headbands!! she is such a cool baby she kept us amused for ages.

A nice cup of tea with cupcakes.....provided by another friend...

yum!

Today we did some antiquing...

I found the most amazing display, It looked right and smelled right, It was like looking into an old mans shed!

All of the old toys had been lovingly brought back to life, oiled wood and glistening metal. Amongst the tools you would see a pair of shoes of some boxing gloves, a tilly lamp or a teacloth. 

I just wanted to pull up a chair and sit in there a while, breathe in the smell and feel the wood....

However, with an LSP and OD and only an hour it was onwards to the next shop, not before bumping into another friend who was out with her family. We chatted whilst her son bought a gun and then went our separate ways. 

LSP had found some things for Christmas and little things for the children, I could not find anything. 

I scanned endless piles of china to see if there was any for our collections, looked for cute toys for the box or just general interesting things....

Nothing, no China, no toys (except for lead soldiers) and nothing that was interesting enough to make it into the house... that was until LSP spotted something....

Something different, 

Something we do not have?

Something I would have never thought to buy, 

a shell, 

no not a conch shell

or a sea shell

A gun shell, 

Yes a Gun Shell. 

Now remember, that you should not have anything in your house that is not beautiful or useful!

This gun shell is far from beautiful 

so it now has a job...

(yes those are bullet holes) 

hope you all have a good week! 

my main vice

Most people have a vice, a guilty pleasure something they find hard to do without....

I can live without, new clothes, chocolate, nights out, dinner dates, shopping.... As we are wanting to save money we will have to! however, I will struggle to give up my weekends away.

they are expensive and indulgent...but give me so much pleasure!

I love crisp white sheets, soft towels, nice rooms, sea views, nice service, sea views, and all those other things that make a weekend something very special...

This weekend we stayed at 17 Wilmington Square, Eastbourne. (I think it would make a great title for a book) Its our 2nd time there. Here are some of its highlights....

This was sunrise on Saturday taken from the hotel window.

The Square

Mints on the pillow!

The room,

Outside on the way home...

This indulgence has to go..........its going to be hard!