Archive for the ‘Day by Day’ Category

If I See Another Bit of Icing…

Sunday, April 15th, 2012

…I’m gonna cry!

Yesterday we got the cake icing done and most of it sent over to the party house to wait patiently. But it did take 3 people a good 3 hours to do it…man, that was a long day!

But they do look fantastic, and I definitely couldn’t have done it without my fantabulous mother and her mad ninja icing skills, as well as the boy and his rather surprising decorating ability (he’s “not creative” – yeah right)!

Now it’s party day, and we have sandwiches to make and salad art to create…

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My Oven Needs a Rest

Friday, April 13th, 2012

The cake layers for the big birthday extravaganza are now all baked and cooling; before being packed away for transport tomorrow.

All I need to do now is to make some cupcakes – however I’ve run out of butter (eek!) and will have to continue baking tomorrow…

…so that’s it for me…”Good Night!” *nods off on the sofa*

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Progress…

Friday, April 13th, 2012

I’m working with unfamiliar baking tins and so my first layer was a complete disaster!

But I refused to give in to my oven’s demands for undercooked sloppy cake, and put in a second layer of cake mix. This is now cooked to a warm golden brown perfection…yes, I’m awesome…

…well, I didn’t earn my Wonder Woman apron for nothing…

…well, I didn’t earn it at all – the boy saw it and bought it for me…

…and he thinks I’m kinda Wonder Woman-esque…

…sometimes…

…okay so he doesn’t, but my Charlotte does…so *sticks out tongue*…

…oooh timer is done!

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Beginning of a Long Night

Friday, April 13th, 2012

My Grandma is 70 on Sunday, and because I’m an idiot I said “sure, I’ll make the birthday cake”…what the hell was I thinking?

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Laughing at Stupid Things

Monday, April 9th, 2012

Okay, so this made me laugh at silly o’clock in the morning…points for who can tell me why…

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Jesus As An Excuse

Sunday, April 8th, 2012

Using Jesus rising again as an excuse to drink wine…fair play…

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Reunion of Arkwright

Friday, March 16th, 2012

It’s about time for me to get together at the towers for a night of shiny pound coins, beer and the Hulk…

…oh and good friends.

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Dancing As If My Life Depended On It

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

I’ve been in a major funk all day long; not really feeling sad or depressed, just a bit off. The kind of funk that makes you fly off the handle because there’s very little margarine left in the tub or your day is ruined because your eggs don’t taste as yummy as when you made them last week; that kind of mood.

I couldn’t understand it; I went to bed last night feeling okay and went straight to sleep without much trouble (this has been a common recurrence the past couple of nights due to exhaustion). But when I woke up to find the text message from my landlord stating that my rent is all paid up for this month, I suddenly didn’t want to get out of bed.

It wasn’t the text message that had put me in that mood, as it was a good thing, it meant that I didn’t have to bother about it for another two weeks…but there was something that was putting me in a bad mood; I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I finally got up, after lounging in bed for hours, squealed about margarine and eggs, complained that they’d made me feel sick and generally starting acting like a bit of a child.

I just couldn’t understand why I’d begun to feel like this.

I’ve been unemployed since early November, and doing work here and there for people ever since, with no real pay (beer doesn’t count), and I’d finally gotten a job interview yesterday with an estate agents. The interview seemed to go well and I started to feel much better about my status as an unemployed benefits scrounger – it was almost like a kick from karma saying ‘sorry for all the crap I’ve put you through in the past few years, here’s something to keep you going’.

So with this little burst of employment hope, why was I in such a bad mood?

Around five pm today I got a phone call from the rather nice guy who interviewed me, saying that I’d sadly not gotten the job as someone else had more experience in my specific job area. This didn’t even really upset me all that much, as I knew that this was a possibility – no matter how well I interviewed.

A few minutes later my phone rang again, it was a woman from an employment agency I joined with some details of a job for me – sadly it was not a part time position (which is what I’m looking for due to health reasons) and I had to turn it down. But it made me go and search for more available jobs – of which I found three with potential.

As you can see,  it wasn’t really like I was having a particularly bad day, it was up and down sure but it wasn’t like there was nothing good coming from today…I’d finally paid up my rent in full!

It was only about two hours ago that I realised what had put me in such a bad mood today, it wasn’t anything significant, and I was surprised by my realisation…

The first thing that I did that day was look at my phone, my lovely little iPhone, which told me that today was February 1st. Now there’s nothing significant about that date at all; no birthdays, anniversaries or appointments…until I thought back to my thoughts in November of last year…I wanted to be back on my feet by February. I naively thought that three months would be a decent amount of time to get my ass into gear and get a job.

With this realisation in hand; that I’m no better off than when I first left work in November, and am in fact worse off, after three whole months of trying to get myself back up and running; I did the only thing I could do…

…I danced…

…shook my hips…

flicked my hair around…

…pulled muscles I didn’t realise I had…

…laughed when I caught myself in the mirror…

…sang outrageously loud whilst the child next door slept…

…and I felt alive.

Sean Keefe – Album Arrived!

Saturday, January 28th, 2012

Anybody who knows me personally will have heard me ranting on about my good friend Sean’s new album, website and tour.

I’m currently unemployed so Mr Sean Keefe begged me, over a few Buds, to help him out with getting his album designed. And since he’s been a great friend to me over the years, my answer was ‘of course, I can do this’. But I wasn’t that confident then…

…today we got back the printed albums. I spent my day fretting over whether I’d had the measurements correct, and had I remembered to take out that bit of white space there…and so is it surprising that Sean and I did a jump and squeal when we saw just how damn good they look?!

Now it’s not just about looks, this is actually a great album. I know that I’m kinda biased but it’s made it into my iPhone music player (which is a fairly difficult task). So if anyone has a chance, and it’s past 29th January, then go to his website and have a listen!

Away from my shameless promotion…if you do go to the website, then you’ll notice that the theme is similar to the album design that I created; can you guess what Sean roped me into doing next?

I spent my evenings delving into the world of website design; and now know, as my mother would say, “enough about CSS and HTML to be dangerous”.

Got another couple of days worth of work to be done on the website, and then it all goes live!

Big excitement tonight; let’s celebrate with beer and homemade chocolate orange cake!

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On a Mission For Blog…

Saturday, January 14th, 2012

Today is Saturday. The boy and I are on a mission for blog…pictures.

I’ve been helping out my good friend Sean Keefe with his album design, and generally playing around with photoshop for the past couple of days. This started me thinking about my blog and the fact that the general design has not changed much since its creation in 2008.

Now I know if my web designer is reading this then she’ll groan and put her head in her hands at the prospect of having to change stuff. But I’m sorry – you’ll be paid in cookies!

I sat down to think up some ideas, took a sip of tea, thought some more, took a gulp of my now cold tea and decided that I had no idea what I wanted.

So I’m getting out, going to see friends/family and rope them into helping me fuel some blog ideas – with the help of some photos.

We’ll see what happens…on our mission for blog…(totally want to watch Blues Brothers now).

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