.... Earth Possibly...

You Are From Neptune

You are dreamy and mystical, with a natural psychic ability. You love music, poetry, dance, and (most of all) the open sea. Your soul is filled with possibilities, and your heart overflows with compassion. You can be in a room full of friendly people and feel all alone. If you don't get carried away with one idea, your spiritual nature will see you through anything.

What Planet Are You From?

..ah well it looks pretty there at least, still worrying how accurate some of that is. Not saying which bits are true tho'.....

As seen at Shirley's and Dotty Spots.

It's official...

.... well from Tuesday the 29th it will be. I will be Self-Employed, now comes the moment of serious panic. I'd been putting it off for weeks, finding road blocks to hold things up. Which weren't road block at all, just me being scared, but you know what now it's all done - well apart from one phone call on Tuesday - I'm actually feeling quite calm about things..... almost... at the end of the day if it all goes pear shaped at least I will have tried.

New members of the family & LA Report

Ok have been meaning to post pics of them for a while now so here goes.....

The Girls
Charlie & Sally

The Boys
Harry & Squeak

Harry, Squeak and Sally are all 5yrs, Charlie is 2yrs. Harry, Sally and Charlie are Standard Greys and Squeak is a Brown Velvet. Charlie is Harry and Sally's daughter.



Oops mustn't forget Sox, she's still not sure of the chinnys especially after they chased her round the living room the other day.... I would post a pic of the hammy but darn thing wouldn't stay put...

Oh and after our visit with the LA bod last Tuesday, we received our report from them in the post yesterday. I'm so so pleased our provision for Robynne has been deemed satisfactory and appropriate to her age and abilities. Oh I'm just so pleased isn't that wonderful...... ok enough, even I can't stand that level of sarcasm for too long..... oh and as everything is ok, they plan to see us next May 2008 and yearly after that.... umm did I miss something but did they not notice her date of birth...... we may have to see them next year but after that well I think they can go stuff themselves - sorry to those of a sensible disposition, but I couldn't really put what I wanted them to do really, I mean they do pass for human you know.

Well I had nothing better to do.....

....... or rather nothing better that I could be bothered to do lol....

Got this one from Shirley

You Would Choose Love

Money may buy a little happiness, but not the happiness of true love. You rather have a true soulmate than a private jet. And while many people may claim they would choose love too... You're one of the few who would really do it.

Would You Choose Love or Money?

..... very disappointing lol, I thought I was much more cynical than that..... Oh and while was there just ended up doing a few more of these..... I think they could be addictive.

Your Attitude is Better than 40% of the Population

You have a positive attitude... sometimes. You prefer to see the world through clear glasses, not rose colored ones.

How's Your Attitude?

.... 40%, that's good...... but I'm more grumpy than that honestly.... ask anyone....

You Are 16% Sociopath

You're empathetic, loyal, and introspective. In other words, there's no way you're a sociopath... but you can spot one pretty easily!

Are You A Sociopath?

.... oh I wanted to be a Sociopath or was that a Physcopath.... mmmmm - odd thing for you all, did the spell check thingy as wasn't sure if had spelt Physcopath right, so spell check thing showed it up red, ok I said it's spelt wrong.... but, instead of showing me how to spell it right the word that it wanted to replace it with was .... Facecloth....? strangely enough when I spelt facecloth wrong it didn't come up with Physcopath as a replacement.....

You are 60% Virgo

How Virgo Are You?

.... So if I was more tidy lol, I would be fully Virgo.... so can I change when I was born then so I fit into a more messy starsign...

It's been a busy few days

First of we had a meeting with the LA bod on Tuesday morning, ooh I do hate those early mornings. Surprisingly things went ok, we had thought to cancel and send in a report, but with everything else that I had to get on with over the last couple of weeks. I really just didn't have the time, so maybe next time. Anyway we were a little apprehensive as we had heard that this guy thinks he knows everything, so we were unsure of how things would go. But surprisingly he was almost pleasant, tho' we shall see when the report comes through from him. He would have liked to see Robynne's work, so he could assess her progress.... tho' how he was intending to do that when he had nothing to compare it with. All in all he seemed quite pleased with how we were going along, tho' he did keep returning to our method of learning. I suppose being an ex headteacher, he must of despaired at our lack of timetable. Well if Robynne's working on something she's interested in, I find it far easier to let her carry on with it till she has worked through it.

On the business front we have added a spreadshirt shop to our website, and Robynne has been adapting some of her art and designs to go onto different items at the moment she has done some sweet baby items with a bear theme, and she's working on making her comic characters from our H.E mag tHE Sound big enough for T-Shirts etc.

We have also come up with a H.E design and were running competition in tHE Sound, the winners will then added to the shop. Which will then hopefully sell, well and that will give us some much needed money for resources and running costs not only for the magazine but for the H.E. group in general.

And then we have some general fashion items that may appeal to all ages.

We will still be having a shop area that will have many custom items for sale and a place for ordering custom items. But we haven't been able to sort that at the moment as for some bizarre reason our computer is showing almost all pictures as very large, very bright red area's. I suppose I could use the old computer. but well that would involve moving everything over and well it's just too much, especially as the old comp is so slow, tho' am hoping to get a laptop soon just for the business stuff, well that's what I'm telling Robynne it's for lol.

Umm well if your sure....

Erotic Thriller

You've made your own rules in life - and sometimes that catches up with you. Winding a web of deceit comes naturally, and no one really knows the true you. Your best movie matches: Swimming Pool, Unfaithful, The Crush

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

.....thanks to Shirley for this one lol.

So anyway have had a fairly productive week, well ok no I haven't but it sounded good didn't it? We managed to get our H.E mag out on time and all in one piece which I think is fairly productive, I made some hammocks for the chinchillas, which they seem to like, tho' still have a fair few other things I should have done, maybe tomorrow. We had a nice afternoon in the park today as well, well until it got chilly it's always great to hang out with the H.E group down here. Tomorrow evening were down the beach for a Beltane Celebration looking forward to that oh and here's a pic of one of our chinnys his names Squeak and he's oh so cute.

" Service Please"

A What?

Have seen this all over the place today...

I am a Canna What Flower Are You?

"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."

..... umm and that is....?, has anyone seen or heard of this plant mmmmm looks like time for some research, wonder if can get Robynne to find it for me.... well it's education isn't it lol.

*edit - found out about the lovely Canna flower.

Decisions

We have made some new decisions with regards to well lots of things really, life H.E and home.

Yesterday we restarted our Guitar Club, we used to have it fortnightly then monthly. We found that monthly was too long and after a break of a few months, were now not only changing from monthly to weekly, we changed the day and time, so now it'll be for just an hour on a Monday. Yesterday went well, it was basically just a catch up to see what chords everyone could remember. It was great fun and I think only doing the hour made it less stressful for me too, tho' next week everyone is going to come 15 mins before start time so we can make sure everyone is in tune - must find our little box for tuning before Monday then lol.

We have also swapped our swimming session from Thursday to Tuesday, as alot of things that Robynne wants to join in with happen on Thursdays and we really want her to do more swimming/exercise and hopefully this will mean it will be more regular.

Also tonight were off to our second Pagan meeting,- we went last October and had a great time - we have decided as a family after much talking and research that this is the way were going to go with our faith. We told our Mum a while ago what we were thinking of and she was a little worried about it being a bit mmmmm evil lol. But after we chatted and explained, she was alot happier about not ecstatic mind you but well she was less worried for our souls lol.... it's quite a difference really from the way we were brought up - The Salvation Army - but it feels right for us.

Then our last decision, has been to forget about getting a dog for now, as as much as we would love to have a dog, having no garden and the size of our flat just aren't practical especially as the dog that we all really want to get is a Siberian Husky/Alaskan Malamute. So the pet that we are going to get is........ drum roll please, well ok maybe that's pushing it lol..... were going to get Chinchilla's. We had been researching pets and well we have all fallen in love with them. Were off to see Kelly on Friday and hopefully in a month or so we will have some new family members.

I just had to do this.....

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

I'd seen this in various places over the last few days so just had to give it a go.

V&A Visit

Yesterday we had a really good day for our visit to the museum, we missed meeting with everyone in the morning, then at lunchtime we all magically met up and ate our lunches together in the John Madejski garden actually it's the only garden area lol. But there's this lovely Ouroboro sculpture, which signifies regeneration and continuity.



The Ouroboro serpent, which swallows it's own tail as a symbol of infinity. The serpent's scales are made of interlocking plastic jerry cans. A very interesting piece, but I'm sure there where some more surreal things in the Surreal Things exhibit, but well I had no interest in seeing that. Plus the queue for tickets was amazing, which is a shame as we where going to try and see the Kylie exhibit, but I hate queueing lol, so maybe we'll pop in there again next time we nip up to London.

After lunch we all went off to the Japan Exhibit, where the children took part in the Japanese activites - well all but Tom and Robynne, we let them go off exploring on there own - just wish I'd managed to get a photo, of all of their lovely Samurai Helmets and Kimono doll's. Tho' I'm pretty sure we will be doing Japan as a theme for the H.E group and that template for a helmet that somehow managed to make it home with me, will be well used I'm sure.



We spent a far bit of time in the Japan exhibit, while the children did the activities. Then we split up, some went home then, but the rest of us stayed and agreed to meet up an hour or so later for the journey home. As Robynne is very into her drawing we went off and checked out the Prints and Drawings exhibit, while she had a long look round I found myself a seat and settled down for a long wait.






















Oh in the morning we had spent a long time in the sculpture's area and also looking at some very interesting fashions of yesteryear, and in the presence of some very large paintings.








Tho' later Robynne informed me that she didn't think we were allowed to take photo's of the very large paintings.

A New Blog......

.... to go with our business venture.

This is where I shall be posting abut the progress of our business, with ideas and such that we shall be trying out. Sewing Friend, it just so that I don't clog up this blog with business stuff lol.

Well I never....

...Honestly.....

You Are a Cadbury Creme Egg

You're the type that stole little brother's easter basket so that you could have MORE CANDY!

What Easter Candy Are You?

...... I would never ever steal my brothers candy. Mmmmm well ok I'm pterry pretty sure I never knowingly stole his candy.

Noticed this over at Bonkers

...Hooray

Hammy is back -

and none the worse for wear after the 12 day holiday in the kitchen. Robynne caught her in the gas cupboard, thanks to Sox who lead her to hammy's hiding place. We are all so relieved to have hammy back where it should be.

Lets see what other great stuff happened this week, oooh our tickets for HESFES arrived so yay. Found out about Japanese lessons, that Robynne and some of her friends will be doing for an hour a week after Easter so she's real excited. Tho' not so excited about possibly having to get up earlier.

Next Wed 11th April were off to the Victoria and Albert Museum, wih some of our local H.E group. Which were all looking forward too. We'll be meeting outside @ 11am so if anyone else would like to join us that would be great.

Mmmmm what else, well it's Easter at the weekend so that's fun too, you know can't think of anything else right now. But it doesn't matter, cause hey the hammy's home hooray for that....

Oh and have gotten rid of that annoying music that started up when you click on the blog, don't understand why it kept starting automatically as had it set to not doing so, ah well the wonders of technology.

The Errant Hamster

I had previously blogged about this, but blogger chose to lose it and wipe my draft too.... mmmmm wonder what problem blogger has with hamsters.




So anyway back to the story sorry the reality of our errant hammy. Late last Friday night, when we were all in bed - some sleeping, others attempting - there was an Almighty crash in the living room. Upon investigation we found our cat Sox sitting outside the living room door, and after further investigation we found the hammy's cage on the floor in various pieces. With absolutely no sign of hammy, now three scenario's went through my head at this point.

1. Sox had eaten hammy.

2. Hammy had gotten away then possibly died of fright.....

.... or and this is was the most preferred option....

3. Hammy was fine and having a ball round the flat.

So we cleared up the mess, put the cage back together as best as it would go and put the cage down - in the hope that hammy would return - and we returned to bed.

There was no sign of hammy until late Sunday evening, when Robynne spotted Sox and the hammy sniffing each other by the kitchen doorway. Unfortunately she yelled at Sox and both animals split. So now we knew hammy was safe and alive. So now we put the cage in the kitchen and kept the door shut. But, sadly hammy was obviously having too much fun living in a much larger cage, as it had been returning to the cage for food and then leaving again.



Our next step was to hunt for humane mousetraps to make online. So during the course of this week we have attempted a few, but it seems our darn sweet little hammy is either just to smart to be caught or doesn't want to be. Right now we have this one made and in the kitchen, fingers crossed it will work.

As the bucket one pictured didn't work, mmmmm maybe it's the bait were using.


Tho' judging by the way it was running round the kitchen when I saw it on Friday evening, it seems quite happy. Personally I'll be glad to see it in it's cage again where it most definately belongs.

I'm not worried honest...

.... honestly I'm not really, well ok maybe just a little.
Wondering at my worry or trepidation, no.......... well ok then but, I'm going to tell you anyway.

You see at the weekend I booked Robynne and myself our first HESFES holiday and well, seeing as how I'm not always good in situations where I don't know people I'm feeling just a little nervous. It's silly really I love camping and can't wait to get there, and I'm sure I'll meet lots of great people and hopefully people will not think me too odd lol. Robynne on the other hand is looking forward to going and hanging out with her friend and meeting lots of new people. But, she's a little worried about the camping side, being as she's only ever been with Scouts and she wasn't into that so well. Fingers crossed she'll come to love canvas as much as us - Andy(my brother) and me - as were planning on going to a few spots later in the year, we may even get our sister and her little boy to come with us.

All I need to do is get a few essentials before the time, like a tent lol... but I have one all picked out just need to go buy it.

Anyway really must get on with the next issue of tHE Sound as it's due out at the end of the week.

Penguin Readers

The other day we were hunting through some of the boxes in my bedroom and came across this... which I had actually bought for Robynne quite a few years ago - when she was still at school - along with another book cassette pack, - which we have yet to find lol - from Poundland, so decided to get Robynne to work through it, just for fun as it is a level 3 and in she should be on the level 6 ones. Amazingly she has almost finished even tho' she finds the book a little creepy - she's not really into Edgar Allen Poe - not sure why, but there you go. But anyway she has enjoyed it, shall hunt out the other one later. So I thought I'd look up online to see if I could find anymore and found the Penguin Readers site....

They have some really lovely books listed, with cassettes or cd's and their not too bad of a price. The free resources are fairly good to, and you don't need to join to access them all. We have had a look at and printed off the fact/worksheet for Memoirs of a Geisha and Robynne has now gone off to the Library to find the book, so that will be her English work for the next week sorted. With a whole list of others for her to work through as and when she wants to. Now if only could get her interested in Maths.

Ok so now the house is quiet for a while shall just play for a little bit....

Time sure does Fly...

Scince my last post have been relatively busy, what with one thing and another - website work, mild LEA contact panic, great monthly H.E meeting and Cosplay outfit for Robynne - phew that was fun... and in the middle of all that had my parents visiting lol

So in order lol
Website work - well to be honest haven't done as much as I intended to, but it's geting there have nearly finished the shop page so that should - fingers crossed - be ready to go up at the end of the month a little later than I wanted but, would rather get it right first time.

LEA - well this was the letter that I recieved on the morning of our last H.E meet which sent me into a little bit of panic.....

..... there was also a form for me to fill in, more in next paragraph lol.

H.E Meeting - this was really great, lots of new people and some we hadn't seen in a while. The children all had a great time and some lovely things were made. I am really enjoying the meetings and always look forward to the next one coming around. Also re previous paragraph showed the letter to some of the other mum's and was advised on the correct way to fill in the lovely form that they had sent, was going to photocopy it and post here but, well have filled it in now and it's making it's way down to there offices as I type lol, so not only great time at meeting, but after chatting to the other mum's silly LEA letter was busted and held no threat .... phew

Cosplay Outfit - So Robynne and her friends Dee, Joe and Seth - with Andy walking with them as chaperone and Dee's family following in the car doing a great impression of the paparazzi ... lol - did a Cosplay sponsored walk on Sat 10th to raise money for Red Nose Day, not sure how much they have raised yet, but from what some of them have said they have raised over £100 between them so thats good, plus there looking forward to do it again next time Red Nose Day comes round again. Hopefully they will have a few more friends join them and will give some of us a little more time for costume preperations lol. Anyway this was the pic that Robynne drew for me of what she wanted her costume to look like....








... which after a few days work turned into this...




A couple more photo's from Saturday.....





... these were taken by Dee




You can find more photo's here....

AC:WW

Oh my goodness, we have Animal Crossing and I am addicted. I never wanted to be just thought would have a litle play and put it down lol. We only got the game on Monday, as Robynne and Andy decided to take some games to trade in. I knew she wanted AC:WW as she had liked when she borrowed from a friend, I was also vaguely aware of the game. But I never thought it would get me, but it has... I paid the mortgage off in less than two days. The only thing that is sad is I have no friends who play the game, mmmm maybe they are more sensible than me lol and knew of it's hidden attraction and kept away. Does anyone know of a support group for poor addicted people like me....... no oh well shall go back to it then.



On another note have gotten the next issue of our H.E mag "tHE Sound" all finished and will be sending that out on Friday. It felt a bit touch and go this time, as it was all finished and printed bar Robynne's comic strip which she left to the last minute, so she felt like I was rushing her. But as Andy told her 'if you had done when you were asked, you would have finished it then'....... So fingers crossed, we won't have the same problems next month.

Currently we are in the process of making stickers to go on every available item in the flat, with there Japanese names on. Not just in Japanese but also in Kanji as Robynne is learning Japanese and labelling the whole flat will help...... mmmmm can't see the cat enjoying a label on her back tho'. But thankfully we won't be goingthat far as Robynne already knows the name for cat, she - that's Robynne not the cat - found a really great downloadable resource and is using it for at the least an hour a day. Where did she get that from now.... will just check, it's one she found herself not one of the twenty odd that I found for her when she expressed an interest in learning Japanese. Ok here it is it's called Japanese learning Suite it does take over an hour to download, but I took a brief look at it today and found it very good.

Robynne is also now getting back into practising her guitar everyday and she has even agreed to work through her theory books too. Which I'm really pleased about. Then last night Robynne asks me if her bike works as she wants to get a little fitter and riding her bike would be fun. Funny that, we were going to get rid of her bike cause she didn't want it anymore, it's been sat on the balcony for over two years. She won't be riding it any time soon tho' as for one the inner tubes are shot and well it's too small for her. When I bought it I never expected her to sprout up like she has. The funny thing is have been saying for a while that we were all going to get new bikes and Robynne has point blank refused to have anything to do with one. So we shall see how long this lasts for.

Things never change...

... sorry but this is just so funny had to share....



*Well it seems that this is no longer working, ah well it was fun while it lasted. But just in case you really wanted to find the song for yourself - tho' have searched to replace this and no luck so far - it's 'High School Never Ends' by Bowling for Soup.

It's a Thank-You blog today

Doesn't time fly, I didn't realize that I had spent so much time away from H.E. this past week. I have been learning so much about building websites and all those seemingly insignificant little bits of code, that have such great effects. That I haven't been noticing the world around me. I even missed activities well one activity, we were as a family planning on joining our H.E friends for the monthly woodland walk, but the code dragged me back in and I just plain forgot about it till I read through blogs late one night.

I shall blame the lovely book Robynne got me form the library "HTML 4 for Dummies" which to tell the truth have read three times and it still confuses me, thank goodness for 'copy and paste' and good old 'trial and error' as apart from the shop area our business website is more or less finished. Also thanks to Ann and her help I now have a nice link button on the right. I have given up on oscommerce as it's not compatible with our sites host, so I found a nice ecommerce item through another blog so thanks go to Qalballah for that. Must also thank Shirley for all her help, she probably doesn't think she helped me much, but she did. But, the main person I have to thank aloud is my darling daughter Robynne who has put up with my grunts and groans when things haven't worked and who oh so patiently showed me again and again what I did wrong, then checked through different codes to see why things didn't work. Plus she hasn't complained when I've been on the computer for hours on end and she wanted to be lol. Oh better not forget my brother Andy who as always makes sure we drink and eat, even when we don't think we need to lol.

So for the next few days I am going to leave the computer alone, well maybe not totally alone. Shall be concentrating on finishing off my work area and getting things sewn up. So again thanks to all those who have helped me get this venture off the ground. Ok better get on, now where did I put that book again ...... lol