Nics knots’s blog

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While I was looking at photos on the computer the other day, I found a picture of the veggie patch when I had first pegged it out in March time. This is what it looked like then....

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And now it looks like this.....

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So we have made some progress. I also have my two greenhouses and various things dotted around.

Lou helped me pick some courgettes on Tuesday...

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There she is, her sunny little self. She is suffering a bit this week, having to share my attention with J being off for the summer, I think. She is dealing with it in the way that all little children know how; by being a little madam. We have sunshine and light when she is centre stage but when anyone else is talking, its a different story.

We went to town on Thursday, she was full of sillyness and trouble-causing in the car on the way there so I suggested that maybe we could leave all of our naughty and sillyness in the car. J told me that he had put all of his in a box, locked it and thrown the key out of the window. L said she had thrown all hers out of the window and she was a good girl now. We got to town, J was walking with us, being good. L, on the other hand was a spinning top, knocking old women over in her wake. I picked her up and was talking to her about behaving when she announced that she had found her naughtyness again and that she was keeping it. Hmm so we see.....

It is so hard when she is like this. I'll be honest, I really don't want to spend time with her when she is being naughty to get attention but what she craves is the attention and that is why she is being naughty but I can't give her my all, all of the time. I'm hoping she will settle down in the next week and realise that it is cool that she has her big bro home, after all she wouldn't have Prince Charming to rescue her from her bed if he were at school, would she? Kids eh ;)

How and when do you reward yourself?
Submitted by Rainbird.

Yesterday I rewarded myself with this necklace for managing to get my little boy to his 5th birthday ;)

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I have been a grumpy cowbag for ooooh about a fortnight now. I am putting it down to a mega dose of PMT and I am pissing myself off with my grumpyness. I want to be locked away in a room on my own and be allowed out when my head can play nice again.

On Sunday, I decided that to cheer myself up and because I had been frugal girl for weeks now, I would treat myself to some Birks in time for the Baby Show at the NEC that I am working at all this weekend. After lots of looking around, I decided that I would buy them from Amazon, not because  they were the cheapest but because they had that express delivery, guaranteed next day joby so I would have them in time for Thursday because I leave at 5am on Friday morning.

So, yesterday I stayed in in the morning, my little sis came round for a cuppa and got encouraged to stay for the afternoon so she could stay in while I picked Lou up from pre-school but the postman didn't show up. Of course, that fueled my crappy mood even more as did Michael when he came home, wound the kids up then retreated to his office to do some work and left me with hyper children while I was trying to make tea.

Anyway, this morning, just as I was giving up any hope of seeing my sandles and convinced that I would hate them anyway, Mr Postman showed up with these.....

Ignore my feet, ew, and stubbly legs (its cold here this week). Just appreciate the shoes....or alternativley tell me that I have now officially joined the hippy/old lady club. Any comments, I don't mind ;)

The other week, I had to laugh because Clare told me in a comment that she thought I was super-organised. Oh how much further from the truth could that be!! I used to be Miss Organised but then I think I moved in with Michael and had kids and lost my organised brain cells. Its one of the things that really annoys me about myself though and one that really needed sorting.

The reason for this shock revelation?? Well I bought tickets for us all to go and see a show at The Drill Hall in Lincoln about a month ago. The show is on this weekend and could I find the tickets??  Ahhh no. I was really annoyed with myself, aside from the obvious reasons because we don't go and see many things as a family and I love the Drill Hall. Anyway, I have just located the tickets in one of my (many) handbags, with the six million recepits and other really important random bits of paper, so on Sunday afternoon we will be going to see Lily and the magical moonbeam. Last year we went to watch Elmer done by the same company, Blunderbus, and it was excellant so I am really looking forward to it.

Hmm, so in an effort to be more organised I have just sorted throught the piles of paperwork that we had on the kitchen worktop and nearly filled them all away. I now have a peg on the wall which has all of my certificate of postage thingys I need to keep for work and another one for really important things (like tickets!), all the rest of the stuff is filed or binned and now I am about to go and update my diary and calender so that I know what we are doing for the next couple of months.

I SHALL be that super-organised person again!!

Ooh and Jack and Lou slept all night from 630 last night. I went to bed at 8. I was going to watch Holby but watched the first ten minutes and fell asleep. M came back from his bike ride with my brother, marched into the bedroom and woke me up (grr!) but I told him I was asleep and went straight back to sleep till 7 this morning.

As promised, slightly later than planned. Lou and I had to sit and watch 'This Morning' (I WILL win one of their competitions!!) and have lunch but here I am.

You know when it all goes quiet so you know something must be going on. Its bad enough if you only have one child and it goes quiet but if you have two, there is generally noise; be that conversational or fighting, there is noise. Well last night Jack and Lou were playing in the back garden, I was doing stuff in the house and I suddenly noticed that all was quiet. I went outside and found this.............

See the looks on their faces. They say 'Either Mummy is going to shout or she is going to laugh but we can't decide which at the moment so we will look all sweet and innocent even though we are both dripping wet, in our school uniforms with watercans in our hands.'

Well luckily Mummy was in a good mood. It was kind of my own fault for leaving them to water their blueberry bushes while I sorted the washing out. Kids and water never mix well do they? So I sent them inside to get undressed and jump in the shower before tea.

Later on, when they were all clean and dry with their dressing gowns on and we were snuggled up on Lucy's bed, I asked them why they watered each other;

'Well Mummy,' started Lou, 'Jack wanted long hair like me and if you want things to grow, you water them. So I did'

'Yes, so now my hair will grow long like Lucy's!' exclaimed Jack.

I love that everything is so straight-forward in a 3 and 4yr olds minds.

I was doing a bit of idle surfing on the old 'net last night and stumbled across Earth Hour. Earth hour is an initiatie that started in Sydney, Australia last year with people wanting to do something to bring about awareness of our massive use (and waste) of energy.

"On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. If the greenhouse reduction achieved in the Sydney CBD during Earth Hour was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year."

That's quite an amazing fact, just by switching off one light!  Just think of all of those lights that you leave on when you're not in the room because you can't be bothered to switch them off, all those phone an laptop chargers left on constantly even when not in use.

I make no secret of the fact that I started using cloth nappies on J because I just couldn't see how we could afford to have two babies in disposable nappies, the enviromental benefits, to start with, weren't as important to me at the time.

Well, maybe if people thought the same about leaving lights and other electrical appliances on when they are not being used; make the issue more personal, forget about the enviromental issues for the minute, if you like.  What about the effects on your pocket; imagine the old electricity meter spinning around.  Maybe that might make you stop the wastage and stop standing with the fridge door open (my pet hate in our house!) while you see if there is anything good to eat.

I'll be switching the lights off tomorrow night. Who's in?

....this

I got an order to make a big needle roll for 40 pairs last week and I put it off over the weekend because I needed to make a new pattern and work out how to fit them all in but I sat down this morning, faffed around with sizes and patterns and came up with this...its even got my new label on it. I'm just hoping the person I am making it for likes it. I am paranoid when it comes to people not liking my things.

If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead. Who would it be and why?

...for waiting right until school time till you made an appearance then blowing up into a blizzard while we waited for J to come out of school then continuing all the way home so that I am now soaked through to the pants (and I mean knickers to all your american readers ;o) ) and socks. Still there is time to strip off, get changed into dry clothes, pack swimming stuff and take J and L to swimming lessons....urgh I LOVE Friday afternoons!!

Show us something you made.

Knitting needle rolls and bags. All available in these and a variety of other prints, including William Morris (if you are into that kind of thing ;o) ) at Krafty Koala or direct from me.

Wow its like pimp my stuff week this week...can't be a bad thing though ;)