Benefits of being ignored

This is Roy, in his usual place, sitting at the kitchen table, concentrating on the laptop. I love this picture though, even if he was getting slightly irritated that I was pointing the camera at him, but only slightly, like a little fly that keeps drifting across your vision sort of irritated.

Oh well at least its one benefit of being ignored most of the time, he can always pretend I'm not there....

My paintings

A little while ago I painted the above picture above of my son Jourdan. The photograph was taken on his mobile phone and we played with it on the computer until we got a much more abstract look to paint onto a canvas. We were both really pleased with it and it really does look like him.

I have the picture as my icon on my Flickr page and obviously in my photo stream. I showed my friend at work and she asked if I would do a painting of her daughter and had one photograph in mind. When she brought in the photograph for me (below) my heart dropped as there was no way I do do the same sort of abstract painting I had done previously. The picture is quite 'flat' and she didn't want black and white either, but sepia please!!. Oh well I do occasionally like a challenge, not very often, granted, so I set to it on Sunday night messing about with the scan.

The finished photos after editing were lovely, so on Monday night I started. On Tuesday night I had this, ta-daa, finished ready for work tomorrow. Although i'm not sure if Sam will like it quiet as much as I do. Oh well if she doesn't i'll keep it.

With regards to the others edited photographs I have one in mind to do a drawing with as well. If it works i'll add it to the blog. Although actually maybe I ought to finish the 3 blankets, 3 handbags, 1 scarf & 1 shopping bag for the Christmas presents first. Oh and of course all the wedding makes we haven't yet started...

Another round of redundancies

Yet again its not me!!

Roy said he's never seen anyone so upset about keeping their job, oh well 14 weeks 3 days until I hand my notice in.

One wet Saturday morning

Its Saturday morning and the weather is atrocious. The news is full of weather warnings for the rain and gail force winds and for once they have it spot on.

The poor chickens don't know what to do with themselves, but aren't bright enough to take cover. So they just stand there getting wetter and more bedraggled by the minute. We're currently waiting for a gust of wind to hook one up and take it away for a bigger flight than am I sure any one of them would have dreamed of.

So what to do today - I've already made a frittata with nine of the fresh eggs and have some bread rising ready to go in the oven shortly. So do I crochet my final blanket of this year, carry on knitting the handbag that I started last night, or start something completely different? Tempting as it is to try out some felting that I've had since last Christmas, or sewing a bag, or even knitting a tea cosy, I think I should carry on with one of the two projects I already have on the go. Mind you only five weeks left until Christmas and still quite a lot of stuff to make people. Will I get there, who knows!!

Finished bedroom

Emily's room is now finished and I am really pleased with the results. The finished Babette blanket is on the bed and shows why I chose the colours for the walls, I already had the quilt cover, I bought it about a year ago. The blanket is off the bed again now though and put away until Christmas.

However, I do remember somewhere in my mentally challenged brain that she did say at one point that she definately would not want pink in her room and as it has transpired pink is definately the main colour. Oh well I can always say I forgot, everyone would believe me, especially after finding my shoes in the fridge!!

Still following my previous blog it doesn't look as if she plans on staying here much in the future anyway, at least not for long periods at a time, but no matter I may have ended up with the nice bright craft room that i've been dreaming of afterall.

Is she coming back from America?

My daughter Emily has gone to America for 2 months to stay with my niece, Amelia, in Tennessee. She due back on 2 December, but I think she is enjoying herself a little too much. She seems to have fallen in love with the life there, learning to knit, sew and professionally clean houses with Amelia's mother in law, earning more money than we sent her with along the way.

Her 22nd birthday is coming up and she'll still be away at that time, so perhaps she will miss me on that day? Who knows, but she just sent me an email with a link to become a nanny / au pair, available from December 2009!!

To be honest though if she has the opportunity why not grab it with both hands, she's finished her degree and doesn't know what to do next, but she does know that in the new year if she is at home she will have to get out there and get a job, so why not do something different for a while.

Meanwhile i'll just wait and see I suppose but its going to be a long couple of months.

End of the holiday

Well thats my week over already.

Its Sunday morning, the weather is dreadful and i'm sitting in bed wondering whether or not to bother getting up at all. I've got my next crocheting next to me and obviously the computer, so I should be all set apart from running downstairs now and again for cups of tea and coffee.

Its currently only 10am and the poor chickens look like they've been left out in a typhoon, why they just stand there in the middle of the garden i've got no idea. Arthur, the labrador, has the same idea as me, he hasn't moved yet at all though and will have no intention of going outside in the rain. I didn't really realise until this week how much he actually sleeps now during the day, but then he is twelve tomorrow. Happy birthday Arthur.

So what have a I achieved this week? Emilys room is more or less finished, I just need to paint the floor (should be doing that right now actually). I've also managed to decorate the toilet and finish off the bathroom. Emilys Babette blanket is completely done and the bouquet is more or less there. All in all then not a bad week.

Back to work tomorrow and i'm dreading it. I popped in on Friday to take in some home grown, home made pumpkin soup for a Halloween charity event they were doing and just being there for ten minutes was ten minutes too long. Oh well if no redundancy a maximum of eighteen months to go I guess.

Upcoming wedding, 2

The brides bouquet is more or less finished, we've still got to find something to back it with, but both Rhiannon and I are extremely pleased with the results.

All the hard work was definately worth it, even though we did take it apart apart three times to redo the structure until we were happy. To start with we put in some button flowers with colour, but it didn't look right, we then rearranged it a couple of times more and now its lovely, quite small but then so is the bride.

We've started on the bridesmaid bouquets now, as well as having a go at the buttonholes for the men and grandmas. Once those are done we've only got hundreds more to make for the tables...

A week off work, yippee!

A week off work - excellent. Time to relax and enjoy myself, sort of. I started decorating Emily's bedroom today as a surprise for when she returns from America in a months time. Isn't it fantastic how you run out of paint right near the finishing line. So back to the shops to get some more, but at least I made it before closing time. But then it was dark (the clocks went back yesterday, so its starting to get dark at 5) and I had to get two coats so that I can start adding brighter colours tomorrow to kind of match the Babette blanket i'm making for her for Christmas. Oh and Jourdan informed me that he needs picking up tonight but strangely enough he doesn't know what time, so no glass for wine and a sit down for me again! Mind you anything is better than being at work and truth be told I actually really enjoy decorating.

Rhiannon is also on half term this week as she teaches, so she turned up from her house at 2 o'clock, the first thing she tells me is that she's 'starving', there's me covered in paint and half way through a wall and she wants me to do her a late lunch... At least she's supposed to be helping tomorrow, but as she's just learning to knit (a scarf for Christmas for hubby to be) I think i'll probably still me on my own. Oh well put some music on, sing along, loudly and badly and give the neighbours a laugh.

Upcoming Wedding

My daughter is getting married on 2nd April 2010. Although we now have the dress, booked the venue, band and caterers, we have so much to do and really need to start getting to grips with it. Here she is choosing a veil, beautiful.

Rhiannon isn't a flowery girl and right from the beginning decided she didn't want any 'real' flowers at the wedding and so we started looking for alternatives. We found felt bouquets and button bouquets galore, but one picture really caught our attention and so have been collecting buttons from as many sources as possible, with Ebay definitely coming out top. My Ebaying has actually become a bit of an addiction and I have finally decided that enough is enough, anyway i'm sure that we must now have buttons to last for quite some time. We have made enough button flowers for the bride's bouquet, as well as a couple of button holes for the bride groom and best man. However, we still have the bridesmaids and table decorations to do. The wedding cake has been designed around the same theme and will make the fruit cake layer in early January.

Invitations are the priority at the moment and tomorrow will be spent on these, with maybe a sneaky trip out to Hobbycraft in between the designing sessions.

My Blog! How exciting!

About me - I live in Berkshire in England and currently work in a finance company, where I am hoping for redundancy to be able to spend more time doing the things I enjoy, hence the title of my blog, Real Life. I completed an HND in Community Art a few years ago, but to date have not really had the time to pursue my hobbies to the full.

Why blog? I have decided I need to blog as nobody really listens to me at home anymore, going on and on about wool, colours, chickens and such and i'm getting fed up talking to myself. So I thought it was about time I cast my net further afield. This is my retreat where I can get away from the drudgery of the 9 to 5 and talk about the things that really interest me, from arts and crafts, to our chickens and recipes from the allotment.

What's it about? My blog will be about anything I find interesting that takes me out of the mundane world of work and daily activities that we all have to endure. I want to share achievements, dreams and aspirations so that they live virtually ahead of realisation.