Afternoon off!

I've just had a whole afternoon off to my lovely self :-)
It doesn't always take much to make me happy honest!
Have managed to drag Meridian around to ours for lunch, I made Veg soup, which we consumed with Stilton Bread, purchased in Bakewell yesterday.

We then headed over to Belper and Fresh Basil http://www.freshbasil.co.uk/ for some coffee and cake (I had Spiced Appley, Meridian Victoria Sponge). Managed to do a little bit of writing whilst we were in there too, both of us studiously pottering away in our notebooks, sociable friends eh!
Pootled to the bra shop, whilst Meridian did beads. 2 new bras later, we sauntered up the road and got dd1 a new pair of pj's £4 in the sale, which I now have to take back, as got home and found they'd left the bloomin tag on them, sigh.

Meridian then took me to a lovely shop that consisted of about 3 houses knocked together, full of lovely furniture and things you can buy, sigh. Still at least I know where our next set of coffee tables are coming from, possibly also the next bed and cabinets too, hmmmmmm now to start saving!

We topped the afternoon off with a trip to the cinema http://www.ritz-belper.co.uk/ , this time work related, to leave flyers and see if they would like us to advertise with them, they asked me to email as busy! so I shall do that tomorrow. Oh and of course we squeezed in a quick iced latte at Fresh Ground too, ooooh I am rotten to my waist line......I'm now considering not going to the gym tonight too, as my head is starting to thump again.....and I have double class tomorrow night......hmmmmmmm

Neglect and the time inbetween

My poor blog has been very neglected recently, cripes when was it I last posted?? OMG over a month ago, now that is bad........

So what have I been upto?

We did finally decorate! the day of the evening that we took the girls away for a few days, they were both in nursery, so I talked dh into decorating!! hurrah. We have nice, clean plain old magnolia walls again (is magnolia nice? well its fresh anyway!). The paint smell after decorating wasn't a problem either, as we whizzed down to Christchurch to see mum and dad in a caravan for a few days.

Had a lovely time in Christchurch and Bournemouth, although was upset that borders closed at 9pm, just as I was finally getting into looking around a bookstore with no kids in tow! was even more peeved that Starbucks had shut at 8pm.........why can't you get a decent coffee in this country in the evening??? grrrrrrrrrr and grump. Met up with Flame and her family, for a fun afternoon of soft play too :-) and she didn't manage to convert me to real nappies :-) not much point now really, dd2 will be out of them during the day soon (6mths or so)

Erm what else have we been doing? Oh the Edgewater event, now that was fun! Lets see, the whole country got rained on very heavily, so hardly anyone made the event on time. Dh took 12.5hrs to get to site, Gloucestershire went under water and some of our crew got stuck on the M5 overnight. Putting the tents up for everyone was a nightmare, but we all managed it in the end, and thankfully by Saturday am, it wasn't raining over our bit of Wales, hurrah, so we could LARP in the dry, always better :-)
I can report there were some top totty at the rescue command HQ on the M5 on our return journey :-) dh has already berated me for looking, but what's the harm eh?!

More recently I've spent a lovely weekend with the Feb 06 girls at CSWS's lovely house in Hertfordshire, one of these days I will get a lovely dream house like hers.............although I do have to once again apologise to them all for having to leave so early on the Sunday am, which in turn caused me to be Cinderella the night before and pack up drinking and wander off to bed at midnight, most unlike me, it won't happen next time, promise!!

I left early as headed for BIL/SIL's house at Bromsgrove. Met dh there and just as we were driving out for dinner, disaster struck! I received a call from a friends dh, asking me to babysit their eldest ds, as yikes, she'd gone into labour......erm sorry, I'm miles away, ahem...anyway luckily they had backup plans, and 4 and a bit hours later, she had another lovely little boy, so well done to you!! you know who you are :-)

OMG I nearly forgot my birthday weekend!! that's what getting old does for you, ahem....
Julie, Richard and Dave came over on the Saturday, bringing the HUGE Egg that is still lurking in the living room, not quite sure what to do with it yet, Meridian says make cake with it, I think I might. They discussed game stuff with dh during the afternoon whilst I was out, then I re heated us all Pizza and Dave's fantastic selection of Garlic Bread when I got back. Followed by wine and chocolate or berry torte, depending on your preferences.

Sunday had a lovely day, went out for lunch with my dh, ss and our two dd's, plus Meridian, her dh and ds. The Bear at Alderwalsey, Derbyshire (SP) was the venue, and I highly recommend it, but book first as they get rather busy! Carvery, very good VFM and the views over the Derwent valley are spectacular. That evening dh did a feed the 5000 buffet for the same people who'd been there for dinner, we were still eating it on Tuesday.......its taken all of us, over a week to clear the house of cake. I am now on a diet again.

Ok, that's my quick summary of July and a teeny bit of August, here's hoping I can keep more upto date in future?