Category / Project 365

by jo

Project 365 – Week 39

Ahh, I got my week numbers mixed up, but back on track this week.

Sunday 20th September. We had plans to go to Madame Tussauds today, but I was ill overnight, a rotten stomach ache so we’ve put it off until next weekend. H wrote her Christmas list instead, which was pretty handy.

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Monday 21st September. I cannot find a photo for today, which is weird as I knew I took one.

Tuesday 22nd September. I took this photo for the blog post below. My two Nijntje maps from Amsterdam and Utrecht, plus the Centraal Museum guide for the Miffy 60 Exhibition that’s going on at the moment. 

Miffy Art Parade maps for Utrecht and Amsterdam

Wednesday 23rd September. H’s outfit on her way to swimming. Stylish! 

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Thursday 24th September. I like this picture as it’s the first time in ages my phone hasn’t taken a grainy photo. Bought H a wig from Poundland, which she added her light up head thing we bought her a couple of years ago. A bit We’ve Got A Fuzzbox and We’re Going to Use It I think.

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Friday 25th September. Spotted these in Tiger Stores yesterday. Did not buy. Remarkably restrained.

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Saturday 26th September. So when in the West End, you must make the most of everything. So after football we got the tube up to Madame Tussauds, followed by a bus to Covent Garden to see all of the Shaun the Sheep statues for one last time (which makes up for us not getting to Bristol to see them – talk about lucky), and finally a last minute decision to go and see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane with H. A late night, but a busy one. Which photo to choose though? Why the one sheep we wanted to find but couldn’t – Mr Shaun. See, way back when we first got married we’d refer to each other as Mr Shaun and Mrs Jo, before we became Mummy and Daddy. So H was particularly excited to find a sheep with the same name as daddy!

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by jo

Project 365 – Week 38

Sunday 13th September. So you have a crazy busy week and it gets to Sunday and you can’t not do something as that’s just weird. So we went to Box Hill, doing the Stepping Stones trail which is quite frankly the most leg-wobbly of walks down the hill, to then wobble over stepping stones and having a fear of falling in, then walking all the way back up the hill. Phew.

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Monday 14th September. My order from Toughees shoes arrived, and fortunately they fit H perfectly, so gone are the old scuffed in a week shoes to be replaced by these. So far, so good. So far not scuffed. *keeps everything crossed nothing will get scuffed again and I will buy Toughees for life*

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Tuesday 15th September. A new Oyster Card holder.

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Wednesday 16th September. We’ve pretty much stopped watching Cbeebies until today – when Topsy and Tim returned. This is H’s face when she watches them – pre Topsy getting appendicitis, mind as that would be a bit mean!

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Thursday 17th September. So H wants to be a goalkeeper at the moment, so I went to Decathlon and bought her some £4 gloves which also match her boots. She’s really happy about this!

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Friday 18th September. I had one of those moments where I wished I’d bought Eva Schloss’ book when we left the Dutch Resistance Museum, and you instantly regret it once you get too far away. So I ordered it, and it arrived. Not one for my commute, as I know I’ll be in tears again. Moving.

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Saturday 19th September. You can live somewhere for almost eight years and not spot something, then you wonder why on earth you’ve never seen it before. Then you read, and re-read and re-read one more time because it’s so wordy it makes no sense at all. I think it means don’t park on their driveway. I think?

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by jo

Project 365 Week 37

Sunday 6th September. H’s late birthday party. They watched The Lego Movie then we played some party games afterwards. It was a surprisingly low-maintenance party, although exhausting – especially as I hadn’t really planned it well. H’s Lego cake was marvellous though. Look!

H's Lego birthday cake

Monday 7th September. H went into school dressed as a knight for their topic this term. I made the costume from a t-shirt, cut the sleeves off and sewed up the sleeves a bit, added a purple emblem to the front and a purple ribbon around the waist. The final touch was a chain mail type hat we picked up from Pendennis Castle and her sparkly tights which made good chainmail leggings!

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Tuesday 8th September. I think I forgot to take a photo today. Weird. Wednesday 9th September. The new Storytime magazine arrived today – can’t believe it’s Issue 13 already. My mum has bought H another year’s subscription for her birthday – and considering H got a copy of The Secret Garden and recognises it from Storytime, I know we need to keep going. This month’s issue has The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe inside, and I wish I still had my old copy.

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Thursday 10th September. Cheating to make Vol au Vents, as inspired by Flora from Bake Off. Chocolate vol au vents work in the same way crumpets and ice cream do – yum.

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Friday 11th September. Making the aforementioned vol au vents.

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Saturday 12th September. A good start to the day, H and her friends were approached about our local football club setting up an Under 8’s Girl’s Team, and would our girls be interested (yes! yes! yes!!!), followed by us getting home, changing football kits and heading out to a football party for the afternoon. My copy of the Bernard Sumner book arrived and so I’m looking forward to settling down to actually read it.

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by jo

Project 365 – Week 36

Sunday 30th August. Put on my Seasalt socks I bought in Cornwall. Felt happier for it. You can’t beat fresh socks and good patterns. We went to Decathlon and bought H a new bike for her birthday.

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Monday 31st August. Went to the Carshalton Environmental Fair – and it was rainy. Wellies on, we were fine. They had a coconut shy – H had a couple of goes and won a coconut – she even managed to hit the coconuts a few times which was good to see – her hand-eye coordination is good!

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Tuesday 1st September. I realise this probably looks ridiculous. This is PeePee Boy. He is a device from China for checking when your water is warm enough for tea. You soak him in cold water for ten minutes, boil your water and pop PeePee Boy in there. If it’s just right then yep, you guessed it, he does a pee. Shaun’s sister (who lives in Viet Nam but lived in China) sent us a package over!

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Wednesday 2nd September. At 11pm I was hastily stamping up H’s school things with my Stamptastic stamp kit for the following morning – I cannot go on enough about how brilliant they are – this is our third year using the stamp pad and it’s still going strong.

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Thursday 3rd September. Back to school – so here’s the obligatory Year 2 picture. Shaun took this in the morning, I took my usual gate picture and compared them against previous first days – she’s grown an entire head!!

Year 2

Friday 4th September. We had a lazy movie day after school today – watching Grease for the first time. My daughter being the reader she is, found the lyrics to the songs just as Greased Lightning was on. It was swiftly confiscated… the original photo didn’t take, annoyingly.

Saturday 5th September. Birthday Party prep – as in, making frozen icing Lego bricks for H’s birthday cake. Shaun takes all birthday cake responsibilities very seriously, and after browsing the internet found the cake he wanted to make. All H wanted was a Lego cake, and somehow I had the foresight to buy moulds – so we had dairy free chocolate moulds of Lego men, and icing Lego bricks – which only work if you freeze them.

Frozen Lego Icing from a Lego Mould

So instead, have two pictures for today. Dairy Free Chocolate Lego Men

by jo

Project 365 – Week 35

Sunday 23rd August. My baby turned six. We woke up in Plymouth, having booked the Travelodge there knowing we’d be going to the Eden Project the previous day. She opened her presents, we went off for a huge breakfast, then made our way back home via Stonehenge. Here she is modelling her buddingSTEM t-shirt which arrived recently – I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign they did, and gave H the t-shirt for her birthday.

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Monday 24th August. Getting Home Learning done for school. Yep, going into Year 2 it seems you get things to do over the Summer Holidays. So this is her Knight outfit. My work is done.

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Tuesday 25th August. Had to take H for a haircut and for her eye check up at the hospital, both of which went well. We have to trawl Charity shops for Enid Blyton books, and found two more. I spotted MC Miker and DJ Sven on the floor. Truly awful record (‘The Holiday Rap’) but this is what all our old 7″ records from the eighties look like now. Maybe.

bad records

Wednesday 26th August. We arrived in Amsterdam – tired after a 4am start but ready to explore a city none of us had been to. After forgetting to charge my camera battery last week, it was the first thing I did when I got home from Cornwall, so I have decent quality Miffy pictures alongside my substandard phone ones. I’m much less cross about it! Here’s one of the Miffy Statues from the Miffy Art Parade – they’re all being removed now, so there’s probably only a month or so left.

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Thursday 27th August. Utrecht. A long-standing place I’ve wanted to visit – to wander around the streets where Dick Bruna lives, to find out what inspired him, to go to the Miffy Museum (Dick Bruna Huis – it’s being refurbished but there’s a huge exhibition over the road at the main museum) and just to be there. I grew up with Miffy, H has too, but also my dad, when he was alive and went for a break in the Netherlands with my mum, picked up a Miffy for me (but lost it), as he knew how much I loved that bunny back in the seventies. To be in Utrecht meant a lot. Where else would you get Miffy traffic lights?

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Friday 28th August. Back to Amsterdam – and a trip to the Library for the views, a walk around some of the old city and to the Museum of Resistance (which has a fantastic new Children’s area which I’ll go into on another post), before finding more Miffy’s (Miffies?), and heading back to Amsterdam Centraal to make our way home again. This statue is in the Hortus Botanicus and was created by Dick Bruna’s daughter Madelon. I’m so pleased we got to this one, as you had to pay – they let us in for €4.50 as it was about to close, and H for free.

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Saturday 29th August. A lazy day around the house – we needed it after a busy last week. H was given a Miffy stencil, so she set about stencilling our back yard. I love it!

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by jo

Project 365 – Week 34

Sunday 16th August. We went to St Michael’s Mount – somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, so really pleased we did it. H was a bit worried as the tide was getting close to the causeway on the way back, and we had no money as there are no cashpoints there (but the shops do cashback) – but we made it back in time! A lovely afternoon, and I had completely forgotten the story of Jack the Giant Killer was based there!

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Monday 17th August. One of the biggest benefits of being National Trust members in Cornwall is the free parking – as we found when we went to tons of places and didn’t have to pay a penny. So we spent plenty in the cafe’s instead! We visited Kynance Cove and were so impressed – a beautiful beach. We bumped into friends too, and by the end of the day H had a body board (bought in Poldhu just up the road!).

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Tuesday August 18th. We knew this would be our last day of good sun, with possible appearances on Friday so headed for the beach again, this time to Gunwalloe Church Cove, another National Trust beach which was quiet, big enough to make a boat in the sand, and empty enough we bumped into our friends again and hung out with them for the day – with H getting more confident on a body board too!

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Wednesday August 19th. Making the most of our Merlin Passes we went to the SeaLife Seal Sanctuary in Gweek, where there was a Lego trail, plus additional questions which H enjoyed doing. It’s all outdoors, so not many places to shelter from the rain, but the rain wasn’t so bad. Our plans of doing two things in the same day were delayed by the rain, however. The Seal Sanctuary was wonderful – seeing how old seals are kept there, and seals are rescued and looked after until they’re ready to go back out to the wild was a real reassurance when you might have concerns about the SeaLife Aquariums (which I’m sure a lot of people do). A truly lovely place. This is H looking for Humboldt Penguins.

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Thursday 20th August. This picture could have been SO much better – if only I’d remembered my camera battery. Foolish things to forget when going on holiday, your charger. So I had to rely on my phone. Which takes photos like this.

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but also takes photos like this, as after we’d been to Pendennis Castle (using our English Heritage Membership), we went to Glendurgan Gardens (using our National Trust membership) – the maze was excellent!

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Friday 21st August. Shaun’s birthday! So we went to St. Ives, which was lovely. I loved walking around, I loved going into a Seasalt shop, and I loved spending money on so many things which will be memories of our day there. I want to go back. I also don’t want to do the park and ride and get the bus down the hill, as a fiver is a right rip off, when you see what a short distance you go!

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Saturday 22nd August. We left Helston, and went to The Eden Project – a wonderful day out. Again, relying on camera photos, and a full review to come – probably with awful photos. We’ll just have to go again 🙂

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by jo

Project 365 – Week 33

Sunday 9th August. We went to see Horrible Histories Barmy Britain part 3 at the theatre. I thought I was being clever getting us seats second from the front, but oh, silly me. We were in fact the front row. Which was fine, but being long sighted I had problems focusing as it was pretty much in my face! But it was excellent. Here’s H.

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Monday 10th August. After the horrible fire we took H to Halfords to size her up on a bike. She’s tall enough for a 24″ one now – scary. She’s a big girl.

H new bike

Tuesday 11th August. This one is a complete cheat as I did take it on Tuesday, but the aftermath of Monday meant I didn’t post it anywhere until Wednesday. Shaun took Monday off to get a smart meter fitted at home, and we have a little gadget which tells us how much power we’re using. This has made us realise some things use a lot of power, and we’re really cutting back. Interesting, though.

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Wednesday 12th August. Found some Minions Kinder Eggs. Bought two. Didn’t have time to eat them.

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Thursday 13th August. Found time to eat them.

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Friday 14th August. Stayed here. It was spacious, warm and quiet, and part of a cunning plan to beat the M5. It worked.

Wooden wigwams

Saturday 15th August. Stopped at Trellissick as we beat the M5 and arrived in Cornwall nice and early. H did a few more of her 50 Things tasks!

Picking apples

by jo

Project 365 – Week 32

Sunday 2nd August. I had plans, so many plans. They fell by the wayside as the cold which had been threatening to knock me over, finally did. So I spent the majority of the day in bed while H went to her best friends’ party. It wasn’t much fun at all being home on my own. I lost my voice too.

survival kit when you have a cold

Monday 3rd August. Which meant I took today off work. Too tired and my throat was puffed up so it hurt to speak. Although being at home alone actually helped as I had nobody to talk to, so my voice was almost back to normal by the end of the day. I still had to do important things like pick H up from school. Her first topic next term is castles, so we decided to make her box garden into a castle – quite easy when you have 7″ squares and kitchen roll holders and don’t have to think too hard about stuff. Phew.

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Tuesday 4th August. H is at holiday club over the summer, so gets to have trips every now and then. Today’s was Build a Bear. They always have the two bears as choice, so I asked if it was okay to give a bit of extra money for her to choose a different one. That was fine, so she came back with a monkey. The monkey “does not look like Fran Kirby” I was reliably informed, and is now called “Harry Kane”. I’m not sure Mr Kane would appreciate being told he looks like a monkey, and I’m not about to argue with a five year old. She’s saving her money to buy Harry Kane an England shirt! 

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Wednesday 5th August. H made me “take a selfie” – I had no idea she even knew what one was. Possibly something she’s picked up at Holiday Club….

selfie

Thursday 6th August. We’re reviewing some Bic pens, and I’ve claimed these ones for my own personal use at work. Add that to the Smiggle highlighter which rubs out, and I’ve got a pretty good pen collection which nobody had better try get their grubby hands on! Yes, I have considered getting a safe for my stationery on my desk.

bic coloured ink pens

Friday 7th August. We had a playdate after school today, and had butter beans with a delicious mild curry sauce – really good too. I could have happily eaten the entire bowl – as could H!

curried butter beans

Saturday 8th August. H went off for the day and night on a sleepover, so Shaun and I went to the pub and had beer and stonebaked pizza. A good day!

jo pub

by jo

Project 365 – Week 31

Sunday 26th July. Drove to Guildford to watch Inside Out at the cinema. H really enjoyed it, I cried several times (proper tears falling from my eyes in a ‘I am so obviously crying’ kind of way) and I think Shaun liked it too. We went to GBK for lunch beforehand, where H got to do a spot of colouring in while waiting for our burgers.

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Monday 27th July. I’m taking the train home to Wallington at the moment, having to pick H up from Holiday Club, which she’s enjoying and is with lots of her friends. Spotted this at Waddon. Keeping all options open there.

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Tuesday 28th July. My new super healthy regime (more to come on that before the month is out) meant I spotted this ad on our local bus stop. NEW MARMITE! Now it may or may not be common knowledge, but I have a Marmite Archive which has different varieties from over the years. Shaun (Vegemite lover) does not understand it, but he doesn’t need to as people who eat Vegemite have not been spoilt like us Marmite lovers.

Groovy Marmite

Wednesday 29th July.  A pile of Dictonaries and Thesauruses I ordered in for some mums at school to save on shipping – to be handed out this weekend. I like to keep busy!

oxford dictionary and thesaurus

Thursday 30th July. The sky looked great tonight.

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Friday 31st July. We’re team Frozen – H’s goodies arrived today. She’s been doing some of the activities on the cards and seems really motivated by it which is good! You can sign up here, and it’s to help encourage your child to do 10 minutes of exercise every day – while H is pretty active anyway, this is giving us a bit of variety.

team frozen

Saturday 1st August – Wember-leeeeeee! Finally made it – it has been just over six years since we last went (when York City were in the League Two play off final and H was six months in my tummy) – she loved it, enjoyed the mexican waves, and only got tired right at the end (so I was kind of glad Notts County didn’t equalise) – but soon perked up when she spotted the playground right next to the stadium – though she was tired and grumpy on the journey home.

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by jo

Project 365 – Week 30

Sunday 19th July. Today I messed up. I want to take H to a game of football before we go to Wembley, so decided on a friendly that Crystal Palace ladies were playing. We turned up at Bromley’s ground, only to find we were two hours too late – it was a 1pm kick off. So we kept on driving, making the most of our English Heritage membership, driving to Eltham Palace instead. The day was saved, but no football.

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Monday 20th July. H’s last day of school for the year. One of my late days at work, though I realised I was on holiday club hours, so made it to the childminders’ place for 3pm, a bit earlier than we expected. So good for it all to be over, even if H has several weeks of holiday club for the holidays. School’s out!

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Tuesday 21st July. H’s birthday present sorted. Ordered from Sports Direct on Sunday, arrived Tuesday. Now hidden away for another month.

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Wednesday 22nd July. Did our second video for the Collins Picture Atlas review. It went much more smoothly, as in, H spoke well whereas I waffled on and made myself sound foolish. But I think a bit of perspective is in order. It was only a few years ago we all realised Mexico was part of North America. I’ve said that at work we need an atlas with each continent and country correctly defined. So this atlas would be pretty handy in that respect. But I didn’t want to actually *say* that. So I just said something else badly. Here’s H reading it.

h reading Thursday 23rd July. We went to the pub after work to hand over the cushion we’d crocheted. I can’t crochet so didn’t join in, but was there in spirit. I think the pub loved it – it was our little tribute to Andy, the bar manager who died recently from Sepsis. He was so supportive of our little group – even if he kept forgetting to book our meetings in the diary 🙂 I’ll miss having my indie music chats with him. H and J from next door walked back home nicely together afterwards. h walking

Friday 24th July. Wet. Not helped by standing on a wobbly paving stone at Sutton Station and this happening. 

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Saturday 25th July. A busy day. We started with H’s football class, my eye test and new glasses, going lavender picking at the local harvest, then back to Carshalton Athletic to watch a friendly. We FINALLY got to a game. Attendance 102 and H loved it – and was focused on the game for quite a bit of the time which was great and sets my mind at ease for next weekend at Wembley. Phew.

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