A Whale Of A Time

Yes, quite literally, I've been having a whale of a time. A 7ft 6in, according to Richard, who is a man and obviously needs to know these things precisely, whale of a time.


Why (and yes, I've asked myself this many times over the last 2 weeks)? The crêche at church are currently telling the story of Jonah and they asked, as they have this idea from somewhere that I'm 'crafty', if I had any ideas? Well, I always have ideas I'm just not sure if I should in future tell people what they are because before you know it you've volunteered to make a HUGE papier maché whale! And I've never done any papier maché before!

So where to start? Obviously first step was to search the web for 'papier maché whale'. Results? None, unless you wanted to make a little 12" 2D whale to put on the wall. The other end of the search fell in to the 'I want to make a whale as big as a house for my museum' category. Not helpful. So it was back to having to use my creativity and come up with a way to do this. The main problem was creating the framework for the papier maché to be laid onto. I briefly went down the route of 'can I find balloons big enough to support my whale sized proportions' but quickly discarded this as no, I probably couldn't. Chicken wire saved the day - and I have the scars to prove it!

After that the rest was easy, if not time consuming. The most frustrating part was waiting for it to dry between applying layers and the fact that it was a 3D object which meant covering all sides of it.

So my life this last week or so has consisted of: papier maché, dry, turn, papier maché, dry, turn, papier maché, dry ... I'm sure you get the picture.

He went down a treat though. And yes, I do mean he. It's definitely not a she - just ask Noah. He complained when I once referred to it as a she, "but mum, I'm surrounded by girls, there are already 4 in this house and only 2 boys, can it be please be a boy whale?".

Who's the 4th girl? Well that's a post for another time but I will tell you it's a hamster named Ruby.

A Layout

Credits:

Papers: Softly Dotted - Amy Wolff, Once Upon A Whimsical Morning - Lilypad Designers, Deacons Closet Reloaded - Studio Flergs, Sweater Weather - Kate Hadfield
Scalloped Strip Masks - Katie Pertiet
Happy Overlay - Mary Ann Wise
Flowers: Fresh Air - MSA Collab, Time After Time - Ferguson & Rockwell, Katie Pertiet
Paint Splotches - Studio Flergs
Label/Pin - Katie Pertiet
Glitter Action & Journaling Label - My Own

"I'm Only Good At 2 Things Mum"

That's according to him that is:

Me: What are you good at?
Noah: Maths and ICT. Do you know what ICT is? Well, I've learnt how to break a laptop using only my fingers!

LOL, what can I say to that?

Apparently he told the teacher but she said not to worry "it was only a spring".

Feeling Good

My New Look Blog

And I'm not ashamed to admit that it's had me tearing my hair out at times! I can't count the number of times I got it 'almost' right but then there would be one little thing that just didn't look right and then I'd tweak it only to find that it had, somehow (don't ask me how) messed EVERYTHING up. I then ended up having to reinstall and start from scratch.... arrrrgggghhhh.

The hardest part was trying to find a basic theme that would allow me, with my limited CSS and HTML skills, to customise it and get it to look the way I would like it to look. I spent hours, and I mean hours, trawling the internet looking for just the right theme and guess what? It turns out that the default theme that's installed with Wordpress is just perfect. Wouldn't you know?

Anyway, here it is. Complete. The graphics side of things was sorted out in the wee hours of this morning (which was not a good idea considering I had to get up again at 7am - Jools + 5 hours sleep = not a good mix) and I've spent the better part of today trying to work out how best to fit it in with my main domain page, getting the links to work, coding up my main domain HTML and CSS to match the Wordpress blog. I still need to sort out my blogroll and other links but to all intents and purposes I'm done. This is it. For now anyway!

And who knows I may actually blog now...

Highly Recommended

I’m sure that most of us are feeling the effects of having to tighten our belts in this economic climate. I know we are, especially as I currently am not bringing in a second income. In our home the largest expenditure (after the mortgage) is our food bill. I should feel ashamed admitting that, I know(I have those lines in Dirty Dancing going through my head – “Are there still starving children in Europe?” “Try Southeast Asia”) but with a family of five, 3 of which are growing children that’s the deal. I’ve commented to friends that when my children come home from school it’s like a plague of locusts, they come in through the front door, rapidly moving down the hall to the kitchen and proceed to eat anything that’s edible! I’m lucky if I get a “Hello mum…”.

A job doesn’t seem to be easily obtainable at the moment, not for want of trying and a job interview next week, so in the interim we are cutting back where possible. The food bill, the one that could possibly support a small country, is something we can cut back on. To start with buying our groceries online helps. It really does. However, this has gone by the by since the beginning of the summer holidays and I just haven’t got back in to the routine of it. Also Richard has argued, on more than one occasion, that the delivery cost is expensive but I disagree. The delivery charge is less than the cost of the all the extras/impulse buys that inevitably find their way in to the shopping trolley when I do the shopping in real life so to speak!

The big question is do I shop online with Sainsbury’s, Asda or Tesco? My shop of choice is Sainsbury’s. Richard’s is Asda. This difference of opinion is largely affected by our different cultural backgrounds, which is perhaps a post for another time.

However, today I decided to get back to that routine when Richard tells me about this brilliant website that he’s seen. It allows you to compare and shop. But it also does so, so much more than that. In short. It. Is. Amazing! Let me tell a little bit about it.

First off the website is mySupermarket and you’ll need to create an account. Don’t worry it’s free. You’re then given the option of shopping with your store of choice, for which I obviously chose Sainsbury’s. But what about your ‘favourites’? You know, the easy option you have of shopping directly online with your store of choice? Where you can just call up your favourites and add them to your shopping cart? No problems you are given the option of importing your favourites. You just click on the option to do so and enter your store’s online log in details (username, password) and it retrieves your favourites for you. Simples. You can even book your delivery slot!

You then just shop, either by favourites, or aisles or by searching. It will show any special offers the store is currently running, including BOGOFs etc., and you just shop away as you would if you were logged in to the store’s online shopping site. But. But, but, but… at the top of the page it will show you how much that trolley of shopping would cost, in real time, at 3 other stores! Can you believe that? So I’m shopping at Sainbury’s and not only can see how much my shopping is going to cost me there but also how much it will cost me if I bought it as Asda, Tesco or Ocado.

Even more brilliantly you can then chose, at the click of a button, to change supermarket. So if it’s cheaper at Asda, just click on the Asda tab and you’re shopping at Asda. But this isn’t all! Want to save even more money? Then just click on the ‘Swap and Save £’ tab and it will show you alternative items, allowing you to swap those items for the ones currently in your trolley and save money.

Again, that’s not all folks! Right next to the ‘Swap and Save £’ tab is the ‘Swap and Save Cals’ tab, which, yes, you’ve guessed it, shows healthier options (lower calories, fat, sugar and salt) which, again, you can swap for the items currently in your trolley. Pretty fancy, eh? But, I hear you shout, what about actually buying the items and checking out? Do you have to then re-enter everything in to the supermarket site? No. It sends your trolley to the supermarket site, you just then logon and check out as usual.

It’s great. What more can I say? Try it. I saved around 10-15% over and above what I saved by not impulse buying. mySupermarket + Jools = happy Richard’s wallet!

In Progress

Ok, so I’ve signed up to do Shimelle’s Blogging for Scrapbookers class to try and get my blogging, and scrapbooking, mojo back. And what’s the first thing I do? Yup, start to pfaff around and not get much of anything done as I decided that I just had to create that ultimate, fantastic, personally created blog and this has meant nothing has been accomplished. So. What to do? What to do?

Well I’ve just installed an autumnal off the peg wordpress theme and am going with this for now. And my intentions? To blog more often, hopefully around once a week and try and get my mojo back.

We’ll see…