Reasons to be Cheerful: 122 reasons! #R2BC

Thanks to everyone who joined in last week, hopefully more people will link in this week as I am sure the sunshine will make us all happier! Don't worry I haven't really got 122 reasons this week phew but the reason for the title will eventually become clear... Here are my reasons to be cheerful this week:
1) Hobbit in Williamson Park
A group of 10 of us from the extended family went to Williamson Park in Lancaster to watch the Dukes' Lancaster production of the Hobbit. An amazing production (more to follow in a later blog post!) but the most exciting part was my daughter successfully volunteering to take care of the key to Erebor whilst the play moved through the park:

2) Home organisation

Its lots of little steps in my challenge to get the house better organised before I go back to work in September. I picked up this Ikea shower caddy with my lottery winnings (a whole £5!) and its making our bathroom a lot tidier:

3) Time together

The advantage of working in school is that I get most of the holidays off with my children. We have also had time with extended family who are up visiting. Certainly a reason for us all to smile:

My hopes for 2016

Please note avoidance of word resolutions as I always fail these!

I am hoping that 2016 will be both a healthy and happy one for all of my family. There are a lots of strands to helping this to happen:

1) All working together

When my children do their bit and help with chores then more gets done, I feel more relaxed and the house looks a lot better:

2) Getting organised

Despite moving in the house in June a lot of our possessions are still at my parents' as we haven't got fully organised yet. Things are starting to change with plans for new shelving etc so that every room in the house can look as neat and tidy as I got my son's floor this week:

3) Healthy and happy children

My children have shot up over the last year and have been pretty lucky health wise (apart from my son breaking his nose!). Here is hoping they continue to thrive physically and mature into the kind and generous young people they show they have the potential to be:

4) Healthier family

I have to admit that as a family our diets in 2015 were far from perfect. So I need to lead by example and encourage a higher consumption of the good stuff and discourage the naughty stuff. To kick us off I have given up booze once again for January (this time in aid of Alcohol Concern) and I am avoiding unnecessary sugar. I will not buy junk food for anyone so the children will just have to earn pocket money if they want sweets! Homemade cakes will be allowed though as I am not a complete meanie... I have even dusted off my multi layer steamer so that we have a wider range of veggies:

5) Shape up for the half marathon

There is no way I will run 13.1 miles in May within the cutoff time if I don't get into a lot better physical shape. So I got my daughter to photograph me in my lycra tonight and I've both weighed (eek!), taken body fat measurements (eek!) and used the tape measure (eek!) to record where I am now. Not posting the measurements in public but here is the embarrassing photo from today showing the starting point:

What are your hopes for 2016?

Reasons to be Cheerful: week 34 #R2BC

It's hard to believe that the summer holidays are almost over already but I am still cheerful! Here are my reasons this week:
1) House Sorting
Its an never ending project but a few days of swapping furniture around and getting my children to part with toys has led to my son's room looking like this:

As you can see he doesn't have much space so having the storage sorted and the amount of toys reduced is essential! At the minute he is paranoid about keeping it tidy so let's see how long that lasts... Now I just need to get the rest of the house sorted...
2) Kids having fun
My daughter has spent 4 days at High Borrans outdoor adventure centre. She is having a fabulous time doing things such as canoeing, caving and ghyll scrambling. By being in a group of school friends she is being challenged to do things she wouldn't normally do. My son had one day there on Friday and he definitely tried things he had told me he would never do! Its fantastic that my children are challenging themselves and having fun at the same time.
3) Family fun
We have also been making time to have fun together. This has included the trip to Morecambe, a Tudor weekend at Sizergh Castle:

A day at Fell Foot and Wray Castle have all added to our smiles. I am sure there is still more to come before we go back to work/school in September!

Reasons to be Cheerful XXXV ( #R2BC )

Another week and another set of reasons to smile!


1) Happy Birthday Granny!


My granny was 95 today!! The children and I visited her with a pile of birthday cards and mini birthday cake. Her main celebration is next week with all her sons, 3 daughters-in-law, 2 of her 7 grandchildren and 3 of her 8 grandchildren. Today it brought a smile to her face as we rolled up to see her. 


2) A Passion for Kendal


After all the months of planning and practising tomorrow is the big day! I have been running the social media for the project over at A Passion for Kendal and as a reward my children and I are playing silent roles as disciples. The town has already had banners put up on the streets and tonight we had our final rehearsal. Here's hoping the weather is as good tomorrow for the real thing:

3) Operation House

Following on from Monday's trip to Ikea I have successfully constructed all the flat pack furniture I bought for the kids' rooms. My son's bedroom is currently really tidy, my daughter's has work still to do! Here are the bits I built:

Operation 3rd Bedroom

With a lot of hard work from my parents we have finally all got our own bedrooms! It's not a finished job but tonight everyone will be sleeping on their own (hope it lasts all night...).


The first phase of the operation was getting my son into his own room after removing my office and sundry items from the box room. Phase two involved swapping my bed into my new room (but not putting it back together) and moving my daughter's bunk bed into her new room and reassembling it. I then spent the rest of the week on the bottom bunk.


Today was the most complicated part of the project. We had to swap all the rest of the furniture around between mine and my daughter's rooms. Things started to get interesting when my wardrobe had to come out.. This belongs to my landlady and so was already in the middle sized bedroom. We had no problem getting it out of my bedroom onto the landing but then found we couldn't get it round narrow landing into the other bedroom.

It reminded me of the song Right Said Fred by Bernard Cribbens as we kept on trying different angles. For those too young to know what I'm talking about its on YouTube:

Then we resorted to semi-dismantling the wardrobe on the landing. Due to the lack of space we had to keep sliding the wardrobe backwards and forwards to have enough space to do this. We did indeed need to have another cup of tea to get the job done.

top off the wardrobe

doors off the wardrobe

Eventually the wardrobe made it via an over the bannister lift and into its new home! Luckily all the rest of the furniture was much more manageable. There is going to have to be some tweaking to get all the furniture with the best use of space. The problem with having an office at one end is that there is more furniture to deal with.


My daughter's room is also going to take some organising to get everything in the right place. It always takes some jiggling to maximise her storage as well as leave her space to play.


The light at the end of the tunnel seems to be getting closer...

Reasons to be Cheerful XV ( #R2BC )

Well the sun may have vanished but I'm still smiling so I've joined in Michelle's blog hop once again. Check out all the other entries at the bottom!
1) The house
Having cleared the clutter off the book shelves in the front room I now have room for more of the books from my parent's garage! Lots of my favourite Bernard Cornwell novels that friends borrowed as a boxful are now coming back to me. I look forward to re-visiting Sharpe and other old favourites.
Other parts of the house are coming together too. My 4 year old walked into his bedroom this afternoon and said:
It's so tidy in here!
So that was a good use of my afternoon then...
2) My daughter
She is all grown up now and gone off on an overnight school trip. This morning she didn't even want me to kiss her goodbye as she traipsed into school with her Trunki trailing behind her. Just hope they didn't all get too wet up at Hadrian's Wall...
3) My social life
I have managed to squeeze an awful lot of socialising into my daylight freedom (must work on getting nights out!). I've had coffee and lunch with one friend, lunch with my aunt, a chat with another mum in the park, coffee with my church mum friends... amazed I've managed to get anything else done! This week its been great that I've had time not just with female friends but male ones so that conversations are a bit more varied! Next week is looking good on this front too...
4) Freebies!
I managed to find out about O2's breakfast packs through a fellow blipper and managed to get myself one for Saturday's England match. Looks like I'll be up very early to heat up the breakfast pie that was included though may be too early for the beer:

Reasons to be Cheerful XV (#R2BC)

Here we go on my Reasons to be Cheerful this week:
1) I won the lottery!
Unfortunately only £50 and not £100 million but it paid for my much needed hair cut and leaves some for a salon colour instead of my normal home effort! I am so used to not winning anything on my irregular tickets that I was pretty surprised to get something back. As its still a mega lottery prize this Friday I've had another go too.. watch this space...
2) I won a dress
You know those Retweet Twitter competitions that fill your timeline? Well I actually won one this week. A pleasant surprise to get an e-mail from Tesco telling me I was the winner and asking me my size choice for their new Freya dress. No idea whether it will suit me but hopefully it will!
3) Getting sorted
I have done a couple of sorting sessions in the "office" and the kids can now use their PC again for the first time in months! Just need to acquire the right number of kettle leads to keep everything powered up. We all enjoyed a session on the Bagging The Dragon maths game. I was very impressed with my 4 year old's maths and computer skills! He ended up the winner and I came a lowly 3rd as I've obviously forgotten everything I learnt to get my B at O level...
4) Family
My cousin Harriet had her baby boy safely this week. This was her 5th child but the first with her boyfriend. I wish them all the best for the future.
Please look at the other blogs taking part in this blog hop:

Closure

Well as my soon to be ex husband was sent a letter saying 15 days before repossession process starts I thought I'd better get around to handing over the keys to the bank...


... the lady I spoke to seemed rather gobsmacked that I wanted to do it as in 6 years no-one had ever done that before! She had to consult her manager as to what to do.


So over the keys went and I walked out feeling a bit strange. That's the end of my time as a home owner and a loss of my personal investment in the family home. Who knows if I'll ever get back on the property ladder?

Farewell to life in Hastings and to both happy & sad memories.