Last day of a week in the life

Well that week flew by!  Here are my last pictures

I wouldn't normally bring work home with me but I am responsible for the school newsletter and it goes to print this week so needed proof reading.  My line manager is an ex English teacher so is red hot on grammar and spelling and it has to go to her when I think it is ready.  She then takes her red pen and picks up all the silly things I've missed!  It's 22 pages long this half term and I've been looking at the articles so much now that I need to have a fresh pair of eyes so decided to check it at my leisure.

 I don't normally go shopping on a Sunday as there is a part of me that thinks Sundays should be days of relaxation and homely things.  But we have a lot of birthdays in the next week and I suddenly realised there was one I had forgotten and needed an emergency dash to buy something I can get in the post tomorrow.  We have friends who moved to Belgium and their Sunday laws are really strict.  No shops open and you are not allowed to do anything which may be considered a nuisance to your neighbours.  No lawn-mowing and no barbecues!  

Tried out a new recipe for dinner which called for 100ml of red wine in the sauce.  Someone once told me that you should never cook with a wine that you wouldn't use to drink with your meal.  So in the interests of quality control, I needed to open the bottle early and have a little taster.  Happy to report the wine passed the stringent testing needed :-)

And here's the finished dish.  Lamb casserole with roasted garlic and rosemary dumplings.  Absolutely delicious and just what we needed on a cold, wet, blustery day like today.  
Now I need to decide what to do with the photos I have taken in order to complete the project.  Suggestions anyone?

365+1 and a Friday in the week in the life

First of all, my collage for 365+1 

Symbolic - my first unaccompanied outing with the satnav.  Only went 10 miles and I still managed to get lost!  Apparently if you are going out into the wilds of the countryside it is better to type in an address rather than a postcode.  I will know for next time!
Cross - St George's Day meant that Google provided a nice cross on a shield for me to use.
Tower - Does a wooden lighthouse tower qualify?
Powerful - Good old Mr Muscle, the only cleaner that I've found that really works on the oven!
Tradition - the school I work in dates back to 1910 and we have boards around the main hall that list every Head girl  and every Head teacher in the last 102 years.
Art - Does my interpretation of 'boot' in 'Draw Something' count?
Homemade - A really chunky Aran jumper that I made in my knitting phase!
And so onto my day

We had little Coco come to sleep over last night as her mummy and daddy went to a wedding and were out all day and late into the night.  So at 7.30am this morning I was on 'walkies' 

I like to save reading the Saturday paper and supplement until we stop for a coffee midmorning on a Saturday, part of our weekend routine.

Pizza for lunch.  Sun-dried tomato, mozzarella cheese, sliced tomatoes and basil pesto.

Is anyone else hooked on 'The Voice' on a Saturday night?  Can't wait for tonight's episode.  The first public vote.  I'm enjoying this so much more than X Factor.
Happy weekend everybody!

Friday of a week in the life

This week is flying by.  And I thought I'd show my photos in a different way today

• I was sitting at my desk this morning and noticed that the way in which my computer mouse was laying at the edge of the mouse mat made quite a comical face. It made me smile anyway,  I think I may slowly be going crazy!
• When I had my bath this morning, I noticed something glittery in the bottom of the bathtub.  It was a  metal 18 - the kind of thing you find in table confetti.  But as my daughter is 25 and son is 22, it's been a long time since we had 18th birthday celebrations in our house.  So where had it come from?  Had those bath ducks been having a party when we go out?  Has penguin been leading them astray again?
• The road home from work is a really pretty one.  The road in which our school is situation is one of the most sought after in town and house prices are significantly higher than anywhere else locally.  Looks so nice this time of year when the gardens are starting to come into colour.
• Is anyone else out there hooked on 'draw something'?  I am a dreadful artist and it's so hard to do something using your finger on a phone screen but I absolutely love it.  Me and Deb Turtle are quite the 'draw something divas' and I love the fact that you can have contact with people in so many ways nowadays.

I'm still chuckling over Amy's idea yesterday of filling my Brad Pitt mug with brads for the next crop!

A day in the office

You won't believe this.  When we woke up this morning it wasn't raining!
A whole day in the office today:

Does this sight take you back to  your school days?  That feeling of anxiety as the invigilator says 'You may now turn over your papers'?  Exams start very soon at our school and the hall is already set up.  Gives me the chills when I go in there and it's empty and silent.

But a nice cup of coffee in my office mug cheers me up.  I love how the drips from the water where I have washed up make it look like he has sweat dripping off his brow!

Back in the main office, working on an article on some recent Duke of Edinburgh trips to Bangor and the Yorkshire Dales for the school newsletter, I looked up and guess what?  Rain.

On my return to the exams office in the afternoon I was looking for some information on the students who have special arrangements in their exams and realised that I probably need to give the notice board a good tidy up.  One of those jobs you just keep putting of for another day!
My office day for my Week in the Life project. Done.

My day off in a week in the life

Ah, Wednesday.  How I look forward to you.  My day off from work.  A day to myself.  To do whatever I want - well that's the theory!  As it happens I've been running errands for other people, ferrying my son places and puppy sitting:

View from my kitchen window first thing this morning.  This drought we are having is awful!  We've had drizzle, light rain, heavy rain, thunderstorms and hailstones today.  

A different supermarket today!  I prefer Waitrose to the others in town and a big bonus is that it is in the centre of town and offers 90 minutes free car parking so plenty of time to go into town, whizz round the other shops and still pop in to buy the groceries you wanted too.  They had their 'Dine in for £10' offer on today.  So I got tomorrow's dinner: a shoulder of pork in honey and mustard glaze, new potatoes, wickedly delicious chocolate and black cherry dessert and a bottle of red wine.  All for £10.  Result!!!

Popped round to my daughter's to pick up the puppy and bring her to my house for the afternoon.  This is the little face I had looking at me while I was eating my lunch.  How could I resist ... she had a little extra lunchtime snack as well {don't tell her mummy}

My son is studying for his masters degree in African Politics in London and today he had an exam for the module he is taking in Swahili.  So I was dropping him off at the station at 9.30 and picking him up again at 2pm.  It's not the prettiest of places.

For tonight's tea I am making homemade minestrone soup.  We will have soda bread to go with it.  Soda bread is my current favourite, I love the dense texture of it and it will go perfectly with the soup.  So that's my day in pictures.  And yes.  It's STILL raining - argh!

Tuesday in pictures

I started off with several pictures and then totally forgot to take more as my Tuesday progressed.  The day didn't get off to a good start, we overslept and so I had to drink my cup of tea in record time

 Added these to my packed lunch - I always have good intentions the day after my Rosemary Conley class weigh in ...

 View in my wing mirror before leaving for work.  Rain.  Again.  So much for the drought we are supposed to be having.

 When I'm in the exams office, I have to work in possibly the most narrow desk area in the whole school.

 And what is the last thing you feel like doing after a day at work?  Going to the supermarket.

But I did stick to my good intentions for healthy eating, salmon, rice and a selection of green vegetables with carrots.

Tonight is the night that my husband plays badminton followed by a trip to the pub to put the world to rights with his badminton buddies.  Which means that I have total control over the tv viewing.  Catching up with last night's episode of One Tree Hill is on the agenda for tonight!

A new start

I happened upon the Ali Edwards' class Week in the Life over at Big Picture Classses and thought it might be fun to keep a diary for a week of what should be an average week.
I only work from 8.30 - 12.30 on a Monday and I had a really productive morning which meant the time flew by.  We have our final listings for the new students joining us in September and I've been entering their details on the system so we can start processing them.  160 girls.  That's a lot of computer inputting!
So as soon as I left work I went over to my daughter's house to pick up her puppy.  She started a new job this morning and I offered to go and walk little Coco so she didn't have to worry about coming home in her lunch hour on her first day.  Having got a degree in Business & Marketing and working for a year in the city for a large media consultancy, then having a total career change and working in hairdressing for 3 years, she's now gone back to the business world and is PA to an Architect in a local company.  Coco treats our house like a 2nd home, but is not impressed when I do things on the computer instead of playing with her

Tonight will be my Rosemary Conley class, don't think I'll be photographing me strutting my stuff in the local community centre!  But a quick look on the scales tells me that I may have put on a pound instead of taking one off ...