Lights, camera, action

I think that if a school agrees to invite the television crew in to film A level students getting their results and putting it on national tv in the evening, they really ought to warn the members of staff coming into work at silly o'clock to help with getting the results envelopes ready so that they may be prepared.
Had I known that cameras would be in evidence I would
a) have washed my hair and blow dried it carefully instead of just dragging a brush through it
b) carefully applied makeup rather than just putting on a bit of lippy and brushing a bit of eyeshadow on
c) thought carefully about what I was going to wear instead of just opening the wardrobe and pulling out a hanger, thinking 'That'll do. I'll be home in 2 hours'

For a start, I wasn't home in 2 hours. I was only supposed to be putting certificates in envelopes and handing them over to someone else to give to students when they came in at 9.30. But one minute I was carrying a box of envelopes into the hall, chatting to the another willing volunteer and the head of 6th form as we put them down and sorted them into two piles, the next thing, we were standing there on our own, and a human tide of emotional 18 year olds were surging towards us. We felt like shouting out 'I'm only a secretary, get me out of here'! Funny how Senior Leadership have a knack of disappearing into thin air when they are most needed eh?
So if you live in the Anglia region and you happen to turn on the regional news on ITV at 6 o'clock, keep an eye out us. Although being only 5' 1" there's a good chance I will be totally obscured by towering 6th formers! 15 minutes of fame? I think not.
PS Good luck to anyone who has offspring awaiting results, hope all goes according to plan!

Scenes of domesticity

Act 1 Scene 1
The sound of a car pulling up on driveway. Footsteps are heard walking towards front door. A key turns in the door. The door opens, a weary Building Surveyor walks in, closes the door, throws his keys into the dish on the hall table and puts his briefcase down with a sigh. Turns off his mobile phone and removes his shoes. He enters the kitchen - stage right:

Husband: So, what have you been doing with your day today?

Me: Well, nothing exciting, just sort of boring housework sort of stuff. Washing. Ironing. Cooking. Cleaning.

Whereas ... really I've spent the morning doing 2 more layouts from our holiday! Started on the first one this morning while having a cup of tea in bed watching breakfast TV

Then while tidying away the leftover bits back into the pizza box, I had an idea for another -

This is now the 5th page I've made out of the kit I got from Sarah's Cards and there is still plenty more papers and wotnots to make a few more. Value for money or what?!

Crafty Princess

Princess' mum is away on holiday in the Canary Islands at the moment and a few days after she comes home it will be her 24th birthday. So while she is sunning herself in Tenerife, I thought it was safe to enlist the help of Princess to get her presents wrapped up.

Part of her present was spending money for her holiday, but you know us mums like to have a few surprises for our 'children' to open as well so I've been buying a few bits and bobs. There's so many pretty things in the shops at the moment and it's very easy to find lovely headbands and flowers to add to your hair or clothes. And there's always make up that needs to be replaced or new colours to try. She is a very pink and girly girl, so we've chosen pink and lilac for our colour scheme. We've hand made our tags and had fun writing clues on the back of them. I popped downstairs to make lunch and when I came back, about a dozen little rhinestone gems had disappeared from a pack I had left on my desk but Princess promises me she had nothing to do with it, however I don't remember using quite so many diamond bits on the labels.

So Princess has had another secret outing and I'm sure that her mum won't be looking at my blog while she's away so I'm confident we've got away with it.

Or maybe not - does anyone know a good way of getting glitter glue out of fur ......

Another day, a tidier blog

In her blog post today, Amy spoke of tidying up her blog and this felt like fate trying to tell me that it was something I needed to do too. A few weeks ago, the site I had downloaded my blog template from moved and it took out part of my design then yesterday I had been blog hopping and found a link on Sian's to a site dedicated to improving your blog. I took this as a sign that 3 things were telling me to change so .......
I thought about the things that I like on other people's blogs and the things I don't and one of the things I don't like is when a blog takes a long time to load. Whoever wrote the poem
'Patience is a virtue, keep it if you can. Found seldom in a woman - and never in a man' would have found that I was one of the women found in the 'seldom' category. So I guess the more 'stuff' you have on a blog, the longer it takes to load so some 'stuff' has gone! I've also deleted some of the blogs I used to check, as some hadn't updated for absolutely ages and taken out some of the blinkies I showed. I've enjoyed all the classes I have done, but probably don't need to advertise the fact that I did Journal Your Christmas in 2008. So I've left the most current ones only.
If only I could be so tidy in the rest of my life ;o)

Tourist information anyone?

In honour of our 30th wedding anniversary, the husband and I are going away for the weekend to Bath. It's a place that neither of us have been to and also a place that is supposed to be lovely. Jane Austen country? Anyhow, having left it until last minute, I actually managed to find a hotel for us that didn't cost an arm and a leg (and trust me, some of the hotels I looked at cost at least 2 arms and 2 legs) that is centrally located. But now, I am wondering if anyone out there either lives near there or has been there and can recommend places to see or nice restaurants or whatever.
If the weather is nice, there won't be a problem, we will wander around and find places of interest but bearing in mind how awful the weather has been the last couple of days and is forecast for the next week too, I need some 'wet weather' contingency plans! We aren't going for another 3 weeks so it has time to change but we all know, we can experience all four seasons in one day here in the UK!
Ideas anyone?

How could I forget?

I was quietly blog hopping yesterday when I suddenly remembered that I had signed up for another class which starts beginning of September! My friend Denise had recently done a class through Big Picture Scrapbooking and said she thought I would enjoy another online class they were running. This came at a time when the Shimelle class was coming to an end and the long weeks of summer holidays were calling to me to relax, de-stress and be creative.
Now I'm back from holiday with a box full of photos to make into an album, a box of Pink Paisley subscription kit to use up and the realisation that I have something else to look forward to. So I thought I would share! The class is hosted by May Flaum and the info is here. It's on the same lines as the Shimelle class of using up the stash you already have which is something that I need to work on!
In the meantime, I've done another page of my photos from Italy. I uploaded a batch to be printed by Photobox and they were here within 2 days and so reasonably priced! Today is the turn of our trip to Herculaneum. The mosaic was found intact in one of the houses and you can tell it was a household with money by the colours of the tiles. The blue is lapiz lazuli which was expensive and so to use it in a mosaic shows a monied household. The stone bottles in the photo were found in a shop selling wine. On the walls of the shop you could also see the paintings on the walls of the price list and the different types on sale. The world's first Majestic winestore maybe? The main picture is of one of the most undamaged street areas. Now I look at the photo of this page, the bit of lace ribbon on the bottom looks a bit random, that may need a little alteration/embellishment at some time in the future!

A Haiku for Rinda

Life giving sunshine

Warms the earth all through the day

Now is time to rest

{in response to Rinda's blog post here}