I have just ordered my supermarket shopping to be delivered tomorrow night and I am pleased with myself.  I have not done a meal plan as normal for the week as I just did not have the brainpower to do it tonight but I do need bread before Wednesday morning or my children will go sandwichless in school.  I am so tired I will probably be astounded at what I purchased tomorrow when the delivery arrives!  I normally get a surprise or two in a supermarket shop which is lovely.  Last time it was sponge cake flour.  What on earth is that?  I am so glad that somebody else ordered it and it was delivered to me in error!  I shall make sponges that are lighter than air now (but could never justify ordering it myself)!

My actual Christmas week shop is already waiting in its delivery slot to come just before Christmas and I am heartily pleased with my organisational powers and foresight to book a good slot nearly 3 weeks in advance!  Get me!  Goodness knows what we shall be eating for Christmas dinner but I do know that my 8 tins of chopped tomatoes will be delivered here in good time to make some tomato soup if I never get around to deciding on the meat for lunch.

Any ideas?

Simple Pleasures

Call me a fool but I spent an hour this morning unwrapping and wrapping up bobbins of embroider thread.  I was in my element!  I bought a box of threads from ebay that someone was clearing out and it go here in a it of a mess so I passed an hour undoing and re-wrapping the beautiful colours onto their bobbins and putting the bobbins in colour order.  I was in heaven!  This project will take a good few more hours until it is all tidy and my own threads have joined their new neighbours in the box, but sometimes you have t take pleasure in life's mundane little idiosyncrasies and see a rainbow in the middle of a mess!

Christmas shopping for three?

I went Christmas shopping for the kids today and was very pleased with my purchases as I got some good bargains all round.  The hardest thing, I found was not buying any presents for Baby Gherks!  She is not due until February and certainly does not need any Christmas presents for another 14 months but I have this "3 children" idea in my mind now and it felt almost unfair to only buy for 2 of them!  I didn't buy her anything anyway as it would be ridiculous.  But a soft soft rabbit nearly made his way home with me!

Pink in the House of Trouser!

Well I have had a couple of days to get used to the news but I have to say that it is still blowing my head off - we are expecting a little girl!

I was so 100% sure it was a boy and Mr G was sure we were having a girl but I pooh-poohed his idea (I mean a mother knows her body doesn't she?).  I could not believe it when the sonographer said it was a girl!  I actually said I don't believe her!  We told the rest of the family who are all so pleased for us and surprised too as my 2 boys are the only grandchildren and nephews on both sides.  Mr G and I are in shock (me especially - "I was  ... Wrong?") and are finding it strange to use words like "daughter" and "she" and "her" as they have not really been in our daily vocabulary until now!

I am so thrilled.  I have always wanted three children and now, knowing that I am having a girl, I am reflecting on the other option of three boys.  I love having two boys now and I was looking forward to having three boys and just thought that that was the way it was going to be for me.  A girl has really made me think about how the dynamic in our house is going to change.  I love the idea of having another female in the house (even our cat is male) and I cannot wait to meet her!

I have to say, I am concerned with the amount of pink that everyone is telling me is going to hit my house.  I am not a pink girl and after scaring myself to nausea in the baby clothes aisle of my local supermarket.  Does it really have to explode all over the house when a girl arrives?  There has been a girl living in my house for as long as I can remember and there is no pink anywhere - not even in the wardrobe!  What will our new arrival bring with her?  Will the House of Trouser go pink?

Whatever she brings she will be loved for it by us all.

Girl or Boy? Boy or Girl?

Well tonight is the last night I will have not knowing if I am the mother of 3 boys or 2 boys and 1 girl.  I have my 20 weeks scan tomorrow morning and we have decided to find out the sex of the baby.  This is a weird thing for us as we did not want to find out with Cornichon and not with Little Pickle although towards the end of the second pregnancy I really wished we had found out for purely practical purposes (do I just wash the neutral stuff or all the boy things or buy new?).

I love love love being a mum of 2 boys.  I am not a girly girl and I think that boys have MUCH better toys than girls.  (Most of these toys live in the cupboard under my stairs and will be a treasure trove for the baby as soon as he/she is old enough to put things in his/her mouth but I will just have to worry about that a bit further down the line.)  That said, a girl would change the balance of the house and possibly bring out the girliness in me too - if it is there!

I am pretty sure it is a boy.  I feel the same now as I did when pregnant with the boys, however Mr Gherkin is sure it is a girl, saying I have been different this time around (huh?).  I am very excited about tomorrow and as soon as I know I will tell the whole world.  I have bets on Facebook and a whole £1 riding on it with Mr Gherkin.  I am sure it is a boy.  I will tell all tomorrow.

Any guesses?

What time is dinner?

For a long time now, I have pondered on when the meal called dinner should take place.  Should it be in the middle of the day or is that lunch?  Should it be in the evening or is that tea?

I have always been brought up to have dinner in the middle of the day and tea in the evening.  I think that is a working class 'thing' and that is what we ate at home when I lived with my parents.  Since moving out (almost 20 years ago) I have vascillated between lunch and dinner and tea and dinner, not really feeling comfortable with anything.  I think dinner in the evening is when you go out for a meal (out for dinner) well into the evening but tea is eaten with the children earlier on at 5.30-6.00.  I don't feel right having tea at 8.  Similarly going out for dinner in the middle of the day sounds wrong but it is fine to go out for lunch,  Do I stay in and have dinner at home in the middle of the day?  Not really.  I think it is going to have to be lunch in the middle of the day and tea early or dinner later on in the evening.

I think that makes sense in my steam-rollered mind (crazy day).  It is just the whole middle-classedness of the whole thing that irks me.  Maybe that is just what it is.  I am a working class snob who has moved into middle class but is clinging to her roots, and remembering what Mum used to do.

What time do you have dinner?

Not Right

I sit here, on pins, waiting for this first "Mummmmmyyyyyyy?" of what I think could be a very long night.  Both little gherkins are asleep but they are neither of them 'right'  I would not be surprised if Little Pickle is up puking all night and Cornichon has started going complaining about this, that and the other but nothing specific after 'lights out'.  Tonight's one was "I feel funny".  Little Pickle was sick this afternoon after drinking too much squash and also had a nap for half an hour at 5 which he never normally does unless he is ill.

I do so hate to see my little ones poorly but I am lucky that a night of not being 'right' is the worst of my worries, knowing that there are so many parents out there who have much bigger worries on a daily basis to contend with.  Poor little April Jones's parents - what on earth are they going through tonight?  My heart breaks for them.  Sleep well little April.

When I hear the "Mummmmmmmmmyyyyy?" tonight I will be glad to go in and cuddle them better even more so if the first "Mummmmmmyyyyy?" comes at 0650 tomorrow.

Bleurgging

This blog is a chore sometimes.  This is why I don't blog very often.  I wish I was one of those people who could blog about nothing and still make it interesting but this is not the case.  I will settle for at least blogging something and being happy with the fact that a post has been published and that i have not forgotten this forgotten art.  I will thing about the next post and make it interesting.  Promise.

Progress - onwards and upwards!

Things are looking up this week as I get things moving in various areas of my life.  Running is in full swing and I have signed up for a half marathon in Cardiff.  The allotment has spuds and beads in it and a gate into it.  Little Pickle has a birthday party tomorrow and food is all ready and waiting to be destroyed. I made a quilt for a friend's little girl out of some scraps that I picked up a couple of years ago and promised myself I would make into a pink girly quilt -well I did and it looks great!  Wish I had taken a pic of it though!  The website is looking populated now!

Wish me luck with some more progress this weekend!

Creative update

I am endeavouring to put some more products on my online accessory shop here.  Tonight I managed to take the time to sort out my records of all the stock I have made, write descriptors and put it all into a nice organised spreadsheet which will make it much easier for me to upload to the site.  At least that is the intention.  Hopefully uploading tomorrow!  Watch this space!

To Be Read Challenge 2012 - Book Review 1

OK so my To Be Read pile is actually reducing now!  I am pleased with this as some of the books we have have been hanging around for so long with perfect shiny spines just waiting to be cracked and broken.  Enter the TBR challenge!

I have finished 2 and a half books out of my 12 and for the end of April I guess I am about 1 book behind but I am doing a lot better than I thought I would do!

Here is the review of the first one

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
I bought this book a few years ago as it was super cheap at The Book People (I am sure it was cheaper than £6.39!).  I have read A Walk in the Woods and enjoyed Bryson's writing style of humorous and informative and I developed a love for Shakespeare when I studied King Lear for 'A' Level English Literature 20 years ago so I thought this would be a nice gentle lesson about the playwright.

I found it an enjoyable book and It did indeed teach me about Mr S, however the reason for the book only being 200 pages cover to cover is because very little is known about him in the first place!  I was surprised in this finding given the volume of work that he is known for but Bryson's easy-going amiable informative style makes no apology for the lack of facts in this factual read.

It is a book I would recommend to anyone who has even a slight interest in Shakespeare and it is so easy and quick to read, it is an interesting eye-opener into the paucity of information that this country has for it's best-known writer.

A good 7 out of 10

Time is ticking on by.  I sit here, waiting for my hair dye to take and I realise that I have not blogged for ages.  I am still here.  I am still plugging away at the little things I love.  My reading list is 1 and 2 halves down, 10 to go.  My garden is getting gardened gradually.  My running is up and down.  My weight is up and down.  My crafting is getting ... somewhere but I have signed up for a fayre so things will have to go up a gear.  My family is gorgeous and funsome.  My hair is done.  I will return tomorrow.

Well 2012 is here and with it brings hopes and plans and resolutions.  I have my fair share of them.  They are currently nestled in my head, yet to be typed but they are there and they are good.  I plan to blog about them for the month of January.  With a bit of luck I will have kept them up to the end of January which I no mean feat for me!

I made plans for my online shop for my crafty things.  They are currently sitting nicely but I am not ready to ship any orders yet.  Link coming when it is all ship-shape!

I feel very organised today and accomplished stuff and I am pleased with myself for this.  I am having an early night tonight as the kids are away and I plan on getting some good sleep and doing good stuff tomorrow.  Wish me luck!