Project 366: 138-152

And the second half of May:

17th May: The Fabulous One and I attended a felt-making class - yay! We had such a great time :)

18th May: We went out for the evening to take part in some activities as part of a 'Light Night'. The Tomboy thoroughly enjoyed making a tortoise from various repurposed items :)

19th May: Now that we'd made a start on the bathroom we decided to get the job done properly. We pulled up the horrible old carpet - and discovered, to our dismay, that there's been a slow leak behind the toilet for quite some time and the floor is a bit of mess.... :(

20th May: I spent a bit of time preparing for the next Tuesday's papercrafts class - we were making bookmarks in several different ways, including using a Big Shot to press flowers into watercolour paper, and transferring patterned paper onto sticky-backed canvas.

21st May: Great excitement! We had fledgling blue tits just out of the nesting box at school! :)

 22nd May: The other technique we tried for making bookmarks was marbling - here you see my class's pieces laid out to dry. Everyone got a very different look, despite using the same materials!

23rd May: It was my turn to lead the House Group Bible study - we were working through Ezekiel.

 24th May: We enjoyed a special trial bike display at school that morning. It was incredible what these two chaps could do on their bikes! This here is part of a carefully synchronised dance routine they'd put together.

25th May: The Tomboy's school had a special garden party and bbq, with a treasure hunt around the playground - she's just found a clue here! :)

26th May: The Parents-In-Law came to visit for the weekend. We took a boat trip on the Saturday.

27th May: On the Sunday afternoon we went out for an ice cream at a local tea room. There was bunting everywhere, in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee the following weekend!

28th May: The Tomboy was having a definite phase of listening to music on her MP3 player - songs she'd recorded from the computer - it only lasted a few days, so I'm glad I captured this photo!

29th May: Result!! The Boy had a cookery lesson at school, and they made lemon drizzle cake - and The Boy's cake was *delicious* :)

30th May: We had the toilet and washbasin replaced in the bathroom - just need to make sure the floor dries out properly now, then we can see if it/how much of it needs replacing...

31st May: Interesting! We were sent a new registration certificate for our car - it seems that a number of blank 'old style' blue forms had been stolen, so all current certificates are being replaced by these new red ones.

And that brings us nearly up to date! :)

Project 366: 122-137

Slowly catching up! Here's the first half of May:


1st May: I covered glass painting with my papercrafts class, and demonstrated using acrylic paints with an image stamped onto acetate - one of my fave techniques! :)


2nd May: The Father and The Sister came to visit :) Here you see The Tomboy showing her aunt the origami book she'd received for her birthday the previous week.


3rd May: An INSET day at school. I find that doodling helps me to concentrate when I'm listening to something!


4th May: I love this photo :) I glanced out of the window to see this van opposite our house - and it looked just like the dog was in the driver's seat!!


5th May: A sad day :( Hereford were relegated from the football league :(

6th May: Bacon baguettes for lunch, yum!

7th May: Wow!! I won a prize in a giveaway on Cathy Zielske's blog!! *happy dance*

8th May: The Tomboy had a cycling profiency course at school. Ideally we'd have cycled to and from school that day, but unfortunately it didn't fit with my work commitments... So down went the seats in the car, and into the boot went the bike!

9th May: We'd been having trouble with a damp patch on our bathroom wall ever since we moved into this house nearly 8 years ago, and I finally got round to arranging for someone to sort it out! A friend of ours is a plasterer and he popped round to do the first stage of the repair.

10th May: The Doctor went away for a few days for a work trip :( Ah well, I spent the evening with Mr Darcy, which was some consolation! ;)

11th May: For May's Connect group meeting we'd arranged for someone from St John's Ambulance to come and run a class on paediatric first aid - very interesting, and potentially extremely useful, though of course we hope none of the mums have to use their new skills...

12th May: I hadn't been watching Britain's Got Talent, but The Tomboy had heard that there was a dog in the final and begged to watch it with me. She was so excited that Ashleigh and Pudsey won!

13th May: I read a book borrowed from the library - an interesting read!

14th May: As it was SATs week, I didn't have my usual lesson with Year 6. Instead I did a bit of support work with the Year 3 class - one-to-one reading support using a scheme called 'Toe By Toe'.  I'd heard of it but never used it before. I found it a really interesting scheme, and the evidence within our school shows that it works very well, too.

15th May: I got my papercrafts class making these rather special pop-up bouquet cards :)

16th May: The Tomboy took part in a rounders festival at a local secondary school. Her team won, and she did particulary well in her role as back stop :)

Second half of May to follow!

Storytelling... um.... Monday?!

Oops, running a bit late for Sian's Storytelling Sunday this month - but hey, at least I made it!

I thought of telling the story of how we nearly-just-about saw the Olympic flame last week - but I'll save that one for now.

I thought of telling the story of our very British Jubilee picnic on Saturday - but I think I'll save that one, too.

I thought of telling you more about our recent holiday - but I didn't have time to sort through the photos, so I guess I'll have to save that one as well!

So instead, here's a video I came across this morning. Being a geeky mathematician type it made me laugh out loud, so I immediately thought of sharing it with you - hope you enjoy it, too!

And as it isn't really a story, I'll link it to the memory it recalls of my first experience teaching maths to an A-level class, while I was on my first teaching practice. I can't remember what the lesson was actually about, but at one point pi was mentioned and we discussed how many decimal places you'd need for different degrees of accuracy. The pupils asked me how many digits of pi I actually knew, and were very impressed when I was able to write it to 35 decimal places! (Feel free not to be impressed at all.... As I said, geeky mathematician type! Though, according to the vid, this maybe makes me more of a physicist - I'll leave you to discover why....)

Project 366: 107-121

And here's the second half of April:

16th April: It had taken them a long time, but finally the demolition job was complete over the road! (The last little bit of building you can see contains an electrical generator, something to do with the nearby railway line, so has to be removed separately. I think that's one reason they had to work so slowly and carefully.) Nice to see a bit of blossom on those trees!

 Imagine photo here!

17th April: The day of the Annual Church Meeting. The photo shows the annual report, with identifying information.

18th April: I collected my World Book Night books from a local branch of Waterstones - managing to squeeze in a Costa coffee while I was there ;)

19th April: A yummy meal of leftover chicken risotto with refried beans wrapped in a tortilla :)

20th April: Haircut and eyebrax day! And the usual self-portrait angst... Interesting to see that the winter coats are still there in the background, even though it's nearly the end of April by the time of this photo...

21st April: We had a family day out to a nearby Tudor house, taking advantage of a special offer run by the National Trust that gave us free admission that weekend :) As we wandered the grounds, we met this lovely little chap!

22nd April: In our area, some of the secondary schools require children to take an entrance exam. The Tomboy will be sitting this exam in September. We started working through practice papers (we won't send her to a tutor, but I'm doing a bit of familiarisation with her at home).

23rd April: World Book Night! And I gave away many copies of Pride and Prejudice :)

Imagine photo here!

24th April: The Boy's Parents' Evening - and he had a glowing report from all his teachers, bless him :) (The photo shows the appointment sheet and a map of the school to help us find the appointments!)

25th April: We hosted House Group at our house that evening, and I suddenly realised we didn't have any cake or biscuits to offer! Fortunately I had all the necessary ingredients to make flapjacks, and added some raisins, cranberries and chopped apricots from my dried fruit stores to make the flavour more interesting :) (Just tried to link to the flapjack recipe on my recipe blog, but I don't appear to have added it there yet!! I'll remedy that asap!)

26th April: The Tomboy's 10th birthday :) And she received many traditionally girly gifts, such as Warhammer sets and paints, Star Wars Lego games, etc...

27th April: My first ever visit to a Hobbycraft store! I found it a bit overwhelming, it was so big - and yet it still didn't have everything I'd hoped to find - but I did manage to pick up some useful supplies for my papercrafts class. And it only took me 2 hours! ;)

28th April: Southampton (The Doctor's football team) were promoted to the Premier League! He was quite pleased ;)

29th April: Yet more rain. *sigh*

30th April: Having missed out on the Olympics tickets we'd originally applied for, I had a go at booking some tickets for one of the football matches. I had to nip home from work in order to do this (I wasn't teaching that morning so it was OK) but having got through the early steps the computer then got stuck at loading the confirmation page - so I couldn't tell if we'd got tickets or not! And when I phoned the helpline, after being on hold for over half an hour they then couldn't tell me much because we'd registered the account with The Doctor's credit card, not mine - grr >:( The good news is, we did get the tickets (we found out for sure the next day), so The Doctor, The Tomboy and I will be able to see Team GB playing in an Olympic football match - we will, after all, be going to the Olympics :) Yay! (The Boy doesn't want to come, by the way - he isn't the slightest bit interested in sport...)

And that takes us to the end of April! May to follow :)