Doggie show

Another busy day over and done.  We were up early and out of the door at 8.45am to go to the dog show.  Simon stayed for an hour and a half to help with the setting up. There were gazebo's, stalls and a small show ring to set up.  He then went home to get on with garage stuff.

I helped lay up the cake stall.  They were thrilled with all the cakes that I made yesterday.  See below.

I was then put in charge of a stall selling bric a brac.  They didn't expect it to sell much as people would not really be looking for that kind of stuff.  I sold a half dozen things and made £30 for them so I was pleased.  It was the most glorious day.  The hottest one of the entire year.  Great for me, sitting under my gazebo but not so good for the poor dogs.

They had a brilliant turn out and I was right opposite the ring so could watch proceedings. There were some gorgeous dogs all with their own story to tell. It was lovely to see so many, happy and healthy and with loving human companions.  These were all dogs that had not had a good start to life.

This photo shows one of the other volunteers, Louise and he rescue spaniel, Purdy.  They won the first prize in the waggiest tail class!  Purdy is a little dear.  She spent several hours fast asleep in her crate behind my stall in the shade.

The show finished at 3pm and Simon came back to help clear up and to take me home.  I was really pleased that all my cakes had sold.  The fairy cakes were 50p each so they made in total over £55 just on my cakes. All in all it was a good day and I met several more of the volunteers.  I shall see them again next Saturday when I am going to the kennels to help exercise the dogs.

Once home Simon went back out to work on his garage and I  had a nice  bubble bath with a glass of the red stuff.  I figured that I deserved it.  Simon did a nice roast beef dinner and since we ate we have both  been sitting with our lap tops. I am half falling asleep.  I bet as soon as I go to bed I will be wide awake as per usual. I hate that!

Hopefully back here tomorrow.

Busy Saturday

It has been a wonderful day here in the Fens.  Temperature around 77 degrees and lots of sun.  I'm wondering if this is summer?  Strange that it should come now.  It won't last.

I am exhausted.  It has been a busy day.  When isn't it?  We went this morning to the Three Counties dog rescue home.  This was the second Saturday that we had gone.  I am going to be doing some volunteer work with them.

I spent about 3 hours there this morning mainly getting to know Gyll the owner and a few other volunteers. Simon was there for a while but did go off to run a few errands. It is a good place and they do wonderful work. It is sad to see all the unwanted dogs and 1 more was taken in while I was there.  So sad.  There were 2 couples there though to view the dogs and it looks like one little chap may have a new home.  Fingers crossed for him.

Simon and I did take a little Jack Russell called Bobby out for a play in the paddock which was nice.  He was adorable.  So full of life and fun.  Why he was given up is beyond me.  If I didn't have Alfie and Loulou I would be bringing them all home with me!!

This afternoon I have been baking.  Mega baking!  The dog rescue people have a fun dog show tomorrow and they needed cakes for a cake stall.  I have baked 5 dozen cup cakes, 3 dozen rock cakes, a chocolate and banana loaf cake and an iced almond cake.  Phew!  It is the least I can do to try to help them raise funds.

Poor doggies.  So sad. Alfie and Loulou have spent the afternoon trying to convince me that they are poor doggies and should therefore be allowed to sample the cakes!  I did make a batch of rock cakes minus the demerera sugar so they may get one of those at bedtime.

Simon has spent the afternoon and half the evening working on his garage extension.  It is coming on now and most of the roof trusses are up.  He will be ordering the actual roofing on Monday.   He did cook dinner though as I was all cooked out.  It was a nice dinner of lamb steaks.  Very yummy.

We have an early start tomorrow as we are going to help out at the dog show. It is being held at a garden centre about 8 miles from here.  Simon will help to set up first thing but he is then coming home to get on with the garage.  I am going to stay for the duration.  There are various stalls to help out on and also there will be some of the rescue dogs there too and I can help with them.  It should be fun.

The dog show is just a fun thing to raise money. It is not a serious show like the ones we entered Alfie in when he was a pup.

I hope they raise lots of money.  They do not have a craft stall as no one makes crafts.  I am planning on doing lots of bits and pieces over the coming year so that next year they can have a stall of my stuff.  Lots of small things that won't cost too much should sell well. Plus it is easy to make small things and I can use fabric scraps.

OK, I think  it is bedtime now.  I am tired today. Maybe I will sleep for once.  If you want to check out the Three Counties dog rescue click the link:  Three Counties Dog Rescue  Remember, "A dog is for life".

Look who has started "Big" school.

Just had to take a few minutes to share this.  I can't believe that he is at school already.  Seems like yesterday that he was born.

Yes, Evan started school this week.  He is only 4 but we are talking "Big" school here.  That is proper, full time school.  He is going to the same school that his Mummy and his aunties and uncle went too.  LOL.  Some of the teachers are the same!

Doesn't he look so grown up and handsome?  I so hope he does ok , makes lots of new friends and enjoys his school years.

Jilly

Another catch up!

Where on earth does the time go?  Last Monday when I posted a blog, I had every intention of trying to get back to my daily blogging habit.  Here we are more or less a week later and zilch!  Not to mention we have moved form August to September.

I can't believe that we are now at the end of summer and autumn is just around the corner.  The summer here was terrible.  We didn't really have a summer. I heard on the news that it is officially the worst one on record for donkeys years.  Yeah, like I needed to be told that!

The school holidays just flew by. Simon has already been back a week. This coming week will be the first one of his new 4 day week. Because of the way the school timetable works he will be off Monday one week and Tuesday the next.  Next week is a Tuesday week.  

The teachers always moan about the autumn term as they say it is a long one.  It isn't really, just a few days extra maybe.  I have always found that it flies by as it is all down hill till Christmas.  When our children were young, I would begin my Christmas planning in September.  I had to as it  was the only way to afford it by spreading the cost.

This year I have been planning Christmas since January!  Only because I wanted to try to make a lot of my gifts this year and that takes planning and time.  No way can you make loads of presents if you leave it until the last few weeks.  I am quite pleased with how this is going as I have quite a few made. 4 out of my 5 children are already sorted with homemade things.  I need to start on the grandchildren soon.  I am really loving making lots of things but just wish that I had more hours in a day.  

Today I have been working on a quilted sofa throw which is a Christmas gift.  I spent most of Thursday getting it tacked together.  The last one that I made, also a Christmas gift, wasn't as good as the previous 2 that I made. It had some wrinkles and I  ended up unpicking some and redoing it.  So this time I decided to tack it to within and inch of its life.  It took forever and killed my knees, back, wrists, hips, shoulders.....come to think of it...it killed me full stop!

I have found that the best place to do it is on my bedroom floor as there is lots of room but that means crawling around.  It was worth it though as it has turned out super smooth with no wrinkles.  I quilted it today using free hand stippling which took ages.  I am getting better at stippling.  I will take some photos and post a "Make do an Mend" blog soon.  I have loads to show of what I have done over the holidays.

Simon is continuing to work on the garage extension every spare minute that he gets. All the concrete panels are in place now and the roof trusses were delivered on Friday so I guess that is the next job.  

I had more to say but it is nearly 11pm and I am tired.  Simon is just doing some drinking chocolate so I think an early night is in order for once.  I shall endeavour to get back here tomorrow.  Hope you all have a good week.

A bit of a catch up

Good heavens seems like I have been on the computer all morning. Hang on... I have been on the computer all morning!!! I am so glad to be done for now with messing around, transferring and deleting stuff. Anyway, time for a bit of a catch up which I shall do in list form.

The school holidays are over. Simon goes back to school tomorrow. The time has just flown by and although we have done quite a bit there are loads of things left undone. We had planned days out but they  didn't happen. The garage however has progressed.

 

 

 

 

We had my Dad with us for 2 days last week and I think that he really enjoyed himself. He liked seeing his 4 great grandchildren and it was lovely to see as he is really engaging with them now.

We had several family picnics during the holidays and I have a lot of photos that I will post shortly. Posting photos is not an easy thing here. It is OK putting them in the body of a blog but albums are a whole different ball game where you have to faff around with another site. Pain in the you know where.

We did get around to cleaning the old grave stones of Simon's ancestors and again I have a load of photos. To post.

I think I am going to open another Blogger site for my Recipes. What a pain that it is necessary to have all these different sites. I know they link well with tabs to go to them but ...well it isn't Multiply is it!

I am currently waiting for Simon who is putting a window in the garage. We are supposed to be going to Tesco for food shopping. They close at 4pm as it is a bank holiday here in the UK.

I know a secret............. May be able to tell soon.......

Hmm, what else? There were loads of things that I thought of earlier but my mind has gone blank. Really think I should go and chase up Simon. I need to do the shopping today as I will not have access to the car once he is back at school. The chap that he car shared with was made redundant and as there is no one else that lives out this way, I will be car less during the week which could be difficult at times.

Back later or tomorrow and will hopefully get some of those photos up. With Simon back at school normal service will hopefully resume!

Side bar stuff from Multiply

On Multiply we had a side bar which we could fill with "stuff"  I had quite a lot of stuff and as a reminder to myself I am posting some of them here.  It would seem that it is not really possible here to customise to the same extent.

First off I had an eternal flame.  It reminds me of my Mum and Rosie and Sandy.

I also had a memorial for Rosie.

Below that I had a clock, a moon phase widget and a cluster map to show where my visitors were coming from.

Underneath those I had daily clicker buttons.  You know the ones where you click once a day and a donation is made to a charity.  I had The breast cancer site and the animal rescue site.  I wish that I could have them on blogger

I had a blogversary button.......

Then I had these ........

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really, really wish that I could have them on a side bar here.  Maybe someone can tell me how to do that?

Jilly

Finishing up

The entry below is the final one that I will make on Multiply.   I am getting everything pretty well set up here on Blogger and I think this will be my new home although at the moment I shall keep Blogster updated too.  I just hope that this will be a happy new place to lay my hat. 

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Well I have finally moved every last blog from here over to my Blogger site. I have also moved all of the doggies blogs and closed down their site. I shall gradually be deleting all of my albums. I have no need to download them as they are all stored on my own hard drive and also in the cloud.

I shall take down the images in my side bar over the next couple of days and place them on Blogger. Then I shall begin to delete entries from here starting with the oldest first.

I will continue to cross post from Blogger for those few of you still here. I will do so until the end. However I will not be using this site to read or comment on blogs. I know where most of you are. I have contacted everyone.

Should you wish to find me my primary blog will be at: http://pinkduchessofmorton.blogspot.co.uk/

Sadly it seems that we have all gone to different places and I cannot keep up with checking on half a dozen different blog sites so inevitably I will lose contact with some of you. If you are one of them, well it was nice knowing you and sharing bits of our life stories. I hope that you find a nice blog site and that new friends will come along and join you. Who knows we may meet up somewhere else in the future.

As always...... I wish you enough.

Jilly