Eleven

I love finding new blogs and reading details of real people’s lives, I’ll often spend hours flicking through blog rolls finding new amazing people, some who I will visit again and again and others who I will just flit through, having the best intentions to visit again but losing them in the world-wide ether (if that is the correct use of that word) of the web.

I was recently introduced to Sarah at The Little Family of 3 when she tagged me. Thank you Sarah and here is the game;

The rules as passed on by The Little Family of 3:

• every tagged person has to tell 11 things about themselves
• answer the 11 questions from the person who tagged you
• list 11 questions for the folk you are going to tag, and they should have fewer than 200 followers if possible
• don’t back-tag

Eleven things about me:

1. I am the oldest of four with an older half-brother and sister
2. I love TV crime dramas such as A Touch of Frost, Inspector Morse, New Tricks (most of which I know off by heart) and Waking the Dead
3. I never spent a day in school until I was much older and worked on projects in them
4. My celtic tree sign is the willow tree
5. I love fatty foods with loads of sauce e.g. cheese or gravy
6. I was made redundant three times before my twenty-sixth birthday
7. I don’t have a tv but do have a LoveFilm account and use iPlayer too
8. I have been vegan and vegetarian but never eaten meat
9. I don’t play computer games often but every few years will spend days playing a game called Settlers, building up my own kingdom and making sure there are enough farms to feed everyone
10. I like mayo with chips, but not everytime
11. I drink far too much tea socially but hardly any when I’m not with people to drink it with

Sarah’s questions for me;

1. If money was no object would you move home, if yes where too? If money were no object I would buy land, enough to provide enough space for me my mother and sister to build our own houses and have our own space but close enough to be able to see each other all the time
2. Where is the most interesting place you have visited? Off the top of my head, The Eden Project. I think it is hard to get under the skin of anywhere without spending time there and getting to know the people and stories it holds
3. How many of the things on your to do list do you actually manage to do in the allotted time? That all depends on if I make a list or lose it before I reach the bottom. Old to do lists are often very interesting when they are found weeks, months or years later. I always put everything off until the very last-minute any way
4. What was your favourite story as a child? I’m not sure if it was my favourite but I remember listening to The Kitchen Warriors and Heidi over and over again. We use to borrow a lot of audio books from the library when I was a child and listen to them every night at bed time
5. Who is the person you remember idolising as a child? I really don’t remember idolising anyone as a child
6. laminate floor or carpets? If it has to be either than laminate but I would prefer slate or wood
7. what is your favourite dessert? Cheesecake or mother’s trifle (and no I’m not creeping lol)
8. What job did you always want to do as a child? and do you do it now? I always wanted to work in the media or be a writer. I remember when I was very little, maybe five or six, being interviewed for the radio about being home educated and I said then I was going to work in the media even though I was very shy and that is what I started out planning to do but it isn’t what I do for a living now and I’m not sure it’s what I still want to do either
9. Is there one thing would you like to change about your life? I would truly love to live in a world that was less dependant on money. It is such an unreal concept with no real value at all and yet it hold so much power over everything. I spent a lot of time struggling to reach a balance between having enough and having enough time to not need it
10. what is your favourite pastime?  Anything to do with my home life; gardening, looking after the animals (even mucking out!), cooking
11. what is your favourite season of the year? I really couldn’t choose one, each season is different each year any way

And the questions for those tagged (if you are choosing to take part)

1. What inspired you to first start blogging?
2. What waking thought makes you want to jump out of bed and start the day?
3. What is/was your favourite outdoor game?
4. What is your biggest time waster?
5. If you could invite anyone to dinner; who would they be? What would you eat? and why?
6. What is your most used tool?
7. What would you bring back from the past that you think we have lost and why? I don’t mean a person, that would be too easy!
8. What was the last thing that amazed you?
9. Have you ever seen a shooting star?
10. What is the oddest food you have tried and did you like it?
11. Tea, coffee or something else?

And finally my tags:

1. Laura at Dichotomyof as she hasn’t blogged for a while and I miss here posts
2. Rosie and Simon(?) at Eco-Gites
3. Anthea at Tales from Mount Pleasant
4. The HedgeCombers – I haven’t forgotten my ABC tag, it is a work in progress!
5. Caro at An Urban Veg Patch 
6. Katy at The Good Life in Practice – a new blog I stumbled across the other day

And that is all I have for now, not a full eleven but quality should make up for quantity lol.  I know I shouldn’t back tag but I would love to know your answers to my questions Sarah

Trundling along

This was begun a week or so ago, just after the sun had burned the frost of my hill and before yet another day of going to work… (I also knew where my camera was at the time but don’t now so now photos I’m afraid)

Things seem to be back to a ‘stand still holding your breath’ stage at the moment and even though little in roads in the right direction are being made I hate the waiting for the return of ‘normal’, whatever that maybe now. Most of it revolves around work and money, which makes the waiting even more frustrating as it is all waiting on others to take action or make their minds up whilst I am left floating along with the days turning into weeks and my plans having to be made in a months timescale instead of what I’d like… And even some of those have had to be put back.

I hate the control money has on everything and the way it makes me feel when there isn’t enough of it; as though I am in some way an inadequate person and as though there is an extra strain on just getting the day-to-day done. I so truly wish I was in a position to not have such a need but I’m not sure that that could ever be reached, and not without first having enough money to begin with. Money seems to be the line between existing and *living* and I want to live and not just for work as so many others seem to have to.

Any way, I am making small (what feel like tiny just now) inroads and this is what I’m trying to focus on… Grumpy poor-me moan over.

Bella kidded two weeks ago, another little boy. He is sooo tiny up to Dumbledor (that is what Briony’s kid was named) and I can’t believe that there is such a difference in just a month. He is darker in colour but already has patches coming through and is going to be more like his mum and Knightshade in looks. He’s been named Dougal.

Just before the cold weather hit I decided to start sowing, hence why I am sitting here with a windowsill of leggy seedlings, and popped three courgette seeds into a pot with a “three courgettes isn’t much to lose” kind of shrug and added a windowsill growing kit of chillies and a packet of Nasturtium for good measure. I think I really needed to get my hands in some soil and see the tiny shoots of hope that seed sowing brings and so far so good, apart from being a little leggy they are fine and I have added a few pots of sweetpeas to them since and then had a splurge of seed sowing last night and have an assortment of flower seeds lined up to be sown today.

I don’t really have a plan to what I am doing so far, just a vague idea of greatness, but it is making me feel hopeful and as though my life hasn’t just become work and a search for new work.

Blog awards

It’s always nice to know that people are reading my witterings, especially seeing as I have been so bad at writing and completely awful at responding to the comments people have left me, I am sorry I do love getting comments and always mean to respond, honest!

Any way, it has been extra nice to be award a blog award not once but twice in less than a month, thank you so much Caro at An Urban Veg Patch and Philippa at Self-Sufficient Dreams

Liebster Award - 2012

Acceptance of the award is conditional on the following:

Copy and paste the award on your blog
Thank the giver and link back to them
Choose five blogs (with less than 200 followers) that you’d like to pass the award on to and leave a comment for them on their blog.

I have no idea how to tell if someone has less than 200 followers, but her are my chosen five in no real order;

Dichotomyof

Being a Smallholder

Lou Tonkin – Arts & Graft

A year in the life of

Forest Flowers – Tales from Mount Pleasant

I hope this brings a smile to your lips and places a bright tint on your days!

All hallows eve

Tonight is all hallows eve, or Samhain , but I much prefer the way all hallows eve sounds. To me this time of year has never been about spooks or trick-or-treat but has always stood for the Wiccan meaning of the day; a celebration of those lives who have passed. It is the start of the dark time of year, so always fits well with the clock change, but not dark in a sinister or foreboding meaning but in a soft and gentle way. The start of time to rest and regain strength for the next season.

I haven’t really marked the occasion for many years but have today by visiting my dads grave for the first time. I took some of the sweetpeas that are still going strong, spurred on my the warm spell a few weeks ago, in the front garden

Wordless Wednesday

Enjoying the evening sun - 16th April 2011

School holidays

Lemon balm shooting back through - 18th February 2011

This week is half term and so a flat out week at work, not really much time for anything simple life-y but I am having a good week. We’ve been doing lots of outdoor cooking; on Monday we made bacon butties and fruit salad, Tuesday and today we have made naan bread pizzas and jacket potatoes and tomorrow we are going to try fruit salad trifles.

At the weekend I finally got chance to try out walking to the allotment and it wasn’t too bad, it took about 10 minutes one way and about 20 minutes another way. I also planted out some of the strawberry runners I potted up at the end of last year, they are in the front garden.

My hens have started laying again it is so nice to have home produced eggs to eat

A trip to the sea

Sand turtles - 23rd January 2011

I have been away over the weekend playing in the sand, cooking outdoors and staying up far too late with my works annual residential trip.

It was a lovely weekend but now I am back to reality and gearing up for the big moving push this weekend

Cat litter

Well, the kittens have now turned into little cats almost and touch wood are doing ok at litter training.

We don’t normally have litter trays in the house as the cats all pretty much come and go as they please, even when the kittens were first born Biscuit wasn’t shut in with them until they had started exploring but weren’t big enough to be left out on their own and even then it was only when we weren’t home.

I haven’t liked buying cat litter; most cat litter is made from clay and although I am not sure how or why I remember it being explained to me how unsustainable and bad this was, something to do with the mining for the clay or maybe where it comes from? If anyone knows more than I’d be really interested as my google searches haven’t turned anything up.**

My google searches did turn up information about wood based cat litter which is made from ‘wastage’ from soft wood industries. It is basically little pellets of saw dust.

We have been experimenting with it and so far have tried two different brands – Morrison’s own brand and The Co-op’s own brand – and both have been pretty much the same just a little different in colour (however the Morrison’s one does come in plastic packaging whereas the Co-ops one comes in a paper one).  

There is one big downside to this kind of cat litter though; when the pellets get wet they swell and turn back to wood dust which seems to stick to the cats feet and so they walk it everywhere meaning that it is only really practical to use in the short-term.

It’s little things like this that mean a lot of people chose not to use the most eco-friendly option and it drives me mad but is something I’m not really sure how it can be dealt with.

**UPDATE – MyZeroWaste has posted about this subject this morning and it explains why clay cat litter is bad MyZeroWaste

Best blog award

Jo from The Good Life has very kindly given me a “best blog” award. I only found Jo’s blog a week or so ago but have been enjoying catching up with all her posts. Thank you Jo, and good luck with your Christmas potatoes which are looking good!

The rules of this award are as follows: Post the award on your blog along with the name of the person who passed it on to you and link to their blog. Choose up to 15 blogs which you have recently discovered and you think are great and pass it on to them. Don’t forget to leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

 This award comes at a very good time for me as I have been finding a lot of interesting new blogs lately, and so I would like to pass the award on to:

A year in the life of…

The Sustainable Smallholding

UK lass in US

Bring me sumshine

Enjoy!

 

Twitter

I have joined Twitter.

I recently heard a programme on Radio 4 about it and it’s many uses but have sadly forgotten which part it was that inspired me to join or how I was going to use it. Still I am now a member, and when I have a) worked out how to and b) found a mobile phone service that has even a small amount of sign covering my house then I will be able to up-date people with what I am up to whilst on the move.

In the mean time it is there in the side bar on the right and I will use it to up-date here when I don’t have time to write a full post.