Completely knockered!

My delightful son had given me the most precious gift that any child can share with his mother............the rotten snots!!!!!  Yeah, thanks for that!  Here I am with a weekend full of craft shows, fund raising and cooking ahead of me and boom! knocked sideways but the aches and the pains.  Not best impressed.  Still, I've managed to get some lovely bits together for sale and finished some projects for delivery as well so not to shabby.

My whole day has been a bit of a blur if I'm totally honest with you.  Woken up by the mini beast at 0530hrs (gggrrrr).  Coffee morning with the girls with the addition of my famous gooey chocolate cake.  CV writing as I need to remember what my brain is for and prep for tomorrow.  Chilling with a glass of vino now.  Was going to dye my hair to remove the badger streaks but I honestly hurt too much to lift my arms that high for that long so badger streaks will have to do.

Looking forward to catching up with the ladies tomorrow but for now I'm off to bed.  Sorry its a short post but i'm totally pooped.

Back soon. :-)

Yes, I know. Slacking again.

I can honestly say that the reason that I haven't shared all sorts of awesome stuff with you for so long is because I had no awesome stuff to share with you.  I know, it almost never happens but I have been so busy with all of the boring but very necessary things in life and I know you don't want me to blog about the height of my ironing pile (which has just taken me 2 hour to scale thank you very much for asking). Son one killed his brand new school shoes in the first week, NOT COOL!  Son two keeps threatening to bring the nursery Giant African Snail home for a holiday.  I have advised nursery that if such a thing should ever happen, it would be returned in a bath of garlic butter!  That seems to have done the trick. He he he.

This weekend however, we decided that the normal hum drum was getting right on our wick and so we blew it out of the water!  I am the voucher and half price queen but this time hubby trumped me totally. He did FREE!!!  Epic, my favourite price.  We are within half an hour of Paultons Park.  This place is well worth a visit if your in stones throw of Hampshire.  Now what makes this place even more amazing is the phenomenal support that they show to the families of service personnel.  Every year they give thousands of free tickets to kids of serving members of HM Armed Forces.  How wonderful are they?  We've been 3 times now and it never gets old.  The only down side to todays trip was that the rain was coming in from side ways and the wind was blowing a demi gale!  No amount of hot chocolate was going to restore heat to our withered limbs and lifeless peripheries.  Never has taking my jeans off for a wee been such a challenge!  2 hours was quite enough for us and we bugged out for hot baths, more hot chocolate, grannies home knit blankets and every fluffy item of clothing that we possessed.  Proper job.  It was so wet that I refused to take my beloved camera so no photos of our misery to show you, sorry.

I am however delighted to share with you our tip top saturday.  Yet again the voucher queen struck and off we went to the Hawk Conservancy.  We love this place and its worth every single penny of its full entry fee.  We were delighted to share a random act of kindness on the lady behind us in the cue, we got her in for free with our tickets.  Happy days :-).  Now you don't necessarily be into birds of prey to love this place.  The mark of a good attraction in my opinion is that the staff care about what they do.  It always shows.  Now the staff are passionate about their birds and demonstrate them with such energy.  I have to say that I've never seen it so busy but the staff just took it in their stride and made sure that everyone got their monies worth.

This is the place, Google it and Go! 

Throughout the park they have pieces of art from local artists.  I could have spent as long looking at these as I did the birds.  Stunning and such talent on display.

This guy is a Hooded Vulture.  I am now a fully confirmed member of the Vulture fan club.  I just think that they are super cool.  Anything that spends most of its day with its head in a dead body and yet still looks that beautiful is OK by me.

This chap is a King Vulture and the picture doesn't show just how boss eyed he is.  He looks perpetually confused.  I can sympathise.

For my American readers.  This little lady is Cheyenne.  No words necessary I think, she says it all.

Finally, this is brilliant.  Now the fella is flying a Black Kite.  Now apparently the Military have a fondness for this bird and used to send the new recruits across the parade square with their lunch in a mess tin.  The poor recruit would then get dive bombed by the resident Kites.  This is what he's recreating here.  Love it.  Beats "left handed hammers", "tartan paint" etc into a cocked hat.

Generally a fab weekend.  I haven't even touched on the massive amounts of home cooked food, baked yumminess, laughter, hugs and family time as the full 5 of us.  Roll on the next time.

Autumn already!?!

It would seem that autumn has arrived in our little corner of England.  That could identify me as a tiny bit of a pessimist as an optimist might call it late summer.  I would argue however that autumn is such a glorious season full of stunning colours, delightfully crunchy sounds and crisp smells.  I truly love it and my camera loves it too.

Hubby took the not so mini man camping at the weekend leaving myself and the mini man to do as we wished.  Now this week we have been without a car and the weathers been rather unkind to the last week of the school holidays (clearly the most painful!).  Theres a limit to the amount of painting, cutting, sticking, eye spying, walking, picnicking etc that you can ask a 3 year old to do to pass the time.  We decided that our lovely Maisey Moo dog needed to stretch her legs so off we went.  As I may have mentioned before, we have the most glorious corn fields behind our house and they are due to be harvested imminently, so much so that I can hear the combine harvester as I type.  When a small child slows you down you get to absorb so much more of all thats around you and I could not be more grateful.

There is something very stirring about poppy's growing in the fields especially when they grow in the shadow of an Army camp.

These were just breathtaking.  My poor old phone had to do its very best to take the photos and I don't think it did too bad a job.  I could honestly carry my camera everywhere with me and be snapping all day long but I would simply never get anywhere.

Look at this little cracker!!  A pink Poppy.  So pretty.  Now I checked that it hadn't simply faded (if such a thing is possible).  I was so delicately beautiful.  I think a red Poppy displays a robust beauty but this little lady looked so fragile.

This is the site that greets us daily until we crested the hill to discover..................

................this!!!!  What a shocker!  Mini man practically exploded with excitement.  Tractors, trailers and combine harvesters all in one place!  Just too much excitement for one 3 year old.

  

Then THIS!!  Honestly, I was totally unprepared for hedge row fruits.  I was all very much still in the mind set of flowers but at some point mother nature decreed that it was fruit o'clock.  Not so much as a consultation!

Mini man loves his dandelion "wishes".  This was a classic specimen of a fully formed wish as he presented to me for photographs.  Sadly the wind whipped by him unceremoniously PINCHING his wishes.  The rudeness!!

I can say that autumn is well and truly on its way and I'm happy to welcome it now I've found my favourite winter boots that I feared had been lost in the move, hurray!