Here comes the Bride Pt2

Well back in July 2008 I mentioned that I was getting Married, this is still the case but it's now more final. The ceremony has been booked at Sheffield Registry Office for the 15th April 2010 at 2pm, and we are looking at nearby venues for the Wedding Breakfast and Reception. So far we have looked at Tankersley Manor and The Garrison in Hillsborough. They are both really nice but very expensive. So at the moment I'm looking around a bit more. My invitations have been designed by myself, as I'm making them and I've decided on my cake which I'm hoping that my cousin is going to help me make, I'm wanting individual cupcakes tiered and a medium sized cake at the top. My theme colour is Cream and Apricot and my Grandad has offered to buy my dress I've just got to get to my weight goal to fit into it, so I've bought Davina's 30min workout to help me. My partners brother is going to do the photography so that saves a bit of money and that he is really good at taking photos so I know he will do a good job.

Nothing much else to report just really busy at work and getting myself prepared for starting my PostGrad Diploma in September, I passed my PG Certificate, but I was in two minds over whether to carry on, but work pay for it and next year will be easier as I know what to expect and hopefully will be able to manage my time a bit more and organise my wedding, so I thought it was silly not to carry on.

ET Phone home

Again yes it's been three months since the last post, I will give myself a slap later. We now have a carpet in the bedroom which is a blue/grey/brown colour, it is very nice and doesn't get mucky as much as the cream one did.

We had our annual trip to London back in June, which was for the @media conference that K goes to, and a shopping/sightseeing trip for me. As I have been going to London for the past 4 years I have done most of the Museums that I'm interested in but have never been to the British Museum so on one of the days that K was at the conference I took myself off to the BM, it was handy that it was about 5 minutes from the hotel so I stopped in for a Starbucks coffee first, they are everywhere in London, we have about 10 in Sheffield but London must have about a trillion. So off I went camera in hand to the BM, I was really impressed with the museum but was a little disappointed at the lack of British stuff, yeah there were Roman stuff and a few British monuments but after seeing the 20th Mummy or the 50th Greek Vase I was quiet bored, plus I think I must have got lost about 15 times. The main highlight was having a argument with a German man, he was stood in front of the Rosetta Stone and was taking like a million photos, all I wanted was one then I could get on with looking at all the other crap, but would he move.....nope so I made myself very clear and barged my way in, I think he was quite surprised by my actions, what is annoying is that when I look at my photos of the stone, I can see his ugly face in the glass reflection.

The other day that I was free to please myself in London was spent mainly on the stupid London's Docklands Light Railway, in my attempt to get to Greenwich. all was going well on the journey from the Strand to Blackwall on the bus, then after finding that there isn't a bus from Blackwall to Greenwich all i was left with was the DLR, this started off well making my way to Poplar then the man over the tannoy said cross over to the other platform for trains to Lewisham and Canary Wharf, which was the way I needed, what he failed to tell me was that there were also other trains that went to Stratford, so I got on the first train that appeared only to realise I was going up instead of down, so after about 5 stops I decided to get off and get on the next train going back down, but this was easier said than done, there wasn't any trains going to Lewisham, but ones going to All Saints so I got on one of them, so in the end I made it to Canary Wharf and at this point I had been travelling over an hour from when I left the hotel. I was about to give up ever getting to Greenwich Maritime Museum when a train with Lewisham came, so off I went, got to the Cutty Sark and started to feel a little ill and couldn't find any signs for the museum so I gave up that, got on the river boat as I wasn't going on the DLR ever again in my life and made my way back to the London Eye. I'd never been on a riverboat on the Thames so was pleasantly surprised, to my annoyance though the boat was full of french foreign exchange children, which was quite amusing to listen to their conversations.

The rest of the holiday was really nice, the weather was fine and much food and drink was consumed. My only celebrity spotting, and it wasn't anyone that famous either, was sitting next to one of this years Big Brother contestants Sophie I think her name was, (the one with Lupus) in Eat on the South Bank.

Prior to London I upgraded my phone to a iphone 3GS which I love and it did prove very useful in London, being able to check my Oyster Card credit and get access to the Internet was a god send.

Oh I was on the Leicester Square Web cam, I came across the web cam a few weeks ago and when I told my colleague at work she said "oh my god you so have to go on that" so I was stood there phoning back to my friend in the office saying can you see me? when I got back in the office I had waiting for me was a print out of myself stood in Leicester Square, which was rather cool.

Things that are broken

This past month it seems as though everything we own has broken, it started with the smoke alarm at stupid o'clock beeping and beeping, I took out the battery but still it beeped, forgot it was on the mains too, so as to not cause annoyance to the neighbours I disconnected it, making a mental note to get a 9v battery the next day, so the next day came and we went food shopping only to forget to buy a battery the one thing we needed. So it was another shopping trip to get the battery and all is well with that.

The second thing to go wrong was our water cooler, that decided it was going to get hot instead of cold, then totally give up the ghost so that got binned, I ordered another one from Amazon, and received the usual series of emails, you order had be placed, our order has been verified, your order has been dispatched etc etc. So there I was eager awaiting my purchase the estimated delivery date came and went no red ticket in the mail, nothing. It was only when I checked amazon it said it had been delivered, and gave me the tracking number, well I went to the delivery companies site and there it confirmed that it had been delivered, but I had been in all day on the day it said but there wasn't any buzz at the door or any knock. So where was my purchase, I thought one of our neighbours had taken it in, but still no-one came, it was only till later that night I checked outside our door that I found my purchase, just left there no note, no knock or anything. Thankfully we live in a block of apartments and there is only 2 apartments on the ground level, but we don't use the front door very often as we come in the patio doors as the main front door is up stairs off the main road, but it all ended ok.

The next thing to brake was our hot water heater, I was on my way to bed around midnight to find my bedroom carpet soaking wet, at first I was unsure where the water was coming from until I realised that it was coming from the heater. What do you do at Midnight? well I rung my insurance company thankfully they have a 24hrs hot line and our management company who also have a number for emergencies, well the guy on the other end of the phone was almost helpful, I think he was a little pissed off I was calling him, and disturbed his peaceful night, well he helped me turn off the water then all we could do was get some sleep and call the insurance people the next day, they were really good and sent someone straight away to sort out the carpet, we then got someone in to sort the heater, thankfully we could get cold water but no hot, but the only annoyance was the amount of money it was gonna cost, apparently we were meant to have the heater serviced every year but we weren't told this so the build up of gunk has cause it to brake, and it wasn't claimable on the insurance, at least we were covered for the carpet, the wardrobe and chest of drawers, which were also water damaged, but at least the new one doesn't have this anode thing on it so it is guaranteed for 25 years which is good. The only issue now is that the people who installed it haven't tightened the thermostats enough and it is slightly leaking, not major thankfully, towels are stopping it, and they are coming out on Wednesday to fix it. At least I now have hot water yippee. All I need to do now is go and choose a carpet.

Cinderella went to the Ball

To be more precise Sarah went to the Masquerade Bad Taste Bear Ball. Didn't manage to get the dress but went in Gold sparkly tights, black skirt and a new top. My mask was finished in time but the bloody glitter went everywhere, and why after 2 weeks I'm still finding bits even in the most unlikely places where the glitter didn't touch.

The event was held at Bramall Lane where Sheffield United play, now I'm a Sheffield Wednesday fan so this wasn't going to be the perfect venue, but the room was ok and the food was slightly edible, a selection of wraps, sandwiches, potato wedges, tortilla chips and a selection of nice desserts. We still felt the need to visit the chippy afterwards though.

The event bear was called Fanny and she was a Burlesque dancer. I did well at this event as I only got a further 5 bears for the collection, we haven't been purchasing as many this year, due to the credit crunch and the fact there hasn't been many bears that we both like.

The entertainment for the night was two Burlesque dances going by the name of Missy Malone and Lola. They both did 2 dances each then a dance together at the end. Miss Malone was ok, a former belly dancer she looked the part with nipple tassels intact but the other girl Lola wasn't that good, she was too skinny and for a burlesque dancer you would have thought that she would have had a decent pair of boobs, but no they were flatter than a pancake. Maybe Miss Malone was making up for the pair of them.

I entered by Mask into the mask making competition but didn't even come close to winning, but I'm not really surprised as they were quite a lot of really good masks, and you could tell that more than 2 days worth of engineering had gone into them. At least mine has pride of place on the bookshelf in the office.

The next Bad Taste Bear event is in the summer at Warwick Castle, which also co-insides with the 10th anniversary of BTB so there will be a special bear to mark the occasion. We haven't decided if we are going yet, but we probably will be.

Egg tastic

Again I've fallen into that trap of not updating, but fear not I will try to do this more often.

So what I have been doing? mainly writing essays for my masters which is slowly doing my head in, trying to study, work and all the house/family stuff is taking it's tole. I wouldn't recommend distance learning, it is pants. Thankfully I've only got 2 more essays to write and that's the first year done, I will have a postgraduate certificate, and to be honest I'll be glad to finish with just that, forget the diploma and the masters just give me the cert, but I'm guessing that my family won't let me. It will be like the rest of my life, doing stuff for other people and not for myself, don't get me wrong I enjoyed doing my degree but the added pressure to do well from my family wasn't enjoyable.

Happy (belated) Easter to all, thankfully I only got 2 Easter eggs this year, which I'm glad about as I've been experiencing a slight blip in the weight watching front. Don't worry I've not put it all back on, but I now weigh the same as I did Christmas week, so in 4 months I've been up and down more times than a yo yo, so stating this week I'm back onto pointing big style, so hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have hit the 3 stone barrier, and I'll be back on the right track.

As mentioned in my last post I was seeking a dress for the ball, well this Cinderella story isn't happening, yes I am going to the ball, but it won't be in a dress, probably the trusty black skirt and a new top, if I can find one that I like. I have started on my mask though I will post a picture when it is finished.

Frosty the snowman

Well it has been snowing all last week and tonight we have more of the fluffy white stuff. It was fun for a while but now it's just damn annoying, all the world stops for a bit of snow. Schools were shut, trains and buses cancelled but thankfully the Supertram was still in action. The only thing that has been the most annoying is that I've been able to still make it into work, it's taken that little bit longer but still I've been there, whilst other people work from home (well they try to log on then give up and go back to bed or to the TV) I'm not bitter honest.

This weekend was the two local football teams clash in a Sheffield Derby. These teams are well known for hating each other and already this year Wednesday have been the better team and won one clash, but this weekend they did the double. Sheffield Wednesday beat United 2-1 at Bramall Lane. This, on the back of a 1-0 victory for the Owls at Hillsborough earlier in the season, gave Wednesday their first double over United since the 1913/14 season. Well deserved as well.

Another good thing that has happened is that the next Bad Taste Bear mini event is to be held in my home city of Sheffield, it's about time really I was getting a little sick of travelling all over the country for these little fellas. The only issue, well 2 issues really. One it's at Sheffield United football club and being a Wednesday supporter it's not ideal but having done the double as mentioned above it will be bearable (no pun intended). Two the theme of the event is Burlesque / Masquerade Ball. Although fancy dress is optional, this event is smart dress too. So I've got to find a cheap ball gown in fat size, good luck I here you cry. What would be perfect is that if I looked like Jennifer Connolly in Labyrinth and had her dress, but that's not going to happen between now and the 18th April. I'll keep you posted on the costume hunt.

let it snow..let it snow

This weekend has been the mammoth of all weekends, we cleaned the flat from top to bottom and I did all my ironing. The thing is I hate ironing so I tend to leave it all in a pile in the bedroom, but I was sick of seeing it, and to be honest the bedroom was getting very messy with pile of clothes that need washing and lots of ironing. So all the lot had to go, not throw away no, the ironing had to be ironed and put away and the washing washed. Well I did in total about 4 hours ironing split into 2 sessions, one Saturday night and one Sunday night. The rest of Saturday comprised of sorting out the Office, getting rid of boxes and cleaning what must have been the entire dust mountain in the world. What I can't understand is how can such a small apartment like ours get so dusty, oh well it is now free of dust for the time being. Sunday was pretty the same cleaning and dusting the bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen. I even had time to bake some butterfly buns and have a shower.

What I did find quite interesting is the fact that whilst I was cleaning and hoovering usually I get very hot and sweaty, but now I've lost weight I was fine, no red and sweaty face or wet hair. I was truly amazed, plus I didn't get out of breath once. This is a big thing for me, I'm almost normal. The only downside is that my back is paying for it today, but not as much as would have been, had I not have been 2 stone lighter.

Talking about weight I've lost another 2lbs this week. I had a little blip over Christmas, but I'll let that one slide as it was the festival of food and niceness, but we are now back on track on the lard busting front.

On another note, it is snowing in Sheffield, now where I live we don't usually get that much snow, as we live in a dip but I was shocked this morning when I woke up to see about 2 inches of white fluffy snow, so out came the boots and off I went to work. Now we haven't got it half as much as down south where even all the London buses have stopped running, we just have delays and suspended services. But wait, it is forecast for more white precipitation overnight, so tomorrow might be a stay at home in the warm day hopefully, but I'm not holding my breathe because as I type this entry the snow has stopped and the existing snow on the cars etc is melting, so we will have to see.

A long time coming

Yes again I've not posted on this blog for months, but don't dismiss me just yet I do have valid reasons. My boyfriend has been very ill since about August and had major surgery in November to replace a tube, so his kidney now works. This procedure went really well and even surprised the doctors. What surprised them even more was how quick he is recovering, this is also going really well, and his scars are getting better by the day.

So my take on Christmas, this year I was cooking Christmas day dinner as my boyfriend wasn't able to go to anyone house, so each year we take turns his parents Xmas day mine Boxing day then the opposite the next year and so on. But this year as it would have been our turn to go to my parents we invited them over to ours for me to do the cooking. I've never cooked for 5 people before especially a full roast(well to be fair my Dad did the meat) but I did veg and roast potatoes and I think it went rather well, no disasters. Note.. this is a one year only normal service resumes next year.

So Boxing day his family came over to ours for a Boxing day buffet with cold sandwiches and variety of meats and cheeses etc which also went down pretty well.

For Christmas I received, a Oral B electronic toothbrush which is amazing so good my boyfriend went out and bought one himself in the sales, crafting stuff, clothes, books, vouchers, Super Mario Galaxy for Wii, Scene it 2 for Xbox and lots of other things. So I did pretty well this year.

Again comes the time to make new years resolutions and last year I didn't stick to mine so this year I'm really going to try but haven't decided just yet what they are. On the weight front over Christmas I've managed to lose 3lbs which is good considering the chocolate and nice food, so in total since May I've lost 2 stone 6lbs which I don't think is too bad.

Summer of Discontent

Again I know i've not been keeping this updated, but I've been a tad busy of the past few months. My Fiance has been in and out of hospital with Kidney problems and things are getting better so he has to have an operation in Nov, which neither of us are looking forward to, but i'm sure everything will be fine, and hopefully he will get better soon.

So what I have I been upto, well the new expansion pack for Sims 2 has come out it's called Apartment Life, and again EA Games have been working hard and i'm loving this new expansion. I'm also lookng forward to February when Sims 3 is coming out, not sure if my current PC will take it though.

I've also been involved in producing marketing marterial and photography for a collegues play "Hedda Gabler" by Ibsen, which opens at the Sheffield Drama Studio on Wednesday night, for more info go to here, or check out their facebook group, if you happen to be in Sheffield and want to see some amazing acting then this is the place, book your tickets now!!!

I'm now back to being a student again, i've enrolled to do a MA in E-communication, which i'm looking forward to, i'm doing it distant learning (studing at home with online teaching), so i'll still be working and work are paying for it which is even better, oh the perks of working for a University. I recieved my work books and module information the other week and looking over it briefly it seems a bit daunting but i'm sure once I get into it everything will be ok. Plus I know get Student Discount again which is ace.

Just an update on the weight front, i've now lost 2 stone 1 pound in total, which i'm really happy about, the only trouble is i've now got to start buying new clothes, as my own are very baggy, especially my jeans and trousers, I feel like a clown in them. Which also ties in very nicely with my birthday in 10 days time, so people can give me money and I can buy new clothes, woo hoo!!!

Daddy's taking me to the Zoo

Well it's more of the other way round, I took my Dad to Whipsnade Zoo for the annual Bad Taste Bear event. The reason for taking Dad is that my partner was in Hospital this happened a couple of years ago, and he missed out on going to the West Midlands Safari Park, now not to criticize or anything but he isn't much of a zoo person and animals don't really excite him, apart from he likes the Penguins. But I know it's a coincidence and he didn't mean to land himself in the Northern General but he was really poorly, but thankfully after a week in hospital he is getting better, he isn't 100% just yet but he will get there.

So back to the Zoo, I really had a great time, it took us about 2 and a half hours to get there and we spent about 1 hour in the BTB bit then went to spend the rest of the day watching the animals, there are more photos on my Flickr site.

My favourite was the baby Giraffe it was so cute and only 2 days old. There was also a baby Rhino and baby Elephant that were equally as sweet. Thankfully the weather held up and we only had a little shower around lunchtime but nothing to warrant getting the brolly out, and the packed lunch we took was nice too.

Here comes the bride... da da da da and all that

Just to keep you all updated, I'm getting married, hopefully next year, if I can get into the dress I've seen. It makes sense really as I've been engaged for nearly 4 years and we are slowly making progress in saving. So I've now found the book I bought when we first got engaged and have started looking around at venues etc, I've got a rough idea of colour theme and I know who is going to be my bridesmaids, for a start my cousin Gemma and my to be sister-in-law and her son as my Paige boy. I've got my chief hen night coordinator Kelly who will definitely give me a night to remember she is really a top bird and a great friend. I've got my partner's brother in charge of photos and I'm making my own invitations plus my hairdresser makes cakes so that bits sorted. All i need to think about is who to invite.

I will keep you all posted on the developments of the planning.

Lego rocks!!!

Well I'm now into week 10 of my Weight Watches diet and I'm 17lbs lighter, which I'm ecstatic about and I'm starting to see a difference in my features. I'm slowly losing my double chin and for the first time in a while I've got my neck back whoo hoo!!! but i can't get too exited I've still got a long way to go.

I've been reading a book that started off as a blog called "The amazing adventures of Dietgirl" I'm addicted to this book, it's about a girl from Australia who has lost 12 and a half stone and hats off to her, she has done it over 6 years and I really admire her determination, I just hope I can achieve the same determination and achieve my goals.

So since my last post I've been in London for a weeks holiday which was ace, there were lots of photo taking and walking around and two amazing meals at Garfunkel's, if you ever go to London you have to experience a Garfunkel's Burger, they are just so nice, the meat melts in your mouth and their chips are so divine. I've still got to upload my photos to Flickr but hopefully I'll get round to it this weekend.

Currently I'm so addicted to Lego Indiana Jones on the Xbox 360, much to my boyfriends annoyance. I'm one of those people that likes to collect everything I need to get all the artifacts, all the parcels and all the characters and won't stop till I've completed it all. Then once I've done that I'm going back to Lego Star Wars and go and complete all that too.

I'm also sort of watching Big Brother, now I've watched them all but in my opinion the first three were the best and it has gone down hill since, but I've not got into the obsession just yet on this series and I'm not sure I will hit that stage. All I can really say I'm glad that Alex got kicked out as she was a nasty piece of work, even though she claims that BB edited it so it makes her look bad and that what she was saying was out of context, but what I don't understand is what other context should it have been taken in, she said those words and they were offensive and she was being a bully to Steph, Mo and Rebecca, which is wrong.

The next Bad Taste Bear event is fast approaching and this years summer event is atWhipsnade Zoo, I'm very looking forward to this one as I've been wanting to go to Whipsnade for a while now, I love Zoo's and animals.

Weighting Issues

Since I last updated I have started Weight Watches I've only been doing it fully for 2 weeks as I have had to buy some new digital scales but so far I've lost 7lb which I'm quite proud off. I had my doubts thinking that it wouldn't work, as I've tried other diets but I'm getting to like this one. I'm not going to meetings as I refuse to pay £5.50 for someone to tell me I'm fat, so I've got two work colleagues that go to the meetings so they have got me the Eating out guide and the Shopping guide and a calculator and I'm finding it quite easy I can have 29 points a day and to be honest I'm struggling to find thing to eat to fill my points up, as you have to use them all up. What has made a difference is not drinking fizzy drinks and cutting down my portion sizes. So hopefully in maybe a year or 2 I'll be able to fit into my dream wedding dress.

I'm off to London in 2 weeks for a weeks holiday, I'm so looking forward to it and I'll get to try out my new camera to it's full potential.

Girls on Film....well Digital

I've got a new camera, yippee. It's a Canon G9 12.1 mega pixels and it is my new best friend. This is the best camera I've ever had and I've been going around taking lots and lots of pictures, you can see these pics on my Flickr site. So I'm going to spend most of the Easter holidays taking pictures. Plus I'm going to London at the end of May so I will be taking loads and loads there too.

So it's now Easter and I've done quite well for Easter eggs, now I will let you into a secret I'm 27 and I still love getting Easter eggs, granted these days you are really paying for all the packaging but the added bonus of chocolate and the occasional mug is great, and the best bit is K doesn't like the egg bit so I get all his too, yummy.

I've also just installed Vista on my computer which is nice, not as good as my Mac but ok all the same. I'm still slowly getting used to where things are compared to XP, but I'm sure it will be fine in the end.

Must....Must.......Must

Yes I must update this more often, once a month for the past 5 months is unacceptable, but when you are as busy as me you tend to forget about the important things of updating your blog, no seriously I have been busy....well maybe a little. Ok we have our nice shiny blue new car yippee, this car is (cue for a song..) Automatic, It's systematic, It's hydromatic well maybe its no Grease Lightning, but it is pretty damn cool, the best car I've ever had, and it only took me three weeks to drive the thing, plus I can park it too, which is an achievement even for me.

Another new thing I got was my new phone. Let me put this into context for you all, I have a Sony Ericsson K800i and I love it, a couple of weeks ago it let me down and wouldn't switch on so off it went back to 02 who kindly fixed it, but it was still doing weird things like corrupting my messages then deleting them without warning, but once I'd updated my gprs settings it seemed to stop. Now I'm coming to the end of my 18 month contract with o2 and I wasn't going to update but simply switch tariffs to 02 Simplicity and keep my K800i. But with all the problems I was having and with the BF's iphone problems with bluetooth not talking to the Tomtom. I decided that I would upgrade and BF can have the K800i for the Tomtom simple no? Then I had the dilemma of what phone to get, I like my Sony Ericsson but wasn't too struck on the K850i until I played with the one a friend had, well to cut a long story short I now have a Sony Ericsson K850i and I love it more than the K800i. The camera is amazing and the sound quality so much better, the reason I was unsure about it was because of the little square blue buttons rather than the little joystick thing, I thought that there was no way I could txt without hitting one of the buttons in the square, but again Sony Ericsson have come out tops the little square buttons are slightly raised so you don't catch them when texting which is great. So all in all a great phone.

At the moment I've been getting nice new things and another of these nice new things is a MacBook, which was given to me by my lovely BF (only coz he got himself a MacBook Pro, but I'm very grateful all the same). Now let me explain I learnt everything I know about computing on a PC, Microsoft thru and thru, but this all changed when I did a Graphic Design job where I was working on a Mac and I had bought my first Ipod, but deep down in my heart I though..... there is not a cat in hells chance of even owning a Mac so I went on dreaming, but storing up in my head what I'd learnt on the Mac as you never know when it might come in handy. So here I am typing this to you on a Mac, but the sad thing is I still love my PC for it holds my trusty Sims 2 game (yes I know you can buy it for the Mac but I don't wanna ok) and speaking of Sims 2 the next expansion pack is coming out next Friday the 29th it's called Free Time and I'm so looking forward to buying it.

Ok so I hope this post has met with your satisfactions of length for a months worth of nothingness, but I will try to post more I promise.

Post Xmas Blues

Well Christmas is now over and I can't believe that we are over half way into January. My Christmas was really cool, I spent my holiday between both sets of families which was really good. For Christmas I got some really nice presents including a Nintendo Wii, Wii games, some books, craft things, a tiger (don't worry not a real one, a adopted one from the WWF), loads of clothes, a donut maker and chocolates.

Now that Christmas is over the only thing to look forward to is Easter when I'm next on holiday from work. Oh and our new car which will arrive next week. Nothing else really has been happening apart from this weekend when all the weather has been doing is raining, what I'm hoping is that we don't have the amount of rain we had in the summer but I've been very vigilant with the weather watch and keeping informed with the flood watches just in case, as I don't want to have a repeat of the summer's floods. Some places near where I live have had local floods but ours has been ok, plus one of the main reasons we flooded in the summer was a tree got stuck under the bridge near my house.

Anyway I'm going to sign off now and finish watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire which is on one of the movie channels on Sky.

Pre Xmas

Again, I'm going to have to update this more often but I always forget, and to be honest my life is pretty boring. Thank god I've now finished my Xmas shopping and I'm sooooo glad, this year it has been horrid, and today didn't help. Standing in a queue in HMV to find then the tills go down and they are only excepting cash payments, so i had to leave the queue go to the cash machine then re-join the queue again, which was the full length of the store. To put it lightly I wasn't amused.

But the upside to all this I've got my Wii for Christmas, I managed to leg it to HMV on Tuesday, thanks to my boss letting me leave work for 20 mins in the middle of the day to rush to the other side of town. I'd previously rung the store and they had 4 left well, i was the last person that day to get one. Lucky me, but i think various store are slowly getting more stock in now. It's sitting nicely wrapped under my tree. I will let you know what i think of it after Xmas.

I had my works Xmas do on Monday night we went to Cafe Rouge again this year, and just like last I had the same menu choices and it was well worth the £20 for 3 courses. Totally enjoyed it. This year I was in charge of co-ordinating Secret Santa at work, the budget was £3 and the theme was silly and the item had to beginning with the letter S. I think it went ok, there were a few moans about the letter choice but everyone managed to get a gift starting with S, mine was a Kids Fake Ferrari F1 car. Yes I know this doesn't technically begin with S but it does state on the box Supercar so that counts, well according to the person who bought it anyway. So good times had by all.

I'll sign off now, hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Long time coming

Well, I'm not doing really well at keeping this blog up to date am I? It's now November and the last post was in September a whole 2 months have passed. But the annoying thing is they have been really uninteresting months. I've just been doing nothing but being really busy.

I celebrated my 27th birthday which was really nice, my BF and I went to TGI Friday's, the meal was nice but overpriced it's a good job i had vouchers. I had some nice presents for my b'day, a lovely ipod nano video, various craft items and money which is always a winner.

October went by in a blur, again really busy but nothing really to pin point what has happened. But I know it involved playing lots of Sims 2 and learning InDesign CS2, I know the basics but wanted to brush up on the other things that I thought I knew how to do but don't.

Last weekend we had friends over, which was really great. Whats nicer than just relaxing and catching up with friends. This weekend will be slightly more hectic as we are both in London, my BF is down there for an award presentation on his works website and I'm down to shop and eat Krispy Kreme donuts oh and for my BF to purchase the new iphone.

Well in 47 days it will be Christmas, I'm quite looking forward to it this year as my BF's Nephew will be nearly 4 and he understands more about Christmas now and it should be a good day with him opening his pressies and creating havoc around the place, and also the fact that my BF is buying me a Wii and I'm sooooo looking forward to one.

Actioned Packed Weekend

The weekend of the 17th Aug was hectic but great, the weather held out but the traffic didn't. We set off on the Friday morning on our journey to Kent to the annual Bad Taste Bear outing. We had a reasonable journey down but hit traffic on the M25, going at 50mph on a motorway isn't great and I think at one point my BF put the hand brake on because we weren't even moving. But we arrived safely, and with only about half an hour added on to our journey time.

Our first stop off was Bluewater shopping centre, the reason for this is that like any other gal i like shopping and more importantly I like Krispy Kreme donuts. I first discovered KK at Harrods in London and fell in love with the little dough circles, they are the best donuts in the whole world, but the only problem is that up north were I live we haven't had the luxury get so I took this opportunity of going to Bluewater to sample some more of these wondrous delights, well 12 donuts later and I'm stuffed. I just want to make it clear I didn't eat them all, I did have some help.

Now Bluewater isn't a bad shopping centre but I feel that I had worked myself up for it to be twice the size of our Local shopping mall, Meadowhall but I was surprised that I think it might be just a little bigger. There are more expensive shops at BW and the most important one the Lego shop, where i nearly lost my BF, it was like a little child in a sweet shop, bless...

So we checked in our hotel that night and had a well deserved rest from all the shopping and donuts.
The next day was the trip to the event, which was at Groombridge place gardens in Kent, and also in the middle of nowhere, thank god for SatNav.

The event was really good, we got our bears and goodie bag, and then joined the queue for the shop, another 14 or so bears later we joined the queue for the tombola, at £5 per go we limited ourselves to 4 goes but the prizes were rare bears, so later in the day we had another few goes. Things were starting to run out, the shop was fast running out of stock and so was the tombola, it was apparent that one collector had spent £400 on the tombola, now in my book this isn't fair, the organisers really should have done something about this or limited the amount of goes you were able to have. Oh well we were glad with our wins and thankful we went to the shop first. We had a look around the gardens then went back to the hotel.

On the way home the next day we stopped off in Slough to visit friends, so all in all a very good but tiring and expensive weekend.

And the rain came

Sorry for not posting for about 2 months but I've been rather busy and it's been until recently that I've had time to get back to normal and finally update my blog. Well from the title of this post i refer to the recent spell of rain, we were affected by the floods in South Yorkshire and had to spend an evening in the town hall in Sheffield and a few nights in the city centre Travel Inn. But despite it all we are now back to normal and the insurance company have been great and paid out. We were quite fortunate compared to the people in Doncaster and down south they have had it really bad and are still in temporary accommodation.

I can't believe that in June/July we were having great downpours and then for example today and the past week it's been in the 70's F. It seems to have all come at once. Hopefully it will still be nice on the 17Th as this is the weekend we are going to Kent to the annual Bad Taste Bear summer outing, this year it is at Groombridge place gardens, it looks like a action packed weekend.