Drawings

I've decided that I wanted to take a bit more time to work on my drawing. I did art up to GCSE level but didn't take it any further. I haven't drawn for many many years and I decided to look on the net for a bit more instruction. I found this site called 'Drawspace' which gives loads of really detailed lessons on how to draw lots of different animals and things. Below is my first attempt!



I think I'm really going to enjoy this new challenge. I want to bring more creative things in to my life and I'm going to try and do one of these lessons every day for a month. I'll try to post what I manage to create!

Happy Wednesday! xxx

Tuesday

When I went to see my doctor yesterday, he put me on a mixture of Diazepam and Diclofenac for my whiplash. Which is good, but it does rather make writing a coherent blog post problematic. (As an interesting side note for my American readers, Diazepam is otherwise known as Vicodin and is the drug to which Dr House is addicted to on a well known Fox drama! If only I could muster such witty one liners!)

So instead I thought I would show you some of the photos I took over the weekend. This is only a small selection as I am still getting used to my new camera and seem to be out of focus more than I am in.







Ros xxx

Food, food, glorious food!

Last night was a very good night. Ignoring the fact that I have whiplash, and thus probably shouldn’t have been drinking (shhh don’t tell anyone), James cooked me another amazing meal.



We had Bobotie (which is a kind of spiced South African meatloaf) and salad. I think it was the eating by candle light which made it so romantic. That and the music of Billy Joel in the background. (Don’t laugh, I love Billy Joel, there is nothing like a little social commentary with dinner!)





After which we had strawberries and cream whilst watching Food Inc. Now I know I’m a little behind here in watching this film, but it was a really eye opener. Now I know i don’t live in the states, but still. It was horrifying to see some of the scenes in the slaughterhouses. Now I know that as a former vegetarian the film was preaching to the converted, but I was still shocked. If I ever manage to make it to the States (which i would love to one day), I might not be eating!

I hope every one has a happy Sunday, I am off to visit my Gran and go out for lunch! See you all next week.

Ros xxxx

(ps. Please excuse the slightly blurry photos, I'm still getting to grips with my new camera!)

Saturday Steals Vol 17

Well I promised myself this week that I would make it back for Saturday Steals. I thought about my post during the week. Decided what I would ‘steal’. My organisation was going to be superb, nay enviable this week. You would have been blown away by the sophistication and thought which was going to have gone in to my post. It was going to be awesome.

Unfortunately yesterday I was in a minor car crash and I have ended up with whiplash. About the best description I can come up with of what this feels like, is that my back is clicking like an unholy xylophone, being played by an over enthusiastic ghoul. This has rather stymied the grand plans I had for my Saturday Steals extravaganza of a post since I’m not really in the position to take the *amazing* photos I had planned.

So this leaves me to tell you about another steal I managed this week. Unsurprisingly I am back on the bandwagon of buying books. But as my daily Notes From The Universe tell me, an amazing collection of books is something to strive for, and who am I to argue! (Honestly if you’ve never heard or read these little notes they are a fantastic way to start your day.)

This book cost me the grand total of 25p from a bargain bucket of books that was outside an independent book retailer on my way to work. Hannah Hauxwell is a woman from the Yorkshire Dales who came to fame in the 1970’s for her solitary lifestyle without modern conveniences (such as say, running water or electricity). A couple of TV programs were made about her and this is one of the accompanying books.



(As you can see my photography is not going any further afield than my sofa!)

Whilst you might be quite rightly wondering why on earth I was attracted to this particular tatty paperback, it is a quite convoluted tale. When I was a kid, my parents had one of the other books from the series, and it sat on our bookshelf for years. I never read this book. I just remember noticing it a lot. It was called ‘Hannah in Yorkshire’, had a black dust jacket, and a very large photo of the aforementioned Hannah on the front. I have no idea why I did not read this book. My parents were very liberal in what they let me read. I read plenty of other things off of their bookshelves. Except this one book. Yet it must have made enough of an impression that I remember it all these years later and then go out of my way to buy a similar book. Perhaps the world is telling me that after all these years I should simply borrow that book off of my Dad, as I should have done about a decade ago!

After all these years this is a pretty good book. Simple but affecting. Not a long or a difficult read, but Hannah herself is a very likable woman, who has lead a most extraordinary life. Maybe I would not have appreciated her story at 5 or at 10. Maybe I would have fixated on the fact that she didn’t have TV, or that she couldn’t wash her hair every day and I would have not really understood what I glean from this tale now. Maybe the world wanted me to wait before meeting Hannah in the pages of a tatty paper back, aged 21. But whatever age I am, I’m glad to have met Hannah in the pages of this book, finally, and she strikes me as the kind of woman who would mind that I turned up a little late for our meeting.

Discrepancies...

I have come to a conclusion that will be of little shock to those who know me well. If left to my own devises I might continue to live the life of a student forever. A case in point would seem to be my eating habits.

When James makes dinner for us I receive offerings such as that below.



Excusing my poor photography skills, what you have before you is a delicious thai green curry made from scratch. And when I say from scratch I really do mean it. It took him hours. We had special fragrant thai rice to go with it. It was garnished. Side dishes were involved. All in all it was a culinary sensation. And this from a man who had never had thai green curry before that day, when I had happened to say that I fancied it when he asked me what I wanted for dinner. It was heaven.

Now I hear you ask, how do I repay him for such culinary genius?



Yes. When it was my turn I managed bake potatoes with grated cheese. And I managed to undercook the potatoes. I think he's defiantly winning here! Yet since I get to eat all of this delicious food without putting the effort in to cooking it, does this actually mean that I'm winning?...

Yes, yes I think it might!

A day out...

I was let out of my office today and set free in to the big wide world. To be fair to my employers, they simply sent me to another office, but still, a day out!!! And a day by the seaside at that!







Pretty flowers, beach huts and sun. All good.

Then the weather turned and we got this



Beautiful, but in a different, more elemental way.

Happy Monday!

Ros xxx

Weekend

I think I'm of the opinion that no weekend can be a bad weekend (no matter how many hours are spent at work), when you Dad shows up with a basket full of cactuses he has grown for you.






I really like cacti, mostly because they seem to be the only plants that I can't kill! Plus, do you see the tiny little yellow flowers?!! I think I might be in love!

I hope everyone else is having such a love filled weekend!

Ros xxx