Its beginning to feel a lot like…..

Okay I know, i know….its a little bit far off but it is nearly the end of October and so that, for me, is a bit of a count down. For me that means there is a really serious possibility that there may be one or two *whispers* nights out!!

The prospect of the LBD number maybe breaking out of the mothballs means that those jean and legging glad legs probably need to get a a bit of a winter airing! *insert scream type face here*

So whats the easiest way of sorting out the forestation? Razor? Imac? what is your poision?

For me..it has to be waxing. I can relate to the whole ‘why cause yourself pain?’ argument but really waxing makes life so much easier….a little discomfort for a couple of weeks of care free frizz free.

Recently I decided to break out from behind the ‘at home’ strips and venture into the world of beauty therapy. So i went to the Jersey Treatment Rooms, which is a beauty salon very near my home on a recommendation. I was met by friendly staff and directed to a lovely little sitting area and asked to ‘take a seat” and make myself comfortable. Glancing around there was tea, coffee accompanied by softly glowing candles and a selection of mints, which I imagine might be useful if you were having a facial. No-one likes bad breath! A luxiourious moment, making a drink and actually drinking it in peace, no babies crying, no toddler screaming. Bliss.

Im not really the sort of person to run toward pain. I am first with the ‘brufen and paracetamol. I believe in pain relief. Why suffer is my policy? Which may beg the question why subject yourself to half an hour of having you hair follicles ripped from your skin?….but like i said before, convenience is such a big bonus in my world…i barely have enough time to wash in my daily shower let alone razor, pluck and primp. Which is why so often the ahem ‘forestation’ is well over due management if you know what i mean 😉

So game face on and FACE the pain. Repeating over and over…’hell ive given birth to FIVE babies(with no pain relief i might add..not through choice, but thats a different story!) so a little hot waxing was going to figure low on the pain threshold. right? RIGHT? hmmmm….

Well actually, in truth, it wasn’t too bad. At Jersey treatment rooms they warm the wax and use a follow up lotion to smooth and cool the skin. It was quick and okay a little painful but I was left feeling smooth, not too plucked chicken like and with an half hour headspace, made possible by one of those wonderful breed of beauty therapist who just ‘know’ not to fill the empty space with mindless chatter. That is like little shards of gold in my frantic schedule.

I was really impressed with the Salon actually you just have to look down their ‘menu’ of stuff and i was already starting to think what i could go back for next…im thinking maybe the fake bake? 😉

So what is your poision? Go on tell me, no-one is listening!!

themondayclub

 

 

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Where have you been?!

Again..MIA. A poor effort BUT this week I was totally snowed under putting together a presentation for my first ever Mum’s photography course which i ran on Saturday. I put together a 90 slide presentation explaining some of the basics of photography.

It was, i think, a real success. My desire behind the course came from my own learning curve. I wanted to provide and environment where mums, who lets face it are more than likely the main photographer in the family, can come and learn the basics, get to know their camera, have a lovely lunch and get a gorgeous gift. In short have an enjoyable couple of hours AND get to learn something new. Something I would have LOVED to have done when i got started. I mostly spent hours watching youtube videos, reading blogs and books.

Its easy to get a bit lost in being a mum and not have any time for ourselves..even if this is sort of for the kids a bit…I am really convinced that we, as mums, need to have time to do something that is just for us, have another string to your bow. So easy to forget that we were once a person with an identity other than ‘mUUUUUmmmy!”

My favourite bit of the whole afternoon apart from giving out the lovely gift bags i had done for everyone (i love giving gifts!!) was seeing those lightbulb moments when something little bit of info drops into place.

Was kind of my favourite bit of last week. 🙂

This movie started off my slideshow. Have a look if you fancy..

 

Im linking up today with my buddy Sarah Miles over at her fabulous blog Hello Wall. Go check it out by clicking on the wee box below.

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A leap from the edge of the earth…

Last night we all gathered around our computer to watch Felix fling himself into space and a free fall of 24 miles….t-w-e-n-t-y…f-o-u-r…

After getting all excited and thrilled about it the sudden reality that we might actually just be watching a suicide sort of made me feel reeeeaaallly uncomfortable. There was a VERY REAL possibility that it may have just become that…some of the risks he faced were:

1. Flat Spin

The problem: In low air pressure, high-altitude skydivers risk going into something called “flat spin.” In this position, the body rotates horizontally — imagine a record spinning on a record player. An uncontrolled flat spin could render Baumgartner unconscious, his blood rushing to his extremities, including his head. There, blood could pool in his eyes, causing temporary blindness. Worse, the force of the spin and the rush of blood to the head could cause massive brain bleeding and clotting, which could easily be fatal.

The prevention: If Baumgartner’s spin gets out of a control, a special elongated parachute will deploy to help stabilize his descent.

2. Boiling Blood

The problem: At the edge of space, from which Baumgartner will make his leap, the air pressure is less than 1 percent of that on Earth’s surface. Above 63,000 feet (19,200 meters), the lack of pressure can cause air bubbles to form in the blood, a condition referred to as blood boiling. A bubble large enough to stop the blood from flowing in a major artery could be fatal, and sudden decompression can expand and then collapse the lungs. Depressurization can also cause the body to swell in seconds, as occurred in 1960 when Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger Jr. jumped from 102,800 feet (31,133 m). When Kittinger’s glove failed to pressurize properly, his hand swelled to twice its size on  descent. [8 Craziest Skydives Ever]

The prevention: Baumgartner’s full-pressure suit and helmet are designed to protect the skydiver as he falls. The team has emergency medical protocols in place should Baumgartner arrive on the ground in crisis.

3. Freezing

The problem: The upper atmosphere is a very cold place. The Red Bull Stratos team estimates Baumgartner will step out of his capsule into temperatures of minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius). As he plummets, he could experience minus 70 degrees F (minus 56 degrees C) or lower. In such cold air, Baumgartner’s body would be unable to maintain a core temperature of 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C) for long. When body temperature drops to 82 degrees F (28 degrees C), unconsciousness can occur. Death is likely when the body dips below 70 degrees F (21 degrees C).

The prevention: Baumgartner’s suit should protect him from temperatures as low as minus 90 F (minus 68 C).

4. Shock Waves

The problem: As Baumgartner’s body approaches the speed of sound, he’ll be playing with someserious forces. Shock-shock interaction occurs when shock waves, also known as sonic booms, in the air collide, in this case the stratosphere that Baumgartner is descending through. Such forces could buffet Baumgartner and possibly endanger him or his pressurized suit. “[Baumgartner will] be colliding with the gas so fast that it can’t flow out of his way because it effectively doesn’t know that he’s coming,” physicist Louis Bloomfield of the University of Virginia, told LiveScience’s sister site Life’s Little Mysteries.

The prevention: According to the Red Bull Stratos team, the thin air is an advantage in this case. Shock waves are less powerful when the air is less dense.

5. Hitting the ground

The problem: Hitting the ground without slowing down enough from a 120,000-foot fall is a very bad idea.

The prevention: Should Baumgartner fall unconscious during his skydive, his emergency parachute will deploy automatically. Unfortunately, he may not be out of the woods in that scenario, as he will be unable to steer his landing or adjust his speed in the final moments of the fall. That could make for a difficult return to Earth.

 Yeah…so im thinking this may have been a better option…lol…

Suddenly i started to edge out the room and as the door opened and he stood up and was about to jump I started to panic a bit…’does he have kids?’ i said to my OH. Wondering bleakly if there was in fact a couple of kids watching their father jump to his death somewhere 24 miles below.  It transpires that he doesn’t but his mother and father and other family were watching. Oh for the love of God…his poor mother….it churns my stomach just thinking about it. I did, i have to admit, squeal a bit when he jumped.

This afternoon we (me and the toddler) discovered when she asked to watch the ‘spaceman flying’ again that when you search on youtube for Felix he is actually quite a infamous base jumper and there are hundreds of video clips of him throwing himself off buildings, into deep valleys and off huge chunks of rock..so im thinking that his mother must be a little bit anesthetised to the pure terror of watching your child do something so INSANE! I had also assumed that he was an astronaut with a bit of a thing for free fall but if you watch some of those video you realise he is clearly just an adrenaline junkie who just wanted to go that bit further and get some pictures that not many people have on their screensaver right? 🙂

I still think he is crazy and want to give him a good slap for putting his poor family through the real possibility that they would watch the death of their loved one alongside the 8 million plus viewers on youtube. But I am in awe of the courage and bravery it must have taken just to take that step.

We could maybe all do with a little bit of his crazy…?

Im linking up today with my buddy Sarah Miles over at her fabulous blog Hello Wall. Go check it out by clicking on the wee box below.

themondayclub

 

 

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Birthday season..

It is birthday season in our house. Over half of my children where all born within three weeks of each other’s birthdays…..*cough*

Which is good on a number of counts.

1. You get it all out of the way all in one go and then it goes very quiet for a while.

2. Thrifty relatives can send lots of birthday presents all together in the same little bundle

3. You can bank on sept/october being a pretty expensive month (tho that might not be such a good thing)

4. Chowing down on party food opportunities is limited. Isnt it better to eat all in one go than spread it out?

5. Any whinging along the lines of ‘when am i going to get some presents?’ can be met with a triumphant “NEXT WEEK!”

There are obviously downsides to it however and it has to be said that my head spins on my neck for most of the last bit of sept and October…oh and then its the C word but lets not go there…never mind that another one of my kids is 7 days after the noel event.. okay so planning not a strong point….ever…

Anyhoo…first up on the birthdays has been my oldest girl. She wanted a ‘pony party’ as in lets all have a riding lesson. So she invited some of her friends and they went to a local stable to have a riding lesson. It was an incredible trip down memory lane for me. I spent a lot of my years when i was younger around horses and going to the yard the first time, one molasses filled breathe in and i was transported back to frosty, quiet mornings hacking out across the countryside and returning home flushed with the excitement of flat out gallop across an empty field.

There was no galloping, lead rein ponies looking moderately bored, as they always do, plodding placidly round an outdoor school and finishing of with the old classic of ’round the world’ Good to see that some things don’t change. It felt so nostalgic watching her and her sister ride. Like looking back at an old picture..only the characters had changed.  For now its just a one off…dont know how long that will last though.

Finishing off the day with cake, of course and then little cupcakes for party bag substitutes. I HATE party bags and will do anything to avoid handing them out. No parent has EVER been blessed by one of those tacky cheap whistles that kids then blow for the next 2 hours driving their parents to the edge of sanity…OR the other cheap crap that gets thrown in the bin as soon as possible or wedged down the side of a car seat for the rest of time.

🙂

im joining in with my blogger friends with Monday Club by the lovely Sarah Miles. Head on over and catch up on some other ordinary mums doing an extraordinary job in raising their kiddies.

 

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The ‘C’ word.

im talking ‘camping’ folks tsk tsk.

Yes camping, what are your views? do you love it? do you hate it? do you even care?

As we are hurtling towards the summer holiday (i know, i know it does still feel like winter BUT lets not go there)..the summer holidays are nearly upon us and that for so many of us means ‘vacation’ time. If you are not stay-cationing..then what are you to do?

Camping is a realistic option for so many of us with children, finances are strung out, we are playing a small fortune for our food and fuel. So what is the cheapest option to actually get some holidays?

Bring out the canvas.

the truth of it is…I am NOT a fan.  Now before you brush my views aside as a non-educated city living prissie. Let me tell you that i have ample qualification to make that claim. HUGE.

Going way back…i cannot actually remember a holiday when i was a kid when we didn’t camp. Every summer holiday saw us packing up and heading to France (usually) with our orange tent. Then im sure i loved it, i can remember loving it…really i can.

So whats changed? One fact. I am now the parent. The sweet justice that is the circle of life biting me in the tush. Now its me that  has to pack for a nuclear event while entertaining small kids and the inevitable wade through the mud to the water tap,  feeding hungry children from one small gas ring, changing nappies with no immediate access to running water, find a pair of clean pants in a pile of clothes that looks like the doorstep of Oxfam, get dressed to go to bed in your entire winter wardrobe and say ‘mind the guy ropes!’ a gazillion times a day.

So i have done A LOT of camping as a kid. AND…we have also camped as a family. I don’t totally hate camping if im honest. I get that the kids love it and the older ones really really do. But i suppose the thing i really hate about it is having small toddler/baby campers along with you just makes it SUCH hard work. They don’t sleep properly..because oh look it gets light so early and really what self respecting toddler is going to sleep when they can hear their family through the PIECE OF FABRIC that we laughingly call their bedroom?

 

If they are new to walking, like our daughter last year who was an eager beaver 10 month old walker, then camping for them is a bit like  asking them to walk on pebbles, those uneven floors mean they spend so much time tripping, dragging bits of wobbly furniture on top of sleep deprived heads..oh and don’t even get me started on the universal hazard that is GUY ROPES…although have to say they have given us some great ‘you’ve been framed’ falls!.

Last year our youngest pretty much adapted to the sewn in groundsheet deal our tent has which means that there is a couple of inches of fabric that you have to step over to get in and out of the door. She just went with ‘trip and scream’ everytime. in and out. Yeah, so. much. fun.

I have camped when my babies were still feeding too! Oh yes! Try attaching a baby to your boob in the pitch black whilst trying to force them inside your ‘made for a pencil’ sleepingbag so you don’t have to actually lay half naked in an bedroom with a comparable temperature of a fridge. Then there is the ridiculous notion that any campbed/lilo/airbed/mats can EVER offer you a reasonable nights sleep. Its always with a sort of resignation that you get into ‘bed’ when you are camping. If you are on anything filled with air chances are it will be flat by the middle of the night and seriously I have a bed, with a mattress, that i can lie on FOR FREE at home. So paying to go and sleep on the ground seems some sort of happy madness!

But really i think the one thing that makes or breaks camping is the weather. Lets face it, in this country that is rarely going to be on your side. But you gamble on it because you have to and you want to get away.

Last year we all went down to Devon for a week. We arrived on our campsite and started to unpack. The kids wondered off to a little playpark and the campsite was spacious with lots of families. It looked hopeful. Just as we had unloaded loads of stuff from the trailer and were laying out the tent and its poles, it started to rain. Not just a little bit of rain..a lot of rain…the kids came scurrying back to us and with the understandable expectancy that we were going to aide and assist them in getting out of the rain. But the ‘roof over our heads’ was at the moment nothing more than a large empty crisp packet flat on the ground. So we told them to jump in the car and we flung all the bedding and clothing that was slowly getting wet on top of them. Crammed in amongst the duvets and the pillows it wasn’t long before little trouble, screwed up, angry faces started to appear at the windows of the car. Frantically shoving the tent into some form of structure while the rain ran from our faces. I was standing holding the porch up and suddenly i burst into tears and cried out to my OH …”THIS IS OUR TIME OFF! THIS IS WHAT WE WORK ALL YEAR FOR!’ ….he looked at me and said quietly ‘it is rubbish isn’t it’

So you might think that we said ‘NEVER again’ after that experience wouldn’t you…hahahahahahahahhaha

Well essentially we have knocked in on the head until we are no longer dealing with children who are unable to take themselves to the toilet…successfully if you know what i mean. But we are away with some friends in ten days time but my parents have generously offered us their caravan which as we all know is a serious STEP UP..in more ways that just physically! 

and then there is the bank holiday weekend to Wales that we said we would do…but im not really counting that as ‘holiday’ that term is henceforth defined by me as something which neither involves transporting and building your own accomodation!!

So go on, i can hear the backlash of happy campers already. 😉

what do you think?

Im linking this post up today with my fabulous friend Sarah Miles who has bravely started a linky thing (technical term!) over on her blog. You can skip over there and see some others. Just press the button 🙂

 

Wednesday Witter

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