Easter Holidays…part deux!

Following on from my previous post…the second half of the school holiday was just as enjoyable as the first! The weather was glorious & much time was spent outdoors! One little blip was when Nathan discovered on the Wednesday morning that one of our three Guinea Pigs (inappropriately named ‘Lucky’) had died during the night. He had been fine on the Tuesday, scampering around the run with the other two, so it was a bit of a mystery! Anyway, a small funeral was held, with Lee acting as gravedigger & undertaker, & I planted a dwarf fuchsia to mark his grave.

On the Thursday I boarded a National Express coach to Birmingham!  No, I wasn’t running away!  I’d arranged to meet my sister & hubby at the ‘Rag Market’ to shop for dress fabric. I’m reluctant to pay £50+ for summer dresses that aren’t even properly finished off, when I’m perfectly able to sew myself!!

The day wasn’t without incident though!! I had chosen to go by coach as at £13.50 return, it was cheaper than the cost of diesel & Car Parking & without the hassle of driving on the M1, M6 & into a major suburban sprawl!! Lee dropped me at the coach station & I popped to the loo before boarding the coach for the two hour trip.

When I got to Birmingham, Sister & Hubby met me from the coach & after exchanging hugs we set off out of the coach station. As we approached the automatic doors a lady tapped me on the shoulder & said “excuse me love, you have a tissue on the back of your dress!” I reached behind & hanging below the hem of my tunic was indeed a piece of tissue….I pulled it & another three sheets followed, having been caught in the waistband of my leggings!!!! 

OMG!! How embarrassing!! At least it was CLEAN tissue…I can only think that when I was pulling up my leggings that I somehow caught the end of the roll in the waistband & had obliviously walked out…Karen thinks that maybe I left a trail of toilet tissue up to the door, which then severed my tissue umbilical!!! How cringe worthy is that?!!! And to think I travelled all the way from MK to Brum in that state!!!!

So…back to the day…for anyone who doesn’t know the ‘World Famous Rag Market’, it’s adjacent to the new Selfridges store in the completely revamped ‘Bull Ring’ shopping area of Birmingham. It’s both an indoor & outdoor market selling fabrics, both furnishing & dressmaking, haberdashery & trimmings, shoes, fashion accessories etc…all at ridiculously low prices!!

We were very spoiled for choice & did a ‘perusal round’ before breaking for lunch in the nearby Chinese Quarter, then a buying round after!!

With 60” wide fabric at £1.50 a metre, I bought fabric for three dresses at just £13.50!!! Add to that the cost of two new patterns, thread & two zips & it works out at £10.00 per dress!! Result!! I also picked up some irresistible trimmings for scrapping!!

Now all I need is to make time to fire up the old Singer & get stitching!!!

On Good Friday we took a drive out to a favourite pub of ours, which the boys call ‘The Secret Pub’ because it’s not one you’d discover by accident!! Tucked away behind an old church, it has an extensive play area, & although my boys are not so little any more they still enjoy the equipment there! As it was early evening, there weren’t many families there, so they practically had the place to themselves & while we sat & nursed our drinks in the sunshine, they had fun doing what boys do best…being silly!

It constantly amazes me how quickly children grow up…it seems like only a blink ago when I was worried to leave them to play on equipment like this without supervision!!

 

Easter Sunday & I was up with the lark to help the Easter Bunny hide the eggs! How lovely that for the first time in a few years we were able to ‘Hunt’ in the garden…incredible to remember that in 2008 we had heavy snow!!

 
The morning sun was so warm that by the time my boys headed out to hunt, all the chocolate goodies were soft inside their foil wrappings!! A few minutes in the fridge rectified this & they still tasted just as good!!!

 
Apart from preparing meals, I spent the entire day in the sunshine! I just lay there on my sun lounger, with my music & my book! Absolute bliss!… made even more perfect by it being a day I would normally be at work!!!

The Bank Holiday Monday was another hot one! Lee & I got up early & went along to a local car boot sale that I’m planning to sell at later this month. Then after a sneaky breakfast at Sainsbury’s on the way home, I set to some serious weeding & pruning…the garden is just coming into it’s own!

 

 

 

I cannot tell you how therapeutic I find this sunny weather, better than any tonic or pill!! I find it easy to get out of bed, easy to get to work, even on those chores I hate!! I eat less & am generally more agreeable all round!!!…& I defy anyone to look closely at all the beauty in a garden & not feel blessed!

Back to Monday…at 2pm we had a power cut!! Fine by me, out in the garden, but Alex was in the middle of a game on the X-Box & was not happy!!! So what do you do in that situation?

Well…you pinch your Mums sun lounger, take your laptop into the shade & watch DVD’s until the power runs out!!!

The power was off until 9.35pm so we sent ‘Man the Hunter’ out for our evening meal…

 

 

 

…which was thoroughly enjoyed by candlelight…

So that’s almost it for the school holiday…Tuesday was spent getting uniform & kit together, food shopping & generally getting my head around having to reset the alarm for Wednesday morning!

Just to mention here that I did also sign up for Shimelle’s latest class ‘Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers’ but to date have only glanced at each prompt as they’ve come through…I’m seeing what’s going on in each of your blogs though, so am not missing out entirely! I will get around to catching up at some point!!!

Thanks for taking time to drop by!  I hope you all enjoyed the pomp & ceremony of the Royal Wedding yesterday…not to mention the sunshine!!  I had a glorious day & will fill you in on all of that next time! I’m off now to peg out more washing & make lunch! TTFN :)