CATS

sitting on my sofa enjoying eastenders, in the corner of my eye i noticed 'something' moving in the garden. i looked over and saw the sweetest gray cat!

this little kitty really wants me to have my own, but what with my unstable situation, we've put getting a cat on hold till MrL gets back in October next year.

and then, i looked again and saw this sneaky fella....

how cute!!!

enough about cats, i need to go and do some shopping. the essentials, you know - bread, eggs, biscuits!

xoxo

life's guilty pleasures

what more can i say, other than today i had the most chillaxed day in ages. bank holiday monday deserved to be totally chilled out, so what if i was on my own? fear not, i am not entirely alone. lo and behold i have my tv on (stephen fry's 100 greatest gadgets - 3 hours worth!) and... this beauty..

and on that bombshell, i bid you goodnight!

how are you enjoying your evenings?

xoxo

potatoes!

yes, i've gone a bit potato mad. MrL had a brilliant idea one day, and that was to plant the potatoes we had in our kitchen as they were starting to grow legs and were itching to get out. so he put them out. out into a box filled with fresh soil in our back garden. we kept them there for quite some time and they flowered beautifully with purple forget-me-not style flowers. it was a pretty sight. what was NOT a pretty sight was the amount of spiders, ants, caterpillars, larvae, centipedes, SLUGS and other nasties we found whilst uncovering the potatoes. i think L did a great job excavating them out. i dare not go near them since i found the bugs. so i held the plastic bag to collect our treasure. it's a shame i didn't take any 'before' pictures, as the potatoes we found were, well, not the prettiest to say the least. i'd say, about a quarter of them were perfect - no bites, no mold, no cracks, no funny black/brown spots. i scrubbed them all down and after having thrown some out we were left with 54 home-grown potatoes!

it was time to eat them, and boy were they delicious. we still have about a third left, so many more mash nights to come (i'm sure MrL is over the moon).

i'm certain we'll do exactly the same next year, as what's more enjoyable than eating veg from your own garden - i'm loving it!

have you got anything edible in your garden?

xoxo

boredom makes me take pictures

as the title indicates, i'm bored. day two of being in the house and not really doing anything apart from cleaning tidying and sitting on my arse in front of the tv. so i picked up my camera and took pictures of some things that i thought were worth capturing.

this big bad boy sat by the front door. making himself snug there. goes to show how often i get out.

ivy, waiting for it to grow roots so i can start planting them in the back garden.

they were beautiful roses sat on the dining table in our vase..they are now dead. i have tried to save the petals for a home-made potpourri attempt.

i managed to salvage a few, stuck them in little glass jars that i had lying around.

four of which looked decent enough to still stand in the vase, so i left them..but apparently you should have an uneven number in a bouquet..oh i'm such a rebel!

i plaited my hair from all this boredom this morning with a little 'not-so-obvious' side bun. i might do this again tomorrow.

and that would be it ladies and gents, that is all i've been up to.. hope you liked the pics.

xoxo

brutal awakening

monday was my 'looking for any old job' day, just to get some cash in my bank account as it's been april since it last saw a payment in. since then it's all been 'out out out' and quite literally i have nothing to take out anymore. i was serious about finding any job on monday. i went to pubs and shops. i left with 20 CVs, i came back home with 20 CVs. what the hell is going on? there is literally NO work up here. forget teaching jobs, there are NO jobs AT ALL. in this disbelief i spent today calling shops in darlington and retail parks..and..you guessed it - NOTHING. i'm baffled, absolutely baffled. maybe it's just the timing - it is the end of summer so all the summer jobs are still taken (come october there might be some jobs lurking?) but what can one do till then? am i supposed to sit at home and tidy all day??! hell no. yes, there are cleaning jobs going, but somehow i can't get to grips with becoming 'a cleaner' :( not after all this hard work i've put into becoming a bloody teacher. it just makes me fume with anger that i don't have a car and that i live so far from any major city.

end of rant. hope you're all doing well. any ideas on what i could do in this situation warmly welcome!

xoxo

no car, no money, no lessons.

life teaches you things the hard way. we had been intent on getting me to drive asap on returning from our holiday....but, having spent a week mulling over hundreds and thousands of car ads (autotrader and pistonheads were certainly the most looked at), we looked at insurance. and we died. quite literally. how on earth can one afford to be insured. it's absurd, nearly £1,500 for a learner driver. my heart skipped a few beats when i saw the rates. on top of that: tax and the car itself! HOLY MACAROLI i thought to myself. so we've had to put off my lessons till next week. fingers crossed we can get a decent car next weekend. MrL is away again till thursday and then again the whole of the following week. i guess this is how life will look like from now on for the next 8 months.

tomorrow i'm out in town to look for a job. i'm fed up of not having any money, not being able to get things i like..we've totally cut down on all our spending. this week i shall be living off tesco value food. yay. there's always time for a first in life...and this is it.

i really don't care what job i get as long as it pays me each week i'm onto it.

xoxo

engrossed in studying the highway code

yes, you read correctly, i've been soaking up all the info i need to know before i set off to the streets on north england in a car. i haven't yet started driving and in a way i'm kind of glad.. i would love to have some pre-lessons from MrL but my driving instructor has forbidden it! she says i'll just pick up bad habits and she'd love me to not know anything as i'll learn everything the 'proper way' from day one. however, i'm not so sure that's a great idea. i would like to have the basics under control so i don't get stressed out on how to start and stop. what do you think?

for the first time EVER i have painted my nails red. i used rimmel's rapid ruby and although the brush is incredibly huge, the tapered brush made it easier to keep the rounded shape avoiding square ragged cuticle area.

so, as i stress about my driving lessons, i hope you're all doing well and enjoying the end of the summer!

xoxo

home at last

after what seems a lifetime, we're back home. we had a fantastic week in poland (wed - wed) the weather was fab and i totally chilled out with the Mr, my parents and sister. we had a HUGE dinner for my gran's 90th that lasted...wait for it.... 7 hours!! what a day. food food food. i look like a barrel now. thank you very much polish food. may the diet begin!

straight after we got back from poland at midnight, we had to set off to portsmouth in the morning for a cousin's wedding. it was beautiful. words cannot explain how gorgeous the bride looked and how amazing the reception was too. i had such a wonderful time. and we stayed at the hotel which was mindblowingly stunning. we set off on saturday and stopped over at L's mum's for a quick catch up followed by staying over at his sister's place. we looked after her cat who is crazy! but it made us want a cat for ourselves so much..we've started looking at rspca and cat protection places round here in the north. i can't wait to have a furball of my own! we returned home last night after stopping over at L's dad's to see his sister who has come back to the uk for good from dubai.

we had a brilliant time, the hard bit now though is to return back to reality and normal every day life. plus, we have to come to terms with the fact that we will not be going away for a holiday this year again. and the fact that L will now be busy from sept till april and then i won't see him till october. it still doesn't seem real. i need to get my driving lessons going but i need to pass my maths qts first! fingers crossed for tomorrow guys! i need it.. ugh.

how have you spent your summers? hope everyone is well

xoxo