LittleBirdyScraps

Don'ts For Husbands!

I found this little book in the charity shop the other day and bought it for £1 because I thought I could do something interesting with it.  It's very tiny and measures about 4 and a half inches by two and a half.

It's called 'DON'TS For Husbands', as you can see, and was apparently written in 1913.  I thought that I would read through it a bit before I started transforming it, and these are some of the things it contains:

Don't sit down to breakfast in your shirt-sleeves in hot weather on the ground that "only your wife" is present.  She is a woman like any other woman.  The courtesies you give to womankind are her due, and she will appreciate them.

Don't stoop, even if your work is desk-work.  Your wife wants to see you straight and broad-chested.

Don't slouch. No-one who cares for a man likes to see him acquire a slouching habit.

Don't fidget.  Some husbands are never still for a moment.

Don't be conceited about your good looks.  It is more than probable that no one but yourself is aware of them; anyway, you are not responsible for them, and vanity in a man is ridiculous.

Don't think you can soothe wounded feelings by material gifts.

Okay.  Let's stop right there.  I appreciate what she's saying, but let's not take this too far.  There are, of course, other ways of dealing with wounded feelings.  But a small material gift is always welcome...

This book goes on in the same vein.  And on, and on, and on.  And on.  And on.  Goodness knows what sort of wife this woman was, or indeed whether any poor bloke had the misfortune to marry her at all.

I started off thinking that it might be a shame to cover up what was in this book, that it might be quaint or fascinating in some way.  Instead I have decided that it needs burying as soon as possible, and perhaps I could somehow make it a celebration of the male sex.  I wonder how the old bat felt if, a year after this was published, her husband had to go to war and maybe didn't come back.

 

The Bad Mother

That's me.  I just know it.  Today was quite a good day,  until I came home from school and saw the text from Youngest, who stands accused of kicking a hole in a wall at school.  The text said that he was just one of three suspects, and that I was going to have to pay a third of the repair bill.  And that he  might not be able to go to Barcelona.

This isn't a random punishment, I should point out. Youngest's school haven't started forbidding children to visit various European capital cities as a consequence for bad behaviour.  No - this is a Modern Foreign Languages trip which he is due to take on Wednesday.  So I was a little dismayed when he told me that he might have to miss it.  Although I should own up to also thinking: a)does that mean I'll get my four hundred and fifty quid back? and b)that means I won't have to get up at 4am on Wednesday morning to take him to the airport because it's cheaper than hiring a coach.  (They didn't give us the option.  I've paid 450 quid, for goodness sake, and there will be pocket money involved - who cares about another twenty for a coach if I can stay in bed til it's daylight???)

Which reminds me, I need to write the word 'Euros' on my forehead.

Hard work

Well, what can I say?  I have been venturing over to Blogger to see if I can't make myself a nice new blog with a yummy header and background.  It's ever so easy, you can find free ones all over the place, copy the code and paste it in....et voila!  Of course that's horribly tempting for someone who likes pretty stuff.

But here I am still.  And you know why?  Because, having had a really easy time creating a pretty background etc for my blog, I then discovered that the day-to-day, image uploading bit, is a load of cack.

I thought I'd put a post up there so off I went, typed a load of stuff as I do, blah blah, and then attempted to insert an image.  That's funny, I thought, it's up there at the top of the post, I don't want it there, I want it here, just after the bit I've written about it.

Several attempts later I was forced to seek help on the UKScrappers forum.  There must be something I'm missing, I thought.  As usual, there were plenty of suggestions forthcoming, but sadly it appears that there is no intuitive way of inserting images into a Blogger post.

Faced with two alternatives - a) spend lots of time faffing about trying to get the blog to look loverly, but only now and again; or b) easily upload loverly background etc and then spend every flippin post faffing about with stupid clunky image uploading system........I have gone for a).

So, what you see before you, dear reader, is what I have cobbled together using my 'art resources' folder.  I think I may get someone to create a header and background for me, as I have to say that the one I ended up with on Blogger was delish.

Anyway.  The reason I'm here today is to show you some holiday photos.  No!  Come back!  There aren't many, honest.  Look, the first one is really interesting....

 

(I say it's no-faff, but to get to this photo I had to go computer-external drive-photos-2010-tremar-charlestown.) 

Have you see Tim Burton's Alice?  That bit at the end where she gets on a boat?  This is the boat!  It's actually called

 

...this!  I knew I would regret not taking a photo of the guy dressed up as a pirate, who is a crew member.  Below deck there is an exhibition which basically consists of photos of lots of films and tv programmes being made on this ship, including the fairly recent version of Jason and the Argonauts for which it had to be made to look like a longboat sort of vessel with a big dragon's head at the front.  They had to carry out similar alterations for another film, only to have filming rescheduled.  The alterations were designed to be ripped of and disposed of once filming was complete, only in this case they had to be painstakingly removed bit by bit, numbered and stored away to be reattached later.

If you can think of a film or tv programme with a period vessel in it, this will be the one!

Here is Paul standing in the very place that Mia Mfslkfglksroiswsk (sorry Mia) stood at the end of the film

I am also going to show you another photo of my man.....It is traditional, on our family holidays, for some sort of car-related debacle to take place on the journey down.  I may have told you about my window suddenly dropping down inside the driver's door before we set off for Perranporth, and Rianna fixing it.

A couple of years ago we set off in two separate cars for Tintagel in Cornwall, only to find when we got there that Paul and his kids were stuck in a layby near Stonehenge, where they remained for around 12 hours.

The first holiday I took as a single parent, and for which I purchased my first mobile phone, started with a prolonged stay at Fleet Services when the traffic jam was too much for my minibus's cooling system.  And I have a photo from many years ago (another Cornish holiday when I appear to have visited the Poodle Parlour) which shows my old car nose-to-nose with an AA van somewhere on the way down there.

Anyway.  Last week when he picked me up, Paul was concerned about his tyre.  The left nearside one, he said, which was losing pressure.  We stopped at a petrol station and he put some air into it.  Then he decided that when we got to Fleet services he would change the front and back wheels over because it would be safer that way.

So at Fleet I bumbled off to fetch drinks while Paul got the jack out.  When I got back ten minutes later, this is what I saw

Now, I wasn't entirely sure at the time, but I thought he said 'nearside' - which to those of you who couldn't give a stuff, is the left.  And I hadn't been watching really closely at the petrol station, but i did think he'd put air in the tyre on the other side.  Oh, I thought, instead of changing the front and back tyres he's changing the left and right tyres.

But no.  In the ten minutes I'd left him on his own, my poor man had completely forgotten which tyre he was having problems with.  Bless.

Here he is removing the correct one

 

Can you see that look on his face that says 'You're going to take photos of this and blog them, aren't you.' ?  Yes, and this one is on Facebook, honey.  Hehe.

Right, I think that's enough of my holiday photos for now.

Today and yesterday I have been painting the downstairs loo.  I should have done some weeding this morning instead of coming on here with my cup of coffee, and now it's raining so I'll have to do it later before the garden recycling is collected in the morning.

In the meantime I have new stash to play with.  At Charlestown where the ships were I bought a big pack of pink heart-shaped doilies, and in Launceston I found the shop with the ribbon remnants.  We also went to Trago Mills where Paul ran away screaming after I spotted a huge Docrafts section, having been lusting after their new summery papers. 

No doubt I will be back later to bore you with my creations, lol.

My Day So Far

Dear Mr ****,

Thank you for your email, I am pleased that William is doing well.  Since I am emailing you, I will tell you why he is late this morning....Last night William put some washing in the machine which included his shoes.  I made the mistake of explaining that shoes were not allowed in washing machines because they unbalance the drum, and the further mistake of agreeing with William that perhaps putting lots of other washing in might avoid this problem.  So he put lots of other washing in as well as the shoes, and the machine stopped.

Because I was out at the time, I was unable to tackle the flooded kitchen until this morning, when it became apparent that something horrible has happened inside the machine and I need to pay a man to come and fix it.  This meant that William had to stand around and be shouted at, and find something to replace the pliers which have gone missing again, and then mop the floor at which he is rubbish.

He was up at 6.30, and would have been on time for school had I not made him 'help' me with the washing machine.  I apologise for that, as I should really have let him go but I was crawling around the floor in a wet dressing gown and not thinking entirely rationally.  I hope this will not affect his chances of going on the school trip.

Yours sincerely
Helen Salthouse

Way Back When

I have just been through my photos, inspired by this post which I found through the UKScrappers blog-a-thon, and found a picture of my children on a beach in Ireland, where we stayed in 1999.  

 

As you can see, they are all without clothes, and the beauty of this photo is that you can't see a thing!   I can't remember what this beach is called, altho we have a video of this holiday and probably there will be something on that.  I need to get all our videos transferred onto DVD, but that's another story...!

Scrap Whispers Challenge #59

Challenge 59 is up at Scrap Whispers, and this week we're All Dressed Up!  Make a page using your yummy stash to add a bit of glam - it can be about anything you like.  In my case I've used a photo of me at my 18th birthday party

 

My BOM is 8.5x11 so I've used some of my American Crafts cardstock prize for this page.

This weekend has been rather hectic; I've been out three nights running and needed a night at home yesterday.  On Friday there was a quiz night at school which I got roped into.  I do like quizzes but this one cost money and I couldn't really afford it, having spent it all on stash last week.  I'll have to do a Shopping post to show you what I bought!

We did reasonably well, finishing fourth out of something like 9 teams.  My favourite round was the Album Covers picture round, I knew all the ones from 100 years ago which was handy.  Bizarrely, our deputy head knew the name of the meerkat in the car insurance advert; the rest of us didn't even know he had one.  Clearly she needs to come back to work full time.

On Saturday we had our annual girlie get-together and sleepover.  Unfortunately I was a bit stressed out because, despite what I had believed to be forward-planning, things started to Go A Bit Wrong.

Youngest went to a paintball party at 11 am.  I had said to him, you  need to be back by four AT THE LATEST, at which he nodded.  Or something.  What he didn't do - and yes, I know this is blatantly obvious, he is 12 for god's sake - was to ask his friend what time it all finished.  By the time I got him back I was already running an hour late.

Earlier in the day, whilst wrapping myself round a jolly spiffing slice of chocolate cake at the garden centre, I had harangued my man over his failure to sort out his son's birthday party.  Basically, no-one apart from Daughter knew what was happening; I couldn't go and Youngest - who is very close friends with the birthday boy - didn't appear to have been invited.

My man refused to accept any responsibility whatsoever for this fiasco, claiming that he hadn't been looking when it was organised and couldn't be expected to know what was going on.  He was unmoved when I drew a complicated analogy with a situation in which his son was left at home alone while everyone else went out partying and it was all my fault.  (I'd finished the cake by now.)

The upshot of all this was that, as I flew into the corner shop to grab a bottle of wine whilst running over an hour late, I received an invitation for Youngest to go to the party in 25 minutes' time.  He was covered in paint.  Imagine, dear reader, the build-up of steam issuing from my ears.

I finally managed to deposit him, from the passenger seat of a moving car, outside the Harvester at 5 o'clock, only to receive a frantic phone call from Daughter two minutes later to say that the table wouldn't be available for an hour.  Well, tough.  There was an adult there, I hasten to add.

Anyway, the reason for my haste was that there is a shop in Camberwell that sells Promarkers much more cheaply than I can get them online.  I could get them online from this shop but I would have to pay £5 postage, which is the price of 5 Promarkers.  I thought, since it is near my friend's house, I would nip in there quick and spend a tenner.

So, 27 quid later I have 22 Promarkers and a storage wallet (it was reduced, what was I supposed to do - leave it there??).  I spent yesterday afternoon blissfully colouring in Tilda images as stamped by my new collection of stamps that I bought second-hand.  I have in fact discovered that I don't know what I'm doing, and need to buy a new ink pad.

All I need now is for my grant to turn up in my bank account and I can actually pay for some of the stuff I've already bought....

Vote Vote Vote Again! (Again)

Okay folks, the kind lady over at Creative Moments insists that we all contact our family and friends and ask them to vote for us.  Not, you will note, the LO you like best, but OUR layouts!!!

So if you have the time, I would be most grateful for your vote - it's the LO under this post of my son and his friends.

(Although, to be honest, if you really like one of the others, might I suggest that you vote for them instead, lol!)

Oh, The Meal.

No pictures today.  But I thought I'd actually do what I promised for once and tell all about our lovely pub tea.

I don't know why I should be surprised, mind.  Youngest and his friend - my man's son - are totally objectionable when they're together.  Whatever they do, they do it loudly and too close for comfort.  Many's the evening we've spent huddled up in front of the telly while they reconstruct the battle of Agincourt in the hallway or come barging into the room just when the dialogue reaches a crucial point, determined to shout over it with their own dialogue which is nearly always gibberish. 

No, I'm being unfair.  It IS always gibberish.

It was my stupid idea to go for the meal, as my man reminded me throughout the proceedings.  The biggest mistake I made was in actually driving to the same place as the rest of them - both boys wanted to go in my man's car and I missed the chance to go tearing off into the sunset without them.

First of all we played Which Table, where the two of them faff about like Goldilocks looking for just the right seat.  As far as I'm concerned that would be anywhere further than 20 metres away from the grown-ups.  I even tried to sit somewhere else, trying to make it like a sort of game.  Look - you can have those lovely high seats and we'll just sit here, in the booth.  But they saw through it.

Now, I don't want you to think that I don't try.  I have four children, after all - what can be left for me to learn about closing my ears and grinning like an overmedicated crazy person?  But I'll let you into a secret.  It's not really my son who's the problem.  You know how it is - you get used to your own children's annoying little habits, don't you.  To someone else they may be unbearable.  I don't know what Youngest was doing, really, because all I could hear was my man's son screeching.  When he was tiny, his parents were worried that he wasn't going to speak....Well, that fear proved to be groundless.  Knowing his mother - we're friends, don't worry - I can only assume that he was waiting to get a word in edgeways, and once he did so he realised that he was going to have to SHOUT.  All. The. Time.

I gave my man a pen from my bag so that he could write down our orders.  (No, he's not a waiter, he just has trouble remembering things.  He wrote his own order down so he wouldn't forget what he wanted.)  His son said 'THAT'S MY PEN, WHAT ARE YOU USING MY PEN FOR, THAT'S MY PEN.  THAT'S MY PEN.  THAT'S MY PEN.  DAD, THAT'S MY PEN. WHERE DID YOU GET MY PEN FROM, THAT'S MY PEN.'  He's eleven.

He didn't eat all his dinner because he never does.  I've never seen him eat all of anything that didn't come from a sweet shop.  Then, when he was told to eat half his chips, he picked each one up and bit it in half.  He said, 'THAT'S HALF A CHIP, THAT'S HALF A CHIP, THAT'S HALF A CHIP, THAT'S HALF A CHIP, THAT'S HALF A CHIP....'  There were lots of chips.

Then the pair of them wanted pudding.  Which was fair enough, but they didn't want to wait for it.  'GET ME SOME PUDDING.  DAD, I WANT SOME PUDDING. GET ME SOME PUDDING. GO AND ORDER ME SOME PUDDING NOW. DAD, I WANT PUDDING.'

Awwww, bless.

All this time, we were trying to have a conversation. Admittedly, it consisted mostly of us asking each other why we'd done this, rather than dropping at least one child off with a grandma and having a quieter time of it.  Eventually, after I'd glared at Youngest one time too many, I told him that he wasn't going to get a pudding because he was horrible.  I'm not going to spend four quid on a pudding for you, I said, when you're being so horrible.  We'll get something in the supermarket.

Needless to say, they continued being horrible, spending some time giggling at something to do with my glasses.  (There was nothing wrong with my glasses, I  looked when I went to the ladies'.  Even though I didn't want to.)  So I said, okay, no pudding in the supermarket either.

Unfortunately, as the more astute among you may already have guessed, my man is not so hot on discipline.  So while Youngest sulked his way around the supermarket, his friend was rewarded for his behaviour with a big box of doughnuts.  He managed to eat a whole one before he reached the checkout, even though he hadn't finished his chips because he Wasn't Hungry.

I got so cross that I had to leave whilst he was choosing the doughnuts, and stomp around the shop muttering to myself, pretending I needed cat food.  He said, 'My dad bought me' - sorry, 'MY DAD BOUGHT ME THESE BECAUSE HE'S NICE, NOT LIKE YOU.'  I said, 'Your dad bought you these because he can't say no to you, and neither can your mother, which is why you are spoilt, my darling.'  But I only said it in my head.

Obviously Youngest hated me nearly all the way home, and refused to speak to me, even though I said he could have some of the chocolate fudge cake I had bought for everyone. 

What I didn't tell him was that a)the stupid heating instructions were wrong, and the icing went into meltdown and crawled off the top of the cake, and b) in a moment of self-control I only bought a small pot of double cream, which contained about two teaspoonfuls and soaked into the cake like beer into a Hell's Angel as soon as it hit the bowl. 

So, that serves me right.

Oh, and c) don't tell my man what I said about his little darling.....:D

Thank you Danielle, Thank you Marit

Delighted this morning to discover that both Marit and Danielle have seen fit to present me with the above award!  I can't imagine why at the moment, since my blogging lately has been a bit sporadic.  For those of you who are sobbing into your pillow at night for lack of my wisdom (I know you're out there....hello?), please be assured that things will change after school breaks up.  You don't want to see a list of the things I have to get done, although I'm sure I'll show you one at some point.

Now I have to give you seven facts about myself, and I have to give this award to seven other people.  First things first...

ABOUT ME!

1.  I seem to have developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome over the past couple of years, which makes me very boring about pastry and stuff.  I now have to eat fruit for breakfast, which admittedly I do like.

2.  I am irritatingly good at spelling.  No, I won't make a deliberate mistake for a laugh cos now you won't find it funny!  I seem to have a photographic memory for spellings, and find it very difficult not to correct people when I see them getting it wrong!

3.  I love the sea.  My favourite place to be is on a cliff top, preferably in Cornwall, with the waves crashing onto the rocks below, a blue sky and gulls wheeling above me.  Sadly this year I won't be going to Cornwall, for the first time in ten years :(

4.  I don't watch the telly very much, and if my scrappy corner wasn't in the living room I wouldn't watch it at all.  I do like to catch Dr Who though.

5.  I am a groupie!  This is now official, since last Sunday when we were at a gig watching some musician friends and a musician acquaintance came in the door as I was going out and I SNOGGED HIM. Well, okay, I went to give him a peck on the cheek but he did that hilarious bloke thing of turning his head for a proper kiss.  My man found this mildly amusing.  I say, get it while you still can.

6.  I have to be doing something with my hands.

7.  when I was at primary school I was a bit naughty and I used to get the cane regularly.  It doesn't work, take it from me - it hurts but then it's gone and you can go and be naughty again! ;)

Right, now my 7 blogs.  In no particular order, and trying not to duplicate anyone else's choices:

1.  Mel Stampz  - I've recently discovered this, it is a cornucopia (did I spell that right? Lol!) of techniques and fascinating bits of stuff.  Well done, Mel!

2. Lou  - am I duplicating here?? Oooer.....anyway, Lou is always so full of beans!

3.  Georgina  -  the boss over at  Scrap Whispers, lol!  I get engrossed in her blog and since she lives just down the road from me it's fascinating to see local landmarks in her piccies!  You HAVE to check out the Kiwi Cake recipe!

4.  Yasu - just take a look at Yasu's awesome work....she's a sweetie too.

5.  Anam - more inspiration.  Anam is on the team at Scrapbook Calls and Contests, and where would we be without them??!

6. The lovely Shemaine  - always a good read, lol!

7.  And finally, this from Denise My Treasured Home  - okay, no scrapping, but a lovely relaxing way to spend some time looking at pictures of homes that are nothing like the scrappy mess most of us live in!  Denise - can we have some updates on the new house, please!

Now, I was going to tell  you about Youngest's latest venture  into School Exclusion - yes, he has once again made me look like Parent Of The Year - but that will have to wait seeing as I'm sitting in bed with damp hair and I have work in 20 minutes!!

Has Anyone Seen This Beach?

 

Today I have emptied an old photo album from a family holiday in 1991.  The photos are remarkably good given that we've never had a good camera; I can only assume it's the lab quality prints.  I'm going to use the originals to make up an album, but it's okay folks cos I've sent everything to photobucket!

The thing is, although I captioned the photos  I haven't made a note of where this beach is.  I don't recognise it and the chimneys in the background suggest to me that it's somewhere along the St Austell/Redruth stretch of the coast  - which is indeed the area where we were staying.

So - does anyone recognise it?  I don' t want to scrap it without knowing where it is! 

I'd be most grateful if anyone who recognises the beach could post a comment and let me know. Thank you!