I'm a Bah Humbug person and I don't like all the Christmas Hype anyway so I'd prefer not to be reminded but sadly I need to get some Christmas cards written in the next couple of days and that kind of brings home how close the Big C Day is.
The squirrel-resistant (I won't say squirrel-proof) seed feeders turned up yesterday afternoon so I'm really impressed with the service from D.O.D.S (Dickos Online DiscountS). The feeders are a bit larey in colour - bright yellow but they are just what I wanted.
and would you believe that we didn't have one tree rat visit the garden at all today. We were both eagerly awaiting the reaction from the squirrels and it was a big No-Show!!! but the birds were happy.
We did our usual round of family visits yesterday, both Mums and our Daughter/Grand-daughter and then last night was the Presentation Dinner at our Bowls Club where we had a good evening and a very good meal. I had a prize for being Runner Up in one of the tournaments so decided I should be on my best behaviour. I volunteered to be the driver for the night and stayed with sparkling water - boring !! but at least I was clear-headed this morning (unlike poor hubby) LOL
A little more progress on Lulu. It doesn't look as though I've done much, but that's because I had to do a lot of remedial work. I made the mistake of working in poor light late yesterday afternoon and this morning she looked as though she had a bad case of jaundice as I'd been using a very yellow pencil.
and cropped to the square shape
I have to make myself go slowly with this one. I'm impatient to get started on the hair to see how that affects the skin tones but then find I've been heavy handed with the pencils as I'm rushing and end up with lines that I can't blend in so have to lift them with Blu Tack to keep everything soft/smooth looking.
Patience is a virtue I don't have much of these days. We fly back to Fuerteventura on Saturday and before then I have to sort everything out for our house-sitters and I also have appointments with the hairdresser and physio. We have our usual voluntary day jobs with Pilgrims Hospice Wednesday and Friday and we are booked to 'walk with alpacas' on Thursday, weather permitting. More about that later in the week - if it happens.
Not having a good evening. Has anybody else had problems uploading photos to Blogger today? I keep getting that irritating beach ball thing bouncing around but my pictures just don't upload. Very frustrating!
Then to top it all, our very simple evening meal turned into a bit of a farce. We don't normally eat burgers but David bought some spicy Chilli burgers and I had some rolls in the freezer so I made up a batch of coleslaw and put the burgers on a griddle on the gas hob. I toasted the halved rolls under the grill - our grill is low level in the bottom half of our oven - with a drop down door.
The griddle overheated and set off our smoke alarm which is incredibly noisy. Because we live at the end of a narrow winding private drive (just a track really) we aren't accessible for fire-engines and we have to have a really efficient fire/smoke alarm and a sprinkler system inbuilt. So when the fire alarm went off we went into panic mode, throwing open doors and windows, turning ceiling fans on and flapping towels around to dispel the smoke and stop the screeching alarms before the sprinklers kicked in .... this isn't the first time its happened, but its been at least a year since the last time and its still scary. David came rushing into the kitchen flapping a towel round and tripped over the oven door, sending all the rolls skating across the kitchen floor so the air was very blue for a while till peace reigned again. Happily, the burgers and the home-made coleslaw were very good so we didn't starve!
Going to chill out with a nice bottle of wine now and not risk anything else going wrong.
With a day like that, the wine will be corked.
ReplyDeleteHope the squirrels find the feeders to be beyond them.
Have a good week.
Haha by rights it should have been Jo .. but it wasn't.
ReplyDeleteThe portrait is looking good - I'm like you when it comes to wanting to hurry on to the good parts.
ReplyDeleteHope the feeders work as you hope. The color is bright but maybe it will be cheery for both you and the birds & act as a warning to the squirrels!
We have smoke alarms also but no sprinklers and had them all go off the other evening (a piece of cheese fell off a homemade pizza). It was horrible & CiCi didn't stop shaking for a long time! She just hates loud noises.
Hope the rest of the evening went better!