Flower Arranging for Dummies

In May I had tonsillitis. My grandparents sent me the lovely bunch of flowers above. Now I don't know if any of you watched Kirstie's Homemade Home but I saw the easiest way of arranging flowers with very short stems, or preserving ones that have been in a big bunch for a bit longer. It's so simple that even Kirstie Allsopp could do it. OK, being a bit harsh there as she's not stupid, just a bit irritating. I think it's the way she gets so over enthusiastic about things.

So all you need are a bunch of flowers, a dish that is wider than it is deep with some water in it and some sticky tape:
Arrange strips of sticky tape over the top of the dish to form a grid pattern, and put flowers into the holes:

Keep doing this until you can't see any of the sticky tape:

Et voila! Sadly I only had a Pyrex dish to put my arrangement in but once it was full of flowers you couldn't tell anymore.

My Five Minutes of Fame

Vince and my favourite radio station is BBC 6Music. When we get up we always put it on to wake us up a bit. This couldn’t be done without the help of the breakfast DJ Shaun Keaveny. He plays good music and is very amusing. Plus he likes to get the listener involved and has several daily features which requires stuff from us at home.

A popular item is Toast the Nation where listeners are encouraged to email in facts about their hometown or where they live now and celebrate how wonderful the country is. The more amusing or spurious the fact the more Shaun loves it. I think the only place that had been toasted in Cumbria was Carlisle but after today that is no longer the case. This morning I toasted Whitehaven, the town where I was born.

If you’re interested in hearing what I had to say then you can listen again for seven days if you follow this link. I encourage you to listen to the whole show if you can (it’s three hours long) but if you want to hear my bit then you need to fast forward to about 1hr 14mins.

Nesting Instinct

I've always been interested in interior design. Perhaps I should have pursued this interest and developed this a career. Perhaps it's not too late. The first television programme I remember watching was the magazine style Homefront. Here I fell in love with the madness of Ann McKevitt and the infectious enthusiasm of Kevin McCloud. Many people now know and love Kevin, as I do, through watching Grand Designs but I'm sure many would be surprised to learn that there have in fact been eight series since it began in 1999.

Since Vince and I got back together in November we have been taking things slowly. In February we decided that we'd like to live together again so we had to tell our respective housemates. This wasn't as bad as we thought as they'd both thought we'd want to eventually. I set my housemate a deadline of getting out by June and he has amazingly found somewhere already and will be moving out in the first weekend of April.

Since we found out we would be living together again sooner than expected we have spent a lot of time thinking about how we will make the house feel more homely. We've wanted to decorate the living room for about two years and have many test patches on the wall but have never made the final step. Before Vince and I decided to live together again I decided that I wanted to decorate my bedroom in Dulux colours Mulberry Burst and Soft Stone. Vince compromised and let me continue to paint the room purple. However he wasn't too keen on the curtains I bought. I love them, especially as they are 66x90" and only cost me £16 including p&p (gotta love eBay). I wondered exactly how much of a bargain this was so I checked it out Dunelm Mill as they're usually pretty cheap for home furnishings. Imagine my face when I looked at this similar pair and saw how much they were! My lovely, brand new, fully lined curtains are pictured below:

Now I'm also hankering after a new coffee table and TV stand. The coffee table that Vince and I bought was about £30 in Argos. It is made of chipboard and has fake wood pattern stuck on top. It has many ring marks and ingrained dirt. The wood effect has come off in places where Vince and I stuck bits of tape to it when wrapping Christmas presents not realising it would come off. Vince has a TV stand for his rather enormous old CRT TV which is going in the spare room so we can play on the PS2 if someone wants to watch TV downstairs. So my TV, Freeview box and DVD player need to have somewhere to sit and I've been eyeing these up on eBay:

Quite old fashioned you may think, but as I live in an early 1900s factory workers' terrace new and minimal just doesn't look right. I've asked my parents to buy me the coffee table for my birthday as it only costs £60 including postage! The TV stand is a little pricier at £150 but I still think it's a fantastic offer as it would probably set you back about £300 in a high street shop. Sadly I'm pretty much broke until I get paid next Friday so it will just have to come out of next month's pay packet.

New Look

Recently I got my hair cut shorter. Now I have just bought myself some new specs from the rather fabulous Glasses Direct. Go to a high street optician, enter your prescription details onto their website and you can get trendy glasses from as little as £19 including lenses. Yes I did say INCLUDING lenses!

The lovely pair I am modeling above are called Daquiri and set me back £38 including scratch resistant coating and postage. They look black but they are in fact black/dark red - a bit of a departure for me because the last few pairs I've bought have all had purple frames.

So whaddaya think?

Oh and sorry if my "lack of eyebrows" scares you - you can see why I don't bother doing anything with them as they are almost invisibly blonde!

Interesting story

Just came across this rather interesting story on the BBC website in my lunch break. Many theories and controversy as to the cause of the mysterious goo. Fascinating stuff.

I Am Evil

Now you can all have it in your heads mwahahahaha!

New Barnet

No it's not a new city in Australia or America named after the area of London but my new hair cut. Sorry about the red eye but I didn't get a chance to sort that out this morning before work.

So what do you think?