Texas Moon CMC - Fancy Dress 2013

Well, posted photos of this year's fancy dress on my website if any of you out there are interested.

Theme was Black 'n' White / Masquerade, didn't know about the Black 'n' White bit till after I'd bought my costume hence the colour! But although it's more Renaissance than Venetian it looked good despite having to sew up three inches of hem!

The Tomorrow People

Anyone out there remember this sci-fi series back in the 70's? I used to watch it (less scary than Dr Who) and was fascinated by their ability to teleport to places. I can remember borrowing one of my Mum's belts and pretending I could too! Walking home in the raw cold which has been our weather this week has made me wish teleportation was for real (minus any dubious references to The Fly!) as I could definitely have benefited from getting back home in the warm in the blink of an eye
;-)

George & William - Happy Easter

Got the smashing school photos of you boys in the post the other day from Mummy. Don't you look grown up! Daddy emailed and said you were both doing really well at school and nursery, William it won't be long before you are following George into big school! Thank you so much also for the lovely Easter card you made, you are both so clever with your painting and artwork! We loved the wobbly eyes. We have some Easter eggs here for you but as we're not meeting up yet I'll save them for you both.
lots of love
Auntie Paula & Cousin Julia xxXxx

Paddington does Ideal Home!

Saw this Paddington Bear cake at this year's Ideal Home exhibition, the theme being London Underground. All together we had a good day wandering around, Julia got given a free B&Q do it yourself book for volunteering to get up and cut a tile with their dry tile cutter! Only two show houses which was a bit of a disappointment and neither were all that. In fact the room sets were better including the mock up of Only Fools & Horses done by George Clark. Though we didn't get to see the man himself this year :-( Off home now to chill out and watch Planet of the Apes!

The trials & tribulations of Blogger to Facebook!

This is a bit of a test post I guess really as I've been trying to figure out how to get my Blogger feeds back onto my Facebook timeline. Not as easy as it once was and until this goes live I still won't know if it works...

Anyway assuming it does maybe some of you out there can solve an issue I have with my smartphone battery. Ever since the Jellybean update my battery seems to be draining far more quickly. Maybe its me but I used to just put it on charge overnight whereas now I'm having to plug it in when I get home or even at work using the USB lead. I've tried various battery apps to no avail and I've played with turning off settings such as wifi, data, app syncing and haptic feedback. Thing is with all these off the phone ceases to be useful ;-) Since being home and having charged it up its sitting pretty stable with wifi on, auto app sync on and haptic feedback back on in the keyboard app only. Wondering if keep switching these on/off uses up more juice than just leaving them on? I have also switched off Latitude reporting my location, has anyone used that and found it hogging resources? Final thing was to limit the number of screens to two thus hopefully minimizing switching between them. If anyone has any thoughts please post on my Facebook page.

Highlights and long time no speak!

Downloaded a Blogger app on my phone & tablet yesterday and realised its been a long while since I wrote anything to my blog. Its not that life is THAT boring but most of the time since we have had the smartphones I've been posting to Facebook just because its easier. That's not meant as an excuse just an explanation. Still, in reality, life moves on month after month pretty much the same and it can be hard to find a highlight worth posting about.
Anyway to remedy that, just before Christmas, Julia attended an interview at Christchurch university for a PGCE place for teaching art to the 11-18 year olds. To increase her chances of getting an interview she's been back at Greenacre Academy, in the art department, as an assistant teacher. They've even offered to pay her now for her time which she's chuffed about. Anyhow at the interview she was told she'd hear about her offer before Christmas but in the end the offers weren't posted until the New Year. Suffice to say she got her place which has now meant sitting the QTS literacy and numeracy skills tests before she can start the course this September. For those of you out there who are gonna suggest these tests are easy let me just say go to the Department of Education and try them out under exam conditions. They are NOT straightforward by any stretch of the imagination. I pride myself on being good at English but I struggled with the punctuation and the comprehension. But this Tuesday just gone, despite having a rotten cold and being snowed in on the estate, Julia passed her literacy on her 2nd attempt. To say I was proud of her would be a huge understatement, she's never swayed from her goal to teach art and in this day and age with many young people having no pride in going out and carving a career for themselves, I'm immensely pleased that she's so focussed. All we got to do now is get through the numeracy and she's home and dry!!!