My mug

Went to All Fired Up to collect my creation this morning, then christened it with a brew at the Chap Centre!

Busyness returns

It was the Southport airshow this weekend, so more opportunities to see the Red Arrows in action! As I was driving towards home they flew up in front of me, drew a heart in the air and threw an arrow through the middle. How kind of them to draw that just for me! Later on in the house we heard them coming back to Blackpool to land so rushed out into the garden to see them do their landing loop le loop and them whizz over the house - always worth a viewing!

This morning I am up early to continue my training regime - I'm aiming for 75 lengths in 45 minutes today!

One and a half kilometres and a word from the Lord

Swam 60 lengths in 45 minutes today. Came home and then came the free newspaper through the door to spur me on...

What should be my Olympic sport?

I have got ridiculously into the Olympics this year. I have found myself wondering whether to stay up to watch sports live (never actually did, but it was a serious consideration) and then have watched sports back to back on BBC. All this competitive sport action has got me angling to get into sport again and make it for the 2012... I'm not to old am I?! So, spurred into action I have been swimming twice this week already and swum 50 lengths both times. Yes indeed! But which sport to choose? Joy sent me a link which chose for me! It is a good choice I think! Just let me dust off that wet suit...

You Are Kayaking

You have a competitive spirit, but you don't like to compete alone. You do well in a partnership, where you can feed off the other person's energy. If you have the right partner, nothing can stop you. Your energy is infinite!

What Olympic Sport Are You?

The Amazing Christmas Card Number 2

A few weeks of creativity culminated in the second amazing giant Christmas card going up at church. Tis late now, and I'm not giving anything away yet, but here's the beginnings of a creation...

School choir?

Time flies when you're having fun - there's just no time to faff about on the internet anymore!

Last week in the staff meeting at school it was suggested by the headteacher that as music coordinator I enter a competition for the school with the Lancashire Evening Post. It is a singing competition. Our school has no choir yet but I am doing singing for half an hour every day with a different class each week so it's not such a huge jump. Sounded like a good idea, so I entered. The choir are going to sing a song and the newspaper are going to come and film us perform it and then post it on their website. Anyone can then vote for their favourite school and the top 10 win prizes. I chose Karl Jenkins' Cantilena (from the Cheltenham and Gloucester advert). Only yesterday I was rung by the newspaper, they are coming to film us on Monday morning...!! Argh! Manic rehearsing over the next couple of days for us and then we go live on the internet. When it goes live I'll post the link and you can vote for us, please!

Shopping list

Today I made a shopping list, and ticked off what I had bought.

It's A Knockout!

Today I was part of a team from Blenheim House in Blackpool competing in an It's A Knockout tournament to raise money for MRI Scanner facilities for children at Blackpool Victoria Hospital. At the moment children who need an MRI scan have to go to Preston. Although the afternoon got off to a late start (we were there at half 12 and didn't get to do anything until half 3...) once we got going it was fabulous fun! There was a lot of water, lots of inflatables, some foam, some injuries... Our team was up against Radio Wave and The Gazette, which was helpful because they kept sabotaging each other and we kept winning! I admit to having been somewhat competitive and eager to win... The photo above is of the last race, we had to run up and down the hills on the inflatable which was covered in foam and water and into a pit of muddy water at the end, run to pick up a piece of luggage and then carry it back. It was really difficult because it was so slippy you couldn't stand up...but I made a significant lead ahead of the other two teams if I do say so myself! We went on to get second place, only one point separated us from first - gutted! But we did ourselves proud.

Red Arrows

One good thing about living in St. Annes is the (fairly) regular visitation of the Red Arrows to Blackpool, even if only to use the airport. Many summer days are spent running out into the garden to see them fly by and land in a spectacular manner on hearing a loud aeroplane-like rumble. Today I saw them fly by in formation and ran to the front of the house in the hope of seeing them do a hoopla-loopla (which I have been assured is a loop-the-loop, but hoopla-loopla seems like a much better name), but they didn't, I think because it was cloudy. So they split off in a less impressive manner. The sad thing is that for the rest of the day, having seen them, at the even slight incling of a possible sighting I have to run to a window, only to see a passenger plane or a typhoon (grey and on its own - far less exciting). I did, however see them again - yey! And this time it was clear and they did a hoopla loopla to land! Our house is in a good spot for seeing them and one always flys right over our house after they split at the bottom of the loop. Fab.

Update: Just seen them again, 3 times in one day, I am indeed a lucky lady :) Sophie and I stood on the garden table and waved as 2 of them went right over the garden and over our heads. No photo though, there's not enough time to go looking for a camera!

Have a heavenly Christmas!

Please excuse a little pride on my behalf in this post today. Yesterday Sarah and I went to St Tees to create a giant Christmas card. The idea being that members of the congregation make a donation to Operation Christmas Child (the chosen charity) and then add to the giant card instead of sending many cards to lots of church members. The money spent goes to a good cause and there are far fewer cards being sent which pleases the environment.

The design

I borrowed inspiration for the design from the illustrations by Tim Jonke in Bob Hartman's book "A Night The Stars Danced For Joy" (which is also an amazing retelling of the Christmas story). The idea was for us to make a large angel, the angel Gabriel, to go in the centre of the display and then have many smaller angels for people to write their greetings on and then add to the display to create a 'heavenly host'.

The display board in the church is only quite small so we extended the display with the backing paper and then with the border. It took us an hour and a half just to put up the backing paper!! Having bought many different types of sparkly gold and silver paper and material we went to church yesterday to put it all together. We used an overhead of the initial angel design to project onto the board and then used that to draw around the various parts of the angel.
We then assembled all the parts of the angel on the floor so that we could work out where all of the different sections were going to fit together and in which order we would need to staple them to the board.Finally we attached the angel to the display. We added some schiffon type transparent gold material for the body tied together with ribbon to give it a 3D effect and added the greeting 'Have a heavenly Christmas' to complete the card. I think it is fabulous!!

Television star!

On Monday my granny was on the television! It was terribly exciting! She won a Christmas card competition and as one of 5 winners in different categories went down to London all expenses paid to be presented with her prize on the Paul O'Grady show! Her picture was by far the best, though I may suffer from a little bias. And if you want to buy the card they are on sale in Co-ops and the profits from their sale go to three homeless charities.