We're having a great week!!

Honestly, its all smooth rides chez Nic this week.

First we had the shower, which is still not really fixed. It seems that they don't make the washer we need anymore so dh cut up one that I had bought but the shower continued to leak so he then got some whipping twine and faffed with that for a while longer and now the leak appears to be 'just' a drip.

It should be mentioned that this shower mending activity happened between 1030 and midnight last night, when most people who are trying to get an early night want to be tucked up in their beds asleep not being shouted every 20mins or just as they are dozing off to see what the shower is doing while mender man is in the loft. I can hear you telling me that I am ungrateful. The reason why it had to be mended then is because he had been out playing at climbing until then.

Next we have the drain. The one that I have been saying needs to have a cover put over it before anything goes down it and gets stuck. You know the way small people like to pop things down holes. Hmm well I was told that I was paranoid. We now have a drain that is blocked so I spent an hour trying to fix that this morning.

Tax credits anyone?? First they told us we owed them money, then they told us we didn't, next they just stopped paying us randomly so I rang them up and the woman told me that the computer hadn't liked what I had written on my renewel form (yep she actually did say that!) so it had stopped paying me. Well yesterday I received a bank giro thing telling me how many hundreds of pounds we supposidly owed them, and please pay up now then today I have a letter telling me that we are all square and no-one owes anyone anything. HELP! Preferably before I got and find that computer.

There was more but I'm once again boring myself so lets have some pics of my weird and wonderful veggies to cheer us all up.....

I had loads on my mind at the weekend, stuff that I couldn't do anything about so I got up on Sunday morning and decided that instead of mopping around the place and wondering what would happen and worrying about stuff I couldn't change, I would go and do some gardening as the old veggie patch was looking in need of some tlc.

I walked into the greenhouse and got hit over the head by a cucumber.....

You can't see them all but there are cucumbers everywhere in that place at the moment. One plant has even decided that it will make friends with a tomato plant and to the untrained eye, it looks like I have cucumbers growing off a tomato plant.

This cucumber has been to school and preschool and nursery in the last week....

J and L were so impressed with it because depending on which way you hold it, its a J or an L ;)

I can't remember if I showed you my siamese tomato but here it is just in case...

I picked 3 and a half pounds of tomatoes while I was in the greenhouse sorting the plants out. I didn't really know what to do with them so I stuck them in the oven with some courgettes, olive oil and balsamic vinegar for half an hour then woodged them up and stuck them in the freezer for pasta sauce. We've had a few of them and they are really nice and so sweet. All of the recipes that I read told me to take the skins off them first but I couldn't be doing with that, there were hundreds of tomatoes, hence the woodging.
These are some of my green beans. They are doing really well this year and the freezer is getting rather full of them. I seem to pick double what I need every time we have them for tea and stick half in the freezer, all chopped and ready to cook for when we have run out of the fresh ones.


And these are the best ever. I was picking carrots for tea and came accross these carrots......

I don't think I need to say any more. I'm going to go and attempt to have an early night.

Today, I have mostly been making.......

........bags. Zippy bags, and these to be exact......

I really love the red fish. In fact I think more so than the white. As for the skulls, well, I decided that my normal lining would be a bit plain but black might make it impossible to find anything in the bag so i chose red instead and I love the look of it now;

That picture really doesn't do it justice but I was in rush to get this little lot in the post before I had to go and pick little legs up so I had to snap and pack ;)

I was going to post about my weekend this morning but then the shower exploded and I sewed to the sweet sound of water and money (we have a water meter) running down the plug hole until I decided to switch the water off meaning no water all day. I ignored my house falling around my ears and decided that sewing would make it all better. That and Doctors and Diagnosis Murder. Wow. I haven't watched them since I lived on my sofa for the first 3months of Js life.

I will post about my weekends gardening exploits and my funny looking carrots later though because they are ace and the world needs to see them.

Folksy and 'freedom'

At 9am this morning I kissed my little people, I said bye-bye to them then walked home in the knowledge that I wouldn't see them until 3pm. 6hours to myself on a normal week day without my children for the first time in 5yrs.

Even though L doesn't start school until next year, I have decided to put her into Pre-school for a full day on a Monday. This has been met with a mixture of feelings from me, mainly, as with all Mums, guilt. I don't work full time, infact today I haven't left the house to work (even though I have done loads of sewing work) so I don't 'need' her in school but I think she is ready for a full day. I'm sure I will pick her up at 3pm and she will be so full of stories about what she has got up to and also be full of tired grumpiness but she will have had fun and want to know why she can't stay for the full day when I take her for her morning tomorrow.

From now on, I have decided that Mondays are going to be dedicated to sewing Nicsknots stuff days. I need to put time aside during the day and to stop feeling guilty about leaving the pots unwashed and the clothes unironed while I sew. I need to, if this is going to become a proper business that I so hope it is.

I've had a really productive morning, I've crossed lots of things of on my 'todo' list and am feeling more positive about most things than I have for a long time.

Last night I made myself a Folksy account. I had heard talk of it and decided that I would give it a go. Quite a lot of chatter about it has been around it being a British copy-cat of Etsy and it is very similar and then the name, hardly different but, I don't know, I think there does need to be a british version and if you are going to do something, why remake the wheel?

I'm not being flipant there, I know (from bitter personal experiance) that people copying your work is a bad thing (or the most sincere form of flattery if you beleive my Dad) but how many ways are there to make a site like Etsy without it loosing the appeal you are trying to acheive?

Sellers have, for a long time, asked Etsy to allow sales in £s as well as $s but its not forthcoming. I think if they did this, there wouldn't really be as great an appeal for Folksy. The main reason I joined was so that I could sell things in £s rather than (or rather as well as) $s.

To be honest, it didn't bother me that much to start with. Money that you have sitting in your paypal account in $s is like double free money....to start with any money in Paypal isn't real is it? and any money that you have in a foreign currency is like holiday money, right ;)
but you have to pay exchange rate fees every time you convert $s into 'real money' and with the $ becoming stronger over the past month, the prices I had on all of my items on Etsy, were overpriced when converted back to £s. A fact that I am sure would put my UK buyers off so I had to spend time converting and updating prices on my account on Saturday.

So anyway, I guess that is my justification for joining Folksy. Here is my shop, only one item in it so far but I will upload more in the week.

I'm keen to hear your views on Folksy....although am slightly worried that I might start a rather lively debate but we'll see ;)

Tell me all you know about..........

..........Evening Primrose Oil and what it does to your monthly cycle.

If you don't want to read about girly things, give this a miss today, 'eh? I'll be back soon with more inane wittering and stuff ;)

OK, here goes; I started taking EPO a year or so ago as well as Agnus Cactus because a wiser person than me, told me that it did wonders for PMT. Since having Lou (and I'm sure the two events are completly coincidental), I needed something or I would gladly kill someone or myself for approximatly 9 days of the month.

I'm really sure that however we evolved or someone made us, they were pretty short-sighted in giving women hormones and then leaving them in charge of small children or to be fair, most things when they have PMT.

Anyway, the EPO and and AC did wonders for PMT but if I take it regularly, my cycle lasts anything up to 6weeks and its seriously un-nerving. Is this normal? I am fed up, as I am sure DH and close friends are of thinking that I *might* be pregnant every other month. Even though I know I'm not, if I'm that late then I might and.....do you know what that does to a girl? Its enough to turn me celebate. Well, nearly.

So I guess I'm asking for advice, information and opinion. I am sure I read somewhere that women take it to lengthen their cycle when ttc but now I can't find where I read that and we're on week 5 now..............

Its oh so quiet......

...its oh so still..........

Back to school and nursery today. I actually forgot that my house was capable of being *this* quiet. Is it bad that after the first five minutes of silence I had to go and put the washer on and switch some music on because it was *too* quiet?

We've had a great summer, I love the hols and spending loads of time with J and L. I just hope that they get on well at school and preschool this year. J seemed happy enough when I took him today but I'm a bit scared. There was a note on the board;

'Spelling test on Fridays'

Hmm, for a five year old?

L will be the oldest in her pre-school and I am a bit worried that we are going to have some problems. She is so ready for school, tries to sneak in at every opportunity and doesn't want to play with the babies any more (her words.)