Paint fumes and excitement

Just to warn you I may still be a little high on paint fumes so if this post wanders off at a tangent you can't say you weren't prepared!

So you know that I hate wallpaper, or I guess more specifically the removal of said overly sticky and infernal wall covering device. I am also not overly keen on home improvements in general; the disruption, arguments and overall chaos caused!

Flash back.....why am I doing all this again?? Oh yeah I remember because such is the love I have for my babies! In the fairy tale land inside my mind my two angels exist together in perfect harmony, looking out for each other when the evil butterfly comes to eat them alive (transalet - they fight like cat and dog at the moment and were only united tonight in their freaking out whilst me and the other half removed an unwanted house guest from their bedroom in the form of a butterfly). However I am an only child and my view of how sisters co-exist could be a little skewed! The reality....if we don't separate them there could be a serious case of sororicide.

Therefore our box room and general dumping ground (we all have one of those rooms, right?) now needs to become a bedroom, fit for a girl a hop skip and a jump away from teenagedom!

There has been demolition, discoveries that elicit certain expletives (various were used so take your pick), followed by the removal of the devils own decorating favourite, repairs, plastering, the clean up and now....now the fun starts.

As much as I hate wallpaper I love painting!

The colour has been picked by the eldest, with more than a little guidance (I was not looking forward to having to paint over deep purple in a few years time!) and her personalisation theme is in the planning stage.

Oh, I love personalising rooms, I always have. As a teenager I had a night sky look in my room, complete with gold suns, moons and stars (oh yeah and bark blue paint - hell to paint over!). Having babies has provided many opportunities for fun murals and cuteness! So far we have had; a Winnie the Pooh theme complete with fluffy clouds, a fairy tale theme complete with frog princes, fairies and butterflies (it even had a blue sky with fluffy clouds, a green carpet for grass and stars and moons lighting) and finally a fully personal effort with names and hand prints.

view original here

I am getting a little excited about what I can create in two little girls bedrooms. My brief; book characters. The eldest specifically wants Roald Dahl characters the youngest has yet to decide. I am just a little giddy and that is definitely the fumes talking because I am no artist. The reality; how the hell do I create wall size versions of our favourite book characters?? I am sure it will work out ok (seriously need to get some fresh air!!)

So did you have a personalised room as a child? How would you decorate your room if you could go back and create yourself one?

Strong Words and Wallpaper

LOVE

 

HATE

These are really strong words. I am sure there are hundreds more but these are the ones that irritate me the most.

Ok maybe I should explain myself a little.

This was one of my Facebook statuses this week:

"I HATE wallpaper. Sorry, I rarely manage to have such an emotive reaction to anything but that stuff I could live my whole life with out having to strip one more wall!!!!!!!!"

I know people that 'hate' everything. If the slightest thing irritates them, if they discover a dislike for something they immediately 'hate' it. My eldest 'Hates' mushrooms yes I use a capital letter here in an attempt to convey the vehemence with which the word is uttered!

Now I don't know about you but I think the words I mentioned above are very strong and emotive. They convey such a depth of feeling and importance that I feel they should be reserved for things that really matter. I don't think I could muster that level of emotion for a food stuff that I happen not to like eating.

However, to be slightly hypocritical, I can and do often state that 'I Love....' chocolate usually! How is it I can bring myself to love something that only causes me problems? How can I bring my self to love a few random words strung together in a blog post written by someone I have never met? I don't know but this depth of positive emotion comes easily to me, it makes me lighter, it helps me to spring through life. Hate makes me feel heavy, like I am trying to wade through mud. But then I guess that my status was appropriate; stripping wallpaper is like wadding through mud, the thought of having to do it makes me heavy. As I stripped, I cursed whoever invented the infernal wall covering, I got frustrated with the tiny little scraps that refused to surrender their grip on the wall and then I cursed the pieces I had managed to remove for sticking to me!

Then, oh no! I carried on, status two:

"I hate home improvements!! Wow the list of things I hate just keeps growing! It like eating Pringles, once you start you just can't stop :-/"

Oh, I am becoming the thing that irritates me; I mean seriously do I 'hate' home improvements or do I just dislike the time and mess involved in making them happen?? Once the negative emotion takes hold of you it just drags you down and keeps you there. Pretty soon everything starts to get tainted. I think I will keep loving as much as I can just to keep the darkness away, to quote Michael Jackson: 'I'm a lover not a fighter'

But I still hate wallpaper!

Business as usual

Well I say business as usual but I haven't really decided what usual will be yet so as I am in the habit of posting daily at the minute (and I did promise) I figured I would post.

So, have any of you guessed what a late night hang out at a library and fairy dust have in common??

A torchlight procession of course! Now I don't really know much about the history of the torchlight processions, something along the lines of Clitheroe holds a celebration of this manner every time there is something to celebrate (the Queen's jubilee, millennium etc..) but when faced with the question 'Would you like to dress up and join in with the library's entry to the parade?' my response, 'Why the hell not!"

These are the reasons that flew through my mind in the second or two it took me to make my decision, roughly in order:

1. I get to dress up and have fun - cool, I love my job!
2. A great chance to get to know my lovely new work colleagues - bonus!
3. Promote reading to the next generation - worth a late night at work, right?

The decision was made to decorate one of our mobile libraries with characters from the Lancashire Reading Trail (brief background - we have a reading trail in our libraries to encourage children to read. They collect a series of 13 character cards and stickers on their trail map as they read their way through 50 books to complete the quest and find the Lancashire Reading Dragon). Along with this those of us mad enough would dress as the characters and walk the route of the procession with the mobile library. I opted to be a dream fairy, although I was tempted to be a book eating werewolf, you can read more about the trail characters here. Go on which one would you be?

Any way yesterday was the day, I finished work then relaxed in a quiet library for an hour or so (ironically not actually touching a book in that hour or so) and enjoyed a locally made sandwich, coffee and cupcake. Then the magic began, I mean seriously it was going to take some serious magic fairy dust to turn me into a dream fairy!!

I resorted to stealing my daughters sparkly makeup, curtains, fairy wings and a little fairy dust later became this:

scary I know!

What ever I looked like and whatever the weather (it rained most of the way round) we had an amazing night. Stickers were handed out to hundreds of kids, smiles and waves a plenty.

My fabulous boss lady as the Pioneering Princess

My fellow Dream Fairy

The mobile library complete with the Word Sucking Vampire, Singing Mermaid, Burglar Boy, Ghost of Astley Hall and Pioneering Princess. Our very own Word Sucking 'Van'pire was driving with the Lancashire Reading Dragon as his passenger.

 

You can see some pictures of the other floats and participants here.

 

After we had finished the procession and returned wet and tired to the library there was just time to dry off and have a brew before we all raced in to the darkened reference library, like giddy children, to enjoy the fireworks display at the castle. We got an amazing view and stayed dry all at the same time. It's the most fun at a firework display I have had in ages; oooing and ahhing at the colourful sparkles exploding across the sky. It's great to be a kid once in a while ;-)

 

Picture courtesy of Sarah aka the Reading Prince.

 

 

The only thing left to say is a huge thank you to everyone that made last night a really fun night!!

 

Motivation: Day 25 I made it

25 days ago I promised to blog every day in the run up to Debs deadline from Kicking Corners (I would insert a link here but I am posting from my mobile because I didn't want to miss the last day!) And I have made it, ok so I may be missed one day but it was my anniversary and sorry I had better things to do!

So here I am sat in a library all alone for two whole hours and I am blogging from my phone, and someone once said I have commitment issues!

Why might you ask am I all alone in this big building full of wonderful treasures....ah for that you will have to wait till tomorrow. In the meantime all I will say is there is fairy dust involved and I will be back tomorrow with pictures!

Motivation: Day 24 Love

We have all felt it, that swell in your heart, the lump in your throat, the tell  tale signs of Love. Sometimes I think I love too much, but that is a different and much longer post full of psychoanalysis that I am just not up for at this hour!

I remembered today how when I was young people got teased for 'luuurving' someone. A little older and the all consuming love of each high school crush, graffitied across our books and bags as a badge of honour.

It is not until later in life that we develop an appreciation that Love comes in may different forms. Parental love; proud and protective.
Romantic love; consuming and powerful.
Sibling love; being there no matter what happens.
These forms of love are not chosen, but the love shared between friends is a different beast all together. It is not as all consuming as that for a lover, nor as unbreakable as the love we have for our family, yet sometimes just sometimes it is perfect and fulfilling.

Today I spotted this picture floating around on Facebook and had to share it with you all, it describes love for me perfectly; be it between lover, a parent and child or between two friends.

Love to all my blogging friends, you have all shown time and again that you are willing to give up your time and energy to help out those in this little corner of the virtual world to ease the pain of another or help motivate someone to a goal. The fact that you can do this for people you haven't meant is an inspiration to me. Today my motivation and my smile are thanks to my inspiration; Deb over at Kicking Corners. A wonderful person, who I am privileged to call friend, even though we have never met. Thank you!

 

 

Motivation: Day 23 Keep going

Man down.....man down.

All of two days from the goal and I have fallen at the last hurdle.

My hand hurts from the increased typing, my muse has packed up and left with out so much as a by your leave and I am just shattered. I don't have anything to give tonight but I couldn't not post, I couldn't abandon Deb so close to the finish line.

I may be lying on the ground watching as you tear away towards the finish line but I m still cheering you on.

Motiation: Day 22 It takes two to tango

'It takes two to tango'....where did this saying come from?? For the history lesson go here.





For me the tango has always been my favourite dance, the tension between the dancers, the passion, the romance, the constant 'you chase, I chase' that all combines to make it utterly mesmerising to watch and fantastic to dance (if you can find the right partner!).







Sorry I couldn't decide between these two performances. One is strictly and Argentine tango the other a tango waltz. Either way I only wish I was that good!!











The tango, and this saying, kind of epitomise every successful relationship. Mother - daughter, husband - wife, lovers, friends; to really succeed, to really work for all involved and be enjoyable, fulfilling and memorable there must be give and take, push and pull, simply being there for each other.

There must be a willingness to chase the other, on both sides, just because the other person is worth your time and effort. Granted with family you are more inclined to try harder for longer, but in all other cases if one side starts to let things slip, if they become lazy and expect the other person to do all the work then that is when relationships break down. Friends loose touch, lovers go their separate ways, marriages break down, family members don't speak from one Christmas to the next.

The more mesmerising the dance the longer one person will try to lead even if the other person forgets their steps (trust me been there!) but eventually the dance will stop because it can no longer continue if one forgets to move toward the other.

My heart always breaks a little when the dance is over, as it does in life when you realise the dance of friendship has run its course, only you have been trying to lead the other when they no longer care to dance.

Keep dancing, keep moving towards the people that count because one day they may have given up and may not be there to catch you for the all important lift!

Apologies for the not so motivational post today, sometimes the little faerie in my mind writes what she wants to.

Only three days left to Deb's deadline, bob on over to see how she is doing. Let her know we are all cheering her to the finish line.