The icing on the cake

It's been a hectic week with Emily still being a little sick in the evenings, I suffered from mild food poisoning on Sunday night and then on Tuesday Phoebe had the most awful vomiting virus.

The poor washing machine has been on several times a day just to cope with the loads. Glad to say everyone is better - though I think Phoebes stomach muscles really have had a work out. I've never heard her vomit so so so horribly before :(

love is a fluffy kitty cuddle

Anyway to cheer us all up (and spend some of my bonus and full time earnings) I bought this beauty -

And then we decided to have a practice run - the colours are dramatic!I also bought the Australians Woman's Weekly cup cake book that was recommended by a fellow employee in Australia and who I now have regular recipe swaps. I now have a fantastic red pepper soup which is simple to make and also very yummy - and I'm glad our picky-eater loves this soup.

Some good films I've recently watched have been Moon and The Hangover. Moon was a great film and story, definitely recommend it to anyone who likes films that are not so mainstream but have a great twist. Now The Hangover was one of those films that will make you laugh, shake your head as you think it can't get any worse and then laugh out loud as it does get worse! Funniest film I've seen in a long time.

Well this about sums up our week - but right now I'm so tired I could fall asleep whilst typing this. So I must go to bed. Sleep well everyone.

A glimpse of our world

That doesn't look comfy.

This has nothing to do with me (I blame her father)

The draft excluders seek warmth

Very cheesy looking cat

Erm a slighly better photo.

I've been quiet

I know, but it's been the usual hectic routine. This week I finally got verbal confirmation from work that I could come back full time, this is brilliant and I have to thank my boss for making such an effort in proving my worthiness to come back on flex-time. It's a 3 month trial but already I'm feeling the benefit of working a more "normal"day. Previously I was working an 8.5 hour day, through in a lunchtime of 30 minutes and travelling time and that was totalling 9.5 hours easily. Not a great system and I was feeling squeezed all the time. Now I feel less stressed by it all, knowing that I'll be in the office 5 days rather than 4, I wont miss the normal day to day goings on either.

That's enough about work. My Open Uni course started this week, and it's been really lovely to see that the University got rid of their horrible First Class software that acted like a forum and email system - to be honest I hated it and finally stopped reading emails and only looked there if I was desperate for help. This year they have taken a different approach and I can see my fellow students emails pop into my personal email account. It's been nice reading the relevant ones and just deleting the ones I don't want. Though it does clutter up my hotmail account on the odd occasion when a discussion heats up.

I decided to stuff the separate Web Design certificate course after completing the first of the 6 courses I realised that I really REALLY hated writing reports and that in all honestly I was crap at writing them too. I went back and looked at my options and decided to get it all over and done with and just do another 30 point level 2 course but when I looked there was very little left that I could choose from and it came down to picking either "Developing Concurrent Distributed Systems" or another course that involved a project - I decided I'd rather face my Achilles heel than complete another report or project, so developing concurrent systems it is!

I'll let you know how it goes - but fingers crossed, after the normal 3 hour exam in October I'll get my results in December and then hopefully I can attend my award ceremony. The cool thing about this is I get to choose where I accept my certificate, and I really fancy Ely Cathedral. Looks impressive doesn't it?

So what else has been happening - not alot, but I did make time to host 2 dinner parties for some friends. For the first one we did a Burns night and had some Cock-a-leekie soup, followed by a nice haggis with mashed neeps and tatties, and for pudding I made some Cranachan with raspberries but instead of using whiskey in the cream I used some mead and it was very very lovely.

For the second dinner party I skipped making a starter and went straight to Pheasant in a claret and orange gravy, with roast potatoes, peas, carrots and sweetcorn. Very similar to the recipe in the link above but with some minor differences. We then followed this with a choice of either apple or rhubarb crumble with Cornish ice cream. Lurv-ley :)

We (Tosha, Lisa and I) tried to arrange a night out for some grub but it all fell through when two of us became ill. I came down with some nasty viral thing again that had me feeling really nauseous ( I was a little sick) and now I have the most awful sinus infection. It was so bad even my teeth hurt. Sinus infections totally suck , suck suck suck. I've now been taking sudafed decongestant for 3 days and this has been my only source of relief though I still have 3 litres of nasty sticky gunge that is lodged in my head - grrrr.

Anyway I'm being called to watch Wall-e for the hundredth time. Enjoy :)