Crikey it's still growing

The allotment has started yield us some veg ! hurrah hurrah - courgettes anyone?



Some of the crop - 1 over grown green courgette! a couple of yellow and green courgettes and some radish.

I was there first

oh my god I've stayed at the same hotel as Peter Andre (though I stayed there first!)

Prestonfield House Edinburgh - total lushness :)

Woo wow wow! Kerry from Digital Outlook gave me this film to watch last week - have to admit I went to the cinema to see it in 3D and was pretty impressed. Would the 2D version be the same - sure was!

This film will actually make my collection of Ultimate Favourite Films to watch again and again. I thought I would find the story dull - the book never interested me - but the film is a technicolour feast for your eyes, and the characters are played brilliantly throughout. What other stories or films does Tim Burton have in mind to recreate? Each one his magical mind has worked on so far has turned into wonderful films with a dark edge to them - they are really so good!

And as for Johnny Depp futterwacken- wow :)

http://www2.disney.co.uk/DisneyDVDs/DVDs/tim-burtons-alice-in-wonderland.jsp

Tea Party
http://www.totaleclips.com/player/Splash.aspx?custid=1064&clipid=e67375&playerid=69&affiliateid=-1&bitrateid=378&formatid=10

Hatter Futterwackens
http://www.totaleclips.com/player/Splash.aspx?custid=1064&clipid=e67377&playerid=69&affiliateid=-1&bitrateid=378&formatid=10

Eat Me Cakes
http://www.totaleclips.com/player/Splash.aspx?custid=1064&clipid=e67379&playerid=69&affiliateid=-1&bitrateid=378&formatid=10#

I'm a what?

Emily has reached the age where she now invents new words and phrases - best so far is "snootigator"

go figure what that means - but it sounds ace ;)

Green things-a-Growing

Though our allotment is starting to spring into life - its still a little behind some of the others. But hey-ho(e) never mind - but its slowly coming along. My friendly allotment keepers have been very kind, one lent me his rotovator so I could finish prepraring some soil, another gave me some lettuce today and a friend also came down and help to strim some of the weeds out for me. Without them I think I would not have got this far for sure.

But I'm pleased to show you some photos of the fruits (or veg ) from all my hard work.
This is the bean/pea section - not much to look at really.



This is the view across the strawberry and raspberry patch to the end of the allotment.
This is the view looking back at the top of the allotment - shed, water butts, flower patch and the squash/courgette/pumpkin patch.

Some raddish.

A small flower bed on the left and on the right the lettuce I received.
The little plants sticking out of the black weed sheet are cauliflower (I hope)

The lettuce again

Spinich patch

Loofas

and cucumbers

Yellow courgettes

What Shall We Do Today?

is often a question I think when we are stuck indoors with the kids! But we were introduced to the Disney Playhouse Website which had some really good games for kids about Emily's age. She really liked the Handy Manny - and she loved to play the Handy Manny Puzzle Pipes. The game involves her trying to fit the missing pipe and using the right tool to turn the water valve back on so the water can travel up the to tap. I was amazed she quicky got the hang of this game and now she loves it - plays it all the time we come to visit the website. I did manage to get her to look at some other games but she found the Flicker Lights the Way a little to difficult because instead of using the scroll pad on the laptop she had to use the up/down/left/right arrow keys which she's not too familiar with.

One other problem we had was that it took a little while for the website and games to run on our old XP machine, it was ok on the Vista laptop which is not great for playing games as we don't have a mouse attached to it. Still we got lots of other games to explore and if the weather turns miserable again we'll have another look at the other games.

Things you should do

most of you have probably read or listened to the news about what's recently happened in international waters near Gaza - if you do one thing today please go to this website and sign your name

Please also read this blog which is being written about the organisation of the aid to Gaza, it lists the people on the ships - it also shows you how generous, kind and passionate people have been in assisting and working hard to send aid. Also note that this blog has stopped being updated - the known condition of the author is unclear at the moment as she was on the boat.

Thank you for reading today

Birdtable - FAIL!

long time no see?

yeah I apologise for that - it's been crazy busy in the household. Not only have I been working hard on getting the allotment ready for planting, but I had a university TMA (tutor marked assignment) to finish and get ready for a well deserved holiday.

The allotment is still moving slowly, sadly we lost a lot of the pumpkins, squash, sweetcorn and courgettes in the early May frost. Luckily today I see we still got some still alive but my allotment partner and I quickly devised a plan to purchase some young plants to quickly make up our loss. The other seedlings are looking well and I think the tomatoes are ready to plant out along with cabbage, raddish and more squash. I also purchased some marigolds today as I read somewhere that they help rid the tomatoes of bugs :) I'll update with a photo whenever I remember to take the camera with me.
Still on the news of the allotment - we had a break in, well everyone at the allotment has had break ins. 10 sheds in one weekend ! Annoyingly this time they did a real good job and mangled the lock, padlock is still ok but they mangled the metal plate. Luckily the dudes handy work secured the fixing to the shed so at least that wasnt knackered.
For now we've decided not to fix another padlock, and when i ventured down this morning to water the seedlings I was told that they had another break in last night :( They never really take any stuff - word on the street is they are looking for power tools. Broke my heart though when I heard that they had done alot of damage to the sheds.

But onto other things - yep had a brill time in Egypt - for those of you who know me the pictures are on face book.

Cats are enjoying the heat!!!! I'm enjoying the heat and I'm proud to say summer is officially here as we broke out the paddling pool this morning and filled it up. If my laptop was lighter I'd be standing blogging in the pool right now :)

Emily put Marvin to bederm not sure why but she is on the table

Marley finds another bed!

Normal?

5 points if you can spot whats wrong with these pictures.

****Answer - yes he has an extra paw growing from his back!

Wild Britain

Just been watching the one show and they had a section about butterflies and that reminded me to blog about our trip to Wilden Butterfly park or Wild Britain as it's now called.

Since we last visited (a good 3 years ago) they have done a lot of work and made some nice play areas like Moley's Mines - where kids can don the oversized helmets with torches and clamber in and around a "moles mine"! Not something for the claustrophobic!

Classic Films

We received Dumbo on blu-ray this weekend. Not a film I really remember seeing as a child so I was very pleased to be given the chance to see it again. And it's very good, short at only 63 minutes but still a good film. I did find it odd watching a film in the original 4:3 format (which is very square looking compared to wide screen!) . I decided to watch it with Disney View Presentation where disney add a boarder to both sides of the screen to fill in the missing gaps. To be honest I didn't feel like I missing anything and it took me a while to notice that the boarders of the screen changed colour throughout the film to blend in. Nice touch. Today I watched the film again but without the added boarders and didn't really feel I was missing out on the look and feel of the film.

Can you believe this film is almost 70 years old and Emily still loved watching it - which really pleased me as it is a lovely story of a baby elephant who is ridiculed because of it extra large ears - which actually turn out to save the show at the end of the day. Did Disney like to put morals in all his stories?

But lets get down to some clips

Some comments from historians about the films ...

Some more history about Dumbo ...

Emily's Photos

Photos taken with her logitech digital camera