Happy Hallowe'en!

The gerbils that almost came to stay...

Well, here is a photo of Alex and Olivia with Charlie and unnamed grey gerbil, who almost came to live with us today. As you can see, they got as far as the house. A while back, one of our gerbils (Gerry) died, and earlier this week, we lost a second, Ozzie. Which just left Billy, who seemed a bit lonely and wandered around searching for his mates (Ozzie in particular as they were always pretty close). So, we decided, time for new gerbils. The pet shop does a gerbil introduction service, where you bring your old gerbil and they put him in with some new ones in a box for 10 minutes or so to see if they fight. We did, they didn't. Fine, gerbils bought, brought home, installed in gerbilarium and then... Billy went very territorial and violent, fought with the other two including quite a nasty bite on unnamed grey gerbil's tail. Sigh. Back to the pet shop with the new gerbils. Oh well! So now, Billy will have to live on his own until he dies - and then we'll probably get two new ones - Olivia wants female gerbils, so that we can give them girly names (yes, the priorities of a 10YO are somewhat different than those of a grownup).

Birthday!

Here is Olivia with two friends posing for a photo at Chessington (theme park), which is where she went for a birthday treat yesterday. It was a great day - a tiny bit of rain kept a lots of the potential crowds away, so we barely had to queue for anything. Fun was had by all, but luckily, the large orange banana was won by a friend, not by Olivia, so it doesn't have to come live in my house!

Love/hate relationship...

Olivia loves me, for letting her have her ears pierced for her birthday (10 next Saturday - we did it early due to scheduling issues...). Sarah hates me, because I let Olivia have her ears pierced for her 10th birthday (Sarah was 11 - oh, the injustice of it all!). Oh well, can't please all the people all of the time!

Kitchen windowsill

Haven't written much lately, I know, though there are birthdays and whatnot coming up, so there will be more. But I was admiring my windowsill earlier today and thought I'd share it - didn't realise until after taking the photo that the line of washing in the background is a bit distracting - I didn't even notice it until I downloaded the photo from the camera...

Anyway, the windowsill changes several times throughout the year, not just at the annual New Year's turnover, so at the moment it's quite autumnal, with oranges and greens and browns. The latest addition, besides the Happy Hallowe'en tea light holder (there are some pumpkin candle holders which are with the Hallowe'en decorations which I will get out probably tomorrow; this one is new this year, so wasn't put away with the other seasonal stuff) is a bottle which Olivia decoupaged for me. The bottle was from some fancy lemonade and I loved the label and the stopper, so saved the bottle "in case I needed it for something". When Olivia bought her decoupage kit at the Knit & Stitch Show, she quickly ran out of objects to cover in paper, so I brought this out - I thought it would look really nice with the paper she had which was covered in orange slices, and I was right. We also both thought that the label would show through, in a good way, and we were also right about that.

Decoupage Cat

Olivia and I went to the Knit & Stitch Show yesterday (there are lots of other art and craft suppliers vending there as well) and she bought a decoupage kit - a papier mache cat, some glue, a brush, three sheets of decoupage paper. She's very good at these sorts of crafts - a patient worked - and here's her finished cat. There is lots of paper & glue left, so I see more decoupage in our future - which is fine. A good way to recycle!

Book Character Day

We went for the little-effort approach this year - Alex was originally going to go as Spiderman (along with about half the younger boys in school, I'd guess) but I had a quick think about what was in the dressing up box and suggsted Darth Vader instead - they were books first, after all. Olivia is a pirate - to be specific, The Dread Pirate Fleur, from a book she was reading earlier this year. Fairly low effort, as I said...

Painter's Progress

Progress in the bedroom - I think it's going to look very good, when it's done. Today I am going to do the skirting board on this wall (no change, still white, just needs touching up as it's not been painted in ages) and then this wall will be done - hoorah! The cupboard will have the mauve doors painted, but we think in one of the brown tones, rather than the aqua. Anyway, it will be a while before we get to that, as I am going to move around the room the other way and save that wall for last - so next, it will be the wall behind the bunkbeds - but not until next week, as we have a busy weekend. Might get Geoff to help me move the bunks on Sunday, though!