Friday Smiles 2023 # Week 46

This week starts early because last Friday afternoon Chris drove me over to my friend's house to deliver her birthday card. She lives near my church so it is a good half hour's drive from here and I had intended driving myself over the next day, but Friday afternoon suited me better. Neither of us like driving after dark these days but we reckoned we had just enough time to get there and back. There were some interesting cloud formations as the sun was going down, and I tried to photograph them through the car window.

They got darker and more distinct, and I think these would class as lenticular clouds.

And by the time we had got back home, this is what was left of them.

I have been working on a macrame Christmas decoration and I needed some gold and red beads. I had trouble finding any the right sizes, and in the end I bought an assortment of sizes in plain wood from Amazon. So on Tuesday, when we went to to do some food shopping, we stopped at a hardware store and I bought cans of red and gold spray paint. I was thinking of a way to spray them without getting paint on everything else as well and I remembered my old 'spray cabinet', aka an old cardboard carton with lots of ancient newspapers in it! I used this a lot when I was into mica sprays for my card making, but it has sat unused on top of my high shelves for several years. But dusted off it was the perfect solution. I threaded my beads onto rough string that was hairy enough for them to stay separated, and pegged them across the box, and I soon had the coloured beads I wanted. Maybe by next week I can show you what they were for.

The Town Hall put this photo up on Facebook today showing the progress on a road near us. 

They started digging it up several weeks ago and then dug deep and we thought they were replacing old sewerage pipe. Apparently they have also repaired water pipes and telecommunication lines, and at last they are starting to resurface it. We are hoping there will be a narrow edge for pedestrians too, and it will be so good to have it back in use as it is our main route out of the village. At the minute we have to use a narrow one way road with seating outside a bar taking up half of it, or drive to the top of the village which means taking a very sharp corner with a steep hill round it, that I avoid at all costs! So fingers crossed, we will be back to using our usual road again very soon.

Saturday was little Leo's first birthday. That year has flown by!. He is doing well though is still only gaining weight very slowly. Every few days I persuade him to sit on these scales so I can record his weight, and as you can see, he still hasn't quite hit the 5 Kg mark that I was hoping he would reach by his birthday. But he eats very well, and I buy him the best food I can afford, so hopefully he will continue to make his slow progress.

Meanwhile Tolly has been my shadow this week. Some days we don't see him from breakfast 'til tea time, but this week he has followed me around, sitting on the kitchen chair to watch me, or climbing on me when I sit down in the evening. He is a big boy and heavy to hold, but he is fully grown now, and really Leo should be catching him up, but I am not sure that is ever going to happen.

It is difficult to get a good photo of any of the cats  because as soon as I call them to look up at me, they start walking to wards me!

And finally some more skies that I saw yesterday evening. The wind was blowing the clouds every which way, high up, so we had this interesting formation.

It cast a lovely soft pink glow on the mountains opposte it.

Then later it darkened and got bigger and it made me think of an angel swooping down with an evening blessing for us all. (She even has a faint face!). 

And that is all from me today except for this little meme that caught my eye. A way to teach rhythm and notation to small children. 

It reminded me of an exercise I used in my nursery where the children suggested food stuff and we chanted them faster and faster to the rhythm of a train on the tracks. e.g. Chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding, suasage and mash, sausage and mash,  crackers and cheese, crackers and cheese, SOUP SOUP! (I hope you had a try).

Now I am off to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles ready to publish in the morning.