Rocking Your World 2015: Week 33

I nearly always feature my sons when it is their birthday, so this week I smiling for our fourth son Jonathan, who hit the big 3-0 this week. Here he is with his lovely partner Ella.

Jonathan was the smallest of my babies, but by far the most active. He was a very solemn little fellow, but he was walking before he was ten months old, and there was never a dull moment with him. He had a few problems as a child but I was always there in his corner to support him, and that partly shaped the close relationship I have with him now. His main problem stemmed from more energy than he knew what to do with, so he was always outside, climbing, riding, playing football or skateboarding, and sitting still was not one of his finest accomplishments, hence the problems at school! Later we channeled some of his energy into drum lessons, and he has never looked back. Having chatted to him on his birthday, I found myself going back through the scrapbook I made for him a few years ago. (He has the book of course, but I have a photo of each page in my files). So I thought I´d share some of my favourite layouts with you today. You should be able to click on them to enlarge them, so you can see them in more detail.

  

He´s going to love me for putting that one on isn´t he?!

 

These were done before I got into digital scrapbooking, so all the photos were sized in Publisher and cut by hand. I did use my old Craft-Robo, the predecessor to Silhouette cameo, to cut many of the headers and some frames, but it was a lot of work at the time, though I enjoyed doing it.They are not the best photos, but I have improved with photography skills since I took these, but they evoked so many tears and smiles. Precious memories!

It has been quite a fun week after a very quiet one last week, starting off with Sunday night which was the last day of Theatre Week in our village. They usually finish this week with some sort of street entertainment, and this years it was what they just call ´Pasacalles´which literally means ´passing in the streets´. It was a small team of folk in very strange costumes, some on stilts, who walked around the village, pushing a small cart from which issued very loud music, and every now and then they lit a firework or flare, which they held in their hands, waving it over our heads, and then they either dropped the still burning end, or left it in the gully of someone´s roof! It was quite bizarre, like so many of the celebrations out here, but there was a great atmosphere, and everyone enjoyed it. (Even the local guadia who were running around extinguishing any remnants of fireworks, had smiles on their faces!) This didn´t kick off until 11.00 at night, but there were loads of families out with really young children, to join in the fun. Here are just a few of the photos. I am not very good at night time photography so I borrowed some of these from the Town Hall Facebook page, but others are mine.

Then we had a nice evening out on Wednesday when we went over towards Albox for a meal with my choir. We have not had any practices through the summer so it was nice to meet up again for a social night. There were about forty of us, singers and partners, and we sat in a horseshoe arrangements for a lovely three-course meal.

Note how many big bottles of water are on the tables among the wine bottles. You can probably see how hot we were. Most of the ladies had a fan too. We get used to carrying one in each bag for the summer. But we enjoyed it even if we were a bit damp and shiny!

Yesterday we were very grateful for the nice weather. It was no cooler, and just to prove I am not exaggerating, here is our thermometer yesterday afternoon, and it hangs where it never gets any direct sunshine. But although it was still very hot, the humidity had gone. It was the dry heat that we are more used to, and it is so much pleasanter, and easier to cope with. The clouds had gone, and the sky was clear again. But today it is even more comfortable because the temperature has dropped almost ten degrees, and looks like staying down for this week. (I had a quick look at the thermometer at teatime and it was showing 32º. Much more civilized!)

One thing I was grateful for yesterday, was getting a lot of washing done. As well as our clothes, I washed bedding and big swimming towels. I did four loads and each one was hung out on the line, dried and brought back in before the next load had finished washing! Today I did the dogs blankets which they won´t need now until the Autumn, so they smell nice and fresh for storing.

I was waiting for a little order to arrive which was just a couple of embossing folders so I assumed it would come in a padded envelope, sometime next week. So when the door bell rang at lunch time today I was surprised but happy because I thought my order must have come earlier than expected. So I was a bit taken back when the post lady handed me a big box!

What was inside? A lot of air-bags, and hidden among them, my two embossing folders! Why do they do it? Perhaps it is to justify the huge postage charges they add on to anything I order! Still I have something else to play with now, so I am a happy bunny.

As you are mostly aware, my white fluff-ball Arwen lives mainly in my craft room and doesn´t ever leave the house. During these hot weeks, she has spent a lot of time in our bathroom! She tends to do this in the summer. It must be cooler in there I guess. But that is as far as she goes. So I generally close the door that separates our living rooms from the bedrooms, just so she doesn´t stray into the kitchen, as I leave the other cats food in their dishes and they graze during the day. Arwen has a urinary tract condition and is on a special diet, so if I leave the centre door open, when the other cats´dishes are empty, they will sometimes come down to see if there is anything in her dish. Arwen does not like this at all and she starts to growl before they even get here, and if she sees Paco anywhere nearby, then fur is bound to fly. So I was really surprised to go into the hall this week and find that Arwen had not only ventured down to our end of the house, but she was sitting near Tango, and they were both quite happy about it!

I don´t know what it is about Tango, but none of the other animals see anything threatening or confrontational about him. He is almost invisible to them, and they all leave him in peace. If Arwen does, he really has got something special!

Well that is just about it for this week. I have just one sky photo for you. There were no dramatic colours in it, but I like the way the rays are coming from behind the cloud, and there is something up there. Is it a baby elephant, or a long-nosed dog? Either way, I think it is quite friendly!

And on that note, I will go and link with Annie´s Friday Smiles, and Rocking your World, at Celtic House, and I´ll see you all again next week.

Rocking Your World 2015: Week 32

Well I guess week thirty-two of this year will go down as one of the most uneventful weeks since I came out here! The main reason is this continuous heat which makes the idea of doing anything, seem like one too many mountains to climb. Of course if I had something that I needed to do, or an event I committed to a while ago, then I would find the energy to do it, but right now I have no commitments so I am making the most of some time to relax, and being very grateful for that.

I have to say that this week has been reminiscent of my holiday in Thailand, because it is so very humid, but I much prefer the usual dry heat we have in Spain.

This week although there have been periods of sunshine, most days have been partially overcast, and several times I have looked forward to a refreshing storm, only for it to rumble around the mountains in the distance, but never quite reach us.

According to a local weather station this was the hottest July since they started keeping records thirty years ago, and especially the hottest nights.

So I am truly grateful that I am able to sleep at night despite the heat. Many of our friends struggle with it, but as long as I cool the bedroom down for half an hour before bedtime, and have a late night dip in the pool, then, as long as I drop off to sleep quickly, I usually sleep right through until the morning.

Once again I have done a lot of reading. I am right into a trilogy about a family of Irish immigrants living in post-war Liverpool, and I love following all their lives through the years. I am just coming to the end of the second book and I know I will go straight into book three. I just have to make sure I have done any urgent chores before I pick it up each day, because once I start reading, nothing else gets done. I spotted a little poem about this on the internet this week, and it certainly struck a chord with me, and I daresay you can relate to it too.

But I haven´t only been reading. I have started to sort through all the new craft stash that I have accumulated, I made a birthday card for later this month, and today I made two Christmas cards. How bizarre is that when it is the middle of a heat-wave?!

I also made some of my now-famous piccalilli. Thanks to my blogland friend Di who provided the original recipe, though I have ´doctored´ it a bit. My kitchen faces west, so by the afternoon, the sun is streaming in, and even with the blinds down and the shutters closed, it is too hot in there to consider cooking. So we have our main meal at lunch-time, and I knew I would need to get up early one morning to boil up the pickle. We don´t actually eat a lot of pickles ourselves, especially not piccalilli, but it has proved one of my best sellers, second only to bitter orange marmalade, and several people had ordered it in advance, so I thought I should really make the effort, and get it done. The vegetables need to be prepared the night before, and sprinkled with salt until the next day, so on Tuesday evening I loaded up a tray with knives, cutting mats, bowls, and a damp cloth for sticky fingers, plus a bag of veggies and one for the rubbish, and I took myself out into the fly-free porch. I had my swimsuit on so I could dip in  and out of the pool every time I needed a break, and a glass of tinto verano for refreshment, and so around midnight, my piccalilli was prepared. The next morning it was soon rinsed and cooked, and bottled up and quite a lot of it has sold already.

I had to smile as the dogs prowled around me hoping I´d drop a little morsel for them, but when I only dropped some raw onion, they went away in disgust!

I thought I had lost my beautiful friend Tango this

week. He is nearly always somewhere around the house, or on a bench just outside, and he always comes in at night, but one evening he failed to come when I called him in for his supper. I kept trying, but in the end I had to go to bed, confident that he would be there next morning, but he wasn´t. Altogether he was missing for thirty-six hours, then suddenly he just turned up again, and I was so happy to see him. He is so laid back, and has such a gentle nature, and I would be so very sad to lose him.

One other thing to be very grateful for this week was a trip to the doctor for the results of my annual blood test. She was very pleased with me and said my blood-sugar control was much better than last year, so I can stay on just half a tablet twice a day, and I am off the statins altogether which I am very happy about. My aim is to get completely off the diabetic tablets too, but little steps....

I am afraid I don´t even have a pretty sky for you this week. Overcast skies each day don´t lend themselves to lovely sunsets.

So that is it from me this week. Do join in with your happy pictures/events, at Annie´s Friday Smiles, or pop over to Virginia´s blog and tell us what you are grateful for this week. Share the love!