Rocking Your World Friday - week 20

Hold the front page!  I’m posting on a Friiiiiday!!!

I feel totally smug now for being so organised :)  It won’t last I’m sure…

So – last weekend it was lovely and sunny – let’s hear it for fantastic weather!  We’ve missed you, sunshine!

We had a lazy day on the Saturday, including a stroll into town where we bought some cool duck pins for my memo board in Paperchase from the friendliest, loveliest shop assistant ever.  In fact I really ought to drop Paperchase an email to that effect.  Maybe a positive comment or two will contribute to rocking HER world :)

(**edited to add, feedback email sent, I hope it gets back to her and more importantly her boss**)

I spent the afternoon hand sewing some alterations to a couple of pairs of my other half’s trousers.  Now, I know that sounds more like a chore than something for the Rockin’ My World post….but I really enjoyed it!  As we don’t live together, I don’t often get a chance to do the domestic goddess thang for Jay, and I kind of enjoyed being useful for once :)  Plus I like sewing by hand, it’s relaxing.

And I was rewarded with a takeout from Pizza Hut in the evening, stuffed crust, yummmmm :)  We ate our pizza while watching the Britains Got Talent final and applauding Pudsey the dancing dog for his well deserved victory.

On Sunday we got up bright and early, had a delicious breakfast of left over pizza which always tastes better cold the next day (and which, for once, thanks to me duct taping all the boxes firmly shut and putting a heavy weight on top, had not been eaten by the cat overnight), and headed up the motorway to Sunny Shropshire.

We have annual passports for the Ironbridge museums that are due to run out soon, and although we’ve been up there twice already, there were still a few things that we wanted to see before our year was up.

First we made a return visit to the Enginuity science museum as the kids love that one.  They are currently hosting an art installation called Core which we went to have a look at.  You had to be taken in there by a member of staff as it’s pitch black inside.  I embarrassed the whole family by saying to the kids  “the man is going to take us in” and then on seeing the pony tail from behind “I mean the LADY is going to take us in, sorry”, only for the very much male ponytailed member of staff to turn round and glare at me.  Ooops.  At least I got it right the first time :)  Luckily he didn’t trip me up when we got into the dark room.

The installation itself was kind of cool – you are in this huge room (it’s an old Victorian engine shed) with 5 massive screens on the wall.  And they are all you can see as it’s all totally dark.  There’s a random kind of electronic music playing and there are all these translucent humanoid shapes tumbling around.  Jay wasn’t overly impressed, he said they just looked like giant Windows screensavers.  And he was right really :)  But they were really COOL giant screensavers :)

Next we walked up to the Darby Houses.  I didn't really know what these were but wanted to go and see them purely because my middle son is called Darby and I wanted to see his houses :)

It turned out they are two period houses once owned by the wealthy industrialist who built the iron bridge itself amongst other stuff.  The houses themselves were interesting enough to have a look round, but the real fun bit was in the last room - dressing up!!! yay!!!!

Connor - the daughter I never had :) :) :) --->





I loved my olden days dress - I wanted to keep it!

Next we went to the Tar Tunnel.  Any excuse to wear hard hats, and we’re on it :)  This is an industrial tunnel that was used back in the Victorian age – they built it and then noticed black stuff seeping through the walls.  It turned out it was natural bitumen – akin to tar – and they ended up making a fortune selling the stuff.

It still drips down the walls now and forms big sticky puddles – it was fun to touch but they did warn us not to get it on our clothes as even Vanish won’t get it out.

boom!

couldn't resist these little keyrings :)

After lunch we left Ironbridge and headed back down to Birmingham …. and followed the smell of chocolate until we got to Cadbury World – yum!!  This was a treat from Mr Tesco, as we paid to get in with Clubcard vouchers, which continually rock my world as they pay for almost all our family days out (see below....)

It was as ever lots of fun – me and the two boys are hardened veterans but it was Jay’s first time.  The kids had green screen photos taken surfing on a bar of dairy milk and having a soak in the Flake bath, we saw the drumming gorilla, wrote our names in chocolate, went on the abracadabra ride, made our own melted choc concoctions in the Essence experience, played all the interactive games, had our tour around the factory, and of course, helped ourselves to lots of free choccy bars :)

All in all another fun day out.  I do love the weekends.

Some positives from the rest of the week:

- on Monday Connor moved his Xbox out of the front room and up to his bedroom. For the first time in years I actually get some time to myself in the front room of an evening – I even watched early evening telly the other day (carrying on this week’s chocolate theme, I watched Choccywoccydoodah :)  ) – this is unheard of as usually he’s either playing games on the telly or watching one of the kids channels.  I don’t let him spend too much time up there, mind, because I miss the company really :)

- on Tuesday we hit the mid point in our ‘100 goals in 1001 days’ family challenge and it was fun to have a round up of what we’ve achieved so far

- also on Tuesday, my Canadian blogging pal Carol went to the Vancouver stop of the Sketchbook Project and checked out my book - yay :D   She wrote a fantastic blog post about it which was a treat to wake up to on Wednesday morning.

- my new Tesco Clubcard statement arrived this week - and they have a special offer on for a limited time on a lot of their days out.  So I cashed in all our outstanding points and I now have tickets for the whole family for Longleat, Alton Towers, and the Eden Project, and also £55 worth of their generic "days out vouchers" which are accepted at lots of smaller attractions.  All for diddley squat.  Fantastic!

- on Thursday, a pressie in the post from another blog buddy (you’re a nice bunch out there aren’t you :) )– a strip of vintage bus tickets (can’t wait to use these in a collage or the like) and some Cyrillic language tape (ditto!) – thank you Sue!  Love the envelope too!

- and this morning, more goodness in the post - a free Derwent art bar.  No idea why they sent it to me as I don't remember asking for a free sample.  But I'm not complaining :)



And that’s it for this week.

I’m hoping to have some actual things-wot-I-have-made to show and tell before we get to next week’s RYWF post!  I’ve been a bit lazy and unproductive recently, lots of early nights tucked up with a book or an episode of Eureka, not so much burning of the midnight oil which is when I usually get the most done.  Must shake myself out of that….

But at least I got my Friday post done on time, huh? :)

Linking up at Virginia’s blog in 3….2….1…..