Rocking Your World Friday week 24

Week 24?  Gosh, we’re almost half way through the year!! Time is as ever flying by shockingly fast.

And on that note, the first thing I am grateful for this week is these RYWF posts … It’s so easy to get to the end of a year, and think “what did we do this year???” and forget half of it.  I am really looking forward to sitting down (with a bottle of Magners, because I don’t really do the wine thing) on New Years Eve and re-reading all of these posts and re-remembering what a brilliant time we have had.

So – where were we?

Work last week was crazy busy, so for once I was grateful of a client meeting in London last Friday, just because it got me out of the office for the day.  The meeting was up on Oxford Street and there were still union jacks everywhere from the jubilee celebrations, it looked nice and festive.  Oh and right next door to where we had our meeting there was a little kiosk selling the BEST cookies ever.  So that was a nice change of a day.

On Saturday I spent most of the day making pom poms for international yarn bombing day – it’s very relaxing, pom pom making, I can recommend it to anyone :)  Here’s the full story

Sunday brought the highlight of my week – in fact one of the highlights of my year.

But before we get to that, can I just say that I want to chuck out a big chunk of gratitude to one thing – the WEATHER.

Yes, I know you will now all think I’m mad, as it feels like it has rained non stop for weeks.  BUT there hasn’t been a single thing that we have planned so far this year that has been ruined by bad weather.  We’ve been so lucky.  Yes there have been plenty of wet days, but these have been the days we planned to be mainly indoors anyway, so it didn’t matter.  So thank you to the weather by rocking my world by always playing nice when we’ve need it to.

So yes, Sunday was a case in point.  Because that was the day we went to the Download rock festival.  Thursday and Friday at Download had, by all accounts, been awful, constant rain, ankle deep liquid mud, it quickly picked up a new nickname:

Saturday the rain stopped, but apparently that just turned the liquid mud into something akin to quicksand and people were getting stuck in it left right and centre, and worse, injured : (

But Sunday?  Our day?  The mud was all dried up, and it was glorious sunshine all day!  I don’t know which one of the pantheon of ancient gods I have appeased, but I’m grateful for the personal good weather service :)

We had a FANTASTIC day – so many great bands to see!  The only disappointment for me was that I missed the Dropkick Murphys set as it clashed with Soundgarden :( But as I’ve seen the Dropkicks countless times before and have never seen Soundgarden, Chris Cornell & co won that clash hands down for me (Jay went to see the Dropkicks though, so at least one of us saw them)

The bands I DID get to see were:

(deep breath)

• DevilDriver
• We Are The Ocean
• August Burns Red (we had never heard of these before but they were excellent)
• Anthrax (I've been following this lot for, ahem, almost 30 years (god I’m so old) and I still love them in general, and the wonderful Scott Ian in particular, to bits)

• Shadows Fall (BEST dreadlocks eva!)

• Black Label Society (only watched one song)
• Sebastian Bach (screechy awful noise, watched less than one song)
• Lamb Of God (who I enjoyed a LOT, more than I thought I would)

• Shinedown (who were really good although one of my friends thinks the singer was miming….)
• Refused (Swedish dork-punks, excellent)
• The mighty mighty Soundgarden (no relation to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones :) ) – Soundgarden were the main reason I was there and they definitely didn’t disappoint.  CC was in fine voice and they played a great set.

• Rise Against - only saw half their set which was a pity but we have seen them a few times in recent years, ......

.....  and we didn’t want to miss any of…..

• BLACK SABBATH – the headliners.  Who, sacriligeous as it is, I wasn’t overly fussed about seeing until a week or two before the gig when it kind of hit me that I was going to see Black Freaking Sabbath!!! :D  Pretty much without whom, none of the other music I love would have ever existed.

Ozzy might be 63 but he can still jump! :)

All in all a great day soaking up the sunshine and world class live music in equal measures

(NB all the live pics above are half inched from the festival's website, I didn't get that close! :) )

On Monday I was grateful for the ability to work from home, as I was really not feeling up to the trek to the office after about 3 hours sleep and the long drive home.  So let's hear it for technology!

On Tuesday I had a loooong day as had to drive back up to the East Midlands for a client meeting late in the afternoon in Nottingham which meant getting home late.  That's not such a good thing, but the mileage I can claim back on expenses is :)

"most played" on my phone

I spent the evening updating the music on my phone - as my new (ish) phone has a whopping 16 Gb storage, yet I have just been listening to the same old same old stuff that I could fit onto my old 4 Gb SD card.  Download (along with one of my fellow circle journal artists reminding me how fab the first Disturbed album was) gave me the push I needed to get around to taking advantage of all that extra space, and fill up my phone with TONS of great music.

I've been pretty much permanently attached to it ever since - even walking around in town with my headphones in which I haven't done in years, I'd forgotten how surreal that is - like you are in a movie and you can hear the soundtrack playing :)

And, just to top off this particularly Rockin' week, on Thursday we booked our tickets for this November's Warped festival at Ally Pally:

This will be the kids' first proper festival, and with a great line up (Lost Prophets, Bring Me The Horizon, Less Than Jake, Funeral For A Friend, Bowling For Soup, New Found Glory, and loads of other bands) plus the skateboard competitions and crazy golf etc, it should be a lot of fun for the whole family.

|m|      :)

So I'd better rock on over to Virginia's blog (see what I did there? ;) ) and link this post up......

Feel free to come and join us and share some rockin' moments of your own.....

Index Card A Day week 2

Will you just look at the tatty wall - coming along nicely isn't it!

So here are my cards from ICAD week 2:

Card #8 - 8th June - prompt: chaos

Card #9 - 9th June - in honour of International Yarnbombing Day

Card #10 - 10th June - prompt: stripes - done in the car on my lap on the way to the Download festival

Card #11 - 11th June - prompt: alphabet stamps - Ozzy, he's a national treasure

Card #12 - 12th June - prompt: suitcase

Card #13 - 13th June - prompt: decorate the corners / alphabet stamps again

Card #14 - 14th June - prompt: use all your blue art materials (plus it's song lyrics Thursday, so that's a line from Cochise by Audioslave)

More updates next week - I'm chuffed that I've managed to keep up with this every day so far!

Rocking Your World Friday double helpings - weeks 22 & 23

This is going to be a rather hurried post I am afraid as I've got two weeks to catch up on and about 25 minutes to do it in

How did my life get so insanely busy all of a sudden??

(and spending half of today making pom poms
didn't help :) )

So yes, sorry for the lack of a Rocking Your World post last week - things are so hectic at home that I usually write most of my blog posts at work in my lunch breaks. Trouble is, the last fortnight has been crazy at work too and lunch breaks appear to no longer exist.

So where were we.....?

When my last RYWF post left off we were in the middle of a heatwave

So my first grateful is for sufficiently hot weather that I actually wore an honest to goodness skirt!  For the first time since my holiday to Florida in 2010.  And for the first time in maybe 5 years on English soil.  So that's a pretty big deal :)

It was so hot that first weekend that on the Sunday we had to wait until about 4pm before it had cooled down enough to go out for a family geocaching expedition.  But that walk - by the canal near Marlborough - turned out to be fantastic and was well worth the wait, we didn't come home until almost 9pm.  We took the boys bikes and they had a great time too:

I didn't do an awful lot during the week as it was all work work work and sleep sleep sleep (with a bit of vegging in front of the TV in between....)

On the Friday I was grateful for having the office virtually to myself so I was able to listen to music while I worked - a very rare treat and it was wonderful - it makes the day go so much quicker!

Also on the Friday, as it was June 1st, I started Daisy Yellow's Index Card A Day - and I've been really enjoying it so far (see my blog post about my first week here), as it gives me the nudge to be creative every day, even when I don't necessarily feel like it, plus I get to spend some quality time with Connor as he is joining in too.  Here's one of his cards:

So that brings us to the second weekend - which of course was a bumper one as, thanks to her maj we all got an extra two days off work - wooohooooooooo!!!!!

On the Saturday we popped over to Stroud (or as I call it, Super Stroud Wonder Town because it's full of cool artistic hippies AND it's the world's first bee guardian town.  apparently) to meet up with my sis in law Annie, who lives in Barcelona, as she was making a brief visit back home.

It was lovely to see her and also to visit the Stroud farmers' market where they sell THE best doughnuts in the world.  I should have taken a photo.  Although to be fair they just look like doughnuts, so here's a googled photo of a different doughnut that looks very similar :) ---->

On the Sunday we went to Bristol for Upfest - the annual graffiti and street art festival.  We had the BEST time.  My middle son Darby, who is at Uni in Bristol, joined us too so that was an added bonus.

Here is just some of the amazing, inspiring artwork we saw that day:

There was so much more - loads more piccies here

And the highlight of the day for the boys was the kids graffiti workshop - they got to spend an hour learning how to use spray paints and working on their own masterpieces:

The only problem was that Connor managed to spray himself full in the face while changing a cap - oops!!! :D  I'm glad he had his specs on!!!

The next day we went down to Dorset for the day to see Jay's mum - as always we had a great day down there, and enjoyed taking Reg the dog for a walk along the beach.  Lulworth Cove is so beautiful, my ma in law is SO lucky to live there!

And the highlight of the visit for me was being let loose behind the till of Jay's ma's shop for a whole hour - I have ALWAYS wanted to work in a shop! :)  It was SO much fun (especially when it got really busy).  I want to work there every weekend!

in position behind my shop counter :)

And that's about all I have to report - we had a pretty chilled bank holiday Tuesday, and then it was back to work, so nothing much to write about for the rest of the week.

Phew!  That's me caught up :)

I'm off now to link this up over at head Rockette Virginia's blog, before she sends out a search party....

Keep on rockin' in the free world, people!

is it that time of year again???

I woke up this morning to the news, via Facebook, that today is International Yarn Bombing Day.

Blimey, that's come around quick!  It seems like only yesterday that we gave some local statues nose jobs.

I had hoped to do something big and exciting this year, but given I'd entirely forgotten it was today, I clearly hadn't done any prep - so I had to do something quick again.

And the only thing I can do quickly with wool is make pom poms - so it's pom poms again this year - maybe that can become my "thing" :)

So I made 9 big shaggy pom poms from my fancy yarn, and took them to the local park to hang them in a tree by the pond:

They aren't immediately obvious up there - for example there are three in this photo with me, but they don't leap out at you:

But I hope a few people will notice them as they stroll through the park, and that they will make them smile

I added a tag to the lowest hanging pom pom, just in case anyone was wondering why....

And here's a nice arty shot that Jay took to finish off :)

Maybe I'll be more prepared next year.....or maybe it will be pom poms again :)