Giveaway Winner

So, Horsey, I said. You know this giveaway on my blog?

What? he said. And I could see that he was busy; conflicted, in fact, trying to choose between watching The Politics Show, The Olympics or the Sunday morning repeat of Ice Road Truckers. Oh, you mean the free gifts you have to give out, he continued

No, Horsey, I said (smiling sweetly through gritted teeth because I knew that I wanted his help; and I could see that he knew that I knew that he knew that I wanted..you get the idea). It's a nice thank you for the readers and now we have to choose a winner.

How are you going to do that, then? He had brightened at that.

Well, I said, you can use a Random Number Generator to-

A RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR? You can't do that! It has to be illegal, he spluttered, you can't go round making new numbers when the ones we've already got are confusing enough at the best of times.

That's why we are going to pick a name out of the hat. Your hat, I interrupted quickly.

And, after a couple of false starts, that's what we did. I did catch him trying to pick like this:

Then he agreed to do it properly (wearing his Ice Road Truckers hat)  but he came up with this:

Finally, we had a winner:

So, Jennifer (who posted at 21.19 on 23rd February), Congratulations! Please drop me an email with your address so that I can get your book in the post. And thanks again, everyone. I really treasure every comment you make and every story you tell. I'll be doing a book giveaway again, I think. Clearly my librarian genes are calling me home. Happy Sunday!

A Confection Of Pink Perfection

Once there was a little girl who loved pink. She loved pink so much that she couldn't stop herself from cutting pink pictures out of magazines. She cut them out and she stuck them in a book of her own design and called it Think Pink and that was good. (There was one thing, though. She had the face of a little, brunette angel; but she liked to talk in really quite a gruff voice, so that when she said pink, it sounded a lot like punk. But her Mum thought that was just fine, because then they could both love The Ramones. So that was good, too.)

Now, this little girl was about to turn 3; and she knew that becoming 3 meant that she might have a party. She knew about parties. She had even been to a few; the most memorable of which was probably her big brother's trip-to-the-museum party. That had been a bit wild and free and, well, loud, really. And if your parents needed a lie-down in a darkened room when they came home, then where was the fun in that? Besides, she was waiting to start Nursery school so could make lots of friends of her very own. Then a party would seem like a plan. For now she wanted something quiet and Small One-ish.

So she turned to her favourite ally in smallness: The Best Auntie In The World and Best Auntie said she had just the idea. Which was right. She brought The Small One a perfectly pink party packed in a panier (okay, basket). Pink drink, pink balloons, pink cupcakes. A confection of pink perfection. So that being 3 was Very Good Indeed.

Don't forget the Giveaway is still open here! I have been very moved, and not a little humbled, by all of your generous, kind, loving comments. In fact, I don't really know what to say apart from thank you. You're the best!

Today i'm Loving A Collection A Day How clever is this?

A Little Housekeeping And a Giveaway

I can hardly believe it: I've been blogging for very nearly 4 months; and I'm coming up to my 60th post. So, I thought it might be time for a little housekeeping. I've freshened up the colours for spring; and I've been working to fill my sidebar with good places to go. I thought I would add some tags, too. Are they a good thing, do you think? Do you ever use them to find out what has been happening on a blog in the past?

Actually, I'm full of questions today. Tagging has made me think about the different kinds of posts I've been doing- ones with layouts, ones with silly stories, nostalgic ones, funny ones- and I would really, really like to know which you enjoy. So, I've come up with a Spring Cleaning Giveaway. If you leave me a comment telling me what you would like to see less of, more of, or none of, I'll put your name in a hat (yes, you've guessed whose hat, if I can prise it off his furry little head ) and draw a winner to receive a copy of:

Blogging For Bliss. International entries are welcome- and, please, if you read but you think commenting isn't really your thing: Blow your cover. Just this once! Say hello. Tell me what you think. You've got until midnight on Saturday.

Unseasonal In Parts

This morning we woke to a soft covering of snow. It's falling still, so we'll stay inside today with soup and scrapbooking. A Sunday filled with cooking and creating is always a good one.

How I wish now I had saved some of the berries we gathered one Sunday last September. I could bake a blackberry and apple pie. I took photos, though, and made this page:

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace

As I have seen in one autumnal face

comes from John Donne's  Autumnal; and actually doesn't really fit here at all, because it's a poem about maturity, I think, and not all of the lines are complimentary. The face in my autumn photo is a young and lovely one; but I'm still using the phrase I found and admired. And if The Small One finds this page and flips it over and discovers more of Donne's fine words- maybe years from now-  I'll consider it a job well done. A scrapbook page worth making.

Inspiration Station

Where do you go when you want a bit of inspiration? Any blogs or books you love to turn to? This week I have been looking at:

• This post by Lobster and Swan. I love this blog for its visual delights and I was inspired by her lovely yellow and blue photos. They made me realise that The Small One and I have been working a bit of a yellow and blue look ourselves. It started with a coat I bought on the autumn, then we moved on from shirts and scarves to necklaces and macs; and now we're looking ahead to summer with some harebell coloured plimsolls. One size fits all in this house; so she doesn't know it yet, but oh yes they will be mine.

• This book which is full of stunning photographs and wonderful blogs

• This girl. Stephanie Howell's pages continue to delight me. This month I loved one of her gallery creations for Studio Calico so much that I lifted it completely. This is her design flipped slightly to fit my photo. I wanted to do it because the photo just fits.

Today I'm Loving...this article to help with bloggers block. See what you think!

Cowboy, Take Me Away

(or, Better Late Than Never)

I think a fair number of you have already made the acquaintance of Horsey, the Sheriff Hobby Horse who believes he can rule the world. He popped up here and, against my better judgement, he is allowed a word or two if I'm running low. So I knew he had his fans. Even The Sheriff himself was unprepared for his Valentine's Day surprise, though. A bit of gentle blog reading turned into a riot when I clicked here. I called Horsey; he looked over my shoulder and then slid to the floor with a gentle thud. But he rallied quickly. He looked a little flushed, I thought, as he asked if the "googler" was working. He had things to check, he said. Stuff to do. People to see. And then he hopped off to Marks and Spencers. Under cover. In his false beard. Two fire alarms and a nasty incident in the linen cupboard later, and he said he was ready for his close-up.

As if his head wasn't big enough already.

With thanks to Deb, who made  this post entirely possible.

Bury My Heart Under The Tree

For Valentines Day: a little heart I love

It's part of a clay pipe and we found it in our garden. When we moved in, we knew that our house had been built on a car park and we were prepared for the ground to be hard and the gardening to be slow work. But before the car park there was a big garden belonging to a Victorian house and slowly, slowly we have been pulling from the ground the little treasures left behind. We have quite a collection now and we quite often find a new bit to add to the tray I keep on the hall table:

The big house, I discovered, was built on what used to be known as Pleasure-House Hill; which sounds more racy than romantic, I thought at first. But I've done a bit of research and really a pleasure house is simply a summer house, a gazebo. I looked to see what I could find out about the pipes, too. It seems they were made here in town in Pipe Lane with clay brought from Devon in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were very cheap and very fragile and a hardened smoker could go through four a week. I wonder, was the one we found a Valentines special? I'd love to know.

Today I'm Loving..Rebecca Sower's handmade hearts. A little bit of love is a really good thing, don't you think?

Half Term Hurrah

"Urgent news about slugs," announced The Accountant, sticking his head round the door and then disappearing again.

"He'll be back," said The Small one, coolly turning the page in her copy of How It Works magazine.
"He knows he can't take them all on his own."

Which is true. Turns out, he'd just discovered that garden slugs can live for 3 years. Who knew? I didn't. But now I realise why we're having trouble getting rid of them. Any ideas would be very much appreciated. They ate a (very) big hole in our attempts at growing our own vegetables last summer and it really wasn't funny. So if we don't make it to Ikea at the weekend, you know where to find us. In the garden. Shoring up our defences.

I've finished my page about Sunday's post and here it is:

The envelope holds a copy of the letter and the text from my blog post. The design is based on one by Celine Navarro, found at Studio Calico

Today I'm Loving...How It Works magazine. Amazing photography, so much detail. Fabulous for budding scientists. But what sold it to me? It has a history section as well. Perfect.

Ah, Spring

Mmm, Spring really is coming I think. I found cricket whites in the ironing pile yesterday; the mornings are a little brighter; and it feels like love is in the air here at High In The Sky. Valentines Day is just around the corner and we're all feeling the effects.

If, for example, you are an eleven year old girl, you might notice certain boys trying to draw attention to themselves with desperate acts of derring-do. Like going out onto a school fire escape and putting a fist through a window (showering you with glass), just so you'd notice. This one resulted in The Small One coming home with a bandaged wrist (no glass near her face, luckily); and the boy in question going home with, ahem, a detention slip.

If you are a fifteen year old boy, you might notice a vigorous increase in the number of mobile phone calls and texts you receive of an evening. Time will tell. The school choir is running a delivery service for singing Valentine telegrams on Thursday.

And me? My Valentine has on offer the biggest treat he can possibly think of. A trip to Ikea on Sunday afternoon. Oh yes. He certainly does know how to show a girl a good time. I'm not too downhearted, though. Because you know as well as I do by now that thinking about flatpacks always puts a certain spring in his step...

I do have a Spring page to show you. It's one I did last year (it was published in Scrapbook Inspirations); but I wanted to post it because it shows the dollshouse Grandpa made. The photo was taken nearly thirty five years ago..and the dollshouse is now nearly seventy five, I think. I have loved every single one of your wonderful Grandpa comments, and especially your own stories of special Grandads of your own. Thank you.

It's In The Genes, Grandpa

Grandpa would have been a brilliant blogger. True, it's hard to know where he would have found the time (he built bookcases and dollshouses, he entered competitions, he won everything from a car to a coffee table); but he would have loved it. He wrote whenever he could. When I went to London on my first-trip-away-from-home he sent a poem to keep me company. When I started a family magazine he was an enthusiastic subscriber and contributor. And when I won a school poetry competition he made me feel as if I'd scored a Nobel Prize. At roughly the age I am now he looked like this:

which is about as handsome a Grandpa as any girl could wish for. We all change, of course, because on the day I really want to tell you about I looked like this:

and together we looked a little like this:

It was a fine summer's day. My first birthday, in fact, and Grandpa had taken me out for a walk in my pram. Just the two of us. I expect he was chatting or singing when suddenly his foot hit something and he bent down and picked it up. It was an old coin; and he put it in his pocket as we went on our way. But when he got home he took out that coin and he sat down and he wrote this:

I came across it again the other day when I was looking for something else. Perhaps that's why I scrapbook. That need to pin down a moment? I think I was born with it.

It's The little Things

I've been coming across a few posts like this one lately. And I like the idea a lot. It's sort of the opposite of sweating the small stuff. It's about choosing to celebrate small successes instead of  searching for big ones. It's about quiet satisfaction with the little things in life. And that has to be good. I'll let you have my list of small successes in a minute, after I have a think about what the rest of the family might say if they were around and I could ask them.

The Tall One might say facing down the bowling machine at cricket or (possibly) making it into the house every day this week without my sister saying 'ooh your blazer smells of girls'.'Which is what she did last week
The Small One might say chipping a hole in my giant gobstopper  or (more likely) most of my successes are quite big actually. But thank you for asking.
Horsey did say oh, oh. I made it onto your blog again and you said that wouldn't happen for a very long time. Then he hopped off, whistling what sounded to me like "They're going to put me in the movies".

And me? I discovered that I could find the reset button on the central heating myself and that it was quicker and easier than hunting out a thermal vest; and I finished up the remains of my Studio Calico kit before the next one arrives. The little photos in the second page are printed with the Pogo Printer I got for Christmas. If you print small, bad photos don't look so bad. Really.

Oh, and to answer questions from my last post: the retro boy sticker is by October Afternoon (Report Card) and the tall red thing in The Tall One's room is for boxing against. It's better than aiming for your sister. Less hassle.

Leaning Out Of Heaven with A Telescope

Today's post is dedicated to Amy and Alexa who wondered (after Sunday) how I kept an eye on the oven from high in the sky. An excellent question. I have to say that, in truth, the only way to do this is to delegate. I have to hang over the bannisters and shout "I need a volunteer to keep an eye on the oven." It's been known to work. Every time I look down I'm reminded of a wonderful phrase from this book

in which Captain Kewley imagines his great-grandfather "leaning out of heaven with a telescope." I love the notion of that. It's a retirement activity tailor-made for my late, great Father-In-Law, The Dean, I always think.

I thought you might like to see what I see when I lean out of my heaven. So, if I call and The Tall One, say, decides to listen, he comes out of the kitchen, down the hall:

and up the first flight. On the landing he might very well pass a pile of boxes:

because when The Accountant isn't rocking a calculator he likes to build flat packs. Up the next set of stairs and The Tall One might stop off in his room to pick up his ipod; and the view on the way back out looks like this:

I keep meaning to buy a "Keep Calm And Carry On" poster for this point. It would be perfect. Up the final flight and as he reaches the top he stops for breath beside my old poster which I liberated from the wall of the Students Union many, many years ago:

Through the door and here we are. High In the Sky. The cropped-to-hide-the-mess version. The Lloyd Cole poster used to hang in exactly the same place above my desk in the Student Halls of residence when I was 19. It's the first present The Accountant ever bought me; and when we moved here he had it framed as a surprise. What do you think?  I'm sure Lloyd is always worth the climb. But I think I'm the only one.