March Scavenger Hunt

Here is the March Scavenge. I've finished it! First time this year that I've actually completed something on the computer within the time limit! Thank you postcards from the pp for an imaginative list. It has been great fun trying to get it finished. An empty chair. This is our cosy kitchen chair and usually Puppy sits here waiting for Smaller to return from pre-school or the school run.

A ring. Us girl Beans like our cheap and tacky rings. I think I need a bit of hand cream...

A lion.

And a lamb. This is also the something which is the same age as me. Is this cheating? Peeling paint. A bit tricky to see. I have only just painted the hall ceiling, so to see the paint flaking is quite demoralising. Not enough for me to sort it out though...

Fancy gates. The gates themselves are a bit dull but the railings on either side are magnificent. SmallerBean and I bike past these every day and she loves the wolf and cockerel picked out in paint on each side. They are one of the set of gates into Jesus College.

Something green. Some of our ever increasing euphorbia.

A rainbow. At a certain time of day when the sun shines onto a mirrored photo frame in the sitting room, magical rainbows appear in the hall. Amazingly, the planets lined up this month for the scavenge.

A collection. This is a printers tray which has all our found treasure in it. A dried poppy head, old coins from the garden, stones and shells, a china dolls head, a couple of really old cigarette packets from under the floorboards, a piece of the Berlin Wall to name a few. SmallBean now has his own tray for the treasures he finds.

Something sentimental. SmallBeans first pair of proper shoes. Bad photo as you can't quite tell just how diddy they are. They measure 13cm long.

So there we go. March. Gone. One quarter of the year has vanished in what seems like four and a half weeks. Looking foward to the April hunt. Hope it will be filled with eggs, chocolate and bunnies.

Jewellers of the future

At Smaller's pre-school I decided to run a little competition to see if there were any budding designers out there.

The children were asked to design a necklace for their mumma and a winner would be chosen. The winner would have their design made into a real life wearable piece of jewellery to give to his or her mummy on Mothering Sunday.

The letters went out and I waited to see if anyone would actually take up the challenge. Then on Friday, the staff, or Lovely Ladies (as they are called in our house), chose a winner. Except they didn't. The pressure was to much for them and they went into the church office to ask Mrs Random to select a winner. And she chose...... Ellie's design.

I am truly grateful that she picked this winner as it did actually resemble a necklace. Quite a few of the drawings were quite, how shall we put it, obscure? Abstract? Imaginative?...

Here is Ellie's design.

Isn't it fantastic? Now I would never put those colours together but quite frankly, I think they look stunning. Hasn't Ellie got a great eye for colour?

Now, I did say on the letter that the winning design would be my best interpretation of the drawing. But Ellie's drawing was really quite straightforward. I chose some teeny tiny peridot discs, some larger rounded amazonite nuggets and some dark, dark blue round freshwater pearls. I hooked them on in a random but not order and it looks like this

...what do you think? A passable representation? Personally, I think it is very pretty. I hope Ellie's mumma thinks so too. I'm giving it to her tomorrow. And I might sign Ellie up to help me when I get stuck choosing colours.

Free

Down the road there is a house (some people on our street call it Boo Radley's House) with a very big and exceedingly overgrown garden.

Biking back from pre-school, Smaller and I saw that the cherry tree in the front garden Boo's House was being dramatically pruned and there were loads of smalll branches lying on the pavement with hundreds of blossom buds about to burst open.

Me (to bemused tree surgeon chopper man): 'Are those branches being binned? Please could I take one if they are as the buds are just about to open?'

Bemused tree surgeon chopper man (wildly looking round for Beadle style camera and presenter): 'Er, yes. Do you want me to chop them up a bit?'

Me: 'No, they're fine like that. Thank you.' And off we go with branch precariously balanced on bike basket.

And here they are.

Free.

And making my sitting room look much better than an hour before.