Half term happiness

So it’s half term here! Yay! A whole week to catch up with work, to sleep in till 7.30, to clean house, walk the dog and to swear at my pc for it’s temperamentalness! Aaah, the life of the teacher huh! I know you guys are all jealous of us teachers and our long holidays! No really, you are, aren’t you? Soooo.what have I been doing the last couple of days? Well, you know M and I went skating on Saturday? Well, our nearest rink is in MK a town or two over thataway…it’s a nice ole drive, especially when the sky is blue and the fields and clouds are matching fluffy white!

Now, I haven’t been skating for years, but it’s amazing how it all comes back to you. After the first smack down, bum on the ice, I quickly remembered the old fancy footwork and I was away! Okay, here I look like I’m just standing still, but I was actually just gliding to the side of the rink to say hello to M, who was sitting this turn out. Poor old M, if he can’t be Torville n Dean straight away, he has real problems maintaining his interest. It’s the ADD in him!

The rink is one that the ice hockey team use so it’s quite big. I enjoyed the bit where they turned all the lights down and just had the disco lights!

I have a whole ton of chocolate orange hot chocolate that’s out of date, and I mean ooops, maybe a year and a half out of date, so I’ve been using it to make sugar scrub with. Sugar scrub is lovely on your skin and smells so yummy with the chocolate orange. It’s so easy to make, I always have a tub of it in the bathroom. I mix granulated sugar with a little coarse brown sugar, some olive oil, the hot chocolate mix and some orange essential oils. You rub it over your skin in the bath and hey presto; the sugar acts as an exfoliate and the oils act as a moisturiser and Wow your skins feels lovely afterwards. Try it for yourself if you don’t believe me..

Okay so I admit it, it’s not been aaalll work for the last day or two! Yeah, I did an assignment yesterday and I’ve been looking over the scheme of work for the new course I’ll be teaching after half term. Yikes, what was I thinking?! Two semesters of problem teens. Hmmm. Oh well, no going back now. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ve also cracked open the seal of my new Wii game ‘Fitness Coach’. Yeah, not much of a game, but more of a lets get my arse up off the computer chair and lose some of that stuff that wibbles so well when I’m shimmying! I’ve done some each morning so far. Okay, so for two mornings. You can choose whether you do cardio or yoga or core training, stuff like that.You can also change the setting of the workout area with the option for more settings as you get further into the game. Also you can choose the music from a range of styles although I’ve done the eighties and the hip-hop and they didn’t sound that different. You can also change the time that you work out for, from 15 mins upwards, so I’ve done 15mins of a few different ones so far; cardio, flexibility, core and yoga. I’ve done 75mins training yesterday and today. I think it works well if you’re familiar with the moves before hand. I don’t think it explains things so well but I haven’t done the tutorials. Also some of the yoga terms are different to the English ones that I’m familiar with and I had to keep checking the screen cos the verbal commands weren’t descriptive enough. *lol* Hopefully I’ll be able to turn the music up a little too. You can also tell it what fitness equipment you already own like a step, or a Pilates ball and it builds it into your workout. Yeah, I’m quite enjoying it so far! Craftwise, I’ve made a donut pendant using these lovely green lustre beads I found at my local craft superstore at the weekend when I went there with my Mum. The blue beads were salvaged from a necklace and bracelet set that Mum passed onto me ages ago. I think they go really well together, the blue beads really pick out the blue in the lustre glaze, and I can wear them long or short as a choker.

Aaand I’ve been making candles. I love scented candles but I’d pretty much run out, so I got the old moulds and wax out and made a new batch. Plus when I went craft shopping with Mum on Sunday I bought some new rose wax fragrance. The house smells lovely now. 

These thick pillar candles look lovely when they’re burning down; they glow in the middle for quite a while, but I use the proper thickness wick for the size of the candles, so they do burn down evenly and not just in the middle where the wax then floods the flame and it goes out, like you get with cheap pound shop candles. Yup, I’m a candle snob!

The round dimples in the red and yellow candle were made by whacking it with my small jewellery hammer. Very satisfying I can tell you! The star shaped one burns down really nicely leaving points standing up round the flame like Stonehenge or something.

And I haven’t been neglecting my knitting. No siree! I’ve been up late night horror film watching; the remake of Halloween’s been on here, so I’ve had my headphones and my super long lead and I’ve been knitting in bed whilst M’s been sleeping cos some of us still have to work! (Hee hee!) The remake’s version of the young Michael is so chilling because the kid they use is kinda cute and it’s hard to think that he could be a psychopath. Well, actually, I know it’s not impossible; I’ve worked with psychopaths and sociopaths in the past, so I do know that sometimes terrifying things come in nice packages. Anyway, I digress. I was telling you about my knitting. Ta da! Look, my BPT hoodie nearly has an arm. Yay! And look, the cables join up under the arm and carry on down. I had to wait a little whilst I waited for these bad boy DPN’s to arrive. They’re those quill needles and are kinda flexible. Not as much as I’d expected, but maybe the thinner sock ones are more bendy.

Tomorrow the plan is to henna my hair, to dance a little, to do a little work; hey, there is no plan really. I’ll just see how the day shapes up. I find that the best laid plans of mice n men, you know how it goes! Have a good one, whatever you decide to do!