Okay, I admit it, 2012 sucked on the blogging front. It has been one manic year!
Last year, I bought M a driving experience at Silverstone for his birthday, which he did in January.
Work is quite full on, I ran the Art Summer School program this year and I have ended up with the main responsibility for most of the GCSE art cohort.
On the family front, my little Sis got engaged on her birthday and June and married in October! That was a gargantuan project, the planning, dress choosing and fittings, the hen party planning (as Bridesmaid the hen party was my project). She was married at our local church, then the party was at Mum’s house round the corner. All very cosy, but the planning and the act of getting the house emptied, cleaned and decorated was a huge effort.
We also got a puppy this year; Jack joined us at Easter and is the most full-on, playful puppy I have ever met! Named after Captain Jack, he is also a pirate in that he will plunder and steal anything that takes his fancy, and can be quite destructive, so our living room is becoming quite minimalist!
He’s nearly eleven months now so he has the body of an adult dog, but the mentality of a little boy. He loves to race round the garden, and because of the amount of rain we’ve had this year, the garden is currently looking like a cow field. His favourite activities are digging, emptying plant pots and chewing the container, and splashing in what once was the water garden, but since he dragged the water lilies out of it, it has now become Jack’s play pond. Needless to say that there has not been much gardening this year. At some point soon we plan to fence off the main part of the garden to give it a chance to recover, so we’ll fill in the holes, replant the lawn and put in some more plants. Jack has had some health issues this year, and hasn’t had the chance to socialise very much, so we’ve only just been able to start puppy classes with him. I’ve trained him from the first day we had him, so he can sit, lay down, stay, leave, etc, etc, but he has a few *ahem* behavioural issues, especially when it comes to social situations. So we’re mostly taking him to classes to socialise him. We’ve also just found out where there’s a pack walk locally, so we’ll take him on Saturday morning and hopefully that will help him too.
My sis got me a Tiger experience for my Birthday last year, so we booked it for the summer and she came with me…
I also volunteered as normal at the Barefoot Festival…the highlight of my summer, where my friend and I go and help out at a dance festival
I also took an online course with the Open University this summer in Digital Imaging…I really wanted to learn to use Photoshop, so that took up a lot of my time!
We gave Jack his first outing in the caravan over the summer and took him to Glastonbury for a week. He enjoyed bouncing excitedly on us each morning when he woke up; morning puppy breath is not a great this to wake up to; neither is a sharp clawed big ole puppy foot in the stomach, or a tongue in the ear...
We also took him to the seaside for the day….Jack loves water!
Dance-wise, I am still belly dancing. Tribal and Egyptian/Turkish. Tribal is my first love, but I go to the cabaret classes for the social side of it as I have friends there who I wouldn't see otherwise. I’ve done quite a few haflas this year, and done some workshops too.
I redecorated my bedroom over the summer which has made a huge difference; we bought an overbed unit which has given us so much more storage space and I now have enough floor space to be able to do some yoga in my bedroom, which is great since puppy classes are on the same night as the yoga classes I normally go to, so I’ve had to put the yoga classes on hold for the time being. So I’m doing yoga at home now in the lovely yoga space. My cat’s quite often come and get in the way join me.
What crafty time I’ve had this year has been organising a Hippy swap on Craftster in the summer, I also did a Hobbit swap, I’ve made some presents and I’ve made costumes. I’ve also become ever so slightly addicted to sock knitting! I love those small portable projects. I have a couple of art journals on the go at the moment, a pair of red zockni’s on the needles, a couple of tribal costuming projects on the go.
For my birthday this year, not only did M buy me a Kindle Fire HD (which I love!!) but he also took me to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, which is where the films were filmed!
He also spoilt me with a new camera for Christmas, so I’m busy trying to figure out where everything is on that!
Will try to be a better blogger next year!!
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