Waitrose in Menai Bridge !!

A little bit of excitement on sleepy Anglesey, we have a new Waitrose supermarket opened up in Menai Bridge. Even though we don't enjoy shopping my daughter and I thought we'd go and give it the once over. The car park was busy as you'd expect, and no doubt the powers that be at Waitrose, thought someone directing the traffic there would be a good idea. WRONG ..... the only thing holding up the traffic, was the guy that was trying to guide people to parking spaces !! Maybe they should have thought of employing someone that could see over the tops of the cars, rather than someone who had to continually run up and down to see if there were any spaces ....dohhhh.

Once inside we started looking at prices ...OMG all branded items were at least 40p dearer than they are at the regular supermarkets. Even their own cheap brand was expensive, so it's back to good old Tesco's for us !! When we got to the checkouts, although friendly enough, the cashier was a little too sickly friendly if you know what I mean. I didn't really need to be told to check my change, or be told to have a good day or to be told to come back soon ...because I won't be lol.

Much to my surprise my daughter stuck her head round the door yesterday morning and asked if I wanted to go to Mona Car Boot ..did I ever !!! I got changed in record time and within 10 mins were off for some rummaging. How disappointing, only 2 rows of booters, my daughter kindly pointed out even if there were more booters, it was doubtful I'd have managed to walk round many more anyway :o( !! Still you never know what little treasure you might find. As it was the only things I bought was a keyboard for my pc and a couple of books. I was quite pleased with the keyboard, as I'd worn the letters off my one, but once I'd plugged it in I found out why it only cost me 50p !! It had some weird affliction which made it go up and down the pages all on its own lol. Being the frugal type person I am, I decided rather than just throw it away I'd pull off all the keys and put them on my old keyboard ...success !!!

So later on there I was happily surfing the net, when all of a sudden there was a bang and our electric went off. As the noise seemed to come from my daughters room I went to investigate. She confirmed that yes indeed something in her room had caused the bang. As our electric fuse box has one of those trip switches I foolishly thought I'd just have to flick the switch and normal service would be resumed. Wrong ... for some reason flicking the switch didn't work. While I was stood there wondering what to do next my daughter joined me, and we crouched down looking at the fuse box for inspiration as to what to do next. Then we made the biggest mistake of all we started randomly flicking switches up and down, completely forgetting to keep track on where they were in the first place. After 10 mins we were defeated, and as I didn't have a clue who to ring, I used the intercom system in all these bungalows. The guy that answered asked if I wanted him to ring Manweb on my behalf, not knowing any different my reply was ...If that's who has to be rung then yes please. About an hour later the Manweb man duly arrived, and with a few quick flicks he sorted out the fuse box and power was restored. As he was leaving he asked if the bungalow was council I said yes, and he told me that they weren't the ones that should have been called, apparently the council have their own emergencies contractors ...so I hope there's not going to be a bill land on the mat !! The one odd thing about the whole saga was, that I noticed when the switches are in the right place, the little indicator colour below the switch was red. Yet if you flicked it off then the indicator colour was green. Now to my mind that's the wrong way round surely ?

Anyway ramblings aside here's a couple of photo's I took yesterday.

Amazing recycling

Yesterday I spent some of my day surfing blogs, one I came across was written by a lady that worked at Proper Job I was so impressed by this website, and wondered why this kind of thing can't be implemented all over the UK, in particular on Anglesey ?

Time after time, after time, when I go to the one or the other of the local recycling centre's on Anglesey, I see perfectly good things thrown in the skips. It's complete madness, especially when there's so much unemployment, people just haven't got the money to spend on new things these days.

This kind of scheme would create a few jobs, and provide an excellent source of affordable items to the people of Anglesey, not least of all it would keep things out of the landfill sites !!

Peacocks and Daffodils

Spring must definitely be on it's way at long last, hedgerows in some of the little lanes we go down, have now got daffodils swaying in the breeze. In one of the lanes we go down some people keep peacocks, we keep popping down this lane in hopes that one of these days we'll see their tails up showing all their glorious colours. So far this year we haven't been lucky. But we took some photo's anyway.

It seems like my 13th grandchild is trying to make her way into the world, albeit very slowly as her mom has been having contractions for the past two days lol. I can't wait for her to arrive, so I can take loads of photo's of her !! My oldest daughter is on her way to visit today, to bring down a pram, car seat and some other bits and pieces, so it would be nice if the baby arrived while she was here.

Nothing days and slip ups

After being really busy, I seem to have had a couple of nothing days. In my world these are days where I don't actually get round to doing anything constructive !! These kind of days always seem to happen when I've got so many idea's buzzing round in my head, that I can't decide what to do next ...so I end up doing nothing lol. I did manage to sort out the room where a lot of my craft stuff is though, so something was achieved :o)

Yesterday afternoon we went to a small park type area in an industrial estate, that my daughter had mentioned last week. Much to my delight we spotted 3 squirrels running around. A perfect photo opportunity I thought, and we happily snapped away for well over half an hour. Once I got back home I downloaded the photo's and started going through them, I was very disappointed that none of them seemed to have their usual crispness. It wasn't until this morning when I happened to glance at my camera I realised what the problem was. The camera was on the wrong setting ...dohhhhh, how annoying. Mind you it's a good excuse to go back there again and take more photo's lol.

It looks like the suns coming out today, so hopefully I'll be able to get the rest of the plants I bought last week, unpacked and planted out.

I thought I'd share the squirrel photo's even though they aren't brilliant quality.

I need more hours in the day

I really do need more hours in the day, 24 is just NOT enough lol. This last few days I've been busy building a couple of blogs for other people. The first was a blog to showcase a friends greenwood carving workshops, she is going self employed and needs a blog to show off what she can offer. Her plan is to do festivals, fete's and any community days, it appears to be popular as she's already got some bookings. Here's a link to her blog http://thewoodcraftscrew.blogspot.com/ The second blog was for Bryn another person who is going self employed, Bryn provides training and support for anyone who is dealing with their own or another’s anger and also stress management. He is currently working with some children at a Holyhead school and is very pleased by their commitment to his program. Here's the link to his blog, if you click on the tab called information there's some free downloads and a free online anger test both are very interesting http://welshassociationofangermanagement.blogspot.com/ Please feel free to pass their blogs on to anyone you think may find them interesting or might like to use their services. As if these two blogs weren't enough, I've also started to design myself another one too, I've decided I need a separate blog with my arts and crafts on, as they are getting lost in amongst my waffles on here. I'll also be putting some of my work on one of the craft selling sites and doing direct links to that too. I'm quite excited about this, especially as I've got a new project in the pipeline, which I think is going to be very popular.

Sunday saw my daughter and I off on a wander in the car as my mothers day treat....my perfect present :o) First we headed off to Pwllheli to a little part of a huge beach called Gimlet Rock. Here I managed to find some small bits of driftwood something that is sadly lacking on Anglesey. I was also on the look out for some interesting but bigger bits of wood for my garden. On our way to Black Rock Sands in Porthmadog, one of the few beaches I know where you can drive your car onto the beach, we saw loads of pieces of wood but the lanes were so narrow there was nowhere to park !!! As there was a bit of a breeze that day I hoped there might be some kite surfers around for me to photograph. But as luck would have it, the tide was out and there were some wind buggy's flying around the beach too, also one lone guy having a go at kite boarding. The kite buggy's look like amazing fun and was I younger and a lot fitter, I'd love to have a go at this. On the way home we were still scouring for wood for the garden, my daughter screeched to a halt and started reversing, she'd spotted something she thought I might like out of the corner of her eye. Not quite what I was looking for but just as good, some dead ivy roots had fallen off a tree, I do love these twisted gnarled pieces of wood, they look so lovely hanging up with some crystals or gem stones attached to them.

My waffles seem to be getting longer and longer, to anyone that's made it this far ....... well done lol !! If anyone fancies saying hello, just click on the comments link just below the bottom of each entry, you don't have to have a blog yourself and can even be anonymous if you like :o)

Yet another busy week

Yet another busy week again !! A week today my friend Bee and her son came down from Liverpool again, bringing with her another friend Ricky and his son. Bee is convinced that she's lived on Anglesey in a previous life, as she feels so drawn to here.

Sunday I had a rare treat, my daughter and I went off to Mona car boot. Considering how lovely and sunny it was, I was surprised how few car booters there were. But I still managed to get a couple of bargains, from there it was off to Tregarth to pick up some much needed flower pots off a Freecycler. Everything was looking good, and we headed back home to carry on starting to sort out our new garden.

Then disaster struck !!! The front of my daughters exhaust fell apart, we managed to get the car into a quiet side road, the exhaust dragging noisily on the road. We knew that somehow we'd have to get the back end of the exhaust up off floor to get home, otherwise it might have pulled the whole thing off. Realising we had nothing suitable to hold it up, my daughter headed off to see a friend of ours Mike, who was working close by. Thank god for men who've got bits of wire handy !! Mike gamely got under the car and with a little help from us, he got the exhaust up off the road, so we could get home, albeit sounding like a tank !!

We knew another friend Coral was due to visit in her van in the next day or so, we hoped that she'd be able to tow the car to the garage we use. Coral arrived on the Monday and we decided that maybe it would be safer all round if my daughter drove her car to garage, with me and Coral following closely behind incase the wire broke or any other disaster happened. It didn't thank god !!

Early Tuesday morning, saw Coral and I heading up the A55 towards Valley to do a car boot with the last remaining things from Corals cottage she'd just given up, to live in her van. Once there we were shown where to park up, it must have been the coldest spot in the whole car boot. While all the other booters were bathed in the warm sun, our van and a guy next next to us sat in the freezing cold, with no hope of the sun moving round to warm our chilly bones. But we soldiered on and by the end of it pretty much most of Corals stuff was gone. The rest we intended to drop off at the tip on the way home.

Once we got back and we'd managed to thaw out, (which took some doing I can tell you ) I got a nice vegetarian stew and dumplings on the go. While that bubbled gently away, I started working on doing a blog for Coral, to showcase her greenwood carving workshops etc, which is part of her action plan to become self employed.

Wednesday dawned and knowing that Coral had to leave that night, to get home for an important appointment, we knew that this would be the last day we'd have a lift to get to the somewhat remote garage my daughters car was in. So we decided to go and check and see if any progress had been made on it, just as we pulled into the garage my daughters phone rang, it was the mechanic to say her car was ready ...good timing or what lol !! As always we were short of cash so were dreading how much it was going to cost, so we were delighted when we were told it'd only be £10, how many mechanics would weld an exhaust back together for that much ...not many I can tell you !!!

Next on the agenda was to drop my daughters car back home, and for us to go and pick up things needed to start getting Corals van sorted out for her to live in it. As we needed some wood, we thought it was worth going to the local tip and see if we could get any there. Our luck was in and we managed to get some, we also got the last post we'd need to put our fence up in the garden, a new set of car mats for my daughters car and a glass topped garden table to replace the plastic monstrosity we had. We'd have got loads more stuff, but the guy at the tip was getting a bit jittery saying that we were being watched by cctv !! In this day and age when most councils are trying to keep as much stuff out of the landfills as possible, it seems ridiculous to me that we can't recycle some of the very useful stuff people throw away ...bureaucracy gone mad I call it !!! Anyway ... the next thing to do was get everything out of Corals van so we could lay some carpet on the floor and believe it or not some on the roof too, hopefully this will insulate the van a bit on cold nights. Once we'd done as much as we could, it was off to the beach for sunset as Coral wanted some decent photo's of herself for her blog and also some fun poi pictures. I was quite pleased with the end results, what do you think ? All bar the 4th photo down are of my daughter though lol.

One of those times

There have been quite a few times in my life, when I have suddenly realised that I feel truly happy and content with my life. This is one of those times, I wake up looking forward to the day and whatever it brings. I might not have the latest flat screen tv, a posh car parked outside or any of the other material possession that seem to mean so much to other people, what I do have is, peace of mind, and that to me is priceless....

As we were driving along the A4080 at the weekend, my friend that came to visit remarked that at some point, there must have been sea covering a lot of this area to produce the many sand dunes. This got me thinking, as the sand dunes cover quite a large area away from the sea, and I couldn't imagine the sea coming that far inland. By pure chance I happened to stop and read the information board at Newborough forest, where we take out dog for his daily walk quite often. How surprised was I, when I read that 700 years ago this area was hit by storms that actually engulfed a cottage and it was buried in sand. When I got home I decided to try and find out more about these storms. Much to my surprise I found out that in the winter of 1320, and over 211 acres was hit by a series of such violent storms that 11 cottages were buried under sand dunes, some of the ruins can still be found in Newborough forest now. So maybe there's a link between the sand dunes we saw and the effects of these violent storms ?