Saturdays Ramblings and Handmade Presents

Well I am pleased to report that my handmade birthday card I spoke about yesterday went down a storm and was really appreciated.  He was really impressed (LOL – possibly not with the quality) as I had gone to a lot of trouble with it - I had made a pop-up card and also searched for pictures of his favourite things to put on the front of the card.  I was so relieved by his reaction as I was dreading him opening it.  Isn’t that silly but then I suppose I have inbuilt conditioning that if I haven’t paid for something then it is worthless.  Just goes to show that money isn’t everything. 

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I am sure that if we all went back to buying or making small thought-out presents for birthdays and Christmas then they would be appreciated much more than buying the really expensive presents we all feel compelled to buy these days.  Actually I think we in England should think of buying unique handmade items for presents a lot more, as they make such better presents than something we buy from a shop that the receiver either already has or doesn’t really want otherwise they would have already bought it themselves.

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I must hold my hands up and admit that I have never really thought of buying unique handmade presents before either.  I think I have just followed the trend and trailed the shops like everyone else.  Although I have always made jewellery and I know people buy it for presents as well as themselves I just hadn’t thought of trying to find handmade items for sale for presents myself.  Most probably this is because here in England we just don’t know about websites that sell handmade items.  It is much more popular in the US but I think we definitely need to hope it catches on here too.  We have craft markets but that is about all really.  So this year I will definitely buy handmade – LOL, then the receiver can’t take it back to the shop and change it for what they prefer.

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We have another lovely sunny day here in England so I am sure we will be breaking all the October records.  I heard yesterday that we had had the warmest September temperatures for 100 years.  I wouldn’t mind but I can’t say we actually had any summer weather in the summer as it was more like a permanent spring.  In April we had some hot weather and now in September but not much in the actual summer itself.  I would think it was getting warmer here to become more moderate all year round as the winters have been a lot milder too.  But then last years winter blew that idea out of the window as it was really cold and snowy which broke other records for being the coldest since the 1960’s I think it was.  England always has really strange weather which is why the English talk about the weather so much but over the last few years it has been stranger than ever.  It’s only about a month until Guy Fawkes night and when I was young, and even when my children were young, we used to have to dress up in really warm clothes – hats, gloves, scarve and, mulit-layers as well as thick coats and fur lined boots etc. just to be able to endure standing around watching the fireworks.  Nowadays it is just a case of putting a thick jacket on.  The way this year is going at the moment no-one will even be bothering wearing a coat at all.

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We went out for a lovely Indian meal with some great friends last night at a restaurant we like which isn’t too far away.  We came back feeling so bloated that we couldn’t even have a cup of coffee when we got home.  We caught up on a couple of pre-recorded television programmes (Law and Order Special Victims Unit and Cold Case) and I came on the computer for a while and I still felt full by the time I went to bed after all that time.  But I did feel tired and didn’t even risk listing yesterdays pendant in case I did it wrong so had to list it this afternoon.  I try to keep my listing to one each and every day so I will end up with 2 today – never mind.  I am sure some people probably miss the days listing if they have lots of posts in their newsfeed/stream or however they normally see each days listing.  I don’t like to appear spam-like by posting the same thing twice a day as I figure they will look for it if they are that interested in seeing each listing and presumably visit my website regularly anyway.  It is easy enough for people to just check my profile page on whatever site they use to see my tweets or posts that day.

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Well as it is so lovely outside again today I think I may well sit outside for a while and catch up on some magazines that I have been stockpiling as I never get round to reading them since I started doing so much on the computer.  That is the problem isn’t it, once we start Facebook, Twitter or Google+ we feel we need to check in regularly as we just don’t want to miss anything – FOMO they call it (Fear Of Missing Out).  Before we were on any of these sites we didn’t think about missing anything but now we are on them we just don’t want to miss a thing.  I only look on the computer and not on my phone but some peoples phones must be zinging all the time with new messages and updates.

Here’s todays trivia snippet:

Polar bears are left-handed.

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And todays chuckle:

DRIVING
Two elderly women were out driving in a large car - both could barely see over the dashboard. 

As they were cruising along, they came to major crossroads. 

The stop light was red, but they just went on through.
The woman in the passenger seat thought to herself "I must be losing it. I could have sworn we just went through a red light."

After a few more minutes, they came to another major junction and the light was red again. 

Again, they went right through.

The woman in the passenger seat was almost sure that the light had been red but was really concerned that she was losing it.

She was getting nervous.
At the next junction, sure enough, the light was red and they went on through.

So, she turned to the other woman and said, "Mildred, did you know that we just ran through three red lights in a row? You could have killed us both!"

Mildred turned to her and said, "Oh! Am I driving?"