An update

I realised I haven't been posting for a while.  A mixture of life having got in the way, me persuing ideas for The Swap Shop UK on facebook, and me falling asleep in the evenings, even when I'm watching a programme I'm really interested in (like Sherlock, last night).   This post is just an eclectic catch up of what's been happening round here.

So, recently when we've been to the library and got out the following books:

• How does a ship float?
• The lion king
• Princess Rani
• Bathtime
• Bless you!

We're also doing the Circus Stars Summer Reading Challenge where you have to read 6 books.  Well, we'd finish it in one week, if we just tried to read 6 books, so we just go back for 6 weeks.  We've already collected the first sticker for our circus stage.

My sister's wedding went really well.  Again, I need to write a separate post about that, but I can now start losing weight again.  That said, i haven't started yet, and will do so after this weekend.  I'm visiting my grandparents, so there is no point even trying to eat healthily there, but next week I will start watching my weight again.  I won't be doing the fat burning foods diet, but will be applying those principles to my normal cooking for the family.

The veg patch is really doing well.  We've been eating tomatoes, spring onions (which are now bulbous and the size of shallots!), and I've even had a few carrots.  The strawberry plant served us well, but has since died, because the hanging basket dried out over the weekend of my sister's wedding.  Next year, though, I will try and plant the seeds at the right distance apart to begin with, so I don't need to keep thinning down.

I still want to move house, and we're still unable to.  Sadly, I have started playing the lottery and so far have won £2.50 on the lottery and £1 on a scratch card.  Not enough for my dream house, yet.  My dream house is still available atm which is probably prolonging my misery.  I'd love to move into no 11 but it's not looking likely.  I've even tried to set my sights lower, and I've found no 13 Chapel Court but we still can't afford that.  It's half the price of my dream house, but double the price of where we currently live, that's in negative equity.  As I said before, we've no chance of ever moving house unless we win the lottery, but in the mean time I'm slowly losing all my savings.  You'd think for a semi-intelligient woman I'd know better, wouldn't you?

I am working on getting more money, without the lottery, although I know this is a much longer term solution, rather than the quick fix I need for either of the homes I want.  I've bought a website for my tutoring (a domain name and a hosting package) in order to advertise myself some more.  Unfortunately, I'm not that technically savvy at programming level languages (I can cope with the higher level drag/drop with a small amount of coding, but what I've bought seems to require a lot more) so DH is going to have to help me.  Unfortunately, with his anxiety, he's not convinced I've done the right thing.  Especially as i've bought a second domain name www.theswapshopuk.com so I can develop my swap shop idea.  Atm I'm planning everything on paper, and then will type the text up and send to DH so he can put it together for me.  He said it looked fairly easy, but when I queried whether that was 'easy for him' or 'easy for him to teach me' his face suggested it was the former, so it may be a while yet, before either of these sites go live.  At worst, I've just wasted £70, which would be a few takeaways; at best, I've not got the means to make some more money.  The website it meant to have an easy to use website building function thing called Click be.  I haven't even found that yet, so I really do need to learn more!