May's Month In Numbers

May's end has arrived all too quickly.  It's been a mixed up month with hail and heatwaves, fun and frustration, celebrations and sympathy.  And being the last day of the month, it's time to join in with Julie's Month In Numbers where a bunch of us use numbers to document the things that are important to us.

30 = the minutes Niece No.1 was allowed to transform Child No.3 from a schoolgirl into the personification of the Olympic torch as part of a make-up competition at her college.

3½ = books read this month (all World Book Night Editions) and all great reads (so far).  First there was my own choice, "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, which was no less thought provoking, uplifting, engaging, upsetting or brilliant upon its second reading than the first time.  I do hope the people I handed it out to on World Book Night 2012 enjoy it as much as I have.

Next up was the WBN choice of a friend from my reading group - "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy which was depressing to say the least.  At times the writing style annoyed me (no punctuation, sparse repetition interspersed with excessive flowery abundance). Perhaps that was meant to mimic the way of life of the father and son protagonists but I prefer authors not to use such obvious methods.  That's not to say I wouldn't recommend the book though - quite a worryingly believable post-apocalyptic tale which left me thinking - and that's a good story in my opinion!

Jo sent me a copy of "How I live Now" by Meg Rosoff for my daughter and I to read.  Telling the story of Daisy, an American teenager in a near-future occupied England, it was another book that didn't use punctuation but it was somehow far less of an irritation this time around.  Read in one sitting, I enjoyed the contrasts between the strangely idyllic Swallows & Amazons beginning with the horrifying realities of powerless children being buffeted about by the actions of adults.  The final part of the book felt a little rushed and unsatisfying; I'm looking forward to discussing it with Child No.3 soon.

The half-book is Ian Banks' "Player Of Games" sent to me by a friend on the Isle Of Man. Come back next month to find out how I got on with it!

130 = the height in feet of Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, which we visited, along with Avebury and West Kennet Long Barrow while staying with friends in Wiltshire.

Us (& Alfie) in top of West Kennet Long Barrow

46 = the number of pounds I spent replacing the hard drive of my laptop which failed 7 months after my last back-up.  Not to be confused with the 46000 seconds (approximately) that I spent laboriously retrieving all the un-backed-up files from the failed hard drive to put onto the new one; which has now been backed up!

26 = years of marriage celebrated this month

5 = hours spent at home by No.2 Son while fetching a suit to wear to his university summer ball - more fun for us than posting it to him as originally requested!

3 = children who have all been sitting exams this month (last but 3 GCSEs for Child No.3, first year Sociology exams for No.2 Son and the final Masters exam in Chemistry for No.1 Son).  Now the wait for various nerve-racking results days begins!

P.S. This post was pre-scheduled so there will be some extra numbers to add when I scrap them ... such as how many people took part in my {Inter-}National Scrapbooking Day Challenge (final deadline at midnight GMT tonight), how many stitches I have in my arm and how many seconds it took for the Olympic torch-bearer to run past me today!

Final (chance for a) Challenge

Yesterday at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog they announced the final challenge for the month of May - a good 'un - and today the Master Forgers show theirs starting here.  Unfortunately I haven't had time to join as I'm having surgery today and have been busy getting my house straighter than normal!  As it involves my write arm I'm not sure how much blogging or commenting I can do for a few days and have scheduled some posts in advance.  Hopefully Blogger will play nice.

It's also the last few days to take part in my {Inter-}National Scrapbooking Day challenge to be in with a chance of winning a small prize.

Happy Mail #2

The same day that my Happy Mail from Natalie arrived there was also a note from the postman telling me he'd been round with a parcel while I was out and that I had to wait 10 hours before going to the main post office to collect it!  In effect that meant I had to wait until the next day, but boy was it worth the wait!

My friend José (who introduced me to scrapbooking back in 2006) had sent me some glue supplies: I love Hema's photo glue as it's cheap, easy to apply, repositionable, easy to clean up and it's also photo safe! José is VERY crafty and so it wasn't just any parcel that I picked up ... inside the brown paper packaging was ...

AND there was a little extra something in there just for fun:

Almost too nice to start using ... but not quite!  Thank you José - I ♥ you!

Happy Mail #1

Look what was waiting on my doormat when I came home the other day - some beautiful mail art from Natalie over at Almost Never Clever - it's part of Ginger's words-themed 2012 Mail Art Exchange.

 Thank you Natalie - a gorgeous envelope enclosing a beautiful card.  They made my day!

Hat Trick

The first challenge over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog this month was to be inspired by some hats that Bethany had pinned ... and I had a tale to tell about No.3 child and her new beret so it seemed appropriate to be using some photos of her wearing it.

No.3 Child ♥ Alfie

But as is often the way, I got sidetracked and put the unfinished page to one side.  Then along came challenge #2 which was to use fabric ... and I'd already decided to make use of some net inspired by those hats ... what luck!!!

We recently spent a weekend in Wiltshire with friends and enjoyed some great rain-free walks in the countryside with their beautiful dog Alfie.  As you can see, Child No.3 still had energy left over for climbing trees!

Using my May Counterfeit Kit, I've based my page on the May sketch over at Sarah's Cards so that is, appropriately enough, a hat trick of challenges in one layout!!

Five on Friday #4 (Blog Loving!)

The other day I had a sweet comment from Ang over at Mad For Paper to say she was naming me for a Liebster Blog Award as she liked it here at Just-Jimjams.  Thanks Ang!

I'd never heard of the award, so I Googled ... and came up with over 2 million hits, but no real origin because pretty well ALL the posts I checked were from recipients like me, puzzling over the origin, but accepting it gratefully and passing it forward to five of their favourite blogs!  A sort of blog chain-letter I suppose.  In fact doing the maths ... if one person awarded it on January 1st to five others, who took a month to award it to five others, who took a month to award it to five others ... then we'd have a mind boggling 244,140,625 recipients by the end of the year (and many billions more if people were quicker to re-award the award).

Now chain-letters that appear in my in-box get deleted immediately, but this is more about spreading the love and telling smaller bloggers (with fewer than 200 followers) that someone, somewhere, not only reads their blog but likes it enough to recommend it to their own readers.  I'm very, very happy to be on Ang's List of Five (and one of the 244 million + bloggers to receive the award in 2012 too), so I put on my thinking cap and tried to come up with five blogs I'd like to recommend further:

Alexa over at Trimming The Sails because her blog is calm and serene, thoughtful and inspiring; she has a wonderful way with words, photos, paper and pixels and, having been lucky enough to meet her at a retreat last year, I know that the humour and sunny smile that shines through in her blog posts is there in real life!

Ann, a mad scientist from Coventry, whose musings are always interesting and filled with lots and lots of scrappy goodness.  She's got 3 kids (like me), wears glasses (like me), gave a class at Pink Booby 5 (like me), has taught at the, now defunct, Exhall crop (like me) and is a very hard-working Primary School teacher (unlike me, but that's another story).

Lisa from Recklinghausen Musings, is a fellow Master Forger from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog.  I am in awe of the quantity of quality items that Lisa makes.  She takes part in frequent LOAD challenges, makes huge numbers of Christmas cards, helps run a challenge blog of her own and is always enthusiastic and supportive.  All this means that I completely forgive her predilection for pink!
 
I love all the things that Lizzie made, especially her wonderful hand bound books.  She's another blogger I have had the privilege of meeting in real life at the aforementioned retreat (which Lizzie organised)!

And last alphabetically, but by no means least,  there is Tracie of Doodledays who scraps and journals beautifully about her large and complicated extended family.  You can't pigeon-hole Tracie's "style" because she is always coming up with new ways to showcase her photos with clever hand-cutting, doodling and page design; she's a constant source of scrappy inspiration.

That just leaves me one more thing to do according to the Liebster Blog Award rules:
1. Thank the person who gave the award √
2. Link back to their blog √
3. Post the award onto your own blog √
4. Choose 5 new recipients with fewer than 200 followers √
5. Let each of them know about the award

P.S. There's still time to enter my {Inter-}National Scrapbooking Day Challenge here ... the odds of winning a random prize are still good ;o}

P.P.S. Just found a Liebster post from December 19th 2010 but the recipient couldn't remember where she got it from, so I guess there are now a gazillion recipients out there :o}

Accounting For April

I will keep up.  I will keep up.  I will keep up!   Following hard on the heels of March's Month In Numbers which was very, very late, here are my only slightly late figures for April!

27 = the number of plastic eggs I hid in the back garden for my 3 not-so-little kids to find.  The eggs contained clues towards some giant luxury chocolate slabs along with tons of brightly coloured jelly eggs I brought back from Las Vegas.

6 = people at home for an Easter roast dinner which was all eaten up despite the copious quantities of sweets and chocolate that had been scoffed!

24 = World Book Night Books I gave away, including a few to readers of this blog

3 = books read this month: "The Last Testament" by Sam Bourne, a tale of intrigue in Jerusalem which left me cold.  I much preferred my Reading Group's book: "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, a very interesting account of early fossil hunting in Lyme Bay, highlighting the inequalities that the fairer sex suffered, especially if they were from the working class.  It was also educational to read about the struggle to reconcile religious beliefs regarding creation in relation to the newly discovered fossils from unknown creatures.  I was also almost unable to put down the first book in "The Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins as the story was gripping from start to finish.  I wonder if the film will be as good?

2 = how many kilograms I lost a week after re-starting healthy eating - 7 more to go to reach my initial target

1 = a weekend visitor from Lithuania who was fascinated by the local dry stone walls, our friends' sheep, geocaching and a 1000 year old hollow yew tree in a nearby churchyard

9 = pages made from my April Counterfeit Kit - my all-time record.

Are you joining in with Julie Kirk's "My Month In Numbers"?  It's a fun way of documenting your year - check it out why don't you?!  Go here for other Aprils in numbers.

Oh and while I'm at it, I guess this post will be just the ticket for Shimelle's Ten on the Tenth, being as it contains ten numbers!