October began with my eldest daughter’s twenty-first birthday, which involved making magic wands and going to our first burlesque show! That seems like a long time ago now as writing a blog post every single day for Blogtober really seems to have stretched out the month! The first couple of weeks were busy with last minute Halloween costume orders at Oshun, and the last couple of weeks we’ve been busy sorting the house….
We’re hosting Christmas for family this year, so we always have a tidy up, but it’s usually last minute and very stressful. This year we thought we’d start early and have a good clear-out at the same time. We’ve now lived in this house longer than any other we’ve lived in, and the clutter has somewhat built up. The bins are full all the time and local jumble sales are getting a lot of donations from us!
Chris also decided it was time we worked on our bedroom, so he made a headboard; hung a clothes rail and the day before yesterday I was lugging bags of brick and rubble outside because we finally exposed the fireplace in there. Part one of the renovations is here, but part two will be coming soon.
Jude and I took a very long drive to Worthing a couple of weeks ago for the open day at Northbrook College. The music centre there is fabulous and if you or your kids are thinking of a career in music, then don’t miss out this university. Unlike several other music colleges, this one is properly connected to a University (Brighton) so that your fees are covered by a student loan. I wasn’t expecting to come across the problem that private colleges still charge full whack for their degree courses even though the students can only get a loan of £6000 per year. Anyway, the facilities were amazing and there was a really energetic and creative atmosphere about the place. They do a Costume for screen and stage degree there too and I really wanted to have a look at the sewing rooms!
Despite being very well set up for music students, we felt it was less so for Music Business, which is what Jude wants to do, so I think BIMM in Bristol is still her first choice.
Pretty much everything else I’ve done over the last month I blogged about straight away, so there isn’t a lot to add here. I watched a Nightmare before Christmas for the first time at last. It’s a really good film – I can’t believe it took so long to see it considering how much merchandise we always see at Disney and Hot Topic when we’re in America. Which reminds me, you have to watch the Honest trailers You Tube video for it – it’s so funny.
Highlights:
* Having fun in the garden with Rain and Jude spraying and splatting ‘blood’ over some old doctors’ coats! (For mad scientist or zombie doctor costumes – there was a reason for it!)
* Coming second in a Writers’ Group competition and winning belly dancing bells!
Pumpkin carving
* Carving pumpkins on the kitchen table.
* Filling the living room with candlelight for Halloween – it looked beautiful.
* Completing the Blogtober challenge and managing to write a blog post every single day. I wrote my conclusions here.
* Rain and Jude coming home with surprise identical tattoos of the fireworks over the Disney castle to represent how much they love our family holidays and how much they appreciate Chris and me. (Big family group hug and lots of tears, obviously.) We had no idea they were planning that – sneaky f*ckers!
Disney castle tattoos
Things I’m grateful for:
* The birds of prey who hunt for mice over the fields near where we live. Buzzards, kestrels and beautiful white barn owls regularly fly by and I absolutely love watching them.
* The West facing window in my work-room. The rest of the house gets dark so early now, but I am very lucky to have the best room and the only one that gets flooded with gorgeous warm evening light.
* Loads of blackberry and apple pies.
* The pretty horned headdress I bought at the Avalon Faery Fayre – I can’t wait to find excuses to wear it!
* Having more to discover in this lovely old house.
* My fantastic friends and family and others who kindly responded to my plea to subscribe to my You Tube channel. THANK YOU so much! You guys did it and I reached a hundred subscribers, which means I have been able to give it a name that can now be printed on my blogger business cards I’ve just ordered. I really appreciate it. 🙂
On that note, I feel quite guilty because I haven’t had enough time for many You Tube videos this month. I thoroughly enjoyed watching back the footage from our Cornwall trip:
Way back in March (I think) I filmed a bit about sorting through the unwanted clothes from the local theatre group:
I have literally just finished washing and putting it all away, and they’ve just told me they’re having another clear-out. I can’t say no to free fabric!
I hope you all had a lovely October. Now we can really start thinking about Christmas. Hooray! By the way, I think I’m going to do Vlogmas (basically a You Tube version of Blogtober), so if you know of any local events (Somerset mainly) for me to film at to make my vlogs more interesting, please let me know in the comments. Thank you!
