Week 46 of #Project365. 13th - 19th November. A photo every day for a year!

I seem to have had a busy week. I sorted the Christmas presents out and now I have a fair idea how many the kids have and what everyone else has too. I had a day out shopping with Becky while she finished her Christmas shopping, my blog turned 9 years old, I'm off out again today shopping and for a meal with Stu and it's my birthday tomorrow. Stu has been working in the garden faffing with the new fence and adding another. It has been a good week.

Now for a photo every day.

310/365 - 13th November

Our Christmas pj's arrived. We have all got matching and we will be wearing them on Christmas eve. I got them from Studio, £10 each for mine and my girls and £12 for Stu's which I think was a decent price. We don't just wear Christmas pj's for Christmas, we wear them all year. Some of my favourite pj's are actually Christmas one's.

311/365 - 14th November

I took some photos of a book I was sent to have a look at. Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real Life Tales of Black Magic.

312/365 - 15th November

I treated myself to a soak in the bath with a bath bomb. This one was the Orange Pop from Lush. I loved it. It smelled amazing and made my skin feel amazing too.

313/365 - 16th November

I was up early to get my Christmas delivery slot with Tesco. I logged in online and on the app on my phone to hedge my bets. I checked the delivery slots at two minutes to six just on the app and they were there, a whole 2 minutes early. I booked the slot I wanted and had checked out by 6am when the slots were supposed to be released. It seemed so unfair to others who queued for ages but I got mine straight away.

314/365 - 17th November

Stu added another fence to the top of the garden and we swapped the table and chairs with the wheelie bins and now we have a cosier seating area. It really does block a lot of the wind and fingers crossed we might have some nicer chairs and a new table if my dad's gets some we're spotted in the auction. I've asked him to bid for me.

315/365 - 18th November

My dad isn't usually one for decorating at Christmas but this year he is going all out. I think last year when he was ill with Covid and didn't really celebrate Christmas has shown him what he's been missing out on. He has a huge Christmas tree outside and it is decorated beautifully.

316/365 - 19th November

New hair! Well pretty similar to what I've had before but shorter. I got Stu to cut it for me like he usually does and it looked pretty straight until I washed and dried it and then I realised it was a good half an inch shorter on one side. Oops. He levelled it out and all was good. 

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There is always someone in our life that we struggle to buy a present for. For me it is my nephew. I have always been useless when it comes to buying presents for boys and now that he is not a child I have always gone with putting money into a card but it always seems like the easy option. I have thought about giving him a gift card but picking one has always had me struggling too, there is just too much choice out there but this is where the VEX Gift Card comes in handy!

 The VEX Gift Card is a multi choice gift card. It's the ideal present for those situations where you're not 100% sure what to gift someone but don't want to tie down a budget to a single store they might not like for example I remember a few years ago someone gave me a Morrisons gift card for Christmas which was lovely of them but our nearest one was miles away and not much use to me. 

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There really is a huge selection of vouchers to choose from and it is easy for the receiver to spend their VEX Gift Card. They just click on one of the many banners on the Voucher Express website, enter the code which is on the back of the card and then choose from the wide range of Gift Cards and eGift Cards and then have it delivered to them either by post or an email if the voucher is to use online.

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Have you heard of the The VEX Gift Card before? Do you know someone who would like one?

I was sent a VEX Gift Card with £50 on in exchange for this blog post.

This week my Word of the Week is: Birthday! #WotW

This week my Word of the Week is:

There is two exciting birthdays this week. My blog turned 9 on Tuesday! Time really has flown. When I started my blog I never expected to be still blogging now but it is something that I love. I was curious to when I first joined in with Word of the Week and it was way back in February 2014 with the word television. I think I have joined in most weeks since, that is a lot of words but a great way to record the normal, every day moments.

The other birthday this week is mine which is on Sunday. I have already started my birthday celebrations, well Becky did she took me into town and bought me breakfast as a treat. She had ulterior motives though. She wanted to finish her Christmas shopping and wanted me to help carrying the bags. lol. I didn't mind, I picked up some more presents too, quite a few actually. I think I have just about finished my Christmas shopping, I have got everything that I need to get so everything else that I buy for people is a bonus.

I almost stumbled across my birthday presents during the week that Stu has hidden away. I was on with sorting out the kids Christmas presents, putting everything into piles to see how much they had and to make sure the piles were near enough the same and I was rummaging around in the wardrobe. He came running upstairs and told me not to look in the top cupboard, there's nothing for me to see up there. lol

I don't have any massive plans for my birthday. Stu and I are going into town tomorrow. I am desperate to have a Christmas dinner and I have found a pub which do them. I'm planning on having the full works. A prawn cocktail, a turkey dinner and then Christmas pudding. Then on Sunday I will have a lie in, open my presents and then do very little until it's time for tea. I think I have decided on getting a Chinese takeaway which my family is very happy about and there will of course be cake.

I hope you have all had a good week?

My favourite blog posts from my 8th year of blogging.

Earlier this week my blog turned 9 years old. I know, where has the time gone. Each year I like to share my favourite blog post from the previous year and these are them. They may not be my most viewed posts but they are the one's that bring back happy memories and one's that I like the most. I blog daily so that is a lot of blog posts to choose from.

These are my favourite blog posts, one per month from the last year:

November - I was dreading my birthday but it really was the best day!

This really is a bittersweet blog post looking back on it. What a difference a year makes. My dad was just getting over Covid after being really ill and this was the last time I saw my friend, Ellie's best friends mum who passed away a less than 2 weeks later. I did have the best birthday even though it is tinged with sadness now.

December - Just the four of us for Christmas.

It took me a while to get into the Christmas spirit but it hit me on xmas eve and we had a wonderful Christmas time. Up until last year Stu and I never bought each other big presents but that was the year I got a coffee machine. Stu said I better use it lots and I have, every day at least once. hehehe

January - Fortnite is definitely not a game for me. Update: I lied!

After writing a blog post saying how Fortnite was not a game for me I got a new laptop which would run Fortnite and realised it was a game for me. hehehe I have been playing off and on all year and at the moment I am loving it. It really depends on what's going on in the game. 

February - An unexpected snowy day. We built a snowman!

We were in the middle of a few months of home learning so when a snow day happened it caused much excitement. It was just what we needed to boost our moods and it was nice to do something different.

March - 12 Lessons I've learned in the last 12 months.

March marked a whole year since we went into the first lockdown and I am sure the year taught us all a lot. I still haven't got out of the habit of wearing leggings around the house. I wouldn't dream of sitting around in jeans now and I fear the school saying they're going back to home learning. We don't want to do that again!

April - We've all been vaccinated. This is how it went for us.

Ellie has had her first vaccine now, the rest of us have all been double vaccinated, my dad has had his booster and Becky is waiting to get hers. The 2nd vaccine was easier than the first and I feel a lot safer for having it.

May - Sometimes it is good to complain.

This post was brought about by bad customer service from a fast food place and I ended up talking about complaining about other shops and services. The little paddling pool always makes me chuckle when I think about it.

June - 10 Ways that we all mess up as parents.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent. As much as we would like to be one it just doesn't happen. We all mess up at parenting sometimes and it's normal. We learn from our mistakes and our children forgive us. That's the way it goes.

July - The end of year 9 and 2nd year at college.

It was the strangest school year. Self isolating, home learning, new classes, me getting to learn more about what Ellie was learning due to all the Zoom lessons, GCSE options and lateral flow tests. We survived and it was definitely a learning experience for us all.

August - Wasting their summer holidays in bed.

My girls got lazy in the summer holidays and it was so frustrating, I felt like they were wasting their time off school, especially Becky who was having her last proper summer holidays. When she finishes college this year she will be going into full time work.

September - Visiting The Deep in Hull.

We visited The Deep, an aquarium in Hull. We had a fantastic day out and will be going back again soon as it's one of those places where you pay once and can go back anytime over the next year.

October - How I have been getting fit & losing weight.

I have been getting fitter and losing a bit of weight over the past few months. I wrote about my motivation and how I got started. It is so much easier to exercise when the weather is warm but I am still going.

Thank you for reading! Thank you as well to anyone who leaves a comment, likes a Facebook post, retweets a Tweet, hearts and Instagram photo or give a thumbs up to my rubbish YouTube videos. I appreciate you all!