The Gallery - Outside My Front Door

This weeks' prompt for  The Gallery by Tara Cain was "Outside our front door".  Well although the picture I have chosen is not literally outside my front door it is just across the road, so I am going to go with it anyway, since I have to go out the front door (or the back door) to get there  The picture is the beach and harbour at Pettycur Bay, it was taken quite early one morning as smurf and I were going for a welly splash on the beach, welly splashing is one of our favorite pastimes and we love this beach to do it because it has loads of tide pools.

Oh i So Would!!!!!

I have been tagged by the very funny Pippa over at A Mothers Ramblings with a rather erm adult themed meme, which goes by the strange title of "Plastic Joy Award" (keep reading it really is not as bad as it sounds). The premise of the meme is that you have to name 5 fictional characters that you would like to do some mattress dancing with, so without further ado...here goes.

1) Edward Cullen - I know, I know, he is waayyyyyy to young, but I so love the tortured, damaged soul type, aside from the fact that I would be taking my life in my hands, I think it would be a great partnership...me sally sunshine...him black and brooding.( can i just add for the record here that I first discovered Edward before the films....pre Robert Pattinson)But here's a picture of Rob just for the sheer hell of it.






2) Woody from Toy Story, well the reason for this one is really simple...I have a thing about cowboys, think it comes from spending some time on a horse ranch, I just love how they call you Mame and tip there hat to you, and that gangly cowboy walk that Woody has down to  a tee.

3) Mr Darcy, its the dark brooding thing again, the tortured soul (can you see a theme going on here?) I have had a thing for Mr Darcy since I was around 13, which was when I first read Pride & Prejudice, I have read it may times since then, and seen the various films, and I have never lost my fascination with Darcy. The fact that I am going to illustrate this with a picture of a wet Colin Firth as Darcy is just sheer coincidence.

4) Wolverine from the X-Men not sure what it is about Wolverine that draws me to him, think is the difficult character again ( at least that's my story).  Although I am sure the razor sharp claws might get in the way a bit, so possibly not a straightforward get together

5) And last but never least Seeley Booth from Bones, I mean whats not to love, he is just about perfect, I really don't have to say to much about him, just look at the picture!!!




So there you go my 5 fictional characters, believe me I could have gone on all night, i mean theres still Carlyle Cullen , Mr Shuester, Indiana Jones...my list is endless.

But the brief was for 5 so 5 I have given you, now I just have to tag  other bloggers so here goes.

1. Claire  over at cheshire mum

2. Amy over at and 1 more means 4

3. Carole over at New Mummy

The Gallery -Me

A bit of a late entry for The Gallery by Tara at Stickyfingers this week.

I like a lot of this weeks entrant's struggled with my entry, being as how I am usually the one taking the pictures, and hate when it is the other way round and I am the subject.

So with all of that in mind i have chosen the picture below.....its me and the beach which I love and my little boy who is one of the things that make me me..I even managed to find one of me with a camera in my hand.

Strangers? - But Everybody Loves Me.

We have been having the stranger chat recently, it was prompted by smurf trying to strike up a conversation with some random bloke on the train, the poor bloke was trying his best to ignore the very persistent small child trying to engage him in mindless chatter about Spiderman, he was obviously uncomfortable being singled out for attention, smurf was oblivious to the discomfort and just kept on trying to get some sort of reaction.

After we got off the train I tried to explain to smurf that he shouldn't just talk to people that he didn't know, because not everyone was friendly and nice and some people didn't want to talk to children they didn't know, he looked at me with a completely bemused look on his face and said "but mummy everybody loves me".

I suppose children do find it hard to understand, because they are usually surrounded by love from all the people that do know them, it must be easy for them to assume that everyone will treat them with the same love and kindness. Also what exactly constitutes a stranger, smurf tends to think that after the first hello the person stops being a stranger.

I terrifies me that someone would take advantage of the fact children are so trusting and although I want to make smurf aware of this I don't want to stifle his natural friendliness and curiosity about people or frighten him into not wanting to interact with people.

Would be really interested in anyone else's ideas on broaching the stranger subject?

The Gallery - Week 3 - Choose Your Colour

Week Three of The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers, the theme this week is colour and I cant wait to see where everybody goes with that one.

My choice this week is a photo I took a couple of weeks ago, one one of the rare sunny days we have had recently, its at the beach about 15 minutes from our house and one of smurfs favourite places.


So the colour this picture represents to me is "Silver", the sea look like a huge still shiny silver mirror and I like it a lot.

Thanks Mum

Since it's Mothers Day today I wanted to post a little thanks you to my mum.

Seeing all the mothers day cards and things advertised at the moment made me start thinking about all the things my mum does for smurf and me and my other half that make our lives easier. I think I have mentioned before that my other half works away from home and because of this I depend on my family for a lot of help with smurf, it was one of the main reasons for our recent house move (5 minutes now from granny, smurf is in heaven).

My mum is one of those people who is only happy when she is doing something for someone, since she retired she has not slowed down at all in fact I think she does more now than she did when she was working.

Smurf is my mum's favourite person, she just absolutely loves to spend time with him and the feeling is clearly mutual. Smurf spends mornings with my mum in the week when I am at work and then goes to a lovely local school nursery 5 minutes walk from mums house in the afternoons. I am finished work in time to pick him up .

I know I can ring my mum up at any time and she will be there for me and smurf, no matter what it is we need, and I know this makes me lucky, lucky that my mum lives close, lucky that she doesn't mind helping us out an lucky that she is still here and active enough to keep up with a very energetic three year old.

I do tell my mum thanks all the time and do when I can do nice things for her too, but you can never show or say how much you appreciate someones help to many times, so I just wanted to say Thanks mum we really appreciate everything you do for us.

The Gallery - 2

Another week and another great prompt from Tara over at Sticky Fingers for her great feature The Gallery. This week Tara has gone with the theme of numbers, interpret this as you may.

I am going to go with the number 2 for my picture and coincidentally it is for two reasons this picture fits the bill. The photo is of my little boy when he was 2 and also the fact that there are 2 of them in the picture, the boy and a goat. Since this picture was taken our little boy has lovingly been referred to by his dad as "Goatboy", due to the fact he spent 30 minutes chasing this goat around a muddy french field to give it a huggle, which is what he calls a cuddle, by the time the goat had been huggled smurf was knee deep in mud and had to be forceably stripped to his nappy before being allowed in the car, he did have a great time with the goat though

Splash - The Gallery

Tara over at Sticky Fingers has started a wonderful new feature that is a way to check out some great photos taken by all the wonderful mummy (& daddy) bloggers out there. The idea is that each week Tara will give us a prompt and we then either go and take a great photo or we use one we already have.

Well as someone who has a Nikon in my hand at e

very opportunity I couldn't wait to join in. If you haven't had a look yet get on over to Tara's blog and join in.

The prompt for this week is "Beauty", and I thought for quite a while about what I could put forward as an entry. My first thought was of course going with a picture of my little Smurf, but there are loads of pictures of him on my blog already so I started to have a look through the pictures I already have.

I choose this one.

I love this picture, it was taken in Portugal, we were having a wonderful day at the water park, watching the dolphins, enjoying the pools and gardens and the rides and attractions. The photo for me just sums up the really splashing fun we had and when I look at it I always instantly remember us laughing at the dolphins. So for me the beauty in this picture is not only the animals, which are most certainly beautiful, but also the memory that the photo holds for me.