Hello Again,
I know I skipped last week so I am just going to pretend that that didn’t happen. 😛
Last Friday Husband and I decided late in the evening that we wanted to buy a puzzle to do. So we landed up on an adventure out to HobbyCraft at Fort Kinnaird at 8pm because they only close at 10pm. We got there around 9. We chose a puzzle called the Carpenter’s Cottage.
Saturday
We just did shopping and we helped a friend look at a flat he was looking at buying. It was a really nice place.
Sunday
Friend E came over and I did some mending of her clothes for her. It was all pretty easy stuff except for a neckline which was made of a fine stretchy mesh folded over by more stretchy mesh, that took a bit of fussing.
Monday
As usual Monday is my cleaning day and so my house got quite a deep clean. It hadn’t be cleaned thoroughly for a while. I mean things like scrubbing the inside of the oven and that sort of thing.
My studio also got an amazing clean. Sigh, it is so nice to be back in my little creative space. I pushed my Laptop backwards so that I could set up my tripod for filming.
Here is my filming set up but I am going to have to play with it a bit more. 1) because I would like to have my tripod set up and also have my monitor on the table. I need my monitor in order to edit my art scans better. Laptops don’t give good colour representation because you can keep changing the angles. and 2) because I keep getting my head in the way!
And for supper I cooked a roast chicken for dinner. Ah, the Roast Chicken story. First of all, all you South African’s take a look at the photo below!
I bet you are thinking what I was thinking when I first unwrapped the chicken. What the heck are those?! I’ll explain. This chicken has shins, or lower leg parts still attached to the drum sticks. The only explanation which I can imagine is as follows: In South Africa there is a market for chicken feet, people buy them and cook them, so in South Africa the lower leg of the chicken is chopped off with the feet and sold that way. Where as, I am guessing here, there is less of a demand for chicken feet in the UK and so their chickens are sold with just the feet removed. My sister told me that she thinks they look like crayfish eyes / eye stalks. I agree.
Anyway so I take this chicken out the fridge and remove the packaging and discover that these leg things are tucked into the carcass of the chicken to make it neat. I gingerly pull them out and immediately get squeamish. (I was vegetarian for 2 years before I had to stop for health reasons) Getting this up close and personal with uncooked meat really freaks me out apparently. Then when I had to rub the butter over the skin I very nearly vomited. This chicken also seems to have a lot more skin than Z.A. chickens and they also left the neck on. Oh and there were some poor little tufty feathers on it.
This chicken has changed my life people. I am not joking, I am going to see if I can cut us down to one meat meal a week and see if my health can stand up to that. At the moment we are doing about 3 vegetarian meals a week.
Tuesday
I continued filming and managed to finish my architectural piece which I was painting.
My mom sent me this cute picture of Salty cuddling her.
Then, having decided that I was going to bake, I went in search of some nice baking trays. We currently only have one really small one that came with the flat. While I was going from shop to shop I saw these pretty pink velvety chairs! But husband pointed out that I already have a studio chair.
And I did find some really nice trays that are the perfect size for our oven! Our Oven is about 36cm squared and these are 34cm squared.
And then the baking bee stung and I baked over 100 cookies. I don’t know why I always do this. I don’t bake for ages and then all of a sudden I bake loads.
In the evening husband and I met friend R out at a restaurant for Taco Tuesday! They ordered something super spicy but I was a sane person and ordered something cheesy 😛
Wednesday
Wednesday was kind of a busy day but I didn’t plan it to be. First of all my prints which I had ordered came in the mail. If I have forgotten to tell you, I am in the process of setting up my Etsy Shop. At the moment there is nothing there because I am still ironing out some kinks.
The print job was perfect. Where you can see colour variation that is where I scanned the picture and then edited it on my laptop instead of on a fixed screen monitor.
Then I decided that I need to do more exercise so I did 45min of Tribal Fusion Belly Dance on my own, which considering I haven’t done it in over a year it was probably a bit much. We are desperately saving for our own place and so I am not that keen to go out and pay for lessons at the moment so I was just practicing what I remember and also doing some drills off Youtube. It is easier for me because I used to do a lot of it so I know how the moves are supposed to go. It’s just building up those muscles again.
After I was done with my dance practice I decided so do a painting of a flower my sister had photographed. It went way quicker than I had expected. It is a peach blossom.
After supper my husband and I went for a nice long walk. He took me on a route he had discovered while I was in South Africa. We took some photos along the way because it was so pretty.
Then at home something horrifying happened. Husband and I were chilling on the couch drinking coffee and chatting about our walk when suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Picture me pulling my legs up onto the couch quickly and yelling ” *insert husbands name here* ITS A GIANT FUDGING SPIDER!” Except I didn’t say Fudging I said a bad word. Husband is momentarily freaked out until he looks over and sees the actual size of it. And then he proceeds to calmly catch it and remove it for me. He doesn’t like killing spiders so he threw it out the window.
We did out best to identify it and we are pretty sure it’s the Giant House Spider. This one isn’t that big but apparently they can grow really huge and also what makes us even more sure that that is what this is is that it once held the Guinness world record for fastest spider…. and boy was this thing fast! Even husband was a bit unnerved by it’s speed. But thankfully their venom is not fatal to humans or pets and they prefer to escape than to bite.
It took me a really really long time to fall asleep that night. 😦 I am convinced I have a mild form of arachnophobia.
Thursday
On Thursday I did a quick expressive painting. I quite enjoyed it as I have not worked in this style for a while.
Then I did a little sketch of an Accounticorn for a friend. I might paint this one up and give it to her.
And then I spent the rest of the day editing and uploading the art video which I filmed earlier in the week. You can see it here.
Friday
On Friday I did a quick little drawing inspired by the lyrics from a song by a band called Cake. “Sheep go to heaven, Goats go to hell”
My mom sent me more cute photos of Salty invading her art supplies.
And I also started a crochet stuffy / amigurumi for friend E. Friend E and I are pretty much obsessed with unicorns.
Halfway through the first leg I discovered that you stuff it while you make it not all at the end. So I had to leave my cozy home and go in search of stuffing. In the end it turned out cheaper to buy a microfiber pillow for M&S and open it than to buy actual craft microfiber at a craft store!
Saturday
We had a lazy slow start to the day. Husband was immensely helpful with my Etsy and helped me with the money side of things.
We went for a walk up Corstorphine hill and saw another monument to Scott.
Sunday
I managed to finish the unicorn!
I love it’s fabulous hair!
Then we took a quick walk through some suburbs that we might consider looking for our own place in. Husband has looked at a lot of the areas before but I was in South Africa and I haven’t seen them yet. It was really nice walking around and discussing the pros and cons of the area. Then at the end of the walk we went to friend E’s house where friend R was meeting us and we made a curry box. Friend R regularly gets these curry boxes. It was a lot of fun, and friend E loved the unicorn!
Well thank you for sticking with me again through another busy week! I hope that you are having a good week and I hope that anyone in the Florida area is busy keeping warm and safe!
Love Diella xoxo
xYOOPx 