Back from holiday catch up

We arrived back from our holiday in Derbyshire yesterday. We had such a lovely time. It's nice to be back in my own bed though! I slept really well. Our mattress at home is a fairly firm memory foam mattress, the mattress on holiday was very comfortable but sprung and so every time G or I moved it woke the other one up.

The journey home wasn't too long and we drove through some beautiful countryside. I was very excited to see a badger by the side of the road scuttling along. It's pretty unusual to see them in daytime.

Look at that pothole... there were some magnificent potholes on the country lanes.

I've been pottering about this morning, tidying up, doing a bit of cleaning and noticed my gerbera daisy outside. The picture below doesn't do it justice, it looks a bit oversaturated on my computer, but it's glorious. I was given this gerbera daisy 22 years ago by some kind neighbours where we used to live after I suffered a miscarriage. Sadly it had recently succumbed to leaf mould and those horrid black mould flies. I'd followed all the advice online, bought mould killer but to no avail. It was a sad looking plant. I put it outside because I couldn't bear to get rid of it and now look at it! It's leaves are healthy and the flowers beautiful. The only issue is I think a snail has been chomping on the leaves a bit. Do I dare bring it back indoors?

 

It was G's 50th birthday recently. We had an open house type party. I kept it secret until the day before. Loads of people came, which I was rather chuffed about as organising parties is not my skill set. Our little house was full to the brim.  Below you can see Coco guarding the Lego. G loves Star Wars and loves Lego. I bought him the At At and a friend bought him the R2-D2. I think he's planning on building them today.

I'm planning a fairly lazy day too. A big of blogging, a bit of sorting through the myriad of photos I have stored and organising them by date and year. I'm currently using them to put together a bit of a journal, which I might transfer over to the blog so that is is more of a complete journal. Although, if I spent all my time and effort doing that, what if Google suddenly decided to stop supporting Blogger - yikes!! That does worry me a bit! Oh and laundry, the post holiday laundry is always fun. 

I have my bookclub tomorrow, we're meeting at a local cafe. This month we read The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner. I gave it 4 stars. It's a bit of a mystery, thriller, plot twist kind of book and jumps between points of view and time (which normally annoys me because I get a bit lost, but this one was OK).

I'm currently reading Play Dead by Harlan Coben, a bit dated now - it was his first novel - but still a good read. 

I really like Harlan Coben books, I discovered his books after watching the adaptation of The Stranger on Netflix, what a great TV series!

I think I might read Pride and Prejudice again soon, I haven't read any Jane Austen for a while. For my 50th last year my girls bought me Pride and Prejudice with all the letters included as separate 'handwritten' letters. It's SO pretty.

To Miss Elizabeth Bennett

Written from Rosings at 8 o'clock in the morning

From Fitzwilliam Darcy

Pretty cool hey?

Anyway, that's it for now.

Sarah x