I spent all of March 25th being 24. Never done that before! p
As cheating as it seems i’m counting this as a genuine new thing! Hah!

Most people would think that with my birthday party being on day 21 and in my own home I wasn’t going to have time to do any new things. WRONG! Bwahahaha! Due to careful planning and prior arrangement I cooked a meal for eleven people (well, ten and a half as Keira’s only a munchkin). I’ve never cooked for that many before and was a tad stressed (though mostly because drinking the night before hadn’t been such a good plan as it left me a bit tired) but everyone ate it with every sign of enjoyment so it must have come off well!
No photos of this. I don’t know why but I didn’t take a single photo throughout the whole 20 hours people were around and celebrating. Not having a camera helped that one but I’ve managed to chronicle everything up to this point on my camera phone and it seems foolish and slack to have stopped just as there were things worth photographing going on. Idyit that I am.

Oh yeah, I cooked a GIANT chicken casserole (and a mini quorn one) and side dishes of roast potatoes and sweet potatoes. Three of my very favourite things!

Saturday 22nd March my Mummy, Stepdaddy, Nanna and Grandad came to visit for the day to see my shiny new house and deliver my birthday gifts. This took up my entire day and in the evening I went to the pub so no new things happened. Or at least no new things that i intended to do and remember at this late stage- I think I tried some new drinks but a) I can’t remember and b) I’m not sure that counts this has to be firmly relegated to the “Off Day” category.

Before I explain what I did on the Friday (day nineteen and the 21st March for those wondering where we’re up to) we’ll need a bit of back story.

When I picked up all my stuff not so long ago I found a series of books that I used to love throughout my entire childhood and my teenage years. I hadn’t read them since I was nineteen for the simple reason that I hadn’t HAD them since then and I was extremely excited when I came across them again.

I was doubly excited for a series of books set in a girls boarding school in Austria, Guernsey, England, Wales and finally Switzerland over a period spanning from the 1920’s to around about the 1960’s is clearly NOT the sort of thing I’m usually found reading these days. However as it’s a series of 62 books I wasn’t sure about committing that much time to one project. After some pondering I therefore decided to allocate three new things to the Chalet School books. One for each of the three main periods as I see them.

Day nineteen saw me firmly in the middle of what I think of as The Jo years. The Jo years span from book one where she first starts at school (as it’s first pupil) to book 21 where the Jo centric adventures first move out of school and she starts to spend more of her time mothering and writing than fiddling in school affairs. Not that she stops being around and about the school, or living next door, she just becomes firmly relegated into the “Grown Up” zone, a process that begun a few books prior when she’d thought her husband dead from a u boat attack.

So on this particular Friday, knowing I had a majorly busy weekend up ahead, I settled down and read my way through books three to seven. I’m further on now but the problems with this project are a)my English has become a bit on the old fashioned and slightly pretentious sounding side which is causing David occasional fits of giggles (naughty David) and b)I’ve had to throw away five of the books as they’re so old they’ve fallen apart to an unsellotapeable and unreadable state and am now having to re buy them off amazon. This means occasional periods of waiting when I don’t realsie there’s a gap coming up ahead!

Day eighteen took me to Boots to talk to a lady at a make up counter about something that has long puzzled me foundation and in particular face powder. After an exciting few minutes discussing and having various things dabbed on me I came away better aware of what I was looking for and mooched away to the cheaper cosmetics area where I purchased what I needed.

There was lots of birthday joy and stocktaking etc so I’ve got a major backlog to catch up on and will try and keep it brief. There are photos and I will add them but I’m going to get the verbal spewing over with first.

Day Seventeen I decided to dye my hair a lighter shade than usual and went all red. I’ve done it in the past but not for aaages. I like it a lot but it’s washing out really quickly and my hair seems to growing incredibly fast if my, darker than I remember, roots are anything to go by. So there might be more hair changing going on soon.

As I’m not really up to DOING much today I rather thought it was going to end up being another off day but then I remembered to do something I’ve been meaning to do for ages: register as an organ donor.

It took a matter of minutes and now I feel happier AND I’ve done something I don’t usually. You could do it too! Oh yes. Go on, click the linky!

It’s also reminded me of other thinds I’ve been intending to do so I shall do a list update momentarily.

I might try eating something first though as I’m really hungry!

Yesterday (Monday 17th March) I started to organise the music on my computer whilst also building a playlist for my birthday party on Sunday.

I seem to have some albums on here more than once and others that I thought I had are missing. It’s saved in two locations on my computer and there are two folders labelled “Other” so this is definitely a job that’s going to take more than one day. It will probably also result in a long list of CD’s that I need to buy as I realise that I don’t have all the things I thought I had.

I actually didn’t get very much of this done as I came down with a sickness bug but I definitely started it and I’m already finding it easier to decide what I want to listen too- which was the point.

Any requests for Sunday’s playlist btw?

Sunday I decided to make chocolate meringues following a recipe and method I found online but using HC’s Kiss Mix Liquid Chocolat.

The end result was tasty, especially after I dunked their bottoms in more melted Kiss Mix, but they didn’t taste or feel like meringues. The recipe suggested cutting down the amount of sugar because of the Chocolate and I think putting the sugar back in along with a slight temperature moderation would make them preperly meringue-y. As it was they were demolished with everyone (except David who only arrived when there was one piece left) had second or third helpings.

Photo evidence 1 Meringues on a baking tray:

Photo evidence 2- Mel and Alice finishing off the extra melted chocolate:

Photo Evidence 3- One chocolate bottomed one left:

After we’d eaten the meringues we got my pirate ship and castle set out for the first time, built that, made a desert Island and added a farm and some remote control bumper cars to it so that we had out own little world:

Which I only mention because I hadn’t done that before either and it was rather fun!

Having never done so before on Saturday I made a wordsearch.

It’s merely of things I like and the first one i did was tiny and easy so there are actually several pictures for this post:

The first (blurry) handrawn, obscenely easy wordsearch:

The second, also handrawn, much harder wordsearch:

And then finally I typed it up onto the computer and David and I spent a while looking for words as I couldn’t remember where they were- particularly Lego and Swings:

It was fun to make and fun to do and took up the time after dinner and Buffy and before bed.