Project 365+1 Days 15 - 21

I so very nearly did a 365+1 update earlier this week. I had an internet connection and everything, so I might have actually managed to make a proper blog post (rather than a quick potted summary of my week). But I just couldn't summon up the energy (I was dying with a cold at the time).

Instead, here's an overview of my week.

On Saturday night I was supposed to go out for a friend's surprise birthday party. Dying with the cold as I was, I never actually managed get changed out of my pyjamas during the day, let alone into something nice. As the jewellery part of my outfit I had planned to wear one of my Christmas presents from Mr. Click, a beautiful locket that he popped into my Christmas stocking for me.

Instead I wore it to pretty up my outfit on Sunday instead, and took a photo that evening to commemorate wearing it for the first time.

Day 15: With All My Heart

Monday was a work day, on the early shift, which is actually one of my favourites. I was snotty and sweaty all day, so it was nice to get home early, shower and make myself feel a bit more human. We had an early night and snuggled up to watch stuff in bed on the laptop, with a nice big mug of hot chocolate.

Day 17: Hot Hot Hot Chocolate

I've had my big hot chocolate mug for years (for Christmas I got a much smaller, slightly more practical hot chocolate mug with Disney Princesses on it, hehe). It's only since taking this photo that I've realised that my biscuits were slightly out of date, oh well, perhaps I've just found the cure for the common cold - by the next day I was feeling much better.

On Tuesday I won a competition at work, earning me a £5 gift voucher. After checking it out online I realised that pretty much all of the shops I was planning on going into during that Saturday's shopping trip would accept it. Definitely a much better prize than chocolates or wine (although if my employers want to give me bottles of wine, or chocolates, or hampers, I'll be more than willing to accept them)!

Day 17: A Prize-Winning Bookmark

The book I was reading at the time was Longitude by Dava Sobel. It was quite interesting, about John Harrison's invention of a clock to measure longitude at sea. Unfortunately, it came about after the author wrote an article and someone suggested that she write a book on the subject, it was interesting and well-written, but had that 'article-feeling' to it. It wouldn't have felt out of place in a national newspaper with some big bold pictures around it.

Wednesday we had friends round for a bit of a catch-up (this was a night we'd been planning since around Christmas, but Christmas, New Year, a power cut and bad weather all got in the way). We had a great time. Dug out nibbles and wine from the Hamper I won before Christmas and ate, drank and chatted.

Day 18: Bottom's Up!

My in-laws gave me a big bottle of Peach Schnapps for Christmas, which I started work on during the blackout (it just drove me to drink I guess). I had two rather large glasses during the night which made taking photos a bit tricky when I got back that night. Of course, the almost empty bottle seemed like a logical thing to take a picture of.

Day 19: Practice Makes Perfect

For Day 19 I took a picture of my husband practicing (the cornet I took my first photo of the year of). I had kind of planned out the way I wanted it to look, though it didn't really turn out the way I'd hoped because the room we were working in was a bit too small for me to get the angle I wanted. The lighting wasn't great either and try as I might, there was no way I could get the focus to fall exactly where I wanted it.

Also I was balancing on a bed, which didn't really help with the focusing issues.

Meanwhile, I've still been working on my Day Zero Project (I've actually managed to tick a few things off this week - getting an address book for example and winning a competition, woo hoo!) and this has included continuing to work on the jigsaw puzzle, which is becoming quite the challenge.

Mainly because it's basically a TARDIS in disguise. It's totally illogical but somehow, the inside is wider than the outside. The outside doesn't all join up properly, so we started work on the middle, which now looks something like this:

Day 20: Even More Puzzling

As you can see, it's joined up in one continuous picture, it's even joined to the bottom edge in several places all the way along. What you can't see is that just to the right it continues right past the right side edge piece and there's no way of adding to any of the bottom edge in the middle. It's truly bizarre. All we can do is keep working at it and hope that it comes together in the end... or not, as the case may be.

And yesterday?

Well yesterday we woke up to what sounded like gale force winds and briefly debated going back to bed, rather than attempting to make it to Mr. Click's tutorial. But we decided that the least we could do was try and at least that way we could go back to our nice warm bed without feeling too guilty.

Once down on the seafront, it wasn't particularly windy and the boats ran. And it wasn't even very rocky, so we relaxed and decided that if for whatever reason we couldn't get back, we'd book into a hotel room and see a film (so I was kind of disappointed when we managed to get home without any problems).

In Glasgow we went to HMV to spent my gift voucher on a Disney blu-ray. Though they had pretty much no choice - it was A Bug's Life or one we already had. So we looked around and found a two for £15 offer on a bunch of other blu-rays. £10 and my voucher got a The Sound of Music and Moulin Rouge. I've been wanting to rewatch Moulin Rouge for ages, so yay!

While Mr. Click was in his tutorial I treated myself to some nice new vest tops for work and then spent far too long in Waterstones looking for a book for myself. We went back when Mr. Click was done and bought a book for him and eventually I settled on a little set of craft books for myself as well.

Of course, I planned on taking a photo of all the goodies we picked up yesterday. But the weather had other plans. We got home, had tea, got the girls out and relaxed. Spooks had just finished and we were starting to get ready for bed when the power went out. That proved fun - trying to get four wiggly girl rats back into the cage using nothing but a mobile phone and a torch with no battery.

In the end I settled for a photo of the bookshelf with the little pretend candle we were using to illuminate the room:

Day 21: Blackout Bookshelf

The reason I took the photo of that particular shelf is because I'm currently reading the second Kathy Reichs book in the series there (hence the gap). The flash showing that we kind of need to dust a bit is just an added bonus, hehe.

So that's me all caught up once again. And I'm now approximately 4% of the way through Project 365+1. Yay. Still working on my Day Zero Project, though the thing that's causing some problems at the moment is the knitting challenge I gave myself.

I decided to change "Knit something each month" to "Complete each project I start" purely because I'm being very tempted by a blanket pattern at the moment and it's unlikely that I'll finish the scarf I started by the end of January.

I did actually mean to bring out my scarf with me to work on today but we then woke up to no power again (it did come back on last night after an hour or so) so we just dragged ourselves out of bed and left the house earlier than planned. Thankfully I live in Scotland, so wearing a scarf in the summer (which is probably when I will finish it) won't make me look too out of place, hehe.