Project 365+1 Days 43 - 49

Yep, photo project is still going strong. I'm quite impressed at how I'm doing so far actually. I think the last time I seriously tried doing it a couple of years ago, I ran out of steam around March. I've kind of hit that point now where I know I need to be taking a photo at some point during the day and in the morning I start planning what it might be of, even if I know I won't be taking it until later.

Accord to the 365 Project site, I'm now 13% of the way through the project. Which is pretty good going, if you ask me.

And on to this week's photos. I'll start off by making everyone jealous of the spectacular scenery where I live:

Day 43: Night Rolls In

Last Sunday there was a fantastic sunset, we watched the sky changing colour outside my in-laws' windows and I decided that I'd have to stick my shoes on and nip outside to get a quick photo. The clouds slowly drew across the sky and it went through a range of purple, orange, pink and blue. Kind of reminded me of one of the pieces in Fantasia.

The following day, as I said in my previous post, I was off for a hospital appointment and some shopping. We do a big food shop once a month, before we go we take stock of what we've got left, make a list of what we want to have that coming month, then make a list and work out roughly what it'll come to. And only then do we actually go to the shops and buy the stuff.

Considering the last time we'd been shopping was before Christmas, our cupboards were getting pretty bare. So it was very nice when we got home from our long shopping trip, unloaded the car and made them look like this:

Day 44: Stocked Shelves

It's amazing how much food we can actually squeeze into our kitchen. Everything that we bought should keep us going for another month or so. Mr. Click always does a really good job of rustling something together on an evening for our tea, and he didn't disappoint on Valentine's Day (not that we'd actually planned anything).

I had intended to take a photo of our Valentine's Day meal, but it was late, and I was starving, and it just smelled so damn good, that by the time I remembered, it kind of looked like this:

Day 45: Empty Plates

Moments before this photo was taken, there were two plates full of Chinese stirfry with noodles, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts and water chestnuts. It was very tasty.

This week I also spent a lot of time working on my assignment. My reward, I had told myself, would be to install The Sims 3 on my laptop and play it once I finished. After a week of doodling house designs that I wanted to make on bits of paper (instead of actually getting on with the things I should have been doing), my assignment was more or less complete and I went to dig out The Sims 3.

Except it was nowhere to be found. It looks as though, in the process of moving house, it got left behind. After searching the cupboard with all the computer and games console stuff; the last couple of boxes which we're still in the process of unpacking and organising; the cupboard and boxes which we knew it wasn't in but checked anyway just in case; we were forced to admit that perhaps we didn't have it any more.

So Mr. Click ordered me a replacement copy, which arrived on Wednesday. Of course by the time it arrived I was busy with other things and didn't have time to get it set up on my computer (until Friday, when I wasted several hours creating a little mini-version of myself and Mr. Click). But I took a photo of it, celebrate its arrival.

Day 46: A New Game

It's been an age since I last played The Sims and I swear this edition of the game is slightly different to the one I had when it first came out. There are some features that I either had turned off before, or which were never there to start with. I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday playing with it, making my sims have loads of children (and trying to cure the resulting nervous breakdowns). At some point I'll put the World Advntures expansion pack on too, then everyone can have a holiday. I have far too much love for this game.

It's been a bit of a week for new things really. New clothes for Mr. Click, new foods for the cupboard, new game for me and then a big treat on Thursday; the new washing machine... or Bertie the Beko as my Mum-in-Law has christened it.

Day 47: Bertie

Bertie is a 6kg, A+ standard washing machine and I was so thrilled to get it all set up. As I said before, we'd been putting off getting it for months and months, it's so nice just to be able to toss all our laundry in and have spun well when we get it out, so all we need to do is hang it up. I'm sure Mr. Click appreciates not having to wring stuff out any more (and we can wash our jeans at home now). A definite improvement.

We did have to find a new home for all of our lemonade as well as the rat litter and food that formerly occupied the space where Bertie now lives. Luckily Mr. Click took better care of it than I did. My solution was to stick the lemonade on top of the counter (neither safe nor attractive). But Bertie is slim enough for there to be room down the side for the two airers we use for drying stuff indoors.

Of course, if you're going to have a washing machine, you're also going to need a laundry basket. Mr. Click picked ours up earlier in the week and I'd shoved it in the cupboard upstairs. When he reorganised the lemonade, it made space just above the washing machine, alongside the washing powder, so now we've got a little laundry station in our back room. It makes me feel so grown up to be getting excited about things like this, hehe.

Day 48: Lots of Laundry

And there's the results of our first two loads in the machine. My Father-in-Law had his knee replacement surgery yesterday, so we've temporarily (rats and all) moved in with my Mum-in-Law, so we took the soggy washing with us (many because it saved on packing clean clothes, into a bag, everything we might want to wear is in this basket... plus some tea towels).

Father-in-Law's surgey went well and although he's in pain, he's come through it well. We're just waiting to find out how his physiotherapy goes today and hopefully by tomorrow we'll have an idea of when he'll be coming out.

As I said, we brought the rats with us and I spent a good part of yesterday playing on The Sims, so I wasn't sure what I'd select as my photo for the day. Sometimes it's the days when you don't know what you'll use that turn out the best, and I have fallen in love with yesterday's photo.

Our bizarre little girlie!rats normally all snuggle up together in their little hammock, but for some reason, since we've brought them here, they've started curling up in the (empty) litter tray together. The best I can think of is that they're getting warmer than usual all in the hammock and so are retreating to another spot to cool down. Whatever the reason, when I went through to our room to pick up my camera to post the photo of the practically tropical temperatures last Monday, I saw two sleepy little rats curled in the hammock and decided to go for it as my photo of the day.

Unfortunately, the moment I turned the camera on, the little darlings woke up and started clambering all over. And the camera kept on focusing on the bars, rather than the rats (or covering the rats with blurry stripes from the bars). So I opened the cage, stuck the camera in and rattled off about ten shots in quick succession, not able to see how they would look.

There were some awful pictures, but there were a couple that weren't too bad. And this has to be my new favourite:

Day 49: Peek-a-Bell

That's my cute little Bell rat. She's becoming quite the camera hog (she can also be seen in a previous photo from this month, examining my OU text books). I'm hoping I can repeat the success with this photo and take some of my other girls, it might be easier to get some in this way because when we've got them out, they just want to be held and cuddled.

And so that's me for another week (photowise at least). I'm hoping to carry on getting caught up on the reviews of the books I've been reading so far this year (just started book number 16 of the year this morning, so I'm no so far behind).