Christmas in the Sun

I have just arrived back from spending the last week in Lanzarote. I have wanted to go somewhere abroad for Christmas for a really long time and it was soooooo nice to spend it somewhere warm and sunny. In fact it wasn't just warm but hot, hot, hot! There was a very long delay in leaving Gatwick and instead of boarding at 8.10am we boarded the plane at 7.30pm. Having to hang around in the airport for that long certainly wasn't a great start to the holiday and our tempers were beginning to fray by the end of it! I had taken my pack of Uno cards with me and we were thankful for those eventually!


As the plane was so late we got to lanzarote in the middle of the night so didn't see anything of it until we got up the next day. And Lo and Behold it was chucking it down with rain! In fact it continued raining for all of that day and through the morning the next day! It did brighten up though and for the rest of the week it was very hot at about 25 degrees. Having left England in the snow it was glorious to be in the warmth! We spent Christmas on the beach and opened our presents on the balcony. My friend got me a book called Wreck this Journal. I am very anal over my books and hate even breaking the spines of a page getting bent! The point of this book is to completely trash it by doing things such as breaking the spine and scribbling in it and so on! I had fun doing that!


While in Lanzarote we went to Timanfaya which is where the volcano erupted for 6 years. It was amazing and it looked like a completely different planet. Supposedly a lot of the films which are set on the moon are filmed there because of the landscape. It was fascinating to see the lava flows and molten rock. The land was so hot that just putting some straw on the earth causes it to set fire in just a couple of minutes! I loved looking around and getting a feel of the place. I still can't get my head around the explosion and what it must have been like.




The holiday was really nice and I have come back feeling relaxed and sunned. Finally here's a picture of the view from the road outside our apartment:

Naomi House

My Charity this month is Naomi House. It is a local charity to Winchester and is a hospice for Children with disabilities and life threatening illnesses. They give care for the children and respite for the parents. They unfortunately lost a lot of money earlier this year due to banks collapsing and this made their future look very uncertain. They have managed to get some of this back but not all. They are a charity and are always in need of more finances and with the economy as it is and the bank problems earlier this year they have never been in more need. If you'd like to find out more about them then click here!

Britain's Got Talent!

I received an email today with tickets for 4 people to go and see a Britain's Got Talent Audition in February!! I have signed up for loads of tv shows so that I can get to be in an audience and I haven't had any luck yet. I was beginning to think that I wouldn't get any and now this has come! I'm so excited. I love Britain's Got Talent and what makes it even better is that Ant and Dec are the hosts and I luuuuuuuuuuuuuurve them! Now I just need to find 3 people I know who are able to come to London on a Wednesday in Feb with me to come along and I will have completed another of my tasks! Wow so exciting!

A Weekend of Time Travel

Ok so no I haven't actually been time travelling but wow that would be fun... Maybe I should add that to my to 30 and beyond list of things to do!

I have watched a couple of films from the 50 films to see list this weekend. Having not watched any for ages I thought I should catch up with them. I was babysitting last night so took the opportunity to get comfy in front of the settee with a big slab of chocolate and watch Back to the Future - hence the time travel! I have seen this film a huge amount of times but I can't remember the last time I watched it all the way through from the beginning to the end. It's a film that is always on and so I'll just dip in and out of it when I come across it on telly. It was a good opportunity to watch it from the beginning last night and actually remember the sequence of events in the correct order! The people I babysit for have everything you could ask for when it comes to an entertainment system. They have blu-ray player, dvd recorder and of course Sky HD. I was going to watch Boyz n the Hood on dvd but I couldn't work out how to get the sound to be the dvd and not sky! I'd managed to get the dvd player working but for some reason I could see the dvd but still hear the sound from the telly - frustrating! So in the end I flicked through sky and found Back to the Future was on Sky Anytime and chose that.

I have spent this morning exactly doing what Sunday mornings were made for - lying in bed! I had some chocolate left from last night so I put Donnie Darko on the dvd player in my room and lay in bed watching that while munching dairy milk. I hadn't seen this film before but it was a good one. It also included a bit of time travel in it so I feel all knowledged up about it now and feel i'm almost ready to start a bit of it myself - thinking i may go back to see some dinosaurs!

Toys r us, toys r us, toys r us

I finished my Christmas Shopping this evening. 1st of Dec and I'm all done! I think this is the earliest I've ever completed my Christmas shopping and it feels good :) I went to Toys R Us this evening and blitzed the place! It was a pretty traumatic event by the end of the evening. I set out with a good feeling optimistic that I would be able to buy all the presents for my 6 nieces and nephews in one go without having to traipse around loads of shops. Well I did manage to do that but only only 2 and a half hours £80 later!! It was harder work than I thought to choose between so many toys and games. It then got to the final two presents and I started to become a bit of a trembling wreck. My sister said to me before I went that if I began sitting in the corner rocking I was to leave - I should probably have listened to her advice! The problem I had was that I'd found something for my two nieces but it was the same thing and that particular brand were doing an offer of buy 2 get 1 free. This would normally be great but I had the problem of then having a third thing and no one to give it to (I had already chosen things for the other 4 kids and didn't want to change those) and I didn't want to just get two and not get something free!! This is where this challenge comes into it. In order to decide what I was going to do I had to speak to my sister and my mum to find out what they had got the children and ask what my sister thought would be the best thing to get her boy. You see how I'm linking this?! To speak with all of my family members each month! One of my brothers had phoned me earlier on to speak to me about football tickets for a match we're going to later this month and I had rung my other brother to ask him what one of his children is in to at the moment. So while in Toys R Us I actually managed to speak to every single person in my family - maybe I should go more often!!!

I have been doing well with keeping in contact with my family since starting this challenge. I get on with my family anyway but I can go for months on occassions without talking to them, especially my brothers. This is mainly just down to all of us being busy and living in completely different places across the country. It's not a huge problem but I thought that as I was doing this challenge and trying to fit something for each areas of my life it would be good to do something to strengthen my family relationships. It has definitely made an impact on my relationship with one of my brothers. We have met up a couple of times since I've started the 30 things which is more than I would've done in the past. His wife is having their first baby next year so I am excited about that (yeah my 6 nieces and nephews are all by my other brother and my sister as they have three each. Next Christmas I'll be having to buy for 7!).

Well November has ended and I completed all my monthly tasks which is good. I also didn't spend anything on my credit cards so that has increased that total to 2. Unfortunately I'm not going to make that 3 months in December as I paid for Toys R Us (ok so maybe it wasn't the entire shop even if it felt it!) by credit card this evening. That's not too much of a shock though as Christmas is an expensive time and I knew that I would have to cover some things by card. I will be donating to charity a bit later in the month this time round. I'm going to be getting my benefits just before Christmas so I will give then as I have a couple of Christmas outings I need to pay for before then! I have already decided who I'm going to give to this month but I will post about that when I do it!