A busy week

Its been a long week since i last blogged anything. Last weekend i went on a trip north to Aberdeenshire to see some family with my sister and her boyfriend, Matt. Its been far too long since i last visited, so it was amazing to see them. Also first time Matt has met the closest thing our family has to a matriarch, Granny, which was great fun to watch. All in all a very good trip. Here is a picture of Matt and Emma playing on one of the many parks we visited, proving just how grown up they have become.

Now is the end of Easter Weekend, which just so happened to coincide with Jonis first pay-day, so went on a trip to Edinburgh to celebrate and spent his whole pay cheque. But its ok, he gets another one next week! hurra! Being paid weekly is going to be so dangerous! It was a fantastic trip - we went to see the Scottish National Ballet do Alice, an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. It was very, very good, turns out i love the ballet. The music was  fantastic and the dancing we beautiful. We also saw a brilliant show in the Fruitmarket Gallery (which is rapidly becoming my favourite gallery in Edinburgh) about the Narcissus myth throughout modern  art. I got to see the Dali painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus, along with a poem Dali wrote to accompany the painting. This is the picture. You will almost certainly have seen it before. 

Its amazing, iv seen that image so many times on posters and on screens, but to see the picture for real, in the flesh up close and personal was just majical. There are some things a replica just can't convey. The exhibition as a whole was fascinating, all thought i would say not brilliantly curated. I think some of the images could have been displayed better. On the whole however, if you are in Edinburgh in the next month i would highly recommend it. 

Easter Weekend has also seen the start of a Grand New Project for myself and Joni. This Grand New Project requires some explaining...

As everyone knows, the weather this last few weeks has be wonderful, and myself and Joni have been lamenting the fact we have no garden in our rented flat. There is a bit of space behind out flat, but when i say bit i mean you can stretch your arms and touch both sides. Our bins live here and a lot of weeds, and thats about it. However, we have noticed that next to this little scrub land is the ruins of a long-derelict house. It has 4 standing walls and a few blocked up windows and only one access door - from our "back garden". We have decided to turn this space into a little squatters garden for ourselves. We have literally no idea who owns it, but they don't seem to care much about it. The place has clearly been used as a dumping ground for years. Here a picture to try and show the space, but it is very hard to photograph fully. 

As you can see, this is mostly just a landfill site, but we have decided to clean it up, and make it into our own little place. So on friday Joni bought 2 pairs of heavy duty gardening gloves and some black bags. We haven't spent long on it this weekend, but I think we have managed i surprising amount of progress. At first only one of us could get in the entrance, and we have had to drag out so much rubbish. Mostly we have just been stacking it in the bit that does belong to our house, making a right mess. Heres hoping the landlord doesn't come round in the next few weeks because we have no idea how we are going to get rid of all this stuff. We have already filled our bin, and then 10 bin bags with rubbish but, ta da...

We made a big pile of mud! Yay! Well done us!

Seriously though, we have made a lot of progress and everyone is invited to our BBQ celebration party when we finish it around September!

Off home to Notts for the long weekend next weekend. VERY excited. Can't wait to see everyone!