My friend and I hosted a Christmas party just before Christmas and the theme was Karate Kid

We drank lots of alcohol and recreated some scenes – videos attached lol

yes I know I am mad and yes it was FREEZING but Vodka is to blame

not done any work on the Prancing Pony recently.  Boys have stopped napping during the day and I am also toilet training them so we don’t have very much spare time at the moment.  However they will be starting pre-school for 2 days a week starting January so I will have some free time to be able to start work properly again.

I went on the tv for an interview re. Bag End – shown on our local BBC news station.  Link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XBdGdBtVD8

it was my birthday and we had a Blade party and then a couple of months later we had a ‘Usual Drunken Suspects party’ and recreated scenes from one of my all time fave movies The Usual Suspects

Blade (aka me) and Danica Talos

 note the blood cocktail fountail in the background!!! we made dinner with my samurai sword (no joke) cut up peppers etc with it.

Here is our usual suspects recreation:

The Usual Drunken Suspects

After about 5 hours drinking, we filmed ourselves recreating the lineup – if you want to watch it, click the link below *WARNING*** it contains a lot of swearing, cursing and silliness please do not watch if you are younger than 18 or are offended by swear words.  We are merely copying what the actors say in the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWa0FfHweEo     ignore the false start we get it right eventually!

Bag End pieces packed up for travelling in my car

Dolls House Emporium had created a custom perspex box for it and done some lovely signs – really impressed.   A journalist came to take some photos too and an interview so will be in the paper this week

Sign in the Entrance to Dolls House Emporium

Bag End in the custom display case

 If anyone fancies visiting, directions to the store are here:

http://www.dollshouse.com/dhe/dolls-house-shop.aspx#map

it is a massive shop full of all sorts of treasures and a lot of the things I bought for Bag End are on sale here!

Really exciting for me

I will post more details soon, but here is the website with directions etc to the store

http://www.dollshouse.com/dhe/dolls-house-shop.aspx#map

I have been experimenting with different floors for the basement of the Inn – I wanted it to be rough stone.  The stones I used for Bag End are too ‘perfect’ for an Inn basement and they cost a fortune so I decided to make my own!

This is what I came up with and it only cost £5 wooohooo (made stones out of masonry cement and then grouted)  Then drybrushed with snakebite leather, bleached bone graveyard earth and a smidgen of fortress grey.  My warhammer chums will know what I am talking about  

This is the frame so far (you need a LOT of imagination to turn it into the prancing pony – luckily I have lots of this):

oh and I have been experimenting with the door sign – this is a VERY rough first attempt but you get the sort of idea (sorry phone is rubbish at taking pics at night – I claim no responsibility lol)

Most of us had never met each other in real life and it worked out brilliantly – I haven’t laughed so much for ages (and I laugh a lot normally!)  I only stayed for one night and it was the first time I have ever been away from my twin boys for longer than a couple of hours.  I had a little wobble on the way out of the door, but when I arrived everyone made me feel that welcome and we had so much fun, that I coped just fine!  (as did the twins who stayed at home and had a whale of a time with Graham (my partner, their daddy) 

this is the rotary centre where we stayed - gorgeous surroundings

I am the second from the right

I am on the far left. We took a walk up to Peveril castle up steep hill

mexican wave after attempting to write 'twinsclub' with our bodies on the hill!

if you look really carefully you will see this spells out Twinsclub! It took us about 15 mins to do it and by this time a load of strangers had stopped to watch us and take pictures! We got a cheer at this point in the photo

scavenger hunt - had to find an item of male clothing. I got the added bonus of 4 topless blokes and an item of their clothing lol

me playing (and winning) at twister!

Packed up some provender (hula hoops, raisins, cranberries and water!) got wrapped up because it was raining and set off out of our front door.  Took my twin boys, two dogs and Nipper 360 double pushchair.

we walked to the top of the hill outside our house, crossed the road and found a public footpath across fields – all very picturesque

The hobbits (aka twins) run at full pelt across field after dogs, and me running like a maniac behind them pushing double wide pushchair, simultaneously taking photos on my phone – good huh?

is that orthanc I see in the distance? er no it’s an electric pylon

it was going great till we got to the end of the fields and then disaster struck in the form of a narrow bridge – how to get 2 dogs, two toddlers and a big pushchair over the bridge??????????????

answer: send dogs across, send twins across repeatedly telling them to ‘follow the dogs’ and ‘be careful’ open 2 packets of hula hoops, tell kids to sit down and let them entertain themselves eating said hula hoops and laughing at mummy trying to carry pram above her head over the bridge

I won’t even post pictures of the state of my clothes – look like I have been crawling through the mud lol

at this point all paths ended so we walked through lots more fields and a farm and eventually reached a road and walked uphill till we found ourselves on the main road near our estate.  Got home (after 2 hours of battling with pushchair through hedges and bumpy fields, felt all good about myself having done a really good walk.  Checked google maps and we had walked  - 1.4 miles……………….

FAIL.  lol – probably not even got to the end of Bagshot Row!  ah well we all had a good time and twins fast asleep now and dogs too!