Whooo-ooooaahhh we’re half way there!

(post title to be sung in your best Jon Bon Jovi voice please :)  )

You might remember, way way back in time, at the start of 2011, I set a list of 101 family goals, with the aim of getting them all ticked off the list in 1001 days.  I called it Project Zero, because it was inspired by the Day Zero Project website (and I slightly mis-remembered its name :) )

Well, today is day 500 – so we are, give or take a fraction of a day, at the half way point.  A good time to take stock and see how far we have got.

I’m happy to say that we have already fully achieved 34 of the goals, and have made good progress on some of the others….here’s a roll call so far:

Goal Number / Description / Date Achieved

50 / Start a regular Art Journal / 01 Jan 2011 - I not only started it, but I kept going all through the year and ended up filling my Moleskine to the brim and it was featured on their website which made me happy :)

10 / Go to a Disney theme park / 15 Feb 2011 - Florida would have been nice, but definitely out of the budget - so we took a short trip to Euro Disney in Paris instead:

5 / Have a smooch by or on the Eiffel Tower / 17 Feb 2011 - done and commemorated in my journal :)

24 / Get a Geocaching FTF! / 19 Feb 2011 - FTF stands for "first to find" - ie you are the first person to discover a geocache after it is published.  These are very competitive!!  And we were very lucky to get this one as another team was literally breathing down our necks as we raced through the woods :)

31 / Be early for school every day for a fortnight / 21 Mar 2011 - not an easy task for a sleepy boy and an even sleepier mum - neither of us are morning people!  It took us a number of attempts to get the unbroken fortnight without a single late morning, but we managed it by the end of March

79 / Get lost in the maze at Blenheim Palace / 27 Mar 2011 - this was a great day out thanks to Mr Tesco - I don't think I would have parted with £60 real cash for a family ticket, but it was a steal with Clubcard tokens.  The maze was a lot of fun as was the rest of the house and grounds.

66 / Find a 5 star difficulty geocache / 09 Apr 2011 - 5 stars is at the top of the scale, reserved only for the most difficult hiding spots or puzzles to solve.  We thought we would struggle to manage one - we actually found two in the same month!  (none since then though, I think it was a fluke :) )

36 / Make a skull quilt block for the Skull A Day DV project / 18 Apr 2011 - here she is, I called her Skullita:

94 / Visit Clifton Observatory / 15 May 2011 - this place is extremely cool - what with the camera obscura and the cave in the cliff, and the rock slide.  And it's cheap too.  If you live anywhere near Bristol, and you haven't visited, go!

Observatory on the top, from which you go down a teeny tiny tunnel  to the cave opening highlighted.  Very cool.

6 / Bake (from scratch!) and decorate cupcakes / 18 Jun 2011 - it had to be from scratch, no kits allowed.  And I'm not a natural baker :)  But with the kids help we did it, and they were delish!

I can't find a photo of the cupcakes we made in June - but here are some others that we made at Halloween which are prettier anyway :)

58 / Connor to learn to ride his bike / 18 Jun 2011 - this bike had been sat in the shed unloved for a while after the last unsuccessful attempt at bike riding.... but this time he stuck at it and got the hang of it .... and nowadays we can't get him off the thing :)

15 / Visit 5 more National Trust properties before our membership runs out / 25 Jun 2011 - we *just* managed this before our membership expired at the end of June - our five extra properties were Great Coxwell Barn, Stourhead (gorgeous! photo below), Badbury Hill Fort, Winchester City Mill, Bath Assembly Rooms and Dyrham Park.  Yes I know that's six, but the last two were on the same day so that counts as one day out :)

33 / Go to a music festival / 08 Jul 2011 - Sonisphere baby!!! :)  We had an amazing time there last summer.  And we're heading to Download this year (albeit only for the Sunday)

27 / Have a Facebook-free week / 11 Jul 2011 - I thought this one would be difficult, it was imposed on the whole family but as I'm the only one who usually uses Facebook every day, I was the one expected to struggle the most.  but, you know what?  I ended up going a full fortnight and I didn't even miss it much.  I'm back to full addict levels again nowadays though :)

4 / A day out at Weston Super Mare / 03 Aug 2011 - believe it or not I'd never been to Weston Super Mud before, despite having lived in this part of the world for over ten years now.  We had a lot of fun.  In the mud :)  And mucking about on the pier:

71 / Find a geocache in a cave / 26 Aug 2011 - this was up on the Yorkshire Dales, and it is one of my favourite ever caches

57 / Holiday in Blackpool / 28 Aug 2011 - we had a really good fun week up in and around Blackpool.  We haven't been able to afford a big foreign holiday the past couple of years, but we honestly haven't missed out as we've been having just as much fun exploring the good old UK.  Cornwall next summer, looking forward to it!

83 / Visit Gormley's "Another Place" sculptures / 28 Aug 2011 - so, so, so, cool

48 / Sell something hand made on Etsy or Folksy / 05 Sep 2011 - I was chuffed to bits when this sold.  I just wanted to know if I could make something that a complete stranger would actually be prepared to part with money for.

63 / Make a wish at 11:11 on November 11 2011 / 11 Nov 2011 - I can't remember for the life of me what I wished for...but I know we did it :)

Pressies from Underground Santa

9 / A day out at Symonds Yat and Clearwell Caves / 11 Dec 2011 - this was a rainy rainy day, so we didn't see much at Symonds Yat, but thankfully the caves are "indoors" :)

62 / Follow along with the A Year In The Life of an Art Journal blog and join in at least once a month for a full year / 03 Jan 2012 - I'm usually GREAT at starting things, but rubbish at sticking with them, so this was a tricky one for me.  But I did it, yay.  You can see all my pages here, but this one was my favourite:

70 / Contribute a set of pages to the tallest handmade book in the world / 10 Jan 2012.  Done.  Can't wait to see the finished article.

43 / Find the Towers and Tors of Somerset multi cache / 22 Jan 2012 - this was an amazing geocache!  It took us over a year to complete and helped us discover some amazing places (and I expect we burnt up lots of calories too climbing up all those towers!).









28 / Climb Glastonbury Tor / 22 Jan 2012 - and we went up the steep side of the hill too - oof - that was hard work!

91 / Take part in the Sketchbook Project one year and actually finish & submit book / 24 Jan 2012 - the biggest single project I've ever undertaken I think.  I look forward to visiting my book when the tour comes to London in October.

8 / See a real duck billed platypus / 12 Feb 2012 -  we were *hoping* for a live one - but apparently there aren't any in captivity in the UK - so a stuffed one in an Oxford museum had to do....

.....and talking of museums....

56 / Visit 12 different museums / 20 Feb 2012 - we've actually been to way more than 12 - it has been fun finding unusual smaller museums to visit as well as the big London blockbusters.  Highlights have been the fashion museum in Bath, the naval museums in Portsmouth, all the wonderful individual museums at Ironbridge, and the rather eccentric Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford where all the lights are dimmed and you discover the exhibits by the light of your wind up torch

trying on corsets and crinolines at the Fashion Museum

the Pitt Rivers

2 / Find a Wherigo cache / 25 Feb 2012 - we have been meaning to try one of these for ages, but our closest was in Bristol and we had never had the time while we were there.  So when a new one was hidden in a Swindon park, we were right on it.  It was a lot of fun, like playing a real life computer game, the kids enjoyed it too.  We did try the one in Bristol too a few weeks later, but my phone ran out of battery before we got to the end.

95 / Take part in iHanna's mail art swap / 13 Mar 2012 - this was the best swap I have ever joined in with and I will definitely be playing again next year

41 / Go to the top of a lighthouse / 08 Apr 2012 - this is something I have always wanted to do since I was a little girl - and we got the opportunity this Easter when we visited Portland in Dorset and the lighthouse was open for visitors.  Lots and lots of steps to the top but well worth the legwork :)

49 / Set up an independent Circle/Collaborative Journal site/blog / 12 Apr 2012 - something I have been thinking about doing for years, and I finally got around to it last month:

85 / See three stand up comedians live / 20 Apr 2012 - we saw Tim Vine last April, Ed Byrne last summer, and Stewart Francis this April.  All very funny indeed.

64 / Postcrossing - get up to 250 postcards sent / 15 May 2012 - I'm not the most prolific postcrosser, it has taken me 805 days, according to the site, to hit this milestone. But I do enjoy sending and receiving postcards, so let's see how long it takes me to get to 500.

So that's our thirty four goals so far achieved.

We have others that are nearly there, and yet more that have been arranged (tickets booked etc) but haven't actually happened yet.

Will we manage all 101?  Doubtful.  But I reckon we'll get at least three quarters of them done.

And without setting the goals, we would definitely have managed far fewer.

So it has been, and continues to be, a great way of motivating us to discover new places and experiences.

I'll be back with another update someday....ttfn

Rocking Your World Tuesday – week 19

It’s that (variable) time of the week again – time to count my blessings and put a few more ticks on the grateful list

I’m feeling a bit fed up today – nothing major, just a bit run down, big cold sore threatening to erupt any minute, super tired, you know how it is – and so it’s a really good moment to do a round up of what’s been rockin’ my world – to stop me feeling so down in the dumps

And last week had a lot going for it – for a start it kicked off with a three day weekend – can’t beat a free day off work!! :)

On the Saturday we had a nice lazy day, mainly spent at home, the boys played on the Xbox and I worked on my Steve Tyler CJ entry.  Very chilled.  We did have a little walk into town when we dropped Connor off at his dad’s for a bit – and I bought three fab new colours of spray paint at the market – got to say I’m liking this MTN 94 stuff even more than my usual Montana Gold.  

And I was super excited on Saturday evening when I got an email from the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project tour to say that my travelling sketchbook had been checked out and viewed at the tour’s first stop in Chicago.  I hope you liked it, Angela B. :)

Crossing the Severn Bridge into Wales

Sunday was our day trip day – we try to have at least one big family day out every week, weather permitting.   The Sunday weather had been looking a bit sketchy in the forecasts around our usual haunts, so I tried a bit of sun chasing, and checked the forecasts for various different potential destinations, choosing the one with the biggest chance of sunshine.  And surprisingly the weather man chose Wales – usually renowned for its rain :)  So a trip to Cardiff it was….

The weather man was spot on and we had lovely weather all day.  First we went into central Cardiff to the city’s main museum and art gallery.  Very impressive buildings and lots of interesting things to see inside.  Also we got the chance to see a mother peregrine attend to her chick up on the clock tower (in the black Olympic ring in my photo…) – as the RSPB were helpfully stationed outside the museum with telescopes trained on the nest.

Next we walked what looked like a short distance on Google Maps, but turned out to be quite a trek, to find “Europe’s biggest sticker graffiti combo!!!!” – only to discover that someone had painted over the whole thing with dark green paint – boo.  Never mind, we still added our stickers to the mix.  Better three months late than never :)

Next we took a drive out to the Llandaff area of the city, looking for the Boiler House Graffiti Project gallery.

Which we found, but it was shut.  Pffft.  But never mind, the legal walls around the back of the gallery were all open and well worth a look.  I especially loved the “Silence in the Library” spaceman.

It was a short trip from here to St Fagans where they have a fantastic (and FREE apart from the car park fee) open air museum featuring original and reconstructed buildings from all periods of Welsh history, many of which have been transplanted here brick by brick.  The kids particularly enjoyed the olden days sweet shop (well, they would, wouldn’t they :) ) and having a wrestle in the cock fighting ring.  Connor also had a go at archery.  We were only here a couple of hours and I’m sure we barely scratched the surface of it.  Definitely a place worth re-visiting one day.

And finally, we popped up the road to the coast, and famous Barry Island. I’ve managed to get to the advanced age of 45 without ever visiting the home of Gavin and Stacey, but I couldn’t put it off any longer :)  The place is a bit tatty and a bit run down, to say the least, but it has a certain classic British seaside resort charm to it, and the kids had great fun on the rides.

And we even got ice creams from Marco’s Café, which I think features in the TV show.  (I have to sheepishly admit that I couldn’t get into the programme, only ever watched one episode and didn’t get it at all.  But I know everyone else thinks it’s really funny so it must just be me)

We got home at about 11pm, thoroughly tired but having had a brilliant day – and happy in the knowledge that we could have a nice long lie in the next day thanks to the Bank Holiday.

And we did exactly that – it was nearly midday by the time we struggled out of bed!  I cooked a big roast dinner – which I don’t often get the chance to do given that Connor is always at his dad’s one weekend day, and we tend to go out for day trips on the other day.  And then after we’d had our fill we walked around to the cinema to see the new Avengers movie.

I’d been looking forward to the film, and expected to enjoy it, but I didn’t expect to enjoy it as MUCH as I did – it was awesome!! :) :) :)

And not only for the eye candy ;)

(I have a new Avenger crush, by the way, Thor was still super cute, but oh my, Hawkeye! He had me all a quiver….see what I did there? :D )

Such a fun film – now I totally understand why people have been going to see it two or three times on the trot.  I wouldn’t mind another watch myself.

If you are one of the two or three people left in the world who hasn’t seen it yet, I can heartily recommend that you get yourself to the cinema pronto – even if you don’t think you like super hero films – you’ll enjoy THIS super hero film, promise.

For the rest of the week I was back at work but there were a few more fun spots:

- I made a kite themed bit of mail art for Vicki via Collabor-ART, and a birthday card for my sister – making stuff is a great way to unwind in the evenings

- My theme and free Prismacolor marker arrived from the Art House co-op for the Mystery Project (just need to work out what to actually make now…)

- The Apprentice had a street art episode set in East London and Bristol, which was highly entertaining – blimey this year’s crop of the young business elite are a proper bunch of twonks!

- Our Download tickets came!!  Can't wait!  less than 4 weeks away now :)

- and we booked our accommodation for our trip to Berlin in July - cool little apartment in the artsy part of town on the former East Berlin side - looks ace doesn't it, so excited :)

And that’s about it for this week

As ever I’ll be linking this up at RYWF Central aka Virginia’s blog.  Feel free to join in if you would like to spend a little time thinking about the high spots of your week….it makes a refreshing change from thinking about the downsides of life.  I can definitely attest that having written all this down, I feel a lot less sorry for myself than I did when I started :)

See you again next time!