the minions are coming...

Despicable Me 2 is released later this week and I will hopefully be going to see it sometime next week for my birthday.  Nothing better than saying farewell to your twenties with an animated movie!  I loved the first film so I'm really looking forward to this one.

We watched the first one again last night in order to prepare Dan and he was won over by the minions, I love the minions.

happy farther's day

Happy Father's Day

We'll be spending the day visiting our families today, happy Sunday everyone.

collecting

Do you have a collection?  I thought about this one and while I don't "collect" things, there are things that I have a lot of, so I suppose you could call that a collection.

Some things I currently have a lot of:

• Picture books: I began buying picture books when I was studying at university and I haven't really stopped since.

• Momiji dolls: These have been bought for me as gifts and I have now built up quite a collection.

• Animation DVDs: From Disney and Studio Ghibli - one day I will own them all!

 Recently I have been buying a lot of house plants, succulents in particular.  Succulents are great plants to have as they are easy to look after and there is a huge variety.

I went around a few garden centres looking for succulents but I often found them to be quite limited and very expensive.  It turns out one of the best places to get large, good value succulents from is Ikea.  And their pots are great too.

Another great thing about succulents is, as they grow, you can split them down and get more plants for free!  I try to re-purpose things where I can so I have planted some of the smaller plants in empty Nutella jars.

I am gradually filling up every corner of our house with potted plants and very soon I will run out of room!

share it, pin it, tweet it...

Since I joined the world of smartphone owners last year I have been using social media networks more and more.  I have accounts with a few but the two I use most often are Twitter and Pinterest.

Twitter is brilliant for staying in touch with friends, keeping up to date on the news (I tend to find out about most things from Twitter these days) and for connecting with some awesome creative and like minded people.  It is also a great way of sharing your work with another audience.

Pinterest is fast becoming my favourite social media network.  It works like a mood board where you can virtually pin great images.  It is one of those things that, if you're not careful, can rob you of your time.  It is far too easy to get sucked in and you end up spending far too much time on there.  It is a fantastic source of inspiration and a quick and easy way of collecting everything together in one place.

Kim Lawler of Finest Imaginary wrote a great post on 10 awesome easy ways to use Pinterest for your website, which is well worth a look.

I also have a Facebook page for my illustration work but as I am not a huge lover or user of Facebook on a personal level I have been struggling getting to grips with how to use it to get the best out of my page.  It is definitely a work in progress.

If you would like to take a peek at any of the above you can follow the links in the sidebar.

How about you?  Which is your favourite?  And how do you use it?

fit and healthy

Both Daniel and I try to keep fit and healthy.  I try and cook all our meals from scratch with fresh ingredients and avoid ready made meals.  We do have the occasional slip up, but doesn't everybody.

When I was at school I hated PE and dreaded the summer athletics stuff.  I would cycle a bit and go on walks with my family and that is the kind of stuff I still enjoy doing now.  The thought of spending an hour or so on a machine in the gym with a bunch of strangers really doesn't appeal to me.  I would much rather get outside and go somewhere.

We are fortunate that where we live is surrounded by some lovely outside spaces.  We don't have to go to far from our door and there are fields, woodlands, rivers and canals that provide great opportunities to get out and get some exercise.  Dan used to go to the gym regularly but in order to save a bit of money we have been trying to do things that are free and take advantage of the outdoors, like running, walking and cycling.

I used to cycle a lot when I was younger but got out of the habit as I got older and went to college and university.  When Dan and I started going out the first thing he ever bought me was a bike.  He has always been a keen cyclist, riding BMX and mountain bikes for as long as he can remember and he wanted us to do this together.

We have been getting out on the bikes a least once a week.  Cycling on the roads terrifies me so at the moment we are just going along the canal.  We try and go either early morning or late evening when there are fewer people about.  It's good practice for me as I haven't ridden for a while, I'm just getting used to using the gears properly and building up some strength.  Hopefully we'll be doing some longer rides soon and start throwing a few hills in there too.

My aim is to be able to go to Dolby Forest and ride some of the tracks they have there.

What do you do to stay fit?  Do you like getting outside too or do you prefer to go to the gym?

little, little thee

When I was little the one thing that I remember people commenting on the most was my hair.  I really had a lot of hair, it was super thick and curly and had a mind of it's own.  It was so unruly even the hairdresser didn't know what to do about it.

That's me, see what I mean, loads of it.

Combs would get stuck, warm weather made it worse and I hated the hairdressers with a passion.  Fortunately it got better and thinned out a bit as I got older and started growing down rather the out.  Below is a little illustration I did a while back about how I felt when I went to the hairdressers when I was a kid. I don't think I ever got stuff stuck in my hair but sometimes it felt like anything could get lost in there. 

Any-who, enough about my hair woes, hope everyone is having a super sun shiny week.  I've really surprised myself that I have managed to blog 6 days in a row and I'll be super chuffed if I make it to the end of the month.

living with a lizard

The title of this post is a little odd but today I am going to tell you all about our pets.  Both Daniel and I grew up in houses with pets.  We would love a dog of our own but we are renting so it's not something we can really do until we have our own house.

In 2011 we decided to look into getting a lizard.  I took a little convincing at first but we did our research and got help and advice from a couple of friends who have a house full of snakes and lizards.  After careful consideration we decided to get a bearded dragon.

We got our baby beardie from Leaping Lizards in York, along with a full set-up for him.  They were very helpful and gave us loads of advice.  Dan named him Ron (after the legend Ron Burgundy, he's a huge Anchorman fan).  He looked so tiny when we brought him home and placed him in the vivarium, but they grow very quickly and have huge appetites.

Bearded dragons make fantastic pets.  They all have their own personalities and are very sociable.  They are pretty laid back and easy to handle.  Their little behaviour quirks also make them fascinating to watch.  We would often find Ron sat in some very interesting and uncomfortable looking positions.  When he was shedding he would inflate himself like a balloon.  They also do this weird thing where the push their eyeballs out which is really quite worrying the first time you see them do it!  He loved our company and would come up to the glass and scratch at the door to be let out to have a run about.

When Ron was almost a year old he got very sick.  One morning he just wouldn't move or open his eyes.  Luckily we were able to find a specialist herpetology vet who was just up the road from us, Johanna at Internation Zoo Veterinary Centre who was fantastic.  He was tested and treated for parasites, something that is quite common in reptiles and we took him back for regular check ups.

Unfortunately after the initial treatment his health got worse.  He refused to eat anything, was very lethargic and began to loose weight.  We took him back to Johanna who gave us vitamin shots and a food supplement but he still showed no signs of improvement.

Sadly we had to make the heartbreaking decision to have Ron put to sleep.  I would never want to have to make that decision again but it was the best thing to do.  Afterwards Johanna told us that there was very little else that could have been done.  She said his liver had failed, something that most likely developed when he was small.

We have talked about the possibilty of getting another bearded dragon in the future.  But we have said that we would rescue one next time.  So many people buy them when they are babies and either don't realise how big they grow or what is invoved in keeping them, so they just get rid of them.

Since then we have gotten Attenborough, a crested gecko, from our friends.  Crested geckos are so very different from bearded dragons.  Much smaller, faster, can lick their own eyeballs and they are nocturnal so he's out and about when we are home in the evening.

There are so many different types lizards and reptiles out there and there is something suitable for everyone, from the beginner to the more experienced keeper.  A lot of people are a bit squeamish about lizards but everyone who met Ron who was little unsure was instantly won over.  Next time you are in the pet shop have a look at the reptile section and see if you're not won over by the baby beardies waving at you.