Tuesday, December 30, 2014

+ 365 - 3 & 2

+ 365 - 3

Today's positives :) (except it was yesterday)

- the marks on my face have almost completely healed :)

- kitties - never underestimate the joy of listening to a kitties purr - I have 4 cats and they are all different and I love them all - they know when I am upset or sad or just need them near me

- a new hot water bottle :) my hot water bottle which I had for several years gave up the ghost - literally all the rubber came apart and poured out oops - happily for Christmas I was gifted a new one which came with a rather fetching rudolph reindeer cover - nothing beats getting into bed and having a nice warm hot water bottle to put your feet on - toastie goodness

+ 365 - 2 today today :)

- bargain hunting - everyone loves a bargain and today I picked up 60 packs of loom bands at 1p each - a angry birds darth vader plush keyring and some toys ready for the kids birthday/easter gifts plus choccies all for under £4 - bargalicious!

- fluffy hedgehog slippers! It's been freezing the last couple of days and I have a stunning pair of hedgehog booty slippers (another gift) which have been keeping my toes nice and toasty - happiness is warm feet!

- sorting out stuff - a declutter always makes me feel better - getting rid of stuff can be difficult I think at heart I am a secret hoarder oops but today I got rid of several bags of clothing and bits and pieces which I havent used or worn in over a year. As well as decluttering and making myself feel good these items have gone on to help other people as I offered them up on me2u freebies.

- the gift of giving - I dropped some items off today to Maxine's Moggies a kitty charity - some toys my 4 dont use - all spruced up and washed and re-sprayed with cat nip, 2 kitty stockings I bought in the sales with toys, some treats and a kitty bed - helping others makes me happy and helping kitties in need makes me happy too so its win win




Saturday, December 27, 2014

+ 365 - 4

Following on from the chaos and madness of yesterday today has been a good day.

When I got up this morning a lot of the marks had faded from my face - although I still look like someone decided to play naughts and crosses on me. The police photographer came to take photos but apart from that I haven't heard any more from the police so no idea what is going to happen with this woman.

On to today's positives :)

- Free Zoflora - I won a bottle of the cinnamon spice zoflora and it arrived today - yayness - this stuff if absolutely fabulous and we go through bottles of it. It smells great and is pet friendly too.


- Rather than hide away all day which I really felt like doing (everything hurts:( ) I decided to carry on with my plans and go out sales shopping!!! Spent a grand total of £58 and I have now got birthday presents for everyone for the next year and started on the Christmas gifts too :)

- Also got to chat online to some good friends - so many of my friends live away (the ones I met through Uni and through working in the USA) and I miss them a lot - it can be difficult to make time to meet up as everyone has busy lives so chatting online is the next best thing

Christmas Day & Boxing Day - a Mixed bag + 365 - 6 & 5

I'm writing this kinda late as its now the day after boxing day.

Christmas day was fab I had many amazing gifts, many weird what the hell were they thinking gifts, lots of great food and pleasant times with the family. My family is nuts but its mine :)

Boxing day was very bad - traditionally me, the parents and my uncle go for dinner on boxing day. This year a kid jumped the queue for the gravy, because I wouldnt give up the spoon to her she stamped on my foot and kicked me and then screamed blue bloody murder. Told her mum I had stood on her and I had a mouthful of vile abuse - seriously no matter how annoyed you are you shouldn't use that language in front of kids. After this shaky start the meal was lovely, company again fab. At the end of the meal the mum again started screaming obscenities and abuse at me, when I turned my back on her she proceeded to fling food over me and when I turned around and lifted my arm to protect myself from the next onslaught of cranberry sauce she launched into a full blown attack on me. As she hit my glasses off and I am pretty much blind without them I have no idea what was going on other than I tried to push her away and she tried to claw out my eyes, yanked out my hair, scratched all my face, kicked and punched me and had to be dragged off by 2 people - all in front of her daughter. The whole thing was horrific and left me incredibly shook up - police are involved but whether anything will happen who knows?

Following on from that it's very hard to be positive - I'm in a lot of pain, have a semi-black eye, tonnes of scratches and bruises and hurt all over. However, I am grateful to the manageress who tried to drag the crazed woman off me, my dad who did his best to protect my eyes, the kitchen staff who came running to help, the manager who called the police and had the foresight to take down the woman's car registration number, the police who came out within an hour and everyone who gave witness statements.


Wednesday, December 24, 2014

+ 365 - 7

Yesterday's post only got published today because my laptop had a fit and stopped working - happily it's back up again today :)

So today is Christmas Eve and here is my list of things to be +ve for:

- Having a family who generally love and support me and like spending time with me - as they say you can choose your friends but your stuck with your family - mine might be screwy and weird but it's mine :)

- Being healthy - well kinda - I may have loads of things wrong with me but nothing is particularly life threatening and this leads on to my next point:

- living in a country where we have the NHS - yeah there are plenty of problems with it - under funded, under staffed and under appreciated but without the NHS I probably wouldn't be healthy - hell being a premmie baby I might not even be here. We forget sometimes how lucky we are to have such a service and today (after spending 3 hours sorting out my meds for the next 4 weeks) I can say I am thankful and appreciative of what we have :)

- Of not being injured, of the parents and animals not being injured when the lightbulb just exploded in the living room - I mean seriously exploded like BOOM SHATTER SMASH - glass flew in every direction up to about 2m from the light itself. Happily we are all okay and the sad little remains of the bulb came away with tweezers so I could fit another one - in some kind of serendipitous twist today in ASDA I just bought a 2-pack of new bulbs for the living room!

- Happy to receive a sweet little freebie arriving in the post for my dad - another free whisky bottle label :)

- and I am positive that tomorrow morning my entire living room will be covered in bits of wrapping paper with all 4 kitties and the dog going absolutely bonkers playing with it - whilst we enjoy our gifts which are threatening to over run the tree


+365 - 8 :)

8 days before I officially start my challenge but keeping up with the pre-challenge bit -

Today's things that have made me happy/been positive/made my thankful:

- I recently contacted a company on facebook about a product of theirs I had bought in a shop in Newport - I bought 4 x packs of alphabet beads but there were no 'N's - I sent them a message on FB saying I was disappointed and they asked for the batch number which I gave them and they said they would send me some 'N's in the post. Today I got a UPS delivery from them which not only contained a pack of 5 'N's but also a selection of their other crafting materials - amazing customer service - they could have ignored my message or told me to take the faulty product back to the shop but instead they stepped up with excellent customer service - way to go MultiCraft Imports of Canada - faith in retail has been restored!




- free cupcakes :) nom nom nom from a lovely lady off me2u freebies a fab freecycling facebook group

- Charity shop shopping - I love getting a good bargain and charity shops are full of them. I am lucky because within 10-15 mins walk of my house there's around 10 of them and they always have new stock in. My favourite one is on thats near the library and today I got mega bargains! I spent around £12 but got s much goodies including: a cigarette card framed poster for my dad for Christmas as he collects this sort of thing - it's a modern repo but an older modern repo from the 80's so he's gonna be happy :) a beautiful wooden jewellery box - again a modern repo but still very pretty and fits in with the decor of my room, a blouse and trousers for work (I HATE buying clothes for work it annoys me - it's bad enough having to go to work but paying for stuff to wear there? ouchie) happily both blouse and trousers can also be worn outside of work and still look awesome, a winnie the pooh jigsaw and 9 books - phew told you I got a lot for my money

Here's a quick picky of a couple of my buys :)


- today I got an awesome freebie in the post - a voucher for a free 400g bag of Royal Canin cat food - my 4 kitties LOVE this food and will happily devour the whole bag in an hour if I let them



- I finally completed my latest jigsaw - I say finally because it has genuinely taken me ages - I think its because it's a round puzzle and has weird shaped pieces but I have prob spent around 8 hours over the last 3-4 weeks doing it - there were times when I thought forget it lets just box it up and move on but I persevered and am happy it's completed

Monday, December 22, 2014

+ Positive 3 6 5

Welcome to my brand spanking shiny new blog.

It's called Positive 365 and it's a personal challenge for me to find something good, heart warming, makes me smile, positive etc every single day for a year - which is going to be hard - grumpy cat has nothing on me!

I decided to do this after doing 5 days 5 things and 100 days happy on Facebook this year (completed the 5 days 5 things, didn't complete 100 days happy because I kept forgetting but did get to around 85 or so which isn't bad).

I am pretty grumpy in general - especially in the morning - I am not one of those people who leaps out of bed full of joy, I do warm up in the day - I achieve Victor Meldrew level's of joy by lunchtime usually. I also suffer from Hanger! Yep if I dont eat regularly I get grumpy, then I get cross and then I turn into a psycho!

Anyways my challenge to myself for the year is to be more positive, to be more cheerful, to be more happy and to take more pleasure in the small things in life.

I have started this blog early (my challenge will officially start on January the 1st - like a new years resolution) to try and lead myself into it gently - Christmas is coming, I am off work, there's going to be good food, drink and pressies a-plenty which should all lead to warm fuzzy feelings of joy!

I am also going to post on it some other things as I go along as pages - they may or may not relate to +365 - I haven't really decided yet - which is fun as I am starting with a completely blank slate.

So today is Pre+365 minus 9

- things that made me happy today:

1) mini stollen from ALDI - at £1.99 a pack these bad boys are super delicious and very moreish and me and my dad after a hard trek around the shops getting in Christmas supplies ate the whole pack on our drive home oops

2) freebies arrived :) a 100g bag of purina one for small dogs for the pooch - free stuff is good stuff

3) surprise comp wins - postie knocked and had not 1 but 2 parcels for me! Turned out I had won 2 separate comps but both prizes were delivered today - a new blood glucose monitor that is apparently pain free to use (I'm diabetic and let me tell you stepping on a hairbrush whilst busting for a pee in the middle of the night is less painful than using a tiny pin to draw blood for testing - true story) and a world book day book - Deadly Pole to Pole Diaries. Which was awesome as I really didn't have much for my teenage animal mad niece for Christmas and now she has a brand new book all about crazy landscapes and the creatures inhabiting them - so its win and win yay

4) Gift giving - I'm a member of a large freebie/freecycling community and through it I have met some awesome and frankly inspiring people. Today I sent small gifts to one family who I felt deserved them and it felt good to give :) I also donated some chocolate and sweets to a mum and young daughter with nothing for Christmas and a goody bag to the mum of twin boys.  Each and every person was so grateful and it wasn't even a lot.

5) Butterfly lights - bought in B&M for the tiny price of £1.99 this pack of 10 battery operated lights are now adorning my headboard and are all sparkly and purdy - they would make a fab gift for a 10 year old girl (although this 33 year old woman is loving them too :)