Celebrate the Small Things & Challenge Honours List 2

Joining in with the:

Katie one of the co-hosts over at The CyborgMom introduced me to it after I had blogged I was feeling a little bereft after the end of the A to Z Challenge so please feel free to contact 

Lexa Cain (click on the button above) to be added to the list

and if you would like to do a bit of a blog hop and go visiting and leave an uplifting comment or two here is the present list of contributors!

  

This week I am celebrating having "seen" my DD - she has been travelling around the more remote parts of Australia so although we have received the occasional text we have been unable to Facetime or Skype until early this morning.  It was just so nice to see her smiling face and know we she is absolutely fine - how wonderful that this technology allows us to do this.  She is still so very young and I really do not think we'd have been able to let her go if it was not for this ability to keep in contact every few days (the last time I sent her a letter out there it took THREE weeks to arrive!!!

I am also celebrating the arrival of the special and incredibly expensive paint I ordered so that the back door (which was scratched quite badly in a burglary last year) can be mended and painted to match the other  woodwork.  The only annoying thing about it is that it arrived in a 10 litre tin (which is enormous) rather than two 5 litres tins which is what I was expecting!!  The problem has been two fold - where to actually get this specialised paint from?  The "local" distributor who the previous owners had purchased from has since gone out of business and how to match the colour as the new paint range does not include the colour code on the old paint tin!!  I haven't actually prised the huge lid off the tin yet so I am keeping my fingers crossed that the paint is the shade of green I wanted - but still I have purchased enough to paint every single door the same shade now that is in the tin - OMG if it is a violent lime green!!!!!

Now onto Part 2 of awarding a Big

to these wonderful A to Z ers who made my Challenge so rewarding

The Hatching Cat - http://hatchingcatnyc.com - led me in to so many strange but true tales that there was an absolute wealth of inspiration to use with children for writing stories (or maybe even adults?)  It was all so professionally styled and written and I really am in awe of its creator!

Lynne - https://lynnelives.wordpress.com  was another UK blogger I discovered through her wonderful sketchbook of interesting sights around the city of Peterborough.  She was also someone who left thoughtful comments which I was grateful for :)

Jeri - https://storytellingmatters.wordpress.com introduced me to the fascinating world of ghosts I didn't already know about (and I thought I knew quite a few!!)  Ghost stories inter-woven with "facts" and amazing pictures all added to the overall quality of this blog and whenever I visited I came away feeling I'd been entertained!

Naila - managed two blogs during the Challenge - but this was the one I followed - yaknowstuff.blogspot.com which gave me a fascinating glimpse into her very busy and hectic life - but also taking time to to come and visit me whenever she could :)

And I've probably been saving the best til last because this lady is just so awesome I find it hard to leave a comment on her blog because I am just too much of a fan  and I become totally tongue-tied!

Sheena - https://notapunkrocker.wordpress.com blogs about all types of issues, mental health, geekiness etc etc and she does it in such an uber cool style.  I discovered her blog during last year's challenge and have been following her ever since.  I would certainly recommend this blog to anyone taking part to add a little spice to their life!