I've just had my first two spam comments.  With having such a low key blog, I expected to be safe from such things.  At least they were polite comments.  However, I'm not about to take up their offer to visit Malaysia.

My Happiness Revolution post.
Thank you Astra: http://ajourneytoadream.blogspot.co.uk/

1  We had a lovely, peaceful half term break from school and we needed it.

2  On one of the days at half term, we were booked to help my son with decorating.  My job was to play with my grandson and keep him occupied  : )

3  My chest infection was not improving on its own so I gave in and went to the doctor.  I'm on steroids now and have an appetite like a horse but am feeling better - yay!

4  We failed in our attempt to buy a barn to convert but we are really happy to find that there are such possibilities around in our area.  We were starting to get a little downhearted but finding this barn and its possibilities has really bucked us up.

5  Twice in the last couple of weeks, my son has phoned me up.  He has to travel a bit for his job and twice recently he just decided to phone his mum, not for anything special but just because he could  : )

6  My friend who has a greenhouse was selling off her surplus plants and let me have all her spare tomato plants before anybody else got there.  With the greenhouse, her plants are 18 inches high and lovely and sturdy.  We planted 2 different varieties of tomatoes but with the cold and wet and no greenhouse, ours are 5-6 inches high.  I want lots of tomatoes because I want to bottle some and bottle some tomato sauce as well.  I read how Sue does it :

http://ournewlifeinthecountry.blogspot.com/2011/09/preserving-gluts.html#comments

7  It was my turn to have the school chicks home this weekend.  They are 5 weeks old now and fully feathered but still very cute.  I put them outside in the little rabbit run during the day but put them in an indoor rabbit hutch in the spare bedroom during the night.  As it was a teacher day yesterday, I had them at home for an extra day.  I'm still of the opinion that we have four males and just one female but only time will tell me whether I'm right or not.

8  My husband had his birthday at the beginning of half term and our kids clubbed together to buy him a new (to him) phone.  The old one has not been the same since I spilled my coffee over it.....  He doesn't really use it much but he seems to be away at all day meetings at a distance or overnight more often and he uses it then to keep in touch with me.  One of my son's friends has to have the latest gadget so they wanted a new phone.  Our lot bought the old (but still pretty new really - only a few months old) one for my husband.  It is a bit of a family joke but my husband is hopeless with mobile phones.  Give him a pile of old bits of electronic junk and he will build you a computer but don't expect him to send you a text.  I think he is determined to get to grips with this one as it is a smart phone and more computerlike.  His level of I-must-do-this determination makes me smile.

9  I love having my husband with me and all my family nearby.  I couldn't bear to move so far away that I couldn't see them regularly.  I treasure the times when the doorbell rings and one of the family is just knocking the door in passing, just to say hello for a quarter of an hour.

10  I love not being cold in the house because I can't bear the thought of the gas bill if I put heating on.  I'm still in lots of layers because ours is a cold house as it doesn't really catch any sunshine but I'm not shivering in my layers.  I must confess that even though it is June, I have had a HWB a couple of nights but mostly I'm warm enough.  It is good to be warm enough : )

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks but I am full of nasty cold and residual symptoms again.  I have been ill and had so many weeks off work in the last 12 months that I am just plodding along as best as I can at school.  I have been kind enough to share my germs with my husband as well and he really didn't need that sort of kindness.  I've had this 3 weeks today and I would really like it to be ancient history.

Enough of my ailments.  I need to put my thinking cap on (if I can remember where I left it) and decide what 10 things I am going to write for my Happiness Revolution post.

We had a bit of a disappointment recently.  We found a derelict barn with planning permission.  It had only a small bit of land with it but in an area where there are fields that can be rented.  The barn is a few miles away but not too far from where we live now so we'd still be able to see all the family.  It all sounded great but there was the dreaded question of money.  We'd worked out that we could almost buy it and still live in this house while we built the new one.  Except that the banks would not lend us anything like enough to build the new one.

The auction was last week and we didn't go because we just could not raise enough finance and it would have been torture to watch somebody else buy it.  It is the best chance we've seen in this area so far and ticked so many of the boxes.  Still, we are obviously not meant to move to that property because things just did not work out.  I'm trying hard to be positive because at least this has shown that there are still some possibilities around.  I had not found anything even remotely suitable for so long.  Anyway, I am still a smallholderwannabe for a while longer.