A Thrifty Way to Cheer Up Someone's Day

Coca Cola is currently being sold in cute 'enjoy a Coke with' bottles.

Why not cheer up someone's day with their name on a bottle?

Friday 13th Facts

I've always been fascinated by superstition, probably because I'm not at all superstitious and am forever being told off for opening my umbrella inside etc. I thought I would share some fun Friday 13th facts:

1. People who have an irrational fear of Friday 13th are known as friggatriskaidekaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobics, which comes from the Greek for 'Friday', 'thirteen' and 'fear'

2. Friday13th happens between 1 and 3 times a year (in 2012, it's 3 times and they fall exactly 13 weeks apart!)

3. In Spain, it's not Friday 13th, but Tuesday 13th which is considered to be unlucky

4. The Costa Concordia sank on Friday 13th April 2012

5. Over the past 400 years, the 13th has fallen on a Friday more often than any other day

6. Both Friday and the number 13 were once closely associated with capital punishment. In British tradition, Friday was the conventional day for public hangings, and there were supposedly 13 steps leading up to the noose.

7. In Ontario, Canada, the number 13 is skipped in the numbering of highways

8. Fidel Castro was born on Friday 13th August 1926
9. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is said to have avoided travel on the 13th day of any month, and would never host 13 guests at a meal.

10. Margaret Thatcher was born on Friday 13th October 1923
11. The US Seal has 13 stars, bars, feathers in the eagle's tail, 13 bars in one claw, 13 olive branches in the other.

12. Many hotels in Las Vegas, including The Venetian and The Palazzo have no 13th floor

13. But it's all OK, because for pagans, 13 is actually a lucky number!

Bread, Scrub and Fun in Folkestone

We've just got back from a weekend in Folkestone, Kent celebrating Dave's Mum's Birthday. We had a lovely evening of improv comedy, an audience-participation trumpet piece and samba. This was followed by a beautiful sunny day today walking around Sandgate and Folkestone and having a delicious lunch. I thought I'd share a few photos of the things I made and we did over the weekend.

A loaf of bread for this morning to get us in the mood for real breadmaker week:

Home made scrub as a little Birthday gift using Mrs Thrifty's vanilla scrub recipe:

Walks along the beach hoping to spot Davina (formerly Dave) the Dolphin (see Wikipedia):

Photo slideshow 'this is your life':

Walking up the zig zag path on our way to eat delicious Nepalese food at Gurkha Palace

Hope your weekend was lovely too!

Frolicking in the Snow

What could be better than some fun in the snow? We went back to see my Mum and Step Dad for Mum's Birthday and were treated to snowfall overnight, waking up to this...

So we grabbed the sledges and like big children scampered to the top of the nearest hill... (Apologies for the quality of the photos, sledging is quite an 'enthusiastic' sport in my house and is a little too risky to bring the camera, so my phone had to suffice!)

View of the village from above

Obstacles to be avoided!

View from the slopes

Hope you all had fun in the snow if you were lucky enough to get some :)

Word Cloud

Today I stumbled across Tagxedo, a beautiful website which lets you create 'clouds' of words using the URL of your blog. Here's mine:

I never realised how much I write about food! 

You can adjust the colours, shapes and even omit words from your cloud. Tagxedo is free, although it's definitely worthwhile donating to keep something so lovely running. Why not head over and try it out?