ta-dah

Here's why I've been so quiet over the last week:

http://www.marchena35.com

I'm currently drawing monsters as these are useful for counting, colour and prepositions and they will look nice and colourful on the site.

While I am drawing monsters, Ian is sorting drawers. Our new knife block means that we can whittle down some of our old knife collection.

We're also in the midst of a mammoth puppy trimming session, quite literally as we missed a trim and they all look like little wooly mammoths now - without the tusks, of course.

Our New Knife Block

jan_23, a photo by ian_pullen on Flickr.

We'd been unable to agree on a knife block for a year and it was pure fluke that we chanced upon this in the El Corte Inglés sale in Badajoz.

Photos

We were trying to get some photos of Bentley to show how he has grown, however he was decidedly suspicious and it wasn't an easy task. Here are some pics anyway...

Me trying to get Bentley to stand next to me so we could show his size - Wilbs coming up to supervise

Bentley who is quite happy to pose as long as it doesn't involve moving from the settee

Bentley and Bob

Bentley looking a little nervously at Rosie who is trying to get him to play

Wilbs agreed to pose nicely even if Bentley didn't

Rosie is convinced that she is still the same size as she was a year ago

Seeing that the festive season is behind us for another year I've changed the picture at the top of the blog. These are some lambs that I saw when I was out for a cycle ride last weekend.

Not a great picture but...

Here's Wilbs buried under puppies!

New Computer

I am typing this on my new laptop. After Ian spent the best part of a week taking a virus off my Dell, and with my high hopes of better performance, when I started using it again the power cable started to fail, and then the 't' key fell off - and then the 'y' key stopped working. I decided that there was a message there, and decided to get a new one. I was going to get another Dell, however I had a problem ordering and they only offer customer service by telephone. I don't like talking on the telephone at the best of times, and having to do it in Spanish is even worse, so I hung on and tried to get a response by email. While waiting I saw a good deal on a Sony, which is refurbished, but with a high spec - and pink. So I got that, bought it on Wednesday and it was delivered on Friday. So far, so good....

I didn't really want to buy a new laptop just yet, but knew I would have to soon. I worked it out that I've probably written 1 million words on it. Something about monkeys and typewriters springs to mind.

We've decided that Wilbs is very clever. He likes to sit on the settee, something that was quite funny as I don't know how he knew it was there to sit on - other than listening to Bentley faffing around as he spent a few days trying to work out how to sit on it (Bentley is a big dog with very little brains). When the settee gets full of dogs (we obviously sit on the floor), Wilbs can't get on, so he has employed a rather clever strategy. He goes into the hall and starts barking, the others all run out to see what he is barking at, and while mayhem ensues, Wilbs comes back in and gets pride of place on the settee again.

Bentley is turning out to be a very nice dog, however I don't think that brains will ever be his strong point. He is nowhere near as nervous as he was, which given that he was a quivering shaking mass when he first arrived, needn't necessarily say a lot. One very funny thing is how he has bonded with Henry. They play together a lot, and Henry plays with him like he used to play with Basil. Happlily Bentley plays with Henry in a lot more gentle manner than he does with Rosie - as they are like two sumo wrestlers when they get together.

Climb Every Mountain

We went exploring yesterday and got quite a long way over the Sierra Bienvenida. It was quite steep and we both had to walk. It was very pretty and we enjoyed it, until we heard hunters who were closer than we liked, so we turned round and headed back. Actually, it was just as well as we did, as when I looked at the map when we got back, we were heading in a different direction than that I had anticipated, a factor that may have resulted in us getting very lost - or ending up in the bull farm, which borders the hills.

It was very pretty, however we soon saw that it was not a place to bring the dogs as there were masses of processionary caterpillar nests and these are very dangerous to dogs. These are the white fluffy things in the trees.

We'll go back after hunting season, as hopefully we'll be less likely to get shot. We finished our ride going back through Bienvenida which made it a nice circular trip.

Exploring

We've been on a couple of cycle rides which have been off the beaten track - well off our normal routes to be more precise. One started on the normal track to Usagre and then we headed back on a different track.  We knew there was a track that looped back, however didn't know whether it headed back to the village. It was quite interesting as we saw the village from an angle we don't normally see and it looked quite different with the castle and water tower being in the 'wrong' places.

We also found an unexplored track the other side of Bienvenida, which we may be able to get to by crossing the Sierra de Bienvenida. I think we are going to do that today - which could be fun...!

Pullen Plan 2012

We're not doing a Pullen Plan this year. This is because this is the year for consolidation.  Our plan for 2011 was to work on a wide number of projects and then this year to review everything and weed out what's not working. Our aim is still for FreeNeedle to account for 50% of our online income (through increasing income from our other sites - not through FN decreasing!).

2011
We launched a few new different types of websites last year. Two that Ian has been working on which are rather interesting are http://www.spinningbatts.com and http://www.yumyumyarns.com . He is also working on a new one now called Photo Chutney, which is like a FreeNeedle for photographers. I launched two and a bit sites, Away With The Pixels and a very new one http://www.digiwithit.com, with http://www.radoodey.com launched, but needing some work.

FreeNeedle continues to do well with 5.8  million visitors in 2011, up from 5 million in 2010, so we just need to translate this success to a couple of our other sites...

Classes have grown in 2011, peaking at 15 hours a week, which is too much, so part of our consolidation for this year will be to work out what is a realistic level.

I've slacked a bit on my rubber stamping site for About.com, so part of our focus for 2012 must be to make sure that I don't let that slide any more.

So, I wonder how I'll view this non-plan when I look back on it this time next year....!

Happy 2012!

Well, Ian has just spent the best part of a week removing a virus from my laptop. It was hidden right in the inner workings of the computer and was difficult to remove. It affected the firewall, but I'm not sure yet whether it had affected the performance of the laptop, in a way I hope so, as my laptop has been going exceedingly slowly.

So, I've just posted the photos of the craft session we had here. I just need to look at the photos to remember why eating anything produced is a bad idea. The house is still looking like an explosion in a chocolate / glitter factory. And finger painting was a brave move and one I will not be repeating. It is highly surprising how much paint did not get on the paper - or perhaps not.

We''ve had a good few days. It is nice not having classes, we went for a cycle ride on Christmas Day, and got lost. Pretty predictable really as I'd reassured Ian that I was 110% confident that I knew where we were going. We came back and had lunch on the sun terrace.

We've been for a couple of other cycle rides - one to Bienvenida and back on a track we'd not been on before. We had a picnic looking up at the Sierra de Bienvenida and another day we went to Llerena to get some shopping and stopped for a picnic on the way back.

My Christmas project this year has been learning to make computer games. I want to make some for young English learners. It is quite difficult and perhaps I won't have them finished for when classes start again.

We've also been to Pepe's at lunch time, which is something we can't do when I have classes, and it's not that appealing in the evening. I think the thing that I miss most about the UK this time of year is the great British pub. Comfy seats and a fire - sigh....

We might have a new cat coming to live with us. He is living currently living in the street in a village the other side of Jerez Cabelleros, he is blind in one eye and is missing a paw. Actually, he can still jump which is something that we didn't want - and his paw was ripped off by dogs so he is obviously very nervous of dogs which will be difficult, however we've factored in the fact that he won't survive without help so we bent our rules a bit.

Manualidades - 24th December