Landlocked Mermaid

In honour of Stephen Hillenburg, genius behind Spongebob Squarepants , this top five is going to be my top five Spongebob episodes. 5. Band Geeks (2.15) Photo from TV Tropes I feel like this is everyone's favourite episode of Spongebob , but it is an absolute corker. It ends with a bop and provides us with some of the best jokes. From is mayonnaise an instrument to Squidward snorting band humour after every pun, this episode just keeps on giving. 4. Skill Crane (4.4) Photo from The Pony Producer Be the crane. Words to live by. I am fond of the Squidward heavy episodes, because as much as he tries to deny it he is just as crazy as everyone else in Bikini Bottom. He gets so obsessed with winning the skill crane! On a similar level to how obsessed Spongebob is with Kevin the jellyfishing guy. Or Mr. Krabs and money. Or Plankton and the Krabbie Pattie formula. Crazy, intense Squidward is my favourite Squidward. 3. Spongebob's House Part...

Four weeks today, it is Christmas day. Do I feel under prepared? Not really, I usually put off Christmas for as long as I can - I think I did all my shopping on the 23rd one year. It's a side effect of working in customer service. We've been pushing Christmas drinks since October so I have been very much doing my best to ignore it. But four weeks is close enough for me. I have a Christmas playlist on from Spotify and am having a good old think about what I do over December which is festive and not damaging to the planet. I could rant for a few hundred words about the amount of plastic packaging and carrier bags I still see (seriously?! They cost 5p and totes are totes better. See what I did there?) Instead I am just going to focus on my festive cheer.  🎄 ADVENT CALENDAR I have my homemade, fabric advent calendar made and ready to be filled. I am going to pop to Lidl later to see if I can find some fun chocolates to put in numbers 1 to 23. I was originally thinking...

I have found one of the hardest places to reduce my plastic is my lunchbox. I typically like to have a sandwich type thing, a couple bits of fruit, and then something sweet and sugary to see me through til home time. I ditched the sandwich bags and wrap anything bready in the cloth that comes with President Camembert. Camembert and chips is a favourite treat dinner of mine, so I had a couple floating around. I was going to use them for something but they work excellently as sandwich wraps. I thought they would be a good temporary fix until I bought or made beeswax wraps, but they survived being washed up so I reckon they will do for a while! Sandwich wraps   I do sometimes mix things up a bit and have hummus with bread. Currently, I am buying the hummus pots, but my mum has a recipe for hummus which I am meaning to borrow. I think I am going to struggle making it without a food processor, but if it's something I am going to do often then it may be worth investing in one...

According to my schedule, today is supposed to be a Merfolk post. And this is the first Merfolk post where I've had the person picked more than two days before! But my mental health has been suffering recently and the idea of doing a research heavy post and typing it out in hours I don't have with energy I don't have was leaving me anxious. So another day, maybe this month, maybe next: we shall see. You have to go where the brain tells you, and mine wasn't crying Merfolk. But that did leave me with a gaping hole for content. What do I do? Well, by random chance I was talking to a customer about bad sleep today. I have a bad shoulder at the moment and have taken to sleeping with a hot water bottle awkwardly lying against it. I should add, I had a lovely water bottle cover: it was cosy, soft, and kept the heat in until the following morning. But since moving in with my partner and having a house with central heating, I haven't had much need for it. So when t...

Today I have been busy making my advent calendar. I went to start it the other day and had a complete brain fail, so I called on the expert: my mum. She instantly saw what the probems were and suggested a much more practical way to construct the advent calendar. Best bit? We used the glue gun. No sewing involved! It ended up very different to the design, but I am extremely happy with it. And I cannot thank my mum enough for the help she gave me this afternoon. Turns out this project maybe was a little too much for me. But it is done now. Check out the making and project! Blocking it out A different and more practical background. Starting with a few patterns and pockets. Mapping out the final fifteen pockets. Lots of folding and gluing. Wonky donkey, but finished. The pockets are much smaller than planned; but this means I can get creative with what goes in them.  I could do foil wrapped chocolate lollies, little slips of paper with th...

Box Jellyfish Photo from Nat Geo Kingdom: Animalia Class: Cuboza Conservation Status: Not Evaluated (NE) Found: Indo-Pacific ocean (dangerous species); Atlantic ocean, East Pacific ocean Diet: Small fish Weight: Up to2kg (4.4lbs) Size: Up to: Side of bell: 20cm (7.9in); Bell diameter: 30cm (12in); Tentacles: 3m (9.8ft) Habitat: Tropical and subtropical waters. Box jellyfish are the most venomous creature in the sea. In the world, even. Well, three of the fifty-one species are the most venomous creatures. So they have a bit of a bad rap. Their venom can be deadly to humans but they are also fascinating and beautiful creatures who developed that venom for their own, non-human purposes. The three venomous species are: Chironex flickeri, the largest of the box jellyfish; Carukia barnesi and , Malo kingi . And they are venomous not poisonous because their toxins are transferred through sting not consumption.  So let's start with the name. They...

The Hallowe'en decorations are down, the remaining goodies drastically reduced in supermarkets, and the festivities are a fond memory. Now, I am a massive fan of Hallowe'en, if you hadn't guessed already, and usually at this time of year I am aggressively pretending Christmas does not exisit. It starts in December, Novemeber 25th at the earliest. Honestly, I think it stems from working in retail and food service where Christmas starts in August. That's when the stuff goes on the shelves (seriously, Santa plushies on August Bank Holiday). That's when the Christmas menus are released. Christmas takes some planning, so people start early. Last year, we planned our Christmas day on December 23rd and it was wonderful - but there were only four of us to feed.  But this is my first Christmas trying to be plastic free and it is going to be hard. So I am going to have to be one of those grown ups I keep hearing so much about and actually try to plan Christmas. Well, may...

So this weekend, the kids made a quiz for me to test my shark knowledge. I left my flip with them and let them loose! They did their research and did a little behind the scenes filming. It was their quiz, so I let them film pretty much everything!  We had some good fun doing this, I hope you enjoy watching it!

In case you missed my Insta-spamming, this Sunday just gone was the Dive Show! It's something we'd had pencilled in the diary for a long time but never actually got round to organising, life am I right? But thankfully, a couple days before we were still able to get tickets and saw it as a sign! We had a look at the talks on the Sunday, as that was the day I had off, and were excited to see a talk on plastic pollution! So despite some last minute can I really be bothered? feelings, it was looking like it was worth attending after all. The original plan was to get most of our gear from the Dive Show - snag some deals as we were buying two lots of expensive equipment. Well, we didn't need to do that anymore which is why I was wondering if it was worth us going. Thankfully, Chris convinced me and I am very glad he did. Because I had a very good time. We got lots of information about holidays, saw some talks, and got sooooo much swag. It was tote bag heaven. The firs...