Singing for my supper

This post has nothing to do with singing, parenting (2- or 4-foot), photography, or any other stated brief. It's about paint. You know, that stuff that people put on their walls because it's "cheap" and (as the magazines cheerfully say) "such an easy facelift!". I have friends who paint regularly. And by "regularly", I mean pretty much as often as the Pottery Barn catalog comes out, or a new colour-scheme suddenly takes their fancy. In theory, I think this is a great idea. But the reality of it is that we are not "paint to change your mood" people. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if we're even competent homeowners. Apparently, I completely and totally SUCK at choosing paint. When we did our renovation four years ago I went through about 15 sample pots before I found one I really liked (love, in fact). This time round, our weird variable light was complicated by a need to sometimes use the living room room for photoshoots, mean...

I am regularly reminded by my Dad that I have taken blogging Epic Failure to a whole new level. Five months without a post? Pathetic. I've thought long and hard about why I've found it so hard to write this year. I've half-started any number of posts (at last count, I think there are at least 6 in my "drafts" folder, and those are only the ones I actually got so far as to start writing down), but none of them seemed to gel. Part of the logjam has been diverted attention: 2011 was unquestionably our "Year of the Puppy", and that young, fluffy bundle of energy has taken up A LOT of time. Last puppy we raised was in 1994, and we lived in the middle of nowhere in the UK, with loads of footpaths and hills at our disposal; there's no denying that doing the same thing (with the same high-energy breed!) in a US suburb has been a very different - and time consuming - experience! It's been wonderful, though. For those who've only known me since univ...