Nikki, from the fantastic blog ‘oh fabulous‘, recently discovered an interesting website called ‘Before I Die I Want To‘.

Before I Die I Want To is a collection of poloroids taken of people at the moment they’re saying what they want to do before they die – which they then write on the polaroid in black marker. It’s one of those brilliant sites for browsing through, full of funny one-liners, poignant hopes & dreams, and interesting insights into the way people think.

Here are a few of my favourite polaroids from the site:

Following Nikki’s example (my personal favourite from her list is the shamelessly materialistc ‘buy a Chanel handbag’!), I have been thinking about what I would like to do before I die, and I have come up with the following…

• Experiment more in the kitchen – learn to bake cakes that actually rise!
• Get a place of our own, with a mortgage & everything.
• Love what I do for a living, instead of just being satisfied that I make enough money to live.
• Write more letters. I love writing letters.
• Go to Paris – a cliche, I know.
• Become a parent (and be a good one!).

What do you want to do??

So, the last few days have been ridiculously busy for us..

On Saturday James & I did some overtime for the company he works for, on a project that involves lots & lots of data entry for one of their clients. Basically, I took staples out of files for seven and a half hours – from 7am till 2:30pm! James was off somewhere else in the building rechecking files that had been destapled already, so I was thrown in with a bunch of strangers, none of whom knew any of the others. Random conversations ensued! The pay was good though :-). We pretty much collapsed in the garden for the evening, and enjoyed the sunshine with a nice BBQ :-).

The plan for Sunday was to clear our bedroom & start stripping the wallpaper, but because James was requested to do another day’s overtime I had to sort & clear the bedroom by myself. With James’s help (once he was done at work), we managed to get the room empty and the furniture moved into the middle of the room – but we weren’t done till 11pm, ouch! These are the ‘before’ shots of the bedroom…

Yesterday Carly came over & helped me strip wallpaper. It’s about half done now & I’m hoping to get the last of it off today. There are so many layers and the last one has random holes in it so needs to come off – but it stuck down with tonnes of paste! It’s tough going but we’ll get there :-). I don’t mind how long this all takes as long as we do a proper job with it. I don’t want to do it shoddily because I like the satisfaction of having a nicely decorated room!

I was hoping to do more work on it yesterday evening, but ended up doing some food shopping, then looking round some shops until Ruth needed picking up (her car was in the garage). After we dropped her off we stayed to play with the dogs/puppies, and have a welcome coffee & a chat. By the time we came home & had eaten, it was too late to start stripping wallpaper, so we just camped out on the bed for an hour watching some comedy show while I did some work on the Pure Genius website, and then zonked out.

Aren’t those puppies so adorable now? Sprite (the not so devoted mother – she can’t seem to make up her mind whether she can be bothered to look after them) is adorable too, of course. Unfortunately Ruth isn’t keeping any of the pups- she already has 4 of different ages though so I don’t really blame her – they’re enough of a handful as it is!

Right, time to hang the washing out & get on with things!!