Making Christmas with Tusks

This is Tusks.

Today, Tusks is helping me get my house ready for Christmas. Since we don't have very much space for a tree, we've decided to put bits of tree on the walls instead. I bought these things from the 99p store.

I unravel the garland and Tusks helps me to bend the trim, giving it a fuller more natural look.

Next he puts the bells on it.

And I hang the garland across the picture rail.

Now that's not very much Christmas for the whole room, so Tusks and I make up a few more garlands and this time I hang them vertically.

And we find some decorations I've had in a cupboard for a while. Tusks is furious to find that I've kept all these shiny things from him for so long.

I find a cupboard door to hang up the wreath I made a couple of years ago.

Tusks wraps the banister up with tinsel.

There's a mini Christmas tree, which still has the baubles on it from last time it was out.

Christmas is ready.

Bem Brasil

Today James and I went to Bem Brasil for lunch. It's an all you can eat Brazilian restaurant. I did plan to take photos of all the food I ate, but I felt too self conscious, so no pics today.

If you've never been to Bem Brasil before, I think you should try it because it's awesome. It's not like your typical all you can eat buffet - they do have a buffet stand with salads and stuff but the main bulk of your eating  is served by waiters. They come around the tables with all different slabs of meat and cut it off for you if you want some. And there's a lot of meat. We had lamb and sirloin and pork ribs and sausage and chicken wrapped in pancetta and garlic beef and chilli beef and steak with cheese and and... gammon and rump steak and and loadsa meats. 

When you eat meats your brain releases endorphins. So basically I got high off food. I'm not exaggerating; I genuinely am not thinking in my normal rational manner.

And then at the end they bring cinnamon pineapple, which is probably the best food in the world. It is probably worth paying the £13 and sitting out all of the meat courses just for some cinnamon pineapple. They put a cinnamon coating on a pineapple and grill it. It is indescribably good.

Then we wandered around Manchester in a bit of a daze and we went in the sweet shop but then we realised that we couldn't face more food and then I had to go find some Irn Bru, which was surprisingly difficult.

And because four people I know have birthdays coming up, I thought I'd have a look to see if there was anything good to get for their presents. But then I remembered that present shopping with no ideas for what to buy is a really stoopid idea so we gave up on that sharpish. Manchester Arndale is a surprisingly disappointing place for present shopping and the meat daze made the crowd annoyingly difficult to negotiate so we decided to go home.

Then the bus driver decided to mind game me by charging '64 bob' for our fare. At first I wasn't sure that was actually what he said, like maybe I was really high and my mind had invented it. Then when he qualified '64 shillings' it took me half a second to remember that shillings went out of use before I was born. And even though I know one shilling is 5p, I still couldn't work out how much that is in real money. Especially absent minded of me as I already knew how much it would cost before flagging the bus down in the first place.

So since we got home, we've not really done anything. But in a fun way. We sat in our bed tent and watched The Wolf of Wall Street, and have decided never to eat again.

Bed Tent

Doing stuff makes life more fun. I haven't done very much stuff lately, ergo I haven't been very much fun. In order to absolve myself from this sin, I will do some stuff every day in the next week for your amusement.

Anywho...

Today is the one day a year when society expects me to do something lovely for my boyfriend. I often do lovely things for him, but apparently today is a special day, so I thought I'd give him something he's always wanted: a tent on the bed.

I figured all I need to do is create some props around the bed and chuck my big blanket on top. I started with the maiden. I shoved it between the bed and the wall.

Then I put my stepladders between the bed and the settee. Pushed the settee in a bit to keep a firm hold.

I threw the blanket on top. Pretty good, eh?

It's quite a heavy blanket and it was already sagging a little in the middle. You don't want the tent falling down on you. So I secured it around the maiden and around the ladders using those plastic clip things that you get for food bags. I just wrapped a corner of blanket around the props and clipped over two layers of the blanket. Easy.

Looks better. But I wasn't happy about this corner; I felt my tent could have a little more ground space (or bed space, as it were).  

So I had to get another prop. First I shoved this bean bag fish into the gap between the mattress and the wall. Then I pushed James's flag into the same space, and shaped the fish around it, to hold the stick in place.

I propped the corner of the blanket up onto the flag. That's better.

For the other corner, I found my microphone stand. I secured the blanket over it by wrapping a piece over one of the screws and tying string around it. Job done.

So my tent was almost finished. One more thing I wanted to do - there is a big gap in one side. Meaning that side basically doesn't exist.

That's okay though; I own more blankets. I threw the little blanket on top, but that wasn't really good enough so I had to crawl through the tent and tidy it up.

That's a finished bed tent.

Now, as I did this last night, I actually had to take it down to go to bed (because with it being February I sleep wrapped up in that big blanket underneath the duvet). But I left the props up so I could just throw the blankets back on top this morning before heading out to work, so that the bed tent would be ready when James arrived.

And he loves his tent. James helped me to make a few modifications. We put a couple of cushions in the corners to create a little more room. James put a scatter cushion over the gap where the ladders are, which he is using as a hatch to reach his supplies (such as the chocolate I bought him).

And then we used this chair to fix it so that we could consume some audio-visual media from inside the tent.

Happy Valentine's Day!