Cursed!

Surprise! I'm alive and not dead in a ditch somewhere, though it may have seemed that way over the past week what with the lack of posts...

I have decided I am suffering from one of 3 things; intensely bad luck, some sort of karmic justice or a curse.
It would seem that wherever I go, if I have planned an intense week of blogging, all IT equipment in the vicinity goes haywire. Take, for instance, the sudden and lengthy loss of internet we had a few weeks back.
Last week I was at home for my mum's birthday and to get the house straightened up a little, the day after I got there (a grand 12 hours after I set foot in the house) the computer decided to blue-screen us and refuse to start up.
So, along came the IT guy and after a few miscommunications the computer was back with us the day before I left. Talk about bad-timing.
Knowing I was unable to write posts in this time, I set about diligently taking pictures that I could use in the future; most of the new recipes I tried, an afternoon tea outing, a trip to a gallery and our visit to the wildlife park. Looking at the previews on the camera, I was pretty pleased with how my photography skills were coming along, at the Wildlife park especially, I got some shots of sunbathing lemurs that were worthy of National Geographic!
Then my batteries died, and did I have replacements? No siree!
I accepted this and seeing as I only had a couple of days till I was back with my rechargeables, sucked it up and got on with stuff.
Fast forward 2 days and I've returned to The Netherlands, after a good sleep and a much needed lie-in I found a set of batteries and popped them in the camera, excited to see what I'd captured! I plugged it into the laptop and 'Hey Presto!'.... Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
However you want to call it, there was not a single photo to be found on that camera. After switching the camera on/off and removing/replacing the memory cards for the 20th time, the disbelief subsided and I got on the internet to try find a solution, but two photo recovery programmes later and all I had were holiday snaps from the previous owner that had been hidden away in the corners of the 'deleted' folder.
I pouted and grumbled and was unhappy with life, the universe and everything, then Arjan suggested we go for a walk and after a while (and an encounter with some teeny tiny lambs) managed to dislodge me from the funk in which I was so heavily embedded.

Yesterday was spent at Oma's house to give some mental recovery time. It was stunning weather and we had agreed to help her with clearing up the garden a bit, so from 10am till 5:30pm we picked, scraped, scrubbed, snipped and swept. Now her paving stones are free of weeds and her lawn is immaculate (it doesn't sound like much but she has a LOT of paving stones) and we are aching all over like you wouldn't imagine.

I decided today to get back on here and, even though I didn't have much of any interest to say, at least let you know I was still around. I PROMISE that I will now be continuing on with regular posts and as my mum and I went a little crazy in the Marks & Spencer sales, I think I will start with an outfit post (I didn't do one today as it was a can't-be-bothered-with-make-up kinda day).

Anyway, stay tuned and I will try not to disappoint!