funny days

Yesterday was one of those...funny sort of days... The way me, claire and Rachel work is normally fairly organised - we do like to plan what we're doing and be on top of who is in charge of saying what and normally spend hours debating a set list of 4 songs...I think I went into shut down this week. Having agreed I would do a gig on my own I then ignored finding out anything about it - knowing that it would be in my old college was enough for me to know probably psychologically that it would be probably be best for me not to find out anything else. I knew the day and that Claire and Rach wouldn't be there and that I wanted to be brave enough to say yes to it - so I did. So this time the set list was thought about in the car on the way there. It was a bizarre day - one where you have lots of little funny and random chats. The rooms filled up around the very edges but definately no more than that with a few college students who normally get together to MC but they we're not going to play today. I spent the first half hour leafleting and remembered how much I actually like talking to young people who are hostile and abusive - actually really - there's such a fantastic honesty and opurity in young people who do not put an polite manners with you and I love knowing that a break through with someone who has started off hostile is a true victory. Philippa did a couple of sets and I did one in the middle. Eventually some guys MC'd. Having spoken to everyone earlier on leafleting I didn't feel at all nervous before or during my set...it didn't go particularly smothly - we missed out the last chorus on the first song, my voice was sore and we'd not sound checked or run though at all. Joel Cana was there to drum for philippa and we asked him to play so he made it up as he went along - though he is an amazing drummer. But they listened, i talked about what the songs were about and they listed to that to - which never happens...and I was thank ful that we have had so much experience of hostile environments- compared to some this one felt friendly!
I haven't blogged in a while but I forget to. Tomorrow we're recording the acoustic tracks for that EP and I'm feeling really positive about what's coming up for us. It feels like an easier chapter - well - a more exciting one anyway!

Tonight there will be music

This evening is the Philippa Hanna album launch. I'm really looking forward to it...though slightly apprehensive. My brother Andy Baker has a support slot and I'm singing some of it with him. I managed to totally forget about one practice, almost had a nervous breakdown in the other I made it to as I had to drag my children out to it and they both had tantrums and screamed and clung on to my legs all the way through and so I got loads of things wrong. Managed a quick run through last night after some pasta but there's a few tricky harmonies to remember. I don't normally get nervous but singing with my brother is different...I'm not unfamiliar with being shouted at whilst on stage if I make a mistake - I don't get that from Claire and Rachel - we laugh at each other...which I can handle!
I am so pleased for Philippa though...she is such an inspirational talent and as an inspirational character to go with that which is a rare and beautiful thing. It's so good that she has such a brilliant album to document some of what she' achieved recently. I really hope tonight is a good one for her. Having chatted with Claire and Rach loads about how difficult it is to get good support to events and to create a consistent following..which I thought was a problem only we had, through talking with my brother who manages Philippa and is involved with lots of artists, it seems that even people who really deserve and amazing following just don't get it. Why does making music have to be so hard. Artists need people to come to their events and support them...it is that support that generates new support.. and that sort of momentum is so hard to create...even if you are good at what you do! I now that I have been guilty of not turning up to gentlemen gigs and philippas gigs even though both are good friends... and because I KNOW how BRILLIANT they are I assume they won't need me to be there for them - but if that is what everyone does then maybe they regularly see the same sea of blank faces that we regularly see too!

Of Course I needent have worried...obviously...and beauty

...and I love knowing that things will be fine because God has it in his agenda...even though logically and practically it will never work. Anyway how exciting to have embarked on the second course and what a lively group we have this time! I was worried that they would all hate each other and refuse to talk - lack of talkingis NOT going to be a feature of this course. This week we were looking at beauty...how the media makes us feel - being faced constantly with airbrushed and rich celebrities. Why oh why do we look at images like this and end up feeling boring and worthless...we all 'know' it in our heads that these images are not reality but the reality is that they can have enormous affect on how beautiful we think that we are. It made me sad recently at the checkout at Sainsburys...my normal magazine buying activity occurs in the supermarket as somehow a magazine cost might get disguised as some brocoli or something we really need and I don't 'feel' I am spending good money on rubbish at least...but as the checkout lady was scanning my copy of happy with a pretty girl on the front with amazingly bright blonde bouncy curls positioned so perfectly like a big sphere around her head the checkout lady sighed with such genuine defeat and expressed that her hair didn't seem to go like that. Well the thing is that NO ones hair happens to go like that without a team of about 20 professional stylists, great photographers, makeup artists, lighting crew and graphics artists ready to make this image look amazing. I am sure that getting up to get to Sainsburys for her morning shift this lady didn't have all that available to her...and neither does this same model everyday of her life either... we ALL look great sometimes and rough as at other times...lets be honest and any single one of us could look stunning if Vogue had us lined up for their front cover...they would make sure of that. So why do we waste SO MUCH time being disatisfied with the way we look but wishing we were like someone else... who is also wishing that they looked like someone else too. Stupid crazy world.

Picture btw is totally unrelated...though it is us performing our Doll Factory song for the first ever time...which i really loved doing! And happens to be about the ridiculousness of media pressure as well.

In worried anticipation...

...this will be brief but I want to document the butterflies that are worrying a bit in my tummy as the next girls course draws very close. I know there is less to do...and I know we have run it before so there is little stress involved this time round but I fear we have the most bizarre mixture of girls and I do not think that the group dynamic will be sucessful. I am hoping that this will be proved rubbish. Joel told me to worry - we've got girls, we've got a room, a great course and we're being paid - then Holly butted in to remind him 'and they've got Jesus' so yes all of those things are right. I just want it to be GREAT. 3 days to go! 4 possibilities for the last 2 spaces... yikes!

What an achievement!

Well done Rachel - she worked SO hard and today the message arrived. GoldDigger are now a REGISTERED CHARITY number 1120689!

I have another blog

by the way...I really am going to put a link at the side - I thought they would be more linked up than they obviously are - this one will be about mainly work ministry and the other www.importantinvestments.blogspot.com is about my family ministry - only a few posts but they are very long ones!

Anyway...

It is just good to have good friends. This week it's been great as we've had Rachel, Ben and Seb (3 amazing youth workers of Steelroots Ministry) round to have breakfast and pray together every morning before/ starting off work. It was a strange concept to get my head around that we wouldn;t have to eat a proper nice full english or at least a very civilised croissant, orange juice and coffee type of breakfast - no apparently it did not need to be posh...wheetabix all round. There's just something I do find a bit strange about meeting up socially to eat a bowl of sloppy brown cereal - but that's my issue to get over.
It has been really good to get down to the table and get on with praying first thing...and amazingly possible to be able to spend a good chunk of quality time with God even with 2 small children under our feet...and thanks to a brand new ELC garage (happy 1st Birthday Elijah xx)We've been able to share vision and feel stronger and more together as a team. Most importantly of course it was great to have a session of praying for our washing machine...trivial to some it has been the most frustrating of problems. I'm not sure if I have documented beyond the sock blockage and mentioned the squeeky drum and then an ok wash and then another blockage which we could not find but managed to clear itself but not before it had flooded our floor one more time. So it sat there in the corner of the kitchen and got prayed for and now is behaving just fine....THANK YOU GOD
Also and amazingly on Elijah's birthday on Monday we had a system of Elijah tried to open his presents and we let Holly open cards. Amonst all the mess of torn paper on the floor I noticed a little note which said something like 'however you need to spend it' in a friends writing and twigged that lying next to it in all the rubbish was a cheque from 2 of our good freinds. They had just decided to bless us with £200 - they have done that before at one of our horrendous financial times I remember and the amount they gave us paid EXACTLY for a freezer we'd just had to buy even though we couldn't afford it. This month - after a year of being debt free we got into a big financial mess again - the thing that tipped us over was the £120 for the washer to be fixed and £80 (I can not believe it can be this much!) for getting rid of the naughty squirrel who has knawed a hole in our roof just because he would like to stay in our loft :# So this cheque covered these unexpected payments we were crippled by. What an amazing ministry to write cheques that bless people that much! I really felt that this was a sign that God was looking out for us in this but knew that wouldn't totally shift the damage but then last night we recieved another cheque from a friend which specified it was for us and not for GoldDigger - which again just makes me feel safe knowing that God is on our case. I need to remember God DOES know our bank balance - of course he does but sometimes we are just so stupid about remembering that if he knows everything then that includes what remains a secret between me and the call centres of HSBC.
I must write about the day in Top Shop...it was amazing...It will be done shortly...or maybe I have done...I forget

More Positive and Really Positive

Right... having read Joel's blog - featuring a picture that really made me laugh - because that is how our house looks at the moment - I was soothed by the fact that he is also annoyed about the stress of this week and having read his fuming anger I feel I have vented mine. Good. Things are still STUPID and the washer now has been unblocked, had the drum replaced, had the pipe reconnected, had the blockage of a small sock pulled out of wherever it was stuck all on different days with several callouts from our new family member - washing machine man and today it is working but makes the LOUDEST noise I have ever heard. Still we aparently don't need a new one - Joel reckons it is fixable :l ummmm However - it is NOT going to bother me...there is nothing I can do to mend a washer and I can not blame myself for it breaking. It is simply annoying but I will not allow it to defeat me. we can all wear dirty, smelly clothes if we need to -I'm quite simply not hand washing 5 mountains of clothes.

But today has been good. Rachel has done an AMAZING job getting the charity registration form together - I am basically astounded that she has motivated herself to plough on with what has been a nightmare to be honest - I'm not just saying that cos I know she'll read this but I simply am in awe! And I've had a nice easy day pulling graphics together for publicity and stuff. Created a girls course myspace this afternoon with pics on from the girls course so will probably launch it to the girls tomorrow night after our day in York hopefully with pictures of our day on there too. Have a sneaky look before we've advertised it on www.myspace.com/girliwanttobe.com

However...

On a more positive note to end the day - we met the girls in Starbucks today to break the news about Top Shop on Saturday and they were properly excited! In fact a couple of them knew already as I managed to tell one of their dad's as I was too excited and then she told 2 of he others as she said it was too exciting to keep secret. Oh how I love being a girl!

I Take That Back

Whatever I said in that last blog I probably DO mean in theory and fundamentally- which I hope can be seperated from my feelings...but... today I FEEL officially defeated. Sorry.

Getting Paid? Ever?

This has been a big topic of conversation on our work days recently. It's a tricky one. When the three of us set up GoldDigger 2 years ago ( 9th August 2005 was our first dreaming session together where the we all got together in the same place to hammer out some ideas around this crazy notion that we were meant to 'do something') I don't think we would have been so enthustastic if we'd have all known for a fact that 2 years down the line we would have been paid a grand sum of £20 each which we only actually kept as it was earnt in the shame of lowering ourselves to performing - as a favour to a friend of course - at a childs birthday party.

Joel and I made a decision, from the very start, for our family that we would not be led by our financial needs - and that as an ideal is EASY to decide but in practice has been quite tough. Though both of us are people who enjoy an expensive lifestyle and having nice things it had to be a stubborn decision. When we moved from Birmingham to Sheffield when I was 3 months pregnant I struggled to get a new job - i think employers are not keen to take someone on who is 4 months away from leaving again and so we had to get by on one salary. Not easy if renting a property uses up more than half of your wage. We were also heavily crippled with student debt, credit card debt and overdrafts - mainly because we'd both been a bit stupid and only ourselves to blame - but still very difficult. During these few months I was forced to become more creative. I had to make things instead of buying things. I saw my pregnancy through in one pair of size 10 but thankfully stretchy and hipster jeans and 2 black maternity tops - I had an identity crisis but quite simply could not afford anything to wear! We got in a horrible financial rut of going over our overdraft and facing bank charges the following month which then set us off on the impossible foot of the coming month but there was really nothing we could do. Still our faith in God was that we knew we had to lean on Him and depend on him - and although we did feel as though we were sinking - and it was depressing - we knew that He had not let us drown yet - and though we may be in debt we still had a roof over our heads and our health and though some days we thought we would not be eating a meal, or we knew we had run out of milk and bread and had literally used up our very last pennies God really did provide. It was on those days that there would be some left over milk from an event at Joel's work or someone would give us something they'd got on offer or someone would invite us round. This got harder when Holly arrived. It is one thing being a grown adult having made this decision based on your own values and beliefs but another thing to put a little baby- totally dependent on you into the equation. But I do love the fact that for Holly's first year of life she was surrounded by an exciting growing ministry which was Joel's work in youth ministry and that I could be involved and help and support him in that.
I did start supply work for a while and the extra money was great - being paid 100 quid for 2 days work is hardly david beckham sort of money but in one month that could cover the bulk of the rent and meant that we could start paying into our debts. However, the bits and pieces of music I was doing were irregular and only managed to give me a more unquenchable thirst to want to do more. Joel and my brother Andrew kept on at me that I needed to just get on and do what ever I wanted to do - and that the right people would just come along - but without thise right people fitlling in the other parts of the jigsaw I just didn't know what that 'something' was.
So that leads up to that time of meeting with Rachel, and then Claire and then our meeting on Aug 9th.
In forming some sort of idea we knew that we needed to set time aside for this project. pre-named GoldDigger was not going to be easy with 3 small children racing around every time we met and I had childcare for 2 days a week free from my lovely mother which covered the days I worked. We needed two days together to put into GoldDigger at least so the choice was simple - paid work or GoldDigger. My husband is amazing - he believes in my ability and most importantly recognises my needs and would never want me to miss out on anything that developed my character, released me into my calling or made me feel fulfilled. In fact if I had not been up for it I would have been forced to do it by him anyway. So financially we went back to tough times. BAck into the same old rut of bank charges month after month but GoldDigger were not in any position to be paying wages - we were non existent at that stage! Still the great thing about the job was that I had two great and faithful friends who I could say - aaaagggghh this is financially impossible! and they would understand and pray me through it. We got a day of freedom when one night my mum wanted us round for tea. Usually she phones when she has food that is nearly up to use by date and we all have a family meal. This time it was a joint of beef. We couldn't make the day she invited us but she was quite insistent that we made the following night instead. So over we went for a very normal family meal. At the end of which my dad suddenly became very serious and told me and my brother that he had a bit of money he had been saving up to go towards us nbeing able to buy a house. This was a huge shock. I have never been allowed to know about my parents finances - they are both very private about money - yesterday I asked mum how much a kitchen knife was that she had and she had to be vague even about that! So that was the day that our lives really changed - we were in a postion to buy having a good deposit- which without this total blessing we would have NEVER been able to do and we were able to take out enough mortgage to pay off our other debts. Our mortgage is STILL ridiculous though and we are down to be paying it until we are 148 or something but at least we have one! We've been in our own house for just over a year now and I really do thank God for it so often. I love it!




So... now GoldDigger is recieving more money - not loads but we have enough to get by and it's so brilliant that some people see what we are doing and give to us regularly. It's amazing as well when close friends - ones who know what we do but also know our bad points also believe in what we are doing and give to us REALLY sacrificially. Very humbling and very encouraging all at once! But this is our baby - and as much as some days I want to demand payment for my 70 hour week...for all those meetings, events, hours designing on the computer, trauling around looking for the right resources...that some weeks I put my children to bed and get strait on with work until the early hours because we've got things on. However I just want what we've had the vision for to be fulfilled. I don't want to take the money that has been given to us for wages if it means that we can't go ahead with the girls course, or with a pulbicity leaflet - because this vision is one I know God has given me the longing to see fulfilled. But we do feel the time is getting nearer. Rachel has worked so hard to get our charity registration done which means it will be easier to apply for funding and we know that set up costs are being met and have been met leaving less to save for.
Some days I get really fed up of it all... I miss going shopping and just feeling a bit bad getting a new top... rather than knowing it will cost an extra £25 of bank charges and I'll be paying it off for 3 months! Mainly I hate constantly having to say no...we cant afford it to everyone we talk to. We have the misfortune of Joel's ministry being in one of the richest areas of the country and so everyone around us lives a much more expensive lifestyle. Yesterday I was asked 3 times within the space of 10 minutes if we were going on holiday this summer. When people twigged that we couldn't afford a holiday we were reccommended this cheepy holiday brocure of Christain peoples holiday homes. That was the standard of our honeymoon - some vicars caravan in scotland - full of all their stuff and not everso romantic - we are not as rich as that anymore with 2 extra people in our family! This sounds really moany - I don't feel deprived though. I thank God that Joel and I are creative people - I don't get inspired by rich people with nice things - it is way to obvious but I do get inspitred b people who can make beautiful things out of the little that they have. I hope we are like this. I also could be going out to an office everyday, packing my children off to some childcare and sitting feeling proud of my nice clothes that I bought whilst shopping at the weekend but doing something dull and meaningless - I would never trade the way we have it for that. As I've said before, setting up GoldDigger was a risk but is life any fun without risks - and what is the point of having a passion and a longing to do smething if that just sits rotting away inside you? I would rather worry about not having the money for things I would like than worry about not having the llife I would like to have and the reason and motivation to be who I should be. Man, this is a long blog.

Things are Over...and Just Beginning

Well things are finally over - the girls course - what an achievement. that seemed like the most intense amount of work ever! Not stress but exciting work. The Princess and Pirate party over - intense amount of stress - probably. Loved it though. Bit scary the thought of cramming 20 small children and their parents into one fairly small house on a rainy day in July but I prayed for sunshine and there was just enough to make it brill and my beautiful little children loved it - so so did I!

The girls course finished excellently -I think. The final session together was just perfect and our very last minute ideas of how to empower the and pull together all the decisions they'd made and the choices the'd made for themselves. It was purely inspired- can't get better than that! To top rthe whole course off - we managed to afford it. Of course we'd missed things off the budget in the beginning - there are always oversites- but amazingly we seemed to come under budget in some other areas so we really managed. Thank you God for your provision! There are things we are still in need of and this course has certainly consolidated our occasional discussions of needing a van!
One properly exciting blessing is that God properly blessed Rachel as she went to Leeds for the day shhopping - obviously God does want us to shop sometimes! In Top Shop she casually mentioned to the shop assistant as she picked up a flier for the style consultant that something like that would be great for the Girls course she was running. My experience of Top Shop assistants has never been the friendliest but this one took all her details and the next moring the stylist must have called Rachel twice before she'd even arrived at work. Basically we've managed to secure that the last session of every course... - which basically we'd earmarked as a treat of some sort - but had pretty much run out of inspiration -it really needed to be special but we'd have to do it every course so a big event would be too draining on out time and resources realistically -...as a trip over the the big style advisors room in York where we will have supplied them with a few details of each girl on the course so that they canhave things ready on arrival for each of the girls. 3/4 style advisors so that each of the girls will get their own consultancy and be introduced to things they may not have ever thought of but will suit their own shape and colouring and taking into account the styles they are into. The sylist Rachel has been talking to is desperately keen to work with us, has a heart for community work and basically has a huge thing about being individuals. She said that she hates the culture that just because Kate Moss wears something we all go out and buy it and really wants these girls to understand what can suit them and appreciate the ways they are all different - This just sounds fantastic! What is more they are happy to work with us as regularly as we want and will provide goody bags for all the girls and refreshments and this is all free of charge and no obligation to buy from the store. We are just totally amazed. We'd actually asked Top Shop earlier on whilst writing the course whether there was any way of supporting us but they had said no - God's timing - so important - and having the guts as Rachel did just to ask a really simple question that I would have never bothered to ask as I would just have assumed there would be nothing in it. Makes you wonder what else we miss out on by just not thinking to ask!

So hopefully we can get all the girls together really soon to take them over to York - we know they will love it and it will be great to spend that time with them at the end of the course where we don't have to worry about any planning and can just enjoy the time we can spend having fun - and of course we are praying that we can join in and get goody bags too - surely there are some blessings for working 2 years for free!

Being a mum

Its been a hard day - challenging behaviour, snotty noses, moaning, espcaping, pulling at cables which shouldn't be there but I do really love being their mum. My children - having had the space of 2 hours since they have gone to bed - are simply gorgeous and brilliant. Elijah just loves the simplicity of his mum, dad and sister - he just has to see one of us and his little face lights up and Holly is just the best little friend. Me and her went into a vintage shop in town today and she somehow managed to scam a free bag - the shop assistant gave it to her as she was parading round in a beret and scarf that I'd chosen and picked up this red sparkly handbag and was posing with it in the mirror. Might take her shopping more often if she can pull that trick off again!


Now to paint castles and pirate ships for their birthday party!

Fashion Victim

Really thought provoking night. The session we led was planned to be about how girls dress in terms of sexy/slutty and how they dress to attract male attention. Though I'm sure that is a real issue to lots of girls tonights discussion went off at a different angle. Style, identity and expression are all huge things and particularly with young people style is a way of really understanding the world they are part of. Today it was the chav/emo/normal debate. In the area we live in you are either emo or normal. Chav's are a minority and no one wants to be seen as one. When I was at school in was the gypos and the townies. I fell under the 'gypo' category. We were the minority and were either labelled gypos, indie kids or goths - all very different but any of those labels would do. The 'normal' would lean towards the townie style - the modern day chav and they would bully us - the oposite seems to have happened now. As much as I hate all the nastiness which goes with the whole style issue I do love the way people can get so passionate about taking abuse for their style. I would gladly put up with choruses of 'where's your caravan' every lunch and break and be satisfied that I wasn't mindless enough to spend my time following someone around singing it even If I had to listen. I was proud of my style and that I was confident enough to go to school wearing strange and bizarre things with eyeliner drawn in patterns all over my face and hair a different colour every week. This year I suddenly realised that compared to how I used to be I am now totally boring - and that made me quite sad.
Since being a Christian I have been made more aware of the 'appropriacy of dress' and what effect certain types of clothing have on guys sexually. It is a really interesting topic and certainly one I think every girl should consider but I do think that some guys feel that girls are out to provoke them when genuinely this may never feature on a girls agenda.
I don't agree with materialism but though that is a principle I try to live by to be competely honest I love fashion and style and buying, finding, making clothes. I love colour and texture, cut, shape, unique and bizarre and completely off the wall fashion. I am a visual and artistically inspired person and if I had my way I would never consider anyone when it came to the way I dressed. I rarely even consider what my husband thinks of what I wear and I don't think I am alone in that. Though it may be totally sexist I would generalise that many men do not know what is in fashion and actually do not like a lot of the styles that are arond at the. moment They are not impressed by something which is uber-cool but by something that 'looks nice' even if that is the most boring thing in the world. If I wore the same outfit for 2 months on end I do not know that the guys in my life would notice I'd done so...but I guarentee my girl friends would notice the second day. Girls dress for girls...I know I do. A girl giving me a compliment on what I wear means far more than a guys and I think that is because loads of girls have an exciting sense of style.
One of my most favorite times in my life ever was when me and my old and so good friend Amy caught up one weekend whilst away at different universities. She came back to Sheffield for the weekend and we some time together. We got hold of some blue fur, silver PVC, zips and a sewing machine we set to work and created asymetrical crop tops, blue hot pants and knee high leg warmers. We wore blue makeup, tied our hair up in the old skool bjork style and tried to sneak out my student house without any of the very conservative boys seeing. We got caught but it was so much fun as we headed out for a dance at the leadmill, the most under-dressed nights we could have possibly chosen. We looked ridiculous but it was so cool and for 2 arty types I guess we felt expressive. I don't know what it is but there is something so satisfying and liberating about wearing things that everyone else sees as gross, ridiculous and stupid. Why does that make me feel good?
Spiritually speaking I do believe we have to be responsible. Our clothes communicate a lot about us and whilst it is one thing to be dressed communicating 'i am a bit wired actually' it is another to be out in the streets with the whole of your body squadging out between a few bits of string and some teenie bits of tacky fabric - I really think this communicates something a bit different. But I love the part of 'the vision' which is a passage written on a prayer wall once...somewhere? which says 'they wear clothes to celebrate and commiunicate but never to hide'. I am challenged to celebrate and communicate that bit more. I know that at school and uni would I wear something and different everyday and even though I went to a non uniform school I never wore jeans - now my favourite pair of jeans have worn through so much that they are literally glued together and I even trauled through ebay to get an exact same pair to replace them - so I know I must have had a few boring days in jeans and jumper - especially since having children. Now, I know there are things not practical about dressing up in high heels and dresses to take 2 toddlers to a muddy park, but even in 'practical wear I think i can afford to be more creative in colour and style. I feel inspired and as today is saturday it seems the perfect opportunity for shopping.
Key note:the most important thing I own - a sewing machine and the desire to use it brilliantly.

My Birthday and my Nannan died

It was my 28th birthday this week so I made myself take that day off doing jobs and had a really nice day- even though to start with I'd booked myself in really early for a bikini wax - nice way to torture myself! We called to Andrew's new house where he and mum were wall papering - I'm glad mum is back from holiday - othewise that would be my job - love doing it bt not with no time and 2 small children! We took the kids for a swim and I grabbed 20 mins to swim real lengths and get some time in the sauna and steam room. Lunch at a gorgeous new resturant on Ecclesall Rd and then a run round endcliffe park. Home for a whole family rest and sleep and then back to work for Joel so I got on with some stuff again.

The next 2 sessions of the girls course are about to happen. I'm doing a wednesday night frantic plan just to get tomorrow as clear as possible incase we have another million things we've forgotton about! Tommorrow is the fashion session and the most time ever has gone into one particular game which lasts just 5 minutes but has cost a fortune! I have had to find a ton of clothes - ebay and primark are lifesavers! clothes rails and last night and tonight we are constructing dressing screens out of MDF, hinges and a ridiculous ammount of cheeky wallpaper samples curtosy of the lovely ladies in Laura Ashley and Homebase who must have believed I needed to decorate a castle!
My nannan died this weekend actually and the funeral is tommorrow. It's a strange situation. We called her 'nannan bake' for some reason we shortened her last name 'baker' to 'bake' even though that was our last name and we never shortened ours. She used to live in Hillsborough and we saw her every other week at least. I have fond memories of being fed beans and burgerbites and watching bullseye on a sunday afternoon. We always had to leave in time for dad to listen to the top 20 countdown on radio one in the car on the way home. I attribute the musical talent of me and Andrew to such journeys. After my grandad died she got quite porley. This was around the time i left sheffield and then one time I was back for the weekend with my ex boyfriend I visited her in hospital and that was the last time I saw her. She could hardly remember me and then she went to live with my aunty in Scotland. We have never been particularly close to my dads side of the family but I'm not really sure why. Dad is quite a private person and I sometimes feel he has tried to keep us from any problems there might have been. My other nannan lived with us from when I was 3 and died when I was 18 - right in the middle of my A levels. I was devastaed. She had looked after me the whole of my life and been in our family home. It was like losing my mum. I guess was always aware that I'd never be as close to my nannan bake.
I knew she was porley but mum and dad don't like to talk about things that arn't nice so I don't know what was wrong and I didn't even know that she had gone back into hospital just before she died but my mum and dad's lack of wanting me to know doesn't excuse me from not trying to find out and not making a trip to see her. I am 28 and am too old to be sheltered. However, I am not going to the funeral. After a lot of diliberation and talks with mum and then dad we decided not. I didn't say this to dad but I don't see the point in funerals really - well of course I do but they don't compare with seeing the person alive. I now really regret not going to see her recently and would feel very sad making the trip but her not really being there. I would go simply to support my dad. His brother is not going and there's something up there but I am have no idea what. However, dad doesn't want me to come up with the children - he reckons it's not fair on them to be stuck in the car so long an not a suitable place for them to be. I'd take them anyway but whatever he thinks. Mum says that Dad knows I'd go and that is enough to support him in this. Dad really sees the meaning in token efforts - like cards and knowing things like this - he's not afftctionate so the understanding means more to him than the actual practicality of it all.
So I stay here and get on with the girls course. I made sure I had a way out of work just so that I knew I wasn't making a decision based on not wanting to let Rach down or having to cancel the course tomorrow. Claire has not been doing this course. She had a miscarriage last month and needs a bit of time at home. She agreed to step in for this session if I needed to go.
I really miss Claire not working with us. We all met at the park on Saturday and talked about how wierd it is doing the first ever course that the three of us have talked about and dreamed about and spent so long crafting together without her - but she is so right to take time to get her head together. At the same time it's exciting to think about the next ones - being able to run the course again with Claire and just how amazing she'll be - especially at mentoring the girls.
My little boy is hard work at the moment. Super cheeky - which is God's way of making sure I don't lose my temper with him making a beeline for all the dangerous things in the house - he can give me that squagy cheeky smile and I forgive him as I pull him out of the video draw for the 100th time that hour.

Proper good week. So busy but so worth it. I've been trying to not work until the evening when I get Holly and Elijah down in bed and then just blitzing my things to do list. I hate trying to balance working when they are up - as much as I am grateful for Cbeebies at some point most days I do hate just sticking them in front of that and trying to work - it just feels wrong and I'm sure they don't like it. Elijah is really starting to need more attention as he's learning to get around and he just loves being with people.
The first two sesions fo I'm the girl I want to be' thursday and Friday night. I felt like a zombie thursday night leading that session - didn't realise it was possible to sit printing through 3 packs of paper in one day and it be so knackering! To say though that we've done an intro session and one session on self worth there are so many issues coming up in these girls lives already that they're obviously just bursting to be able to deal with. We've put in stacks of work and I know God will use and honour all of that, I believe he's been in our prepaeration so much, but basically he's just been working at bringing these issues to the surface in this group for this time. Oh I love it when a plan comes together -and we didn't realise what a great plan that would be! I'd so love to document it all here but though no one is actually reading this at the moment I would be breaching a bit of confidentiality to blog all the names and issues at the moment.
Packing down at the end we talked again about how much we really need a van. We have nowhere to store our stuff and our resources are growing all the time. Joel is getting sick of sharing our dining table with laminates and floor cushions and we've got far less here then Rach has at hers with her poor parents giving up their whole study to be filled with storage boxes! so we know a van would really help for storing the less expensive stuff and we have to do more than one journey to places. our PA is SO heavy and doesn't fit into our cars too so for gigs we are really struggling. What we need is a van and an office with room to store our PA stuff where we can access it really easily. Being 3 girls is a problem when it comes to lugging flight cases around anyway.
We'd not really advertied the fact that we need one, at least for a while anyway, but we did speak to each other about it on friday night and chatted through it again with Claire last night whilst popping round to get some fish and chips but this morning in church Dot, who is one of those amazingly inspirational people- who really acts on all the things God asks her to no questioning - said to Rach that we'd really been on her heart this week, she'd been praying for us loads especially about the girls course but whilst doing that had really felf that God had told her that we really needed a van. She doesn't have tha sort of money at all so it wasn't an order for her to sort ot but a sign that God has it under control. Another couple who already support us, financially and give us so much prayer and encouragement also gave us money to pay for CDs to give to all the girls on the course. It feels so overwhelming to be so supported but I guess we still really feel that it's our vision we are having to persuade people to see the potential in whereas people are really showing us it is God's vision and he can inspire anyone to buy into what is being set up. That way is ten million times better as well.
It is ten minutes until my birthday! I wonder if on my birthday next year I will still have projector screens made from toilet plumbing sticking into my head when I sit on the sofa - or will we have a premisis? Last birthday I was a big whale and this year that big bump is now a gorgeous cheeky little boy who smiles and tries to chatter to me - so I KNOW that anything is possible!

Last Night I Cried

Claire, Rachel and I started a project from scratch. 2 years ago, pretty much exactly the tree of us met at mine with a wierd notion that we were supposed to do something together! Well Me and Rachel had met up for a coffee as she was living in Gillingham and ondereing what to do next and was up in Sheffield for the weekend. We'd maybe met once before. I think I suggested that she should move back to Sheffield and we should do something. Well very bravely she did just that. Though there was really nothing more to it than that a freind mentioned to Claire that we were thinking of doing something together and she got really excited and when I bumped into her at the Dore Gala in 2005 I could sense her excitement and asked her round. we didn't know what we were talking about but I think that each of us had been feeling that God had a plan for us... that we'd been feeling ready for for a long time but did not have the people around to do it with. Me and Claire tried to meet every week just to pray together and we kept in touch with Rachel in Gillingham. On August the 9th the three of us met together.
The first part of the puzzle was the easiest to work out. Rachel was on a creative ats team in Gillingham and loved it but didn't get to do enough performing. Claire is a trained dancer and had been feeling that she was ready after having her second child that she wanted to go back into it. I am a singer and have been in bands before but had just been doing odd bits of recording here and there, I'd been songwriting but with no real purpose or agenda so was drifting a bit. I knew that I wanted to develop my music but didn't want to do it on my own I just couldn't find the right people. So we decided to push forward and form some sort of group.
As we met and got to know each other we just became great friends and in our openness with each other we naturally drifted to talking about self esteem and how feeling little self worth through parts of our lives had affected us and caused us to make choices that had damadged us or just caused us to go through hard times. Our vision grew out of this and we became really passionate about taking a message of self worth to young girls in Sheffield. It is amazing how nasty words, lack of support and absence of encouragement has an affect on a person and I know I can still fall into the pit of remembering something that has hurt me that was never intended to but has had a lasting impression and has even changed the way I think and held me back from having the confidence to do the things I should be doing.
We therefore launched GoldDigger. We worked on our songs and performance and committed to working 2 days a week. Claire and I are married and our families live off our husbands wages. This was hard to do as I had to give up earning £100 a week which helped us loads to earning nothing in a job that had no money for even its own budget. Rachel supports herself with a part time job the rest of the week. Not only were we working for free we also were having to plough the few pennies we had spare into resourcing the project.
We had days a week, had to find free childcare and occasionally bring Claires or my children along to work and had to spread those 2 days between songwriting, recording, coreography, practicing, writing our girls course material and schools lessons,researching, fundraising including trying to set up as a registered charity and taking performances and teaching opportunities. It has been a busy, frustrating, amazing, slow, painful and beautiful process. Rachel through all the planning of the girls course always used to say 'oh imagine when we have all our sessions planned and we can keep all the resources in a box on our shelves in our office with a label on sand we can just pick it up and go' well we don't have shelves, or an office but yesterday we bought those boxes! The course is finished and we start the first one of the 8 week courses in less than a week. It's looking as though the first on will be all booked up too which is amazing for youth work! People have listened to our vision in the last 2 years and trusted us with their own money and we have a budget for the course and can manage to setup what we need to. We are almost a registered charity, have a board of trustees, and yesterday I think I realised how far we had come. I cried when I was refunded some postage costs for some material from Ebay for session 3 and I noticed that we'd ended up spending less than we'd budgeted for. We're still not getting paid and it is still a struggle and we are in need of a van and an office but I know that God has been amazing to us so far - i know that he has connected us with a group of girls that really need this course and I just can't wait to invest that time on getting to know them and really challanging some of these issues that they are going through. It you read this and you are someone who is willing to pray, please ask Jesus to do powerful things on this course. It starts this Thursday 7th June.

My Welcome Message

Well I am going to give this blog idea another go...To lay it out on the table I do prefer myspace - I like the idea that there is scope to create a visual mess and to give myself this standard template felt like sacrificing my creativity. I have an insatiable appetite to do everything myself and am particularly fussy about graphics and fonts...I hate Times New Roman - it is an automatic turn off. I love writing things down in new note books and keeping records of random thoughts but I hate writing in blue biro - has to be black. Also text has to be justified. I just don't like messy scraggy lines down the side of the page. And I hate snakes.
I am excited about keeping a blog though. It feels like one of those significant times in my life where I hope there'll be lots happening.
About me... I am 27 but it will be my birthday next week. I have never wanted a normal life or a normal job and sometimes I feel that I've let things turn out too normal. I got married to someone also committed to not doing things normally - Joel is an adventurer...he likes to escape the day to let God speak to him and has been known to disappear. He loves climbing, sport, writing, music. He loves to create and also will have his own quirks about graphics. We don't agree about fonts but we laugh together, challenge each other, argue rather than bottle it up and are very much best friends. He IS my ideal man. We were surprised very soon after we got married to find that I was extremely sick and that was the start of our little girl Holly. She is beautiful, cur,ly fair hair and big blue eyes strong minded. I was proud of her today being happy to go to a fancy dress party as a pirate girl when she expected all the other girls to be princesses. That is cool- already an individual. After she was born I knew I'd really like a little boy with dark hair and brown eyes and that I would call him Elijah Leo. He is nearly one now and is the most beautiful, chunky thing. He loves his sister so much and that is gorgeous.
Though money is something we struggle with having Holly forced us to live off Joel's salary and then I took the risk to give up my part time job to venture into what is now GoldDigger. I guess that many of my posts here will be about what we are doing. It's a ministry we (Rachel, Claire and myself) are convinced that God has his hand on it - which basically means that we feel we are doing something which goes beyond our efforts and is a really significant thing which though we 'manage it' it is totally out of our control. We present ourselves as a band but we also have written a teaching package called 'I'm the Girl I want to Be' to teach girls, teeagers, and particularly the most insecure and vunerable, about self worth, having better self esteem and sex and healthy relationships. Our myspace for our music purposes is myspace.com/golddiggersheffield.