Phew...! I might not post here any more but when I got a mail from blogger saying upgrade or you're gone by May I nearly fainted! After losing everything... and I mean everything, following a total hard drive motherboard failure, this is the only place with memories left... so sad about that, I couldn't let the old blog go. So hoping, really really hoping that i've done this right - after a right job trying to log in - and this is now here to stay, just for me in me maudlin moments.. ;-) This post is just a trial.

Bad times....

It's all gone downhill since Friday....

1) I've been really unwell. I've had the mother of all colds, an unbeleivably sore throat and bad head, and have felt totally wretched. I still do tbh, I still feel very under the weather - and now completely stressed as well :-(
Because....

2) Vin's stuck in Lanzarote and can't get home until tomorrow afternoon, well, it will be night by the time he get's here. Ordinarily, this wouldn't really matter, but right now it does as he has forms to fill in for this university place, funding to apply for - stuff which should have been done urgently yesterday and emailed back to them, but which obviously hasn't been done as he's not here to do it. On top of that it's now going to cost him a fortune to get back as we can't risk standby anymore... he's missed work, driving lessons....It's all turned into a nightmare, and I've felt sick with the stress of it all day. I'm gutted he's got to pay a huge flight home, but I can't do this on my own, he needs to be here if he wants to do the degree.

With being ill, and all this going on, I've not been feeling very crafty, but I have started the Chicks album, and by keeping it very simple - as I intended to - I've managed to get a few pages done. The photos are not brilliant, I might try again when I feel better.








Had to smile to myself using the TWIST TIE, i'm sure that's one of the things we laughed about on UKS... fancy me still having some of those tucked away - truth is I've got LOADS! lol.

Over on Scrapology we are offering some blog candy in the form of lots of gorgeous halloween goodies, all you have to do is leave a comment and follow the blog... simples!


Plus there's still time to enter to win this prize in the August scraplift challenge! Get over there!

more soon

All good here...

The boy's on holiday with his mate, out visiting his sisters in sunny Lanzarote, but we heard today that he has an offer for uni, so when he comes home we'll have it all to do filling in a million forms and applying for every grant, bursary and scholarship going.... Wish us luck with that then.

Here he is celebrating his success in his usual laid back fashion... way to go Vin!

I've been pretty busy this week, so not much crafting or blogging done, tho I did make my LO for September's Scrapology which will go out on the first monday of Sept. Still time to enter August's draw btw - there's also a fabby prize on offer and not many entries yet - so get in and have a go while you can, your chances are good!

Today i've felt proper poorly... and no, family - it's not wine flu, before you ask!
I've not felt up to much but did dabble a bit with some stickles and stuff and made a pretty butterfly card - maybe i'll send it to myself... as a get well card lol. Sincerely hoping I feel better tomorrow anyway! I don't really do 'ill' very well...


The secret garden's coming on fine and keeping Carlo busy... and as for me, well, tomorrow it's back to the chicks album, assuming i'm well enough of course!

More soon

you know when something sets you off...

... for me it can be a set of colours which I like together, or a line of papers... a new technique, or some sort of embellishment that inspires me. Then I seem to get stuck using that thing over and over. I liked the colours of my August Scrapology LO and found myself looking for scraps to make a card with the same colour scheme, anyone else find they do that? A while ago everything was hot pink, lime and B&W together, now I seem to be a bit stuck in an autumny pallete. Dunno why tho.

Today I have a LO using pix from our hols in March - I really can't wait to get back out there in a few weeks for a bit more of this :-)


Oh, and here's the card - using those colours I mentioned.


I also have some news about Scrapology - Jill at Cardinal Colours is kindly sponsoring the blog and will be providing a prize each month for the LO we like best! All you have to do is enter, obviously, and sign up to follow the blog! This month (AUG) the prize is a 'Craft Mates, ezy locking caddy!!' So if you wanna win this fantastic tote get over to Scrapology and check out the A is for Apertures post!



New prizes every month! C'mon and play!

more soon

rain rain go away!

Are you fed up of the rain? I know I am. The other half is too... he's still trying to complete the patio up the top of the garden, fitting it in after work and any odd hours he has and his efforts are being severely hampered by this sodding weather. Mind you, what's the rush? Just read this morning that we have this weather to look forward to until November.... erm... and then what? Sudden blue skies? I don't think so, Mr Weatherman!

Well, at least if he gets it done we might sit out NEXT year.... Just don't know why I couldn't have been born somewhere else... like Spain...or the desert... or anywhere warm and dry *sigh*

As it's all glum out there, I'm in here making things so there's an upside I guess.

Yesterday I made a card for Daring Card Makers - I do love their challenges :-)

You had to put a TREE on a card, lol.
A tree of all things...! Anyway, I made a baby card in the whimsical style I seem to be developing of late... I actually made a Christmas card as a well - being the obvious thing, but it's a bit rubbish, prob be confined to the bin or the back of a drawer later. I was quite disappointed in it anyway.

And then this morning, I made another card loosly based on this challenge at Get Sketchy. I think if there were no challenge blogs i'd never get anything done.

And talking of challenge blogs, you still have two weeks to get your LO done for Scrapology if you're playing along this month - New Challenge up first monday of September :-)

I'm trying to eat healthily for the next four weeks for my holiday... I made my favourite seafood pasta last night and I'm having baked trout with lime and coriander tonight. Tomorrow it'll be salmon in chilli and garlic - I might lose a few pounds but i'll look like a blummin fish by the time I get there!


Anyway, happy (wet) weekend everyone
More soon

Scrapology is go!

As I mentioned yesterday, I am part of a new venture in scrapping - a lovely friendly blog, offering a bit of inspo and fun on a monthly basis. Sooooo.... if you've lost your mojo recently - as many of us on the DT have of late.... pop along and join the adventure with us! There's only one challenge a month so you have plenty of time to join in, and we'd LOVE to see your work, we can all support each other and get some scrapping done together :-) You can link to your blog, or email us with your LO. Details on the blog - Scrapology - come and check us out, here's mine :-)



more later

news and views

I am surrounded by Leo's in my life. My brother, sister, daughter, son, grand daughter and son in law were all born under the zodiac sign of the Lion so as you can imagine, July and August are expensive months for us.

I actually sent my sister a card from Moonpig because this company is a favourite of our family as we like to personalise things where possible, however I couldn't resist making her a little card too and as she's fanatical about her allotment and mad on gardening in general, I knocked this up for her this morning:

Other news is Carlo has cleared the top of our garden which was nothing short of a wilderness tbh, and has started making a new patio. We've had the millstone for years and always intended making a water feature of it with pebbles and a fountain, something like this......


.....but since we never got round to it, he's decided to use it as a centrepiece and build a circular patio instead. This is up the top of the garden and is bathed in sunlight morning and evening now we've had the tree surgeon in to blitz the huge ugly sycamore which has blighted the garden for years. I am SOOOOO happy about this! We're going to make it really lovely up there, paint the wall and put all our pretties we've collected on our travels on show so when we sit down to relax we can remember all the lovely places we've been and all the nice hols we've had. It won't quite be the Med, but we can pretend ;-)


It's nowhere near finished of course, but at least it's started and i've completely abandoned the idea of keeping chickens altogether now.... don't want to share my tranquil area with a bunch of noisy messy hens do I!

And my final piece of news is that I've been invited by some friends to join a new blog where we will be offering up some inspiration and asking people to share their ideas with us too. It's been a while since I was involved in anything scrappy as a few months ago I took a big step back from everything crafty and gave up all my DT's and commitments due to overload and burnout. I totally lost my mojo and with it all interest, and well, basically I just needed a break, but I'm back crafting again - even blogging! - and I think i'll enjoy the challenge, so I hope you'll pop along to Scrapology - Adventures in Scrapbooking... when it goes live tomorrow to see what you think of our new project :-)

more soon

Chicken Talk!

At work we took part in the 12 day experience - friends on facebook will have seen the pix. On a pre-arranged day an incubator arrives from Living Eggs containing 10 ready to hatch eggs... and within a couple of days you several have gorgeous fluffy chicks!

They can't guarantee how many, but I understand it's usually around 6-8. However, in our case all 10 hatched, much to the delight of the residents and staff. I began recording their progress from the day the eggs arrived, and I've decided to put together a scrapbook album so the residents and their families can reminisce about the event as often as they like.

I intend to keep it very simple:

1. to save time, because much as I love the resi's, most of it will be done at home and my time with my family is precious to me.

2. The vast majority of my residents have some degree of dementia, and clutter on a page can be very confusing for them. If I want them to look at it often ( and I do) then I need clear, clean lines and nothing way out or whacky.


To keep it coordinated i'm sticking to a fairly simple monochromatic colour scheme, but to add a little fun i've chosen a few simple embellishments, and will use stamps throughout to carry the reader from page to page.

Just hope it turns out ok, and they love it as much as they love the chickadees themselves!


I've also been busy cardmaking, and can't believe how much i'm enjoying crafting again... mind you, let's be honest, the weather's been naff so i'm not interested in being outside. I read that Summer's on it's way back, and next week's gonna be nice again, so might as well take advantage of the bad weather to catch up on projects indoors while it's grim!

I made this this morning, just a quickie card for DCM's latest challenge. I have a number of August birthdays coming up, and Peridot is the birthstone for August born folks, so this will no doubt be useful for someone. Thanks to Debra for the stickers, told you i'd find a use for them one day even if the oldies couldn't!

And this for Card Patterns sketch no 75




more soon
have a lovely weekend everyone!

get the flags out!!!

I made a layout at last, lol!

I have my lovely friend Lynn to thank for getting me back in the scrappin saddle...And now i'm back in the craft room, I find i'm enjoying it again. Maybe I just needed a little break, who knows... but in the last three days I've made two layouts and a card - not bad for someone totally without mojo last week! :-)

I couldn't resist making a LO featuring the gorge little flags I see everywhere lately. Obviously, mine are home made, though i'm sure some enterprising soul is selling miniature bunting for layouts on ebay or etsy. Come to think of it, probably the big manufacterers are too, but as I had some old diamond patterned paper kicking around it was easy enough to cut some out and chop them in half, and they were perfect for the pic of my little grand daughter Jen being the clown that she is and making everyone round the pool smile.


Thanks for popping in!
more soon

Daring Cardmakers, Nat's challenge.

So much for getting back to blogging! No sooner had the idea come to mind than everything went crazy and my time disappeared again - how typical!

Anyway, I have managed a couple of things. One thing I really wanted to do was to find time to get back into making cards... I'd barely started to learn this craft when it all went pear shaped and my hobby time got put on the back burner... but... I'm trying to change that now. With this in mind I thought a chllenge would help, so hopped over to Daring Cardmakers, as I always like their ideas. With luck I'll try a few more challenges from other sites this week as I find putting a card together comes easier at the moment than making a whole layout - although I HAVE even managed one of those!

Here's my card for DCM




The theme was sister or friend... and as it's my sister's birthday on the 10th - and she is without doubt one of my very best friends, I had no prob having a go with it :-)

Thanks for popping by
more soon

Canal Festival

We popped along to the Canal Festival today. I wouldn't say we are exactly moping with Vin away at Sonisphere... and Don and all her lot out in Lanza with the girls...but the idea of a colourful fun afternoon surrounded by water and boats was a welcome break, so we jumped in the car and shot down the bypass after our jobs were done.

Apart from the barges, there's a lot to see. Loads of country crafts, stalls and entertainments. Carl loved the little boats powered by candles, and I loved the bright rag rugs and basketware. We walked along the tow path for a while looking at the narrow boats, and stopped to pet daft dogs excitedly running the length of their boats barking at everyone in a very important way :-) We had our lunch there too from the hog roast... hot pork rolls with apple sauce, crackling and coleslaw, and Carlo had a highly potent scrumpy while I sipped a delicious fruity Pimms.

There were birds of prey, and I snapped a lovely photo of an owl who had the most beautiful orange eyes, and we cracked up at the tractors who all bore a sticker proclaiming them Old Farts... made us feel quite at home, that did!

Anyway, here's a few pics from our day out. I might even shake myself into making a mini book of the event - such a colourful day out deserves recording. Just hope I can hold that thought.... fingers crossed anyway.









anyway, enough for tonight :-)
More soon