Not a layout...

but it is a photo to make this a bit more interesting! Look at my new flip flops I got today.....

Momiji-like flip flops for a £1...what more could you want?!

Maybe tomorrow....

I will be able to update with some photos! I have been driven mad by our PC the past week as my internet and emails have even been crawling at snails pace or non existant for best part of the week...*scream*
This weekend has been another busy one.Saturday morning we went to see Chipmunks the Squeakuel at the cheapy cinema in town, Now I know it's cheap but that still doesn't excuse the stupid woman next to us who rang someone from her mobile after the film started and then got up and went out,squishing past us, about 3 times.
Late afternoon we went over to Anna's to tie up a few loose holiday ends :) :) .We dined (to Anna's dismay!) on Dominos and Em practised her driving skills on the X Box! I stayed over and we spent the evening chilling out in front of the TV and the laptop before realising what the time was taking into account the clock change!
Today we were cropping ,and I think I might stick to taking the minimum in future..Kerry, you'd be so proud of me,I got four LO's done! And all I took was three packs of paper , my photos ,tape, mat & a punch...rather than half the house as usual.
This week sees me running round like a headless chicken I think....yikes!
I'll be back with photos of the LO's once they have titles on them :)

Time for a catch up...

I know, it's been ages since I did a proper post so here goes...!
Holly had the privilege of wearing the golden 'G' badge to school every day last week,the G being for good, golden etc (or as some of the little charmers in her class called it 'Geek of the week'...)It promptly fell apart so I made new one,and although the safety pin has fallen of that too a few times at least all the glitter is still intact!

I can't for the life of me remember anything I did last week (!) other than a bit more holiday shopping and planning out a rough guide of what we plan to do each day :) Sadly there just aren't enough days for everything though :( This weekend we sat on Google Earth looking at 'real life' roads and marked out routes on the map :)And I highlighted various eating places and shopping malls :)
On Sunday I was woken up with breakfast in bed, a waffle with bananas and toffee sauce :)And I was lucky enough to get some very nice 'pink' presents :)
As the weather was so lovely (it's finally starting to feel a bit spring like!) we went for a walk at the lakes.The girls were not impressed to find their favourite climbing tree has been cut down though :(The day was finished off with a lovely roast dinner :)
On Monday I went over to Anna's to make a start on the Retreat 'stuff',which entailed lots of kit packing :)Not long now :)I think there are a couple of places left if you fancy a weekend of scrapping :) Check out the details here :)
And last but not least ,this is a layout I did at the crop a couple of weeks ago ,using lots of Niki Sivils Cherry Pie papers and accessories :)
I am off to listen to Glee soundtrack...very loudly :)

Pencil Lines

I joined in on Pencil Lines this week as Anna had some spare sponsorship for me :)
I used Raspberry Tea Prima papers ,all flowers and swirls are Prima too :) The brown swirls are actually a corner frame cut up into various pieces!
Great minds think alike so check out Anna's LO for our matching titles!
I will be back tomorrow with a proper update before I forget what I've been doing!
I am off to Anna'a tomorrow to sort out retreat bits & pieces...that came round quickly!

And the winner is...

I used the proper Random generator site which came up with number 6 :)

Which is Clare Crompton!

Clare, please email me with your address details :)

Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment :)

A Little Give Away :)

As promised yesterday, I have something to post to one lucky poster :) Thanks to the generosity of Anna, I have a copy of the new Pencil Lines book to give away.


Just leave me a comment (on this post only, to be in with a chance to win the book) telling me what you are loving using at the moment on your LO's, be it new stuff ,old stuff or hand made!

I will leave the comments open until Saturday 8pm (GMT),and will announce the winner on Monday :)

*** Comments now closed ***

Ladies what lunch :)

Last Saturday the day finally dawned for our visit to London for Anna's belated birthday pressie :) Along with Karen, we went to London for tea at the Ritz,as well as a wander round Harrods.As you can imagine ,Anna was in her element in the food halls ,whilst Karen and I were pretty sure we'd lost her a few times! After browsing the horrendously priced Hello Kitty section (it had to be done!)and various other out of our price range departments,we went back to the food halls for Lola's cupcakes (pressies for the girls),posh cakes and breakfast yummies (ie huge croissants!)
We then made our way to the Ritz,where it can truly be said, we got our money's worth! I didn't realise that they would re-fill everything (more than once too!)

After eating a 'few' sandwiches each it dawned on us that maybe we had better leave some room for scones and cakes! Just as well we did as the scones were to die for,even better smothered with jam & cream :)By the time we'd polished off extra scones (!!)it was looking doubtful that we would manage the gorgeous cakes.However Anna and I forced ourselves to sample them ;)We had a wonderful time there, the atmosphere was lovely, not too formal and we weren't the only ones with cameras! (Though I think Anna was the only one with a fixed lense, so that the poor waiter had to disappear way over the other side off the lounge to take a photo of the three of us!)
Sadly the tube ride back was the most hideous I have ever experienced but we survived ! After arriving back at Anna's we finished the day with a 'few' glasses of vey nice wine:)Needless to say we were still stuffed from our tea & scones!
Sunday morning Karen & Kevin left for Newcastle and Anna & I went cropping .I'm glad we were inside for best part of the day as the weather was horrendous!I got a LO done, stated on an altered book thingy(whilst scaring Kerry with my knife weilding!:) )and half made the mini book that Anna taught :)When I got home I was welcomed with a tin of cookies the girls has made for me :)

We have had beautiful sunny weather the last couple of days which has made me feel so much brighter too :) I've have done lots of cleaning ,just need to get my head back round the holiday planning! I did go out and buy suntan lotion today though, so that's another thing to check off my list!

Pop back tomorrow when I will be having a little give away on my blog :)

Me time :)

Yesterday afternoon with Holly out all day and Em amusing her self and talking music with Geoff, I made the most of some daylight scrapping time :) I very rarely scrap during the day,I always feel a bit guilty when there is other stuff needs doing like ironing and housework!So this is the result :)

I've been wanting to use these papers for ages so I'm glad I finally did.The Lo was inspired by this one a I saw while back by the amazingly talented Karola.(note ,I said 'inspired by', I'm well aware that it's not a patch on hers!)Though it wasn't til I went off in search of a link to it that I realised I'd used a similar title too!
I used Pink Paislee papers, Pink Paislee chipboard & stickers,Doodlebug alphas, AC puffy thickers and Kaisercraft pearls.
This morning we went to the cinema and it's really time I remembered to take tissues with me! We went to see Where The Wild Things Are and even Holly was crying at the end!
Tomorrow sees us back in the school routine with some miserable weather forecast too :( I have a bit of housework to catch up on before I carry on with the holiday planning :)

I've got mine :)

Have you got yours yet? I'm talking about the Pencil Lines book :) You cannot imagine how happy I am that I was part of this :) The more I look through,it the more I love it :)

So, half term is almost over and I feel like I've hardly seen the kids properly:( I suppose it's to be expected as they're both growing up and spending more time with their friends but I've missed not doing much with them this week :( Tomorrow Em is off to the cinema in the morning with friends whilst Holly is out all day at Brownie meet up...see what I mean?!I think Sunday will be a day for doing nothing!
This afternoon Holly and I decided to go for a walk for some fesh air, and to give my camera a bit of trip out (though sods law that the girls flattened the batteries in it yesterday!)Once home ,Holly set about doing a bit scrapping :)

Having promised myself I'd 'do' something last week,I spent the weekend making the final 2010 Paper Mill calendar I had to do .(Yes, I know it's now Feb but the original had September missing so I couldn't use it!)Which was a good thing as it got me rummaging through lots of paper again :),and made me feel like doing a layout.I used this photo as I had it already printed out and I'm almost out of ink (sods law!).I used the lovely Kaisercraft papers from Anna's January crop kit.I am very bad at not using my kits so she'll very proud of me!The cute wooden star is actually a cake decoration (it was on a little wooden stick!) and the letters are my new love Doodlebug stickers.I have got through loads of their Loopy Love stickers but these ones are fab too, plus you get lots on a sheet :) Doh, I've just realised that I forgot to add on a date tag somewhere so I'll have to do that later!
Half term has started off pretty drearily with rain, grey clouds and more snow yesterday...I feel like I'm in desperate need of of some fresh air and sunshine!
We are on guines pig patrol this week for our neighbours, though they are staying at their 'own home' and we are just going over to feed them :)Though with the dark evenings I'm thinking it may have been easier to have them here!Lesson learnt :)
Anna has now taken delivery of the Pencil Lines book -woohoo! I think very few people will appreciate the blood ,sweat and (lots) of tears that have gone into getting this book published ,and I am so proud of her for persevering and realising her dream :) Okay, gush fest over ! I'm sure I will have a photo to share of the girls holding the book soon as they can't wait to see it :)

Whoops

I did mean to blog sooner but...life seems pretty un- interesting at the moment :( I have been getting into the whole holiday 'planning' thing (much to Anna's horror ;))and spending ages researching stuff,only to stay awake at night with so much whizzing round my head...cue one grumpy and tired me!
Scrapping is still non-existent, though I'm going make myself do something this weekend!Yeah right...;)
Last week I was lucky enough to get lots of flowers, all as thank you presents :) I have managed to keep the beautiful orchid alive so far, and how beautiful are those cream tulips? (which sadly have just about died now :( )


Earlier this week Holly has Australia Day at school.'Warm' costumes weren't exactly practical as it was freezing! Holly went doing a bbq,complete with plate of plastic food and tongs :) Not forgetting the huge koala bear she took too!

I am really looking forward to half term next week, no packed lunches to make :)!
And fingers crossed the Pencil Lines books will be with Anna very soon and I will have a copy in my hot little hands!
I will try and update again soon...but don't hold your breath!

Badly written blog!

Or just not written at all!!

And as I haven't written it for so long, I'm having trouble remembering what I've done!

I have lots whizzing round my head, mainly holiday planning :) This time last week I was filling in the passport forms,and today these arrived through the letterbox.

Now I would love to show you our photos ,but we look like a scary ASBO family so Idon't think I'll bother!

Our weekend was a busy one,Saturday morning we went to Thurrock to do a bit of shopping for 'warm weather' clothes! I know it may seem a bit early ,but we needed to go to a decent Primark and the Thurrock one is the nicest near here! Really pleased that I got us some bargain Crocs too, Mary Janes for Holly & Em and Caymans for me for a total of £29 :) That's one thing I can cross off my list then :)

Saturday afternoon Holly had a birthday party at the sports stadium doing fun rings, which is basically going down the ski slope on a huge inflatable ring! Then on Sunday afternoon we went to see the Bowkis family :) Em rocked out on Guitar Hero with Peter ,and I'm not quite sure what Holly and Izzy were up to!

Today has been back to the mundane, lots of hoovering,dusting and ironing...roll on next weekend! I have no crafty 'makes' to share,I'll need to scrap again soon before I forget how!

Felty things:)

For yesterdays crop,in an attempt to not take quite so much paper with me, I took a big bag of felt :) I put to use Anna's lovely new Hello Kitty die (hmm,wonder who sent her the link to that then?!) and made two of these Hello Kitty pencil cases for the girls.


I had to have a quick lesson from Kerry on how to do blanket stitch first though :) They still need buttons putting on, and I'll be the first to admit that are pretty basic! But it was nice to do omething a bit different :) I also attempted some felt flowers, but I think I need to practice them a bit more!

I also made this, finally using a board with a strut on it that Anna brought me back from Barcelona a couple of years back.You can basically use the back of any old photo frames as the base for a layout :)


I have been meaning to use it for ages and thought it would be perfect for using some of Anna's scrunched up flowers on :)I used Scenic Route Sonoma papers.I'm a bit sad that there will be no more papers from them as they're one of my favourite companies, I could use their papers over and over again (and I do!)

Ready for the weekend :)

I have to admit that these days I really look forward to the weekends and the possibility of a lie-in! Maybe it's the rotten dark weather we're having,but most mornings I would rather stay under my duvet :) No chance of a lie in on Sunday though as I need to be up bright and early to go cropping :)I still need to sort out some stuff but I am hoping to be a little bit more organised and not take half the house,simply because it's too heavy to take on the train!
Earlier in the week I did this layout,which I have to admit I love :) The photo was taken by Anna ,back in April last year.I know it's nothing special but it was nice to do layout because I wanted too :) When searching for something the other day (which I didn't find!),I had a rather big reminder of how much unused 'old' stash I have.I went mad buying Ki Memories embellishments when I first started scrapping.And I still have loads of them ! So in an effort to 'use it up' I made a point of using a couple of bits on this layout, the bookplate and the 'memories' tile.Hopefully now I've remembered I've got them I'll use a few more!I also need to remember to hunt through my chipboard more often as I tend to forget the alphabets in there and just reach for the Thickers or Doodlebug stickers.
On Tuesday Anna came over and we did a little bit of retail therapy in Dunhelms and Hobbycraft,just for essentials though you understand ;) We were pretty disappointed with Hobbycraft ,not that I ever spend loads in there, so we came out pretty much empty handed.Before going out , we had a go on Wii Just Dance and knackered ourselves! Two 40 somethings dancing to Hot 'n'Cold by Katy Perry is probably not the prettiest sight you'll ever see!

Almost a heatwave!

Today has been a much needed day of sunshine and blue skies, I even managed to hang the washing out in the garden! And although it isn't really that warm, after being so cold for so long it feels really warm!

We went for a walk down at the lakes this morning ,to get some fresh air, as Em seems to spend most of her weekend holed up in her roon doing homework! Although the snow is all gone, most of the large lake is till frozen over.

I have managed to finish a LO last night :) Very simple ,but I just couldn't think what else to addd to it, as it wasn't really a photo that needed flowers or bling! I'm not even sure of the title,\i just wanted it finished or it would have sat around for ages!

Anyway, it is basically to tell the story of how I finally own the full set of Friends DVDs,after several years of not being able to justify paying out for them :) Which reminds me that I can now get rid of the seven series that I have on video which are sat out in the shed!Anybody want them?!

I used Cosmo Cricket and Jilly Bean Soup papers, I'm rather keen on spotty paper at the moment:)

This week I need to put together some bits & pieces to do at the crop on Sunday :) Not necessarily scrapping, I think I may be making a couple of felt 'things' :)On Tuesday I'm seeing Anna,we seem to have done our usual thing of not seeing each other for ages and then twice in one week! I'm looking forward to a gossip and a hot chocolate (and maybe a trip to Hobbycraft ;) )

Priceless....

I popped into my mum & dad's today to borrow something that my Dad had to go down to the shed for.When I looked in the bag (which was a fairly new one) there was a tatty little book in the bottom of it, which turned out to be a very old 'Brownie Ventures' book of mine! I can only assume it was in the shed for some strange reason! Mum thought it was my sisters but looking at the name of my 'six' I could still remember all their surnames :) Anyway, what I found inside the book made my day...

Look at that...I made a Scrap book (And I think the other 'object' might be an apron?!) ,probably in about 1977!

And this page makes me giggle,I gave myself two ticks for getting up in the morning with a smile!!

I am so glad I found this,I'll put it with my Brownie certificate and add it to my list of things to scrap :)

So, what's been happening since Monday....

Mum's tests at the hospital showed that she didn't need any further treatment at the moment,which was fab, thank you for the well wishes for her ,I really appreciated them :)

The trip to London didn't happen :( (long story!) ,but should happen sometime in the future, fingers crossed!

And I think that's about it...most of the snow is now gone, but we're still left with loads of slush and ice on the pavements...not nice :( It would be nice to step out of the door without having to wear my wellies and without having back ache from walking weirdly so as not to fall over!

This evening I started a LO (thud) though without having a deadline for it, it could be a while before I actually finish it so don't hold your breath!

It's a start...

So despite treating myself to some very nice stash in the sales ,I still haven't actually done much scrapping :( Last night I was in the mood, printed a photo, only to realise that I'd already used up the paper I was planning to use - typical! So I ended up finishing off a Lo that had been sitting around since the last crop I went to in ..erm...October...ooops! I made it using some photos I already printed and Anna's crop kit.Apologies for the awful photo, it's so dark at the moment, even in the day time!


The snow is still here, though it seems to be melting a little bit,very slowly and we had a few more light flurrys this afternoon.The snowman's head is just about clinging on for dear life in the back garden!
But how cool are the icicles on this tree/bush thingy? Not the best photo as I was on the other side of the road but better than nothing!

Tomorrow both girls are back in school, normal times ,which makes life a bit more normal again!I seem to lost all sense of routine the past few weeks!
This week sees my Mum go into hospital for a heart treatment so am a little bit apprehensive about that,but there is a chance she could be in and out in a day,fingers crossed.
Then on Tuesday I am going to see Legally Blonde,the musical in London -woohoo!Never seen the film,but I just love the excitement of going out to London for the evening :) (Can you tell I don't go out much?!)

A few more...

..as it doesn't look like it'll be going anytime soon!




Both girls were off school again today.And tomorrow,Em is home but Holly is in...what a pain in the bum! It'd be a lot easier if they were both in or both off!
It has been really cold today ,much colder than when it was snowing yesterday!Shouldn't complain though, it makes a change to get actually get snow in the winter, rather than daft times like Easter and Halloween!

We had some more :)

So having originally been forecast snow all day yesterday, it eventually started lightly at about 7pm.And then carried on during the night...and chucked it down during today as well :)Everything looks so much prettier covered in snow :) AS usual I took my camera out with me as who knows, we may not get any snow again for a few years!








I have lots more photos, but they might upset Anna ,as she seems to live in the land of little snow!
Holly and her friends made some fab huge snowmen at the lakes as well as doing a lot of sledging :) They both have another day off school tomorrow too, though it is supposed to be bright & sunny though very cold,perfect for taking photos ;)Thank goodness I have some Cosmo Cricket Jolly By Golly on it's way to me !

Happy (belated!) 2010!

Yes,I know I'm a bit late,but better late than never :) Our New Year was a very quiet one.Sadly we didn't go to to the Bowkis bash this year,as we knew the kids wouldn't last til midnight! They proved us right and I had to shake them awake to come and watch the fireworks at midnight!
We have been done a little bit of sale shopping,just little bits & pieces plus boring things like sheets & pillows!:) The girls got some Hello Kitty bargains in John Lewis ,plus half price HK calendars from Clintons.And today I got some very cute wooden star cake decorations which will end up on a LO somewhere!I have also stocked up on some scrapping stuff, namely white alphabets as I am all out of white S's!!And some bling and flowers fell into my basket too :) I also managed to bag a set of Heidi Swapp months of the year stamps from A Trip Down Memory Lane in their sale, which I'm planning on using in some kind of yearbook this year :)
All the decs have now been taken down.It always looks a bit bare afterwards, but the Rockband drums have taken the place of the tree in the window!Maybe I could drape some tinsel round them?!
Huge excitement here as we have finally booked our Florida flights -yipee! We have lots of planning and list making to do in the near future :)
Feels very weird having no Pencil Lines LO to share this week! But I have lots of LO ideas whizzing round my head at the moment, so hopefully I'll get something done soon :)
As today was the girls last day before going back to school, we went to Starbucks for hot chocolate :)And this afternoon I draggged them out to the lakes for a walk and to give my camera an airing :)
Every where was covered in thick frost this morning,and not much thawed during the day.We are forecast more snow for tomorrow - yipee :)