Well today was not a good day work wise, cause um....I never actually made it in! Sitting minding my own business on the train when the driver announces that the train will be terminating at the next stop due to a huge power outage at Hornsey. There were no trains going from Alexander Palace into London stations. One clever guy decided to head back in the direction of home as there would be a few North bound trains that missed the power cut due to still pass us before all trains were stopped completely, but of course I sat waiting for things to be sorted so we could move on. Silly me!

Half an hour later I called Stu to come get me and take me back to my car so I could wait there for things to be cleared and make my way back down to London. Well things were never cleared, it turns out a tree had fallen onto the track bringing down the power cables. Goodness only knows if it will all be sorted by tomorrow but I have more chance getting in if I head of real early so this is what I plan to do, sigh.


I have yet to take pics of the stash I got last week, sorry girls, BUT these lush Rusty Pickle MERRY GRINCH-MAS papers fell into my basket on Tuesday while innocently browsing around A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE (link on the left ;) ), aren't they gorgeous?? And how about the ribbons! Loving the bobbly one sooooo much! Go look quick before they are all sold out! But be warned they WILL want to come to your house!

Have a good evening y'all.......

The appointment with the florist went very well, thanks Debs! She is lovely and had so many great ideas. She also loved my idea for the table flowers so i'm well chuffed! As the wedding is in SPRING, we have a great choice of colours and I am going for a mix with the main colour being pink. My bouquet will be similar with the focus on one flower type and colour in the middle with the other flowers around the edge, and the flower girls will have the same but smaller.

lol, I am so glad I went in to see them early because she asked me so many questions that I didn't have the answers to, like do we want button holes, corsages, candelabras etc etc. And I haven't even thought about flowers for the church! So now I have some decisions and a final list to make, then I can go back and confirm exactly what I want.

My American crafts albums came yesterday and I have to say I LOVE THEM!! You can get so many page protectors in one and you can decorate them how you want. Will definatly be getting more of them!

All my orders from last week have now arrived, lucky me!!

Here is my dare LO, it really is such an honour being asked to do be a SPESHAL girl for the week.

We had another fab weekend.......I decided to go down to london with Stu after all, and pick up Danni so she could spend the rest of the weekend with us, and we took her to Bar Meze for supper on Saturday night. Yesterday started with a trip to Sainsburys for our food shop and we came home and baked and prepared a roast dinner. I even managed to get some gardening done but alas no scrapping.

I have an appointment this afternoon with a florist re: the wedding flowers. I have so many ideas buzzing around in my head, but I know I will have to decide on something soon or else i'll still be thinking about it the week before the wedding.

I am going to work on the save-the-date 'invites' during the next few weeks so I can get them posted off. My thinking for this is very basic with just the message but I need to somehow tie it into the theme and the look of the real invites so I guess I need to decide on them some time soon too!

Oh it is all hard work!

Thanks for looking and have a great day!

Are you speshal??

I am! Dare #21 is up......EVERYONE IS SPESHAL

Dare I say it.....

it's very peaceful and quiet at work today! I have been surfing the net and playing games most of the morning and longing for 4pm when I can go home and start my weekend. Stu is wanting to go done to his heli shop in London, so I may stay home and scrap or maybe i'll drive down with him and fetch Danni on the way and have her stay with us for the night. Decisions, decisions!

Have a great weekend!

What a week

Phew, I am so glad tomorrow is Friday, it has been a long, hard, tiring week, and i've had enough!! What with difficult trainers and M&S failing to deliver half our order on Wednesday, I have been rushing about like a headless chicken. Next week thankfully is quiet and i'll have a chance to catch up with the house keeping at work and get the place back in order. It is difficult keeping the place in order when trainers move equipment around and don't tell you, so you think everything is in place and when it comes to running a class you realise half the stuff is missing. it doesn't help that you usually only find this out 5 minutes before a class is due to start or worse yet, half an hour into class!

Anyway it's the weekend soon and I plan to have another relaxing one.

This is me, ages 10 weeks *aaww* lol. I've used crate papers including a tag and frame and a BG rub paisley rub on. Another oldie LO :)

Today I ordered some chipboard American craft albums from ARTBASE , 8.5x11 size. A magazine from BOX ROOM BOOTY , some blossoms and cutsie little clipboards from SARAHS CARDS , some christmas stamps from MEMORY AVENUE and lastly, phew, some of these JIBBITS from LOOK AT MY CRAZY SHOES

And that's me broke again! Thank goodness it's payday tomorrow, lol.

TFL and have a great evening y'all

Ooh i've been a slack blogger again! Although not much has happened since I last posted.....or has it??

We had a lovely relaxed weekend, even though we managed to give the house a thorough clean top to bottom, and I did a wee bit of weeding in the garden. We took a drive around the villages to look at churches and I think we've settled on one (as a back up incase our church isn't open yet). I now need to call up and book it! On Friday night we went to a great Greek restaurant and had way to much good food and wine but it was lovely to go out. After dinner we sat in the square and watched the people (mostly very odd looking young people!) going out to the pubs and clubs. I am so glad I'm not in the dating game as it looks like hard work, lol.

Sunday brought with it visitors from SA (hence needing to clean the house!!) and as always it is good to see old friends again. We had a lovely afternoon sitting in the sun, we had a walk round to see the cows and had carrot cake that I had baked in the morning. Stu then lit the BBQ and we had rotiserie chicken, which was awesome!! The evenings are still warm enough for BBQs if you start a little earlier, as the sun is usually gone by 7.30pm.

An oldie LO today, love this photo taken by Stu in SA last December. We always visit the West Coast Ostrich farm when we're there, it's a great afternoon out. I've used, my favourite, Chatterbox papers.

And so onto the new week. It started off bad yesterday with our IT guys stuck on a train so he was running very late. This meant trying to source our internal people of which there are very few to help find projectors, mice and batteries. Things got worse when we realised the assistant trainer on one of our third pary courses is going to make our lives as difficult as possible this week! He is moaning about everything and complaining when there is no cause for complaint. Yesterday they said there wasn't enough food, when we had ordered plenty, on asking the delegates if there is enough they said 'OH YES' and then there was loads left over!! Today we have ordered about £20 more and I know they are going to complain again that there is too much, BUT lol, wait till tomorrow when I have uped the order even more, mwhahahahahahahaha, they want food, baby i'm giving them food!

Now that we have lost our catering department it is up to myself and my colleague to maintain the cyber cafe. Now it's not hard work but it can be time consuming. We also on occasion have client meetings and 3rd party courses (as above) and like I said they have food brought in. We have the task of setting the said lunches out and again it is time consuming and takes us away from the reception desk. Most of the tasks involving the lunches and cyber cafe are carried out by one person, not totally but I mean one at a time, such as unpacking it and putting it in the fridge, filling up the milk and juice jugs etc. The setting up of the lunches is usually done by both of us only because it's quicker and it means the food can stay in the fridge longer. And it's just my luck that one of the busiest weeks we have had all week and my colleague is on holiday! Bless her, she booked it months ago and we never knew we would have so many courses and meetings on and it's only day one of her being off and I am at the end of my fuse already!! Roll on the 3rd October!!

Oh well best I go make myself a cup of tea before I expire.

Have a great day and thanks for looking y'all!!

OOOUUUUCH!!!!!!

I went to give Flo a tickle but must have spooked her cause she came out with claws blazing and ripped into me. This is what one side looks like but she got me all down the outside of my forearm too, it burns like buggery!! She now sitting at the door looking all forlorn cause i'm ignoring her, lol!!

And I think it's time for bed! night night.......

Fate or devine intervention??

Last week I tried to book our village hall for the wedding and was shot down, the lady who does the bookings wasn't happy cause I wanted it from Friday to Sunday, (to decorate and tidy up), she said she would think it over and get back to me :( I was so dissapointed as I had finally decided it was a great place to have the reception and I had so many decoration ideas surging through my mind.

Anyway this morning she called me back to say she has booked the hall for me from Friday to Sunday!! It is such a load of my mind and I can now I can start calling caterers, arrange flowers, and make a start on the invites.

Today would have been my Dads 59th birthday, do you think he had anything to do with the decision on the hall??

Happy Birthday Dad, I miss and love you! oh and thanks ;)

Phew, I have spent the best part of today sorting and tidying my scrap room. As you can see by the pic on dare #19 it was a mess and in need of a spritz, so I threw out a garbage bag full of trash, not sure how I collected so much rubbish but it was there. I have a pile of pizza boxes waist high to throw out too. Again i'm not sure why I kept them but they definitely need to go!!

It's amazing what you find when you tidy up.....i have a basket full of cool embellishments that I actually like and will use I had just forgotten about them in a draw under a load of crap, lol. I also found loads of stuff that I am sending to a fellow padders son who is very into scrapping and needs stash. Bless i'm sure he'll have loads of fun playing with the stuff.

I moved all my paper onto one shelf so I can now see exactly what/how much I have. And yes it's way too much so I gotta scrap loads before I can buy any more!!


So onto my shopping spree!! Yesterday I went to this gorgeous little store in Hitchin where they sell the most adorable country house stuff. I want my whole house decorated in stuff from this shop!! I bought some baskets for my scrap room, two to keep on the desk, one for all my tools, PC roller stamps, circle cutters, corner rounder, xyron machine etc. And one for my paints, I love using paint but I often forget I have it, lol.


One for embellishments so they are on display as apposed to tucked in a drawer where I don't see them.

And they have the most adorable little tin jugs painted pastel colours that i think will be perfect for the table flowers at the wedding, so I bought two so I can take them into the florist. I bought a couple of tin hearts strung with twine that I think will make interesting and very different wedding favours, to show mom to see what she thinks.



And this was my last purchase, that will be ideal for putting the sauces, cutlery and serviettes in when we have a BBQ. Just the other day I was saying to Stu that I wish we had something to keep everything on the table tidy and viola, I found it!! I LOVE THIS SHOP!!

I had such a good time wandering about Hitchin, it is the cutest town and I love the fact it has different shops to London high streets. There is a great jeweler that I have often been tempted to visit but thought it a bit snobbish, well yesterday I went in and *gasp* I bought myself a Links of London bracelet with charm *heart*. I have been admiring them from afar for SO long, but never bought one cause I though they were like £500, but they're not and it's just gorgeous!!

lol, and that's where my shopping spree ended, oh what a great day!!

And here we are, the final two dares (although I still can't believe I missed two out!).

Dare #18, how hard can it be........to keep up with the housework! I always seem to have a full washing basket, there is always dusting that needs doing, the carpets could do with a vacuum, and the bathroom is a state, lol.


and Dare #19, it's time.....to clean up my scrap room, just look at the state of it, no wonder I can't find anything!!

Tonday I had a little shopping stree but i'll tell you all about that tomorrow ;)

TFL y'all and have a great evening!!

While I was scanning my LOs at the weekend, I discovered I hadn't actually done two of the dares! I have however made notes on the dares seem to have come close to deciding what to base my LO on. Just not actually got around to doing them, lol. Anyway I will do them, but for now here are dares 12, 14, 16 and 17!

Dare #12 My hero. This had to be a LO about my Grumps, who was in fact not grumpy at all. He was quite possibly the most lovable, kind, generous soul that ever walked the earth!!

Dare #14, Serendipity, this LO is all about how when looking for one house we found another, even more suitable to our neads in beautiful surroundings!

Dare #16 my favourite, i chose to do a LO about my favourite colour, which as you can see is blue :)

and finally Dare #17, if I knew then what I know now.....I would have told you I love you every day. My first LO of my daddy! I have been meaning to do one for a long time, but the photos I have are not great and none really worthy of a full page LO. But this pic was great for a little LO and I feel good about having done it.

I have a day off tomorrow so will upload the final two dares and hopefully get a chance to do the two I missed out!!

TFL

Woo Hoo!!

I am a very smily girl today as I have been selected to be on the Scrapfairies design team!! Sam is a swetie so I am excited to work for her as well as the other girls on the team!! Here are my audition LOs........

Fly me to the moon! Stuart flying his baby heli! He still has the 'training wheels' on in this photo but has progressed so much this summer he no longer needs them. Used BG baby boy papers, I thought the rocket paper was quite fitting, lol.



and OHs neice, Sarah, playing in my garden. She has so much energy it is hard to keep up with her!! Loved these photos that were taken by Danni with my camera (Konica Minolta 7D) Wanted bright paper so Rob and Bob was perfect!!

TFL and Happy Friday!!

and another.....

Dare #11 Once upon a time....I never knew planning a wedding would be so hard. lol, it really is and i feel like all I ever do is write lists, make calls and then make decisions. But it will all be worth it on the day **heart**

i'm behind......

with my Speshal Dare uploading!! With one thing and another I haven't been able to blog for two days, but without further delay here are another two LOs......

Dare #9 I was there. I was there to say goodbye. 04/03/95. The day we turned my dads life support machines off. Had he built up the strength to live on his own, he would never have been able to do the things he did before, he was brain dead. Very emotional time for me at the moment, what with my wedding next year and September being his birthday month. I have however felt the need, at last, to get some feelings down on paper so the dares have been good for me.

Dare #10 If it wasn't for.......CRASH. This LO is about the scars I have on my right arm which are the result of a really bad car crash I had on my 24th birthday. I spent 2 weeks in hospital but I thank my lucky stars all I damaged was my arm! But never the less I hate my scars and if I didn't crash the car I wouldn't have them, lol! I will one day do a LO with photos but for now this is all I can manage.

I am having a scrapping weekend, cause Stu is away, can't wait but as always I will miss him :(

TFL!!

Only 2 LOs tonight cause I decided to be clever and glossy accent something on dare 9, so I removed it (it was only stuck down with temp herma) and now it's still wet so I can't put it back on my LO to photograph and obviously I can't scan it, lol. Oh well!!

Dare #7 was changes! What a change in me since last October.....

and Dare #8 I wish. I wished on every first star and every birthday candle for a bride doll!! I'm still waiting, lol...

My poor body is aching from helping Stus brother and SIL move house on Saturday, but boy was it good excercise, I felt muscles working in places I didn't even know exist.

I was at the docs today, I had a few things to talk to him about. The one was the yucky excema I have on my hands and feet, he's given me cream that I hope works cause it gets so itchy expecially in the warm weather and it seems to be hotting up again. The other thing is my weight!! He has me going in for blood tests to check a few things and has put me on medication which I will start tomorrow. I also need to start eating proper meals during the day so will buy some cereal on my way in to work for breakfast and then go out to buy some groceries to make a decent low cal lunch. If you have any ideas please let me know!! The third thing I had to sort out was this odd little lump on the back of my ankle. It's apparently achilies (sp?) tendonitis (sp) and he has recommended I wear heels for the next three months, so I guess I need to go out and buy some. I wear flats ALL the time and this apparently puts strain on the achilies tendon. Besides these things my BP is good and i am generally healthy.

So I hope you all had a good Monday and enjoy your week!!

3 more SPESHAL DARE layouts!!

Dare #4 was 10 THINGS.

Dare #5 was I WISH THEY TOLD ME.

Dare #6 was I NEVER.

If you've not yet done any dares YOU MUST. I have really enjoyed the challenge and scrapped so much about ME!

TFL y'all and have a good Sunday!

It's taken a while but I have finally caught up with my SPESHAL DARES ! I am going to upload 3 LOs a day for the next 6 days so I have them on my blog and then I will keep up and upload them once a week.

I have decided to use the weekly word prompts to make an 8x8 BoM, taking a look at who I am and how I feel about things in my life NOW, and how I deal with things from my past and how I feel about things that have happened in my life, in my childhood. I'm not going to type out my journaling but if you strain your eyes you may be able to read it!

Dare #1 was I DREAM, and my dream right now is to be married and have a baby.
Dare #2 was THINGS THAT MAKE ME MAD, and two things that make me mad are IGNORANCE and SELFISHNESS.
and finally Dare #3 was PERFECT, so I chose to do a LO about how perfect{ly} happy I am!! (I have been asked to take this LO down till it is decided whether or not they want to publish it - It will be back ;) )

The lovely Anita has a very ill sister and is trying to raise some extra cash, to get her something very special, by offering a photo popping service! Have some photos you are dying to scrap but they are just too dull and uninteresting?? Then get on over to her blog and she'll pop them for you!!