The saga of Josh and his hunting continued into Saturday night and I managed to save another tiny baby rabbit from his evil clutches. To be honest I have no problem with them hunting or killing, but it's the torture and playing with the animal first that I don't like :( And I know by rescuing the creature I have only let it live to grow and eat our veggies, ho hum........

So round three of the pad summer CC comp and the themes this week where again FAB! The first was to do a LO inspired by the title or a line from either Dirty Dancing or Flashdance. I used the quote 'When you give up your dream, you die' from Flashdance, and the LO is titled 'I WANT TO LOVE YOU 4EVER'. The sentiment behind the LO is about my longing to get married and have a baby and wanting to be with Stu. Giving up on my dream to have them both would have resulted in me loosing out on one of them, something that I never wanted to happen. Luckily our love is too strong!
The second LO needed to come from Michael Jacksons THRILLER album, again using a song title or a line from the song. My LO is titled PRETTY SASSY GAL and comes from the song title PRETTY YOUNG THING (not 100% sure about the title but it's only stuck on with temp herma so I can change it later if I want). Photos are of Danni taken back in 2002.

Only 109 days till ScrapManic! So excited and can't wait to hear what the classes will be and who is teaching. And of course seeing the 'gutter girls', my 'lovely room' pals and the girls who are coming from the Pad! It promises, again, to be a FABO weekend.

I said to check back for the mini album I was making over the weekend......I made the album but didn't get all the pages done so will try do it during the week and let you all see.

Josh the hunter

Josh has been at it again! Last night he brought a baby rabbit into the house, I chased him out and in the process the rabbit got away. This morning I heard a noice downstairs and knew it was him with the rabbit! I chased him out and again the rabbit got away. Mid morning I was outside photographing butterflies when I heard the squealing and rushed to lock the cat flap and close the door.

He spent ages, at least an hour, chasing the rabbit around the garden, both of them were exhausted. The rabbit didn't have the strength to escape and Josh didn't have the strenght to kill it.

But finally the clever little thing managed to get under the line of trees and across the road onto the field. I followed him over and began chasing it to the other side and into the bushes. He was so tired that I managed to get quite close to take photos! You can see he's a bit dishevelled from his attacks....



Half way across the field the poor thing was just too exhausted to go on and came and lay down next to my foot. I had the zoom lens on the camera so had to use the macro setting to get this shot, lol.



I put the camera down and carried him across to the bushes. I hope he doesn't get killed by the other rabbits cause I have touched him :( and I hope the exhaustion doesn't kill him.

And that is quite enough excitment for one day, i'm back to scrapping!

It's yet another hot day in London and still we have no air con in the office. The poor delegates are sweltering in the classrooms and we have a few mobile air con units working overtime to try make it bareable for them.

Today is the end of my working week, I have a day off tomorrow cause Stu is off to the 3D masters and is taking the landie so i'll be house bound till Sunday. Won't be an issue though cause I plan to do lots of early morning and late night gardening (in the cool) and during the day I am going to scrap my little fingers off. I am terribly behind on my Speshal dares (link to the right and down a bit), and week 3 of the pad/Speshal challenges need to be uploaded by midnight on Sunday.

I also have an idea for a mini book which I will make and upload so make sure you check back ;)

One day I will take photographs like my mate Darrin ! We used to be neighbours, before we became country bumpkins, he is my inspiration and if he would just sit still long enough I would have him teach me everything he knows. Check out his site, he has some seriously amazing photos!

Week 2s pad summer CC challenge was again split inot two parts, 1st was to do a LO inspired by the title or a quote from the movie The Breakfast Club or St Elmos Fire. 2 classics that I love. The quote I picked was 'do you know how popular I am? I am *SO* popular, everyone at this school loves me'. It's very tongue in cheek but I am so glad I got to scrap this photo!
and 2nd we had to do a LO inspired by the Wham album 'make it big', so it could be a song title, the album title or a line from a song. Mine is not a very serious LO and based on the title 'Wake me up before you go go', bit of a broad interpretation, haha. The LO title is 'please don't wake me up' and I have used a photo of Josh curled up asleep and looking too darn cute. I have an annoying habit of always waking him up for cuddles and kisses :)

Yesterday we went to the Farnborough air show and it was so fantastic! I have never seen Jets fly in real life and the sound was just awesome, it seemed to rumble your tummy as they took off. The A380 did a demo and I must admit I was a little nervous as it is just not natural for a hunk of metal like that to do twists and turns so close to the ground. But it too was an swesome spectacle. Oh course there where a few C130s and I am still determined ot have one in the garden as my studio! But I was also looking at the Chinook, which is just an spectacular helicopter, and it comes a close second in my search for garden ornaments :o It was very hot again, but we luckily managed to stay hydrated, and I got to top up my tan! It was a very long day but a most enjoyable one, now I need to sift through my hundreds of photos to find some that I can scrap....

Have a good Monday y'all!

The journal of a........

first time gardener, is what I spent my morning making. The idea for the style came from a cyber crop planner Ching made over on UKS. I love the idea of using envelopes to create an acordian journal. i have used Crate new garden collection papers and co-ordinating cardstock.

Inside the 'front' are 5 pockets, (the envelopes), which each have a theme, 'what to plant where?', 'buying plants' etc, and inside each envelope are two large tags for journalling and photos.



and again on the back there will be more journalling, in fact I plan to fill it up with as much info and feeling as possible. As I have said before this is the first year I have ever had a garden of my own and it has been a awesome journey of discovery!

Pad challenge

Debbie and the Speshal dare girls are running a series of challenges on the pad leading up to the summer cyber crop. Week 1s challenge, which was last week, was to create a LO using the title or a quote from one of the two following films....Pretty Woman or Beaches. AND a LO using the title or words from Madonnas Like a Virgin album. So here are my two LOs...
Firstly the LO using the title of the film Beaches, which in South Africa was called Forever Friends, and it a LO based around the friendship between my best bud and me. We have been best friends for 21 years! and I love her dearly. ( I have been asked to take this LO down until it is decided if they will publish it or not - It will be back ;) )
The second is a LO using a photo of my new jewelery stand that I posted last week. It's inspiration came from the song title Material Girl, which describes me to a T!

All my links.....

went haywire, but I think I have managed to fix them, lol, no idea what happened :?

Still on a high today........

from making it into a design team!! lol.

I did not however make it into Jillybeans team, although I did make the final vote which is just a huge boost to my confidence.

It's another very hot day in London and i am so tempted to take a half day and perhaps tomorrow off too. I want to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts and spend time in my garden.

Yesterday I baked a carrot cake, and, even if I say so myself, it was delish! I gave two big fat slices to Ron and Poppy and had a slice myself. I really should have brought the rest in to work for the guys but actually it is too good to share, so i'll have the rest myslef tonight mwhahahahahahaha. On another note I actually don't know what has come over me lately, this is the second time I have baked in less than a week :O mmmmm I wonder if i'm brooding??

Woo Hoo

Good morning bloggers! Feeling very chuffed with myself this morning as I have been selected to be on the
Kraft Stop design team! The LO above was the one I sent in for my 'audition'. Well done to the rest of the team too...

Nicci24lego
kellyg
LisaPink
Natbag
Natalie1
Hysteri-CAL
RozRoz

....I am looking forward to getting to know you all over the course of the next year.

Happy Sunday!

today we bought

a new vacuum cleaner, it's a SEBO , of course when we got home we had to try it out and it works a dream! I can't believe how easy it goes over the carpet and it picks up EVERYTHING. Oh and i've christened her Sophie!

My new, very girly (so Stu says, hee hee), dressing table mirror and jewelery stand! Aren't they gorgeous!! So glad this week is over, it's been very draining and i'm feeling quite fed up :( I need a break so looking forward to having a little one in August. Even though I decided not to go back to SA for yearly holidays I have to say I've missed it this year. It's always a boost of sunshine D, and great shopping and of course lots of swimming!

So looking forward to spending time in the garden this weekend, it's my tonic.......

Oh and last but not least a big {{hug}} and special thanks to Suzanne for sending me {{hugs}} today I so needed them :)

A randon pic from the weekend. Ron gave us loads of gorgeous veg, lettuce, potatoes, spring onions and carrots! So yummy!! We really are spoilt.
Yesterday our power went off again, but this time only for a hour and luckily near the end of the day so no real disruption to classes. But a huge pain in the arse!

I am home today as I have a dodgy tum, won't go into too much detail :D but it's not nice :(

Another

very warm day in London! And to make matters worse our air con in the office is faulty, gah, it's about 26 degrees, far too hot to work ;)

oh my goodness, check out the chatterbox blog chatterblog oh why haven't i found this before!

Another......

design team submission......another failure :(

We have had another glorious weekend in the country! We did our shopping on Saturday morning, including a trip to the market for greek olives, fete and stuffed chillies YUMMY!! Stu did lots of work on his veggie patch yesterday, he has about 40 broccoli and cauliflower plants (that's 40 of each :o ) so he had to extend it a bit to accomodate them. I planted some seeds into trays and also split my cosmos plants, that I got from May, into seperate pots.

When I put the nastersium seeds into pots all those months ago I also planted mission bells, but they didn't do very well when I transplanted them into the garden and I thought they had all died but yesterday I noticed some of them have started to grow and one has even started to flower, so maybe I'm a little green fingered after all!

I'm trying my hand at growing peppers too, Stu didn't have any luck and I doubt I will be any more successful but there is no harm in trying.

Last night we had a roast dinner, the first for a very long time, the potatoes came from Mays garden and the roasted carrots came out of Stus garden. We used shop brought onions only because we bought so many last weekend but the ones in the garden are ready to eat! We also got loads of lettuce from Ron yesterday that I washed and popped into the fridge. I think we will have left over chicken, boiled potatoes with mint and fresh garden salad for dinner tonight!

I hope you all have a fab day!

Freaky Friday

What a day! Yesterday just before 2 we had a power outage the whole office in total darkness and of course no phones or pcs (which is really bad in a business that does IT certification!) We spent the afternoon trying to keep everyone happy and find out when the power would be back on. When I left at 4.30 there was no change.......

This morning when I got in there was STILL no change, yes that's right our office was still in total darkness, and to make matters worse the emergence lighting had also gone out as they only last a certain amount of time on battery. We managed to set up our coffee purculator out in the main reception so at least we could make the delegates coffee before sending them home! By 11 though we were back on and here I sit waiting for 4.30 so I can go home......

It's also a year since 7/7 and the city is very quiet, i'm sure lots of people chose to stay at home today with their families.
My last photo of the week is Stuart flying his Raptor 50, he is really doing so well and getting the hover perfected, soon I imagine he'll have his 'training wheels' off!

Happy Friday y'all!

Last Sunday was open gardens in our village, basically people come from all over and pay a fee for a map and the chance to walk around and look at the beautiful gardens. Stu and I helped on the big field which was used as the car park, and luckily only had to be out there for 2 hours as it was so dang hot! Mark was up at his alotment with William so when we got back from carpark duty I managed to get a few photos of him. Love this one of him looking so cool in his cap, lol. And talking about being hot..........
My poor kitties have been trying to find shady spots to sleep and shelter from the scorching sun. I spotted them both crashed out under the hedge and couldn't resist some photos (blogger plays havoc with the colours so they're not as clear as IRL)
Thankfully is has cooled down a little today, well it was this morning but goodness knows we will be melting again on the train on the way home.

Happy Thursday everyone!

My flowers!

It's so grey and dull outside that I thought some bright and sunny flowers might cheer me up! This first pic is my cosmos, I have white and pink that are flowering like crazy and last night May gave me some more that she has grown from seed. They are still teeny tiny so i'll need to nurture them more before planting them into the garden.
I have 6 Cape Daisies, 2 white, a pink, a purple, a light burgandy and these lovely bright yellow ones. They are so cheerful and being Stus moms favourite plant they also bring him lots of joy!
This last photo is of a plant I don't know the name of but I managed to catch a bumblebee poking him butt out of one of the flowers :D

I have news to update but want to do it with photos so watch this space and i'll post agian tomorrow, or tonight!