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!

Well my trip home yesterday was a doddle, so quick and easy, but this may be die to the fact i left work at 1.30pm, lol, i just couldn't has all the commuter traffic so booked myself a half day and spend a glorious afternoon at home scrapping. This is the LO I did, it's a scrap lift of a LO I saw on 2 peas sometime last week (sorry can't remember whos LO to credit them properly but I will try find it!), I loved the journalling on the strips of paper. The photo isn't great, as you can't even see it's me but I still had to scrap it.

This morning all train service had been restored so it's back to normal, thank goodness!

Thanks all folks!

travel nightmare

Last night when I got to the station we were told that there were no trains running and we would need to get a rail replacement bus to WGC :O WHAT!! OMG!! okay well there wasn't anything for it, no amount of whinging was going to make the situation any better, so I dealt with it and started the long tiring journey home. Luckily as it was still only 5pm things were relatively quiet so I managed to get to Finsbury Park and on the bus, which was full and I had to stand but hey, at least i was on my way.....

After what felt like hours, oh haha it was hours, we pulled inot WGC and I jumped in the car and headed for home. At that hour the roads were quiet and it only took 15 mins. So in all it took me 2 and a half hours to get home. Not too bad.....

This morning I checked first capaital connects web site and saw that there were a few trains running but figured the earlier i got on my way the better! There was alot of traffic for so early but I made good time and got onot the platform at 6.55.....and waited.....and waited......lol and waited. 45 minutes later a train had arrived and we were on our way, woo hoo!

All trains are terminating at Finsbury Park, and on arrival there were 100s of people waiting to get down into the underground to continue their journeys, it took 20 minutes to get off the platform and out of the station, which is where they were directing us, only to make our way back into the station, from the other side, to get on a tube. On my way around I spotted a bus that was heading to the barbican so I hopped on and eventually I was close enough to jump off and walk the rest of the way. So in summary the journey this morning took just over 3 hours! And I still have to get home tonight, haha.