Well december wasnt what i had hoped it woud be and we are slowly trying to get back to normal.

Yesterday was the third aniversary of Andrews death... we spent the day keeping busy building storage units that we had got earlier on in the week from ikea. At one point i had to go next door and ask for help, Andrew would have been able to have done it so easily...i just miss him so much.

a quite day...

which i spent playing with ink and paint all thanks to tim holz



i'm really pleased with how it turned out as i wanted a more traditional background as the lighter colour wouldnt have gone with my album. i cuttlebugged a chipboard shape and i am pleased at how it turned out.
ive had to scan it so its lost some of its detail and colour. as usual i am behind with the journal and ive only managed two pages lol. i will upload them when we have some decent light and i can photograph them

ooops

its december already!!

R is off school she's only managed 3 weeks since the begining of term.... she managed to put her knee cap out of joint and was on crutches and now she has an awful tummy bug with cramps and nausia.

The boiler broke and we spent a week with out central heating. thank god for hot water bottles, blankets and finally 2 electric heaters off my brother.

as usual i am running round like a mad man trying to finish off christmas pressies and at some point i need to tidy up so we can put the tree up.

off to start my christmas journal...luckily we had a light sprinkling of snow today so i have a nice wintry pic for it

at last

i have finally finished my journal cover for the iacw a-z.

i am quite pleased how it turned out and cant wait for the journal to be finished

a bad few months

the last few months havent been great. i had to have the cat, bali, put down as he was very ill, his kidneys were failing. the dog, rio, had to be re-homed. thankfully the rspca took her and had her re-homed within a week. today i had to have the other cat, zante, put down. his arthritis had gotten very severe and it was the kindest thing to do.

ive been tagged

1. If a movie was being made of your life who would you like to be cast to play yourself? And why?



Angela Griffin...a good northern lass



2. You are spending a whole month on a desert island for charity and you have to choose your favourite celebrity to spend the first two weeks with & your least favourite celebrity to spend the second two weeks with, who would they be & why?


Orlando Bloom for obvious reasons and Aemonn Holmes coz he does my head in and i would take great pleasure in kicking him off




3. What are your three favourite crafting products?



anything from 7Gypsies, stamps and gems



4. If you could invent something to do anything what do you think it would be?

A time machine so that i could go where i want when i want



5. What are the last three books that you read?

The hunt, dragon reborn and shadow rising all by Robert Jordan

6. Qvc or create & Craft?

Qvc


7. Docrafts or Dovecraft or DCWV?

DCWV

8. What is your claim to fame?

I came joint first in a talent contest when i was a child...i had to share the honour with my sister!

I am tagging

jakey

paul

product review

How often do you use adhesive?

most days

What is the main type of adhesive you use?

herma, doublesided tape and glossy accents

What do you look for in an adhesive?

something that easy to use and economical

How easy is the product to remove from its packaging?

very easy
Does the product appeal to you – i.e. does it look good?

i would have liked a different colour

How easy is the product to use?

i struggled a bit as i wanted to glue something that was quite fine and i kept getting more than the one strip that i wanted and i kept picking it up the wrong way as it felt more comfortable that way.

How well does the product perform?

it performed really well on paper and cardstock

Do you like this product?

it was ok, i guess with a bit more practice i'll get used to it

Do you consider it good value for money?

no. you only get 8.5 metres compared to the 15 on the herma

Would you consider buying this product in the future?

no. its not refillable

What would make you more likely to buy this product in the future?

if they did refills and they were very cheap

What would make you less likely to buy this product in the future?

if they increased the price

all in all its a nice stand by in my craft tote but not something i would go and buy...at the moment.

a first

above is part my first project for iacw whic went live yesterday. i really enjoyed it and i'm looking forward to my next one...on friday eeek!

well this last week of the holidays has been a quite one which i have enjoyed but i am not looking forward to the alarm going off on monday.

my craft robo is fixed...yaaaaaay. thanks to a nice man called steve at graphtec all i had to do was remove the sidecover and remove the offending blobs. so ive cut the rest of the gingerbreadmen and the rest of the tardis outer cover and finished them both off.

so excited

i was asked last week to become part of the iacw desgin team. i was really chuffed as it is somewhere i go most days as i think the girls are really talented. this was my first week in the art journal and i am busy catching up on the weeks that i have missed and trying to finish off another project.

the weather....

has been very strange this week. snow on sunday, bright sunshine yesterday and then back to rain today....i cant keep up.
its the easter holidays here this week and next and weve been busy with visitors most days.
ive been busy creating and there will be an announcement tomorrow which i am very excited about....now back to my craft desk.

at last

ive finally finished my christmas journal. i never intended to go to the 6th of jan as i had cover those thoughts in previous years and i decided to finish on christmas day but then i had a rethink and finished on new years eve instead.
so thats 3 projects in 2 weeks that i have finished...lets i hope i can carry on the good work!

busy busy busy

i finished 2 projects last weekend...yeeeehaaaaaaa
the first one is a tardis from when we wnet to the dr who exhibition in october. okay so the cover is not exactly finished but thats coz of the craft robo...see my tech difficulties post! i used lots of stickers that raena had collected from the magazines that are out including a fab set of post it notes.



the second is a christmas album. i was dithering in november about what to use for shimelles xmas class and remembered that the first time we went to trinidad it was christmas...so i started it then. i used my 7gypsies birthday pressie off jill to do it...well what else would she have bought me lol

progress

as you can see below we are getting there with the vegetable plot. its been dug over, manure added and the raised beds are now in place.
weve already started on the seeds .... we had the beds widened as well so we will be able to get more flowers in this year...... so we will be doing a lot more this year with the veg ones as well. at the moment they are taking over the kitchen top and the bedroom window sill as we had to take down the cover on the greenhouse due to the storms.

technical difficulties

first off i noticed that my lovely blue banner had the wrong title on it..once upon a time!!....where did i get that from..note to self...dont make another banner at 3am!

blogger has been acting up as it wont let me change my background, finally did it...decided it needs tweaking...and it wont let me.

downloaded an action which i know was not for elements but it hasnt stopped me before...havent a clue what i had done previously but spent hours on it on saturday to no avail.

my craft robo rollers wont turn properly...i now need a large magnifying glass to remove debris off the rollers so that i can finish 2 projects.

my word for this year was "finish"...do you think i chose the wrong word?

it's been two years

since i became a widow, a single parent.... i hate that phrase.
it only seems like yesterday when our world fell apart
its not been easy trying to do all the jobs that were andrews role in this family.... i still hate putting the bins out, especially when i forget and i am hopeless at being a father.
i miss him so much...his wicked sense of humour...he was always winding me up....just someone to talk to at night while watching tv...dancing in bed....and all the other daft things we used to do.

the vegetable patch

i had a gardener here earlier this week to take up part of the lawn and dig out the new vegetable patch, widen the existing beds and add manure...this garden has had nothing added for years..although i did add chicken manure last year. we had the lavetera taken out as it really took over the bed it was in last year.
ive already started on the seeds....peas, marigolds, tomatoes and begamot have gone in this week. its too cold for them outside at the moment so they are taking over the kitchen. i got some duck tape today to patch up the plastic greenhouse as it took a battering last year. i also got 2 40 litre yellow...and i mean yellow.... buckets today from wicks for the potatoes to go in, as i think they will be better than the compost bags that i was going to use, they were only £3.99 each...bargain.
i ordered a compost bin from recyclenow.com my council partakes in a scheme where you get cheap compost bins...so £11 was spent on a compost bin and a small blue kitchen worktop bin for the peelings etc.
i'm saving my empty plastic milk bottles as i am going to cut them down and use them for cloches for the peas.

4 more left

well 5 actually as i still have to do page 4...just cant get my head round it and we didnt do anything special that day. i need to hand cut 1 more page...just need to make sure i cut the correct side!!

pages 20 to 24!!

the hospital messed up with raena's scan appointment so we are back there again next week
sonja was here on wednesday and we had a great time scrapping and chatting while the girls played on the wii. we were both cracking on with our christmas journals.
close ups of the journal pages will be on my slide once blogger stops messing me about...for some reason it will only show me half of the templates page!!

money and more

i bought a euro millions ticket last week and then forgot all about it. i remembered yesterday and checked it...i got 3 number and won the grand sum of £16.20

i bought a few bits of food, treated myself to a chinese and bought another ticket lol. i did offer raena a treat but she didnt want to know!!

at work we have changed from weekly to monthly pay and from the way the letter was worded i thought i wouldnt get any money after the end of jan till i got paid on the 15th of feb...i was wrong and i'm now 2 weeks wages better off......thats why i bought another ticket...i'm hoping 3rd time lucky.

the scrapologie blog has a fab rak on at the moment so go and have a look at yesterdays post and leave a comment.

this is my 100th post...... its taken me a while to get here but i made it at last lol.

ive managed 4 more pages to my journal and i'll get them photographed over weekend and upload them...i can finally see the end i sight...phew!

this journal

is just taking sooo long! we were both ill at the begining of december with a sever cough and cold...my cough eased off but it still lingered so that at the begining of this month i ended up with pleurisy....finally recovered from that and raena was taken into hospital on tuesday with suspected apendisitis, which eventually turned out to be a cist...and she has a uti as well. she was discharged on saturday and is still in some pain and we are due back at the hospital next month for another scan. it never rains but pours!
so i am determined to do some more of the journal this week...just not sure when lol