A few things to share...

...Oh my God, work is tiring! I haven't been able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, as I've still been in holiday mode, but that has made getting out of bed in the morning even harder. However, its not been too bad teaching again, and at least two days then a weekend is a good way to ease into it.

I've got a few pages to share, all of which were created for the Papermaze blog. First up, we have my contribution to the current competition over on the blog, to using a felt circle picture as inspiration for your own creation. Here was my interpretation, a kind of 'garden picture', and yes, there is no big title - I'm not sure if I like it or not, but its good to make a change. The stitching took me forever though! I used a poem I found on the internet to form the journalling, felt for the circles and BG Mellow paper as well as scanned in book paper which I used to create the clouds.

Next up, we have two pages created using the new Scenic Route Providence range. For more inspiration using the other new Scenic Route range, you should check out Scrap Paper Scissors - Wendy and Angie have made some awesome layouts using the Grafton range.

These two layouts were created in a bit of a hurry, but I actually really like them - sometimes simple can be beautiful, and in particular I love the Family Portrait layout because of the photo, which I didn't want to obscure behind a whole load of embellishments. Its a rare photo of all of my mum's side of the family (except my uncle, who actually took the picture) back in 1985. I'm so glad I scrapped this now so that I can remember us all together.

This layout has such fab photos of my sister pulling a very cheeky face - it makes me laugh whenever I look at it!

Last Day of Freedom!

Yep, its the last day of freedom before a very long half term, and its the first day when I haven't been curled up on the sofa feeling rotten for half of it. Typical, time to go back and my immune system starts to kick in. Beats being ill at work though.

My birthday was really nice, despite being poorly. I woke up to this:

Ed had got up extra early and set it all up before going to work, bless him! He says that he popped one of the balloons, it failed to wake me up but the cats jumped up off the sofa like they'd been shot and ran outside apparently. Its their first experience of balloons, I wish I'd seen it.

Ed took a half day off work and came home to take me out for a late lunch too - I couldn't eat that much due to my cold and the fact that my diet seems to have made my stomach shrink, but I did really enjoy the salad cart at the Harvester! Then in the evening, Ed's folks came round for a bit of birthday cake - I had two, a Homer Simpson one (I love the Simpsons!) and a Thorntons toffee one which was really rich. I tried a little bit of both.

I got some great gifts, lots of IKEA vouchers for spending on my scrap space in the spare room, some cool New Look T-shirts from my sis (including my personal fave, an Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street shirt which I'm currently wearing), some new shoes and jewellery from my mum and Ed got me some lovely perfume, Davidoff Echo Woman which smells great (fab choice babe!). Mum also took me out at the weekend to get some bathroom accessories so that room is looking far more finished now. From my lovely teamies over on UKS, I got a box of stash which will all be very useful, including the Scenic Route Lynden line which I'm looking forward to playing with. I also had a very fancy set of bathroom scales which not only weigh you, oh no! They tell you your fat percentage, muscle mass, water percentage and BMI. My boyfriend just can't resist a gadget :) I was pleased to discover this morning though that I'm down to 10 stone 3 pounds - if you want to lose weight, just get the lurgy for a week is what I say!

This morning I finished off a layout for the Papermaze blog which should be up any time soon, so as soon as it is I'll share it on here. Its a bit of a departure for me, because its my first ever layout without a title! Or at least a big bold one. I'm still getting used to it :)

Off to mark A level exams for the evening now, I'll be back to share the trials and tribulations of a new term tomorrow...

Aaaarghhh!!!!

My lurgy has now developed into that kind of heavy cold where you literally just want to scratch your face right off! Kinda like chopping onions all the time. Its a bit like hayfever except I don't think the pollen count is particularly high at the moment so I think this must just be general lurgy.

Never mind, I had a really nice weekend with the folks anyway and enjoyed my meal out. Its not my birthday till Tuesday, but since everyone is back at work by then we decided to celebrate it this weekend instead. The food was excellent - really good quality ingredients and great flavours. It was also nice to discover that I now weigh 10 stone 5 pounds - I'm very happy about that as I was only aiming for 10 stone so not far to go :) Here are a couple of piccies of our evening out.

In other news, my article on using chipboard letters went up on the Scrap, Paper, Scissors blog yesterday so I can finally share some layouts here. I have to admit, these aren't my favourite - I'm going through a bit of a scrapping low point at the moment so I really pared back my style with these two pages. The first one (which I have since added a few gems to after I scanned it) has got some great photos of Ed and Elmo and I really like the chipboard lettering itself which I painted in several shades of pink. Its all a bit simple, but I suppose sometimes thats not a bad thing and its certainly a change for me!

The second page was a bit awkward coming together. I just wanted to use plain chipboard letters, which is a bit of a breakaway from the norm for me anyway and sort of dictated me in not being too fussy on the rest of the page. I thought, seeing as the page is about our Haven holidays as kids, I might do a postmark to mimic a post card. It ended up becoming the whole 'Blockbusters' board you see here, but I don't totally hate it - it just doesn't set the world on fire for me!

I also made a little mini book, but seeing as I want to share the rest of that after it has reached its recipient, I won't upload the front page on here for now...

Just because...

...I think everyone else should get to enjoy the Crusha kitten song too. This time they are at the gym. Now maybe I should dig out that old bottle of Crusha from the back of my cupboard...

Piccies of home...

...so, the lurgy continues, but I don't want to bore you all with another rant about it so I've decided to share with you a few piccies I've managed from the confines of my home. For those of you taking Shimelle's class, you will know that we were supposed to be taking pictures of our local area or town. Now clearly, this was going to be a bit of a stretch for me seeing as I haven't much felt like leaving the house. So I thought I would do my best by hanging out the window and seeing what I could catch with my compact camera! So the shots are my VERY local area but I actually quite like some of them - a true ode to suburbia! I'm far too ashamed to upload these to the Flickr group as there are some awesome photographers sharing their work there but its very inspirational taking a browse through the group pool.

This photo was taken through the living room window this morning - the little white blob is the neighbour's cat, Beano, who I absolutely adore!

This one is a familiar sight in this area - reception in Coventry is so bad, everyone has these oversized beasts as aerials on their rooftops!Of course, for all the Sky obsessives, we have the obligatory satellite dishes...I do like the little wisp of steam coming out of the vent behind!

I absolutely LOVE this little blue car owned by someone in an adjacent street - its always got its little nose poking out of the garage there and I had to take a photo of it to document my area - I'm sure its got a name like Brum. Maybe I'll call it Colin...I call this shot, Rooftops to Nowhere. I'm sure there is something in that direction. But all I can see are very similar looking rooftops. The joys of the suburbs.

And because it wouldn't be my neighbourhood without them, here is one of my little fluff monsters, perched on the fence.

I'm going down to my parent's tomorrow as we have booked into an Italian restaurant in Banstead to celebrate my birthday - I'm determined I'm going to enjoy it as I've been looking forward to going for ages so the lurgy had better be gone by the morning or else!

Dreaded Lurgy!

Ok, surely this is not fair. I work all term without getting sick and the minute I'm on holiday and can enjoy some time to myself, I get sick. I woke up this morning feeling terrible - aching all over and coughing and spluttering. After dosing myself up with painkillers and carrying a hot water bottle around for most of the day I'm starting to feel human again, but I feel like a whole day has been wasted doing nothing!

Two prompts have arrived for Shimelle's class now, neither of which I have attempted. There is a layout and a mini book to have a go at. I'm not sure about the mini book, I don't think the theme suits me exactly, but I do want to have a go at the layout. Trouble is, I want some decent photos to go with it and currently the weather is atrocious so every shot I try to get will be grey and miserable. Here's hoping for at least a little bit of sunshine tomorrow! I'm not too stressed though, the point of the class is to have the projects there for when I am ready, so I might hang on till next week.


Over on Papermaze's blog Scrap Paper Scissors there is a cool competition. Its all about using this picture, made of felt and buttons, as an inspiration point for your own project. As part of the DT over there, I will be making my own take on this, probably in the form of a layout which will be up on the blog in the next week. If you fancy having a go, get on over to the blog and look up the details.

Gorillapods!

Ok, maybe its the fact that it makes your camera look like something out of 'Batteries Not Included', or maybe its the realisation that I can't keep my hand steady long enough to take a decent photo, but having read about these on the Shimelle.com class forum I've decided to order one from Amazon. As much as one day I would love to have a digital SLR with all the trimmings, I know that ain't gonna happen any time soon, so at least I can make the most out of my compact. Even if it isn't as good as everyone says it is, I know Ed will have a fabulous time fiddling with the thing - gadgets are to Ed like the holy grail of existence! So I'll patiently await my purchase and see how it works out.
No prompt as yet from Shimelle today, so I'll probably be back on later to update...