A new sewing machine

I finally succumbed to my need for a new sewing machine and bought this one from Tesco Direct. I have to go and pick it up from a local store on Monday to avoid paying a delivery charge. It wasn't as cheap as I'm sure its possible to get them, but I've had a bit of design work recently and decided to treat myself with my proceeds from that. I don't suppose its a very good model but it'll be fine for papercrafting which is what I want it for predominantly anyway.

My brother and his friend are up visiting at the moment, and I have to admit that I am now fully overloaded on Grand Theft Auto - it may be an amazing game, but I'm bored to tears with it! I have decided to leave them to it tonight - boys and their toys!

If the weather is good tomorrow, we might go out and enjoy it, but after that I'm hoping to get on with some serious scrapping - it will be the first 'personal' scrapping I will be able to do for ages as I have got all the outstanding DT work out of the way. I've got more coming shortly, but in the meantime hopefully I'll be able to make a dent in some of the kits I've got stacked up here. The trouble is, everytime I think about cancelling, the next kit looks just too tempting - what's a girl to do?! I might have to sell a couple of them on the UKS marketplace, purely to gain some floor space back again...

I'll update again over the weekend, with some pages to share if I'm lucky :)

A tragic evening

I have had such a sad evening. Earlier today, the little white cat from two doors down, Beano was found dead outside by another neighbour. He wasn't even a year old and was such a character - he was friends with everybody who lives in the close and used to run up to greet us when we got home. I've cried buckets this evening, but as my mum reminded me, I just have to imagine him as a little white angel cat now. I'm so upset that I never took photos of him - I always meant to but just assumed there would be plenty of time. The only one I have is a blurry shot of him through my window when I was taking pictures of raindrops. I know my cats will miss him, bless his little heart. We all will.

I thought I would share the birthday mini book I made for my sister as promised. I wanted to make it quite simple but pretty, and leave a space for her to record her own memories too.

Tea at the Ritz!

What a fab weekend I have had - visting the folks back home and going out in London was lovely. Tea at the Ritz was certainly an experience - we couldn't believe how opulent the Palm Court where we had our tea was. Some of the real hotel guests who were heading into the dining room were amazing too - their dresses were bedecked in gems and their hair was perfectly coiffed - they almost looked like dolls! How the other half live...anyway, here are some pictures to commemorate our evening. No photos of the actual tea I'm afraid, you're only allowed to take photos in the foyer.

First up is a photo my dad took of me, my sis and our friend Nic in the garden before we left - I look like a right shortarse on that lower step as my sister is several inches taller than me anyway!



Next up we managed to snap this pic of the sign outside - just to prove we had been there...


Finally, some other fellow tea takers took this pic of all of us - me, my sis, my mum and Nic on the stairs in the foyer of the hotel. By this time I had two great ladders in my new pair of tights but fortunately you can't see them in the pic!
I also went walking with mum and dad yesterday on the South Bank and took dozens of photos which I will share on here tomorrow, as well as finally being able to share some pics of the mini book I made my sis, which I gave to her on Saturday (several weeks after her birthday - sorry sis!). Right now though, I can hardly keep my eyes open so I'm off to bed. Night night!

My new toy!

I am totally loving my new Cricut - I hooked it up to Sure Cuts a Lot pretty much straight away and now I can cut out whatever font from my computer that I like! I had collected quite a few free fonts anyway and already have a font manager so it was fairly easy to get started. It just makes creating titles so much quicker and easier and I'm sure I will experiment with cutting other shapes - there is a great page in Ashley Calder's book about this.

In the mean time, I thought I'd share with you some sneak peeks of the latest page I've been working on - this is for the Papermaze blog and instructions will be up in the next week or two.

I'm off for tea at the Ritz in London tomorrow for a friend's birthday - I will make sure to get lots of photos of us in our finery and share them on here when I get back. Hopefully, while I'm gone Ed is going to finish painting the bathroom - however, I made the mistake of buying him Grand Theft Auto IV for his birthday and he has hardly stopped playing it since!

I've been naughty...

...and treated myself to one of these little guys! Its not the Expression, neither is it new (I found it second hand on UKScrappers marketplace). However, I'm really excited about getting it. It was posted to me this morning so should be arriving any time in the next day or so. I plan on downloading Sure Cuts a Lot software and seeing what I can do with that - I'd rather not spend a fortune on lots of cartridges if I can avoid it!

So how am I justifying this expenditure? Well, I've got payment for a couple of magazine assignments due, and I also plan on selling a few items to make up the rest of the money. I've got a brand new Sizzix Big Shot, as well as some kits which I'll never get round to using, so I will see what I can get for those.

I've just finished a page for SI magazine - it was a very quick assignment - I was told about it on Monday and had to have it in the post by Friday this week. However, I managed to finish it yesterday evening and I'm really pleased with it! No sneak peeks though, I don't think they are allowed :(

Another sneak peek...

I've been doing a bit more creating for Rebecca's Scrapbooking Stash and thought I'd share a couple of sneak peeks since I'm not sure when the layouts will be up over at Rebecca's site. This layout is about a day out we had in Burford recently and I went to town with paint and eyelets, all inspired by Ashley Calder's book...

I'm quite proud of these little handmade flower embellishments and as you can probably tell, I'm a tad obsessed with my new Cuttlebug alpha - its very versatile!

Birthday Boy!

It was my boyf's birthday today and we have had all his family around this afternoon for tea and cake to celebrate - it meant a mad afternoon of house cleaning for me but it hasn't been this tidy for ages so I'm actually feeling quite pleased with myself!

Ed got a new lawnmower and a little gas barbecue from his parents and sisters so hopefully this means that this Summer we will be able to really enjoy the garden properly. We went out this morning and spent a fortune in the garden centre and Ed spent several hours putting all our plants in - it was all looking great until about half an hour later it started hailing madly! We couldn't believe it as it had been warm sunshine up till that point! Still, at least they all got watered in nicely :D

Last night we went out for some drinks with friends and had a really good evening - I had bought a new top to wear out and was really pleased with it. Here are some piccies from the night:

Ed with his friend Andy - as always Ed has to pull a funny face for the camera!

My friends Emma and Gurpreet from work

Me and my friends Suzanne and Mags

Over on UKS the cybercrop has just come to an end and I have been spending some time leaving comments on everyone who took part in my class (my hands are now going numb from all the typing!). I was so pleased with all the gorgeous layouts that were produced and I found it really hard to pick a winner in the end, so just had to go with the one that stood out to me the most and had made good use of the class technique. Its been such a great thing to do and so many lovely people have PMed me with thankyou comments - I'm glad everyone enjoyed it so much. I had been worried that I might not have 'pitched' the class very well as so many different people with different levels of ability take part in the crop, but I guess there was enough there for everyone to enjoy it. A big thankyou to everyone who took part - you have made my weekend!