37 Days until Christmas......

So time has flown and there are only 37 days until Christmas Day. I have hardly done any Christmas Shopping and my Christmas Card makes are non-existent. Having had a lingering cold for nearly 2 weeks isn't helping either. Just as I think I am getting better it deteriorates again. 

Friday night we went to see Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch. The film is definitely worth watching. Saturday saw us zipping off to Wembley to watch the England v Slovenia match (via Westfield, Stratford for a quick tagine in the food court) which after the first boring half ended with a final good 3-1 result. A quick trip around the new Wembley Outlet shops and a browse around the Christmas Market ended with a trip to Costa before piling on the tube back home. A good day was had by all I think. 

Here is a card I made a while back. I went through a time of making flowery cards. 

This was made solely out of Stampin' Up! Supplies. Love that flower punch and stamp set. 

Right off to look for a good book to read. And then after dinner (chilli which has been cooking in the slow cooker all day), I am going to watch the new Ripper Street on Amazon Prime. Have a great evening all. X

Exciting Times

Been very busy yet again. Thursday night we won our music quiz yet again. That is the third time in a row and this week we will get 15 points deducted from our score. Cannot see us making it a fourth time. 

Friday we went to the cinema to see Interstellar. It was okay, but thought the ending ruined it. Not saying anymore in case you want to watch it. It was very long at around 3 hours. 

Saturday evening the boys went to a Firework Display with my daughter. Unfortunately the heavens opened at the time they started and everyone ended up really wet. They did enjoy it though. 

Sunday. Well that was the highlight of my year (except for my birthday). We went to see Billy Idol, he was a punk rocker back in the 70/80s. I have waited 36 years to see him and it was worth every minute. Cannot believe he is nearly 59. He had so much energy and from a distance looked the same as he ever did. Spikey blonde hair and leather. Lol. 

And a photo to prove we were enjoying ourselves. 

Anyway. Better get on to the things you are here for. 

I know a lot of these type of cards have been made. A chest of drawers with baby items poking out of the drawers or hanging off the door knobs, and this is my first attempt at one. I think maybe the chest of drawers could have been a lighter brown, but overall I was pleased with it. 

So that's it for today, will be back soon with some more makes. Have a great day all. X

Fun Times.

Life is never boring. We are always out doing something. Thursday nights we have our weekly Music Quiz at the White Swan in Bicknacre, Friday night was Halloween and we went to a party at my sister's house. And here we are all dressed up. 

I am the Pirate Zombie and Hubby is the clown, which totally freaked out my 18 year old son. 

Saturday night we went to see Nightcrawler at the cinema (as we have Unlimited Cards), and Monday we had a trip to Thorpe Park. It was open until 10pm so not only did we get to play all day, we visited the Fright Night Mazes in the dark and then rode all the rides in the dark too. Awesome!!!

Today I have a card to show you. It is what is called a box card. It folds flat and fits into an envelope and then you can pop it up to make a box once opened. 

This was made for my female Pastor's birthday. She loves shoes so I just had to incorporate shoes into the design. What do you think?  Card stock and paper all Stampin! Up. 

Tonight we are off out to our monthly Pub Quiz. We haven't done so well for a while after having a spate of coming first and second. Fingers crossed we do better tonight as it is the last one before Christmas. 

Take care folks and have a great evening. X

Back Again Today

Hi everyone. I have managed to come back today to show you some more things I have made. We had a very busy weekend. We went to see The Fury and The Babadook at the cinema, also a karaoke night at the pub Saturday night and our friend did an impromptu gig at the pub last night so we went along to see him. A hilarious night was had. Very very surreal. 

So here are my makes. 

The inside of a card I made for my daughter's birthday. She loves camper vans. 

And this is the outside, a very cool colour camper van. 

The card stock I used was Stampin' Up!  I used a file from Silhouette Store to cut the design and used my Cameo to cut it. 

So I will be back later this week with another update. We have a Halloween Party on Friday, I will show you what my boys will go dressed as. They had a party at Scouts last week and dressed up for it, so have had a trial run. 

Have a good evening. 

Have You Missed Me?

Wow, wow, wow. Been a while since I posted. I have been a bad blogger over the last few years but am going to try to blog more regularly from now onwards.

Life keeps changing, but then again stays the same. My son passed his driving test a couple of weeks ago and bought himself a car. It is wonderful that he is now more independent and can spend more time with his mates.





I have also been busy card wise over the last couple of months, but have cased a lot of cards from Pinterest, so will be sharing over the next couple of days.

It was my grandsons birthday on 9th October. He was 5 and here is the card I made for him.




I am having a lazy day tonight before going out to the pub tonight with friends. It's Karaoke Night, but I don't sing. Ha ha.

Take care everyone. X

Just a warning to anyone who is thinking of swapping their broadband and phone line to BT UK DONT!!

We were with BT many years ago and left because of problems, we went to Talk Talk and although there were a few problems with them too, they cost us much less money, and they sorted out the problems and we had a good speed of broadband and phone line for hardly any cost per month. Hubby then started working from home and we decided we needed High Speed Fibre Optic. Against our better judgement we went back to BT UK with the cost per month at least 3 times that of Talk Talk. 

Since being back with them our broadband has consistently dropped out, sometimes dropping out around 2.30pm in the afternoon and still not being back at 7am the next morning. Hubby has had to hotspot off my mobile phone just so he can work. Adding extra costs to our broadband. 

BT UK sent several engineers around, for several weeks as the problem was never fixed, and eventually it was decided that the cables in our road were over 50 years old and they would be replaced as there was a fault on our line. They came one Thursday afternoon, dug the hole, then came back on Monday morning and filled it back in again. Someone from BT rang and said they had actually filled it in without doing anything about the cables by accident, as engineers had been unable to come out to do the work because of the rain. That was a week ago. Since then no one has been out to fix it, our broadband still consistently drops off and since Thursday we have had no phone line either.

My daughter has recently been in hospital, she has ITP and if she even knocks herself it is imperitive she get herself checked out as her blood count is low and she could have internal bleeding. As I am a Certified Emergency First Aider, I am always her first port of call, and we have had to top her mobile phone up for her so that she can call my mobile now as she cannot call my home phone. More expense. 

Hubby tweeted about it this morning and BT got back to him saying an engineer is on his way to fix the fault. We haven't seen any BT engineer, but I dont expect they will be fixing our broadband.

What an expensive mistake it was for us to go back to BT UK. Please be warned. Will it ever be fixed? Who knows, but we have never been offered a refund or anything. Such a Comedy of Errors....

Edited to add:-  Unbelievable. Including our line rental we pay £40 for line rental and 80mb fibre broadband. We haven't had a phone since Thursday despite BT telling us a BT Engineer was on his way this morning and we are getting 17 mbs broadband. Totally unbelievable. BT UK you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Edited yet again to add:-  Hubby has retweeted them asking why if an engineer was on his way to fix it at 10 this morning it still wasn't fixed, he got a reply saying..... they have a commitment to fix our line by 23rd October and will ring us on 24th October to see if it works.  Hubby said that we will be wanting a refund of our payments as we aren't even getting 1/4 of the speed we are paying for, by Wednesday we will have been without the phone for a week and they said that is something we will have to discuss with an Account Manager.  Not so helpful.

Finally Made It Back

Well I have finally made it back.  Today is the first day they have all gone back to school, but still things here are busy busy busy....... yesterday we went to see Thousand Foot Krutch, an awesome Christian Band, infact, I think they are the best Christian Band.  Heavy Rock, just how I like it, but they have never visited the UK before, so I was so excited to see them when they finally did.  Only took them 16 years, and we saw them in a small 500 people venue.

Friday we are off to Wembley to watch the England Moldova football match with the boys.  Lets hope it is a good one and the rain isn't too heavy.  We have seats 5 rows from the pitch this time instead of upstairs so will get wet if it rains.

I haven't really been crafting lately either, I have still been buying stash though and will one day break it open and use it.  At the moment I am working on a Birthday Card for someone and a little tag book for my son to keep track of the pocket money he earns.  Today I am just too worn out to do anything though.  That will teach me to leap around dancing, jumping etc at my age at gigs.... lol

This is the card I made for my grand daughters birthday, she loves Disney and pink so I hope she liked it.  She is only 2 though so not sure she has so much of an opinion at the moment.  lol

Hope to make this blogging lark a more regular thing now the boys have gone back to school.  See you all soon.... xx

Getting Behind.

I was doing so well for a while there, but then the school holidays started and Hubby gave up his job to work for himself from home permanently, so there is always something going on here.  Well something except for crafting.  I just haven't had time.  But I did make a couple of things which I will show you.

Pink Flamingo

It was hubby's birthday a few weeks ago, here is the card I made him.  A little bit strange for a man you may think, but we kept seeing pink flamingos in St James Park in London and it amused everyone, so voila, a card for everyone's amusement.  It did go down well.  We are definately a strange lot in my household.  The flamingo was a file from Silhouette Studio shop and all the cardstock was from Stampin' Up!  I am loving the new Stampin' Up! catalogue, go check it out to see what all the fuss is about.  

I have one other thing to show you, so will try and get back tomorrow... have a great evening everyone... xx

Address Book

My son was entering a group competition with Cubs and had to make an address book with all his groups name and addresses in.  I thought a tag book would be idea, so cut out the bits on my Silhouette Cameo and he put it all together..... Each tag has a separate persons name and address on it, with more patterned paper on the back.  I think it was okay as his team came 1st.....

This was made using Echo Park Paper and Stampin' Up! ribbon.  And very lucky he was to have me part with this paper, its normally the stuff I stroke and put away carefully....

It was sports day a couple of weeks ago.  We dont get to see the secondary school one but I still have the pleasure of going off to junior school to watch my son compete.  He came 2nd in single running and got a certificate.  They also take part in class events.

Have a great day, enjoy the sun.  xx

Leaving....

Not me, just my grandson's nursery school teacher.  I think it is rather sad as she also taught my 2 younger sons and she is such a lovely lady.  My daughter asked me to make her a leaving card, she is actually retiring but didn't want anyone to know.  I sat down ready to make a card, but came up with something else instead.  She probably got loads of cards so thought something a bit different would be in order.  So here it is......

I made it using a couple of files from the Silhouette Studio Store, it is a little paper pieced vase with a rose and petals placed inside.  The acetate box was also a file which I made a big bigger to accommodate the flower in the vase.  The tag and rose design were more designs from the shop too..... I have so many that I haven't used yet, but the weather is just too hot to work at the moment.

The new Stampin' Up! catalogue is also out and I have placed a nice order with my friend for some very yummy stash, including the new In Colours which I think are absolutely yummy.  I have also joined a Ribbon Share with another friend so I can have some of the new ribbons colours without having to buy a whole reel as I am fast running out of storage space in my craft room.....

So that is it for today, hope you may have got a bit of inspiration from visiting..... enjoy the weather and take care xxx

Looking like a nice weekend....

Hello, and a happy Friday to you all.  It was rather dull here this morning and not so warm but immediately the sun came out the heat turned up and it is now very hot.  Fingers crossed this continues for the weekend.

As promised yesterday, I will tell you about Hubby's latest win.  On Monday he won 4 tickets to see Human League and Kew Gardens on Wednesday night.  So we took the boys and had a picnic on the lawn.  My youngest son absolutely loved it, he kept running down to infront of the stage and dancing, he said everyone was dancing there and he wouldn't get embarrassed.  I think a wonderful time was had by us all, culminating in a spectacular firework display.  Now I must admit that Human League in no way resemble the group of old, but they do sound exactly the same.

They played all their best songs, finishing their set with Dont You Want Me Baby.

But they came back on for an encore and finished with Forever In Electric Dreams......

The whole evening was absolutely awesome....

Even the firework display was brilliant, would definately consider going again another year, even if we have to buy the tickets.

Last weekend was my youngest Grand Daughters first birthday.  I made her some vests (or at least decorated them with vinyl) and made her a cute little 1st birthday card.

This one was made using rhinestones.  I cut the template out of rhinestone material on my Silhouette Cameo, then ironed on the rhinestones.  I think this was my favourite.

A sparkly princess iron on vinyl design, also cut using my Silhouette Cameo and then ironed on to the vest.  In future I think I will sort out my heat press for vinyl work as it works better than using the iron.

A little princess carriage for a little princess.....

And a cute little monkey holding some sparkling hearts.  

This was the birthday card I made for her, lots of paper piecing using a file from the Silhouette Studio Store.  It really is so cute.

Sorry for the photo heavy post today, I hope you enjoyed visiting and pop back again soon..... have a really great weekend and don't get too sunburned.  xx

Busy busy busy.....

Well it has been hectic here, so many concerts, so little time.... lol.  We had an absolutely brilliant time at British Summer Time in Hyde Park last Friday.  Hospitality was awesome, food was awesome and drinks were awesome, but the most awesome thing of all (apart from the groups) were the ice-creams.  I have never tasted such gorgeous ice-cream in all my life, and believe me I have had quite a few ice-creams.  It was so, so good that I never even took a photograph of it.  I guess you could tell how awesome it tasted from a photograph anyway.

This was the yummy Lobster and Salmon Burger I had in a Brioche Roll.... absolutely gorgeous with big lumps of lobster in it.  We also had a Pimms to drink with it and then I had a waffle with strawberries and cream and more alcohol.... lol

I absolutely love the Kaiser Chiefs and was so pleased to be seeing them again, we saw them at Cliffs Pavilion last year and we were at the front on the rail..... awesome.  And he walked straight past us too, climbed a sound booth and then ran back through the crowd.  Brilliant

After that came Bon Jovi, another band we had seen before but brilliant nonetheless..... and Jon Bon came out on the catwalk too..... unfortunately only once....  they were on for nearly 3 hours...

We were only 5 rows back from the front, so were close enough to see them very close up.  We found out when we got to Hyde Park that we actually had Golden Circle access...

Anyway, enough of concerts for today.... I thought I would show you my nails.  I bought 2 more new Konad plates to stamp onto my nails (google Konad Plates if you dont know what I am talking about), and finished my nails off this morning.  I think they look pretty cool and I seem to have got the hang of the stamping now....

And finally a card I made.  I will admit I made it a while ago but it was my son and daughter in laws anniversary this week and I thought this would be ideal for the occasion.

I added a nice insert with Happy Anniversary stamped on it.  All stash used is from Stampin' Up! 

I will try and pop back tomorrow, I haven't told you about Hubby's latest win and news yet.  Watch this space.  xx