Busy busy busy!

We have had a busy few days. Last weekend we started decorating my old room at my parents by stripping the wall paper. This week we have been painting and wallpapering. We have done everything but sleep there since thursday and having to cook a meal tomorrow will be a bit of a shock!!! I have really enjoyed spending so much time with my mum but it makes me wish we lived within walking distance from them.

I did start a card today but it is a little way away from being finished. I hope to finish it tomorrow night so will show it on here then.

Make a Wish

Aren't these digital stamps the cutest!!?? You can purchase them from Pink Cat Studio and all proceeds are going to Make a Wish Foundation in memory of Ethan Weiman. Ethan passed away on 12th June 2009 following a battle with Neuroblastoma (a form of cancer) aged just 5. All the money raised will go towards helping other children like Ethan fulfill their biggest dreams. Since going on sale PCS have raised over $1200 dollars from these stamps alone! I shall be having some fun colouring them in over the weekend :D

I am totally fed-up of feeling tired and lifeless so have decided that I need to get doing more exercise as well as cutting down on the unhealthy edibles that I have no willpower in resisting!!! Last Friday I decided to make a start and dusted off the Wii Fit board and worked out for half an hour. I can actually say I enjoyed it and did generally feel better for it (well except my arms which were killing after all the boxing I did lol). I then picked up EA Sports Active on the way home from playing at Sarah's and have been using this. It is cool and I am burning the calories at a faster pace than they predict. They give you a 30 day challenge and even today when I really didn't fancy coming home and exercising I made myself do it and enjoyed my 20 minutes of exercise - who knew exercise could be fun. I am determined to keep it up and get into a routine that doing these workouts are the norm and hopefully my energy levels will rise and size will reduce - I'd love to be proud to wear a vest top in florida next time we go rather than having to cover the top's of my arms!!!

A day of difficult topics

Today I have been on a course about disability awareness and safeguarding children. I have learnt a lot and realise that no matter how politically correct and unprejudiced you think you are you still have a lot to learn!!!!

Some sad facts - There are 11,000,000 children in the UK. 4,000,000 are classed as "vulnerable" (for various reasons) and 80,000 children are in care!! It makes you think how lucky our own children/grandchildren are - give them all an extra special hug tonight.

Onto lighter things this is card I have made for my friend who leaves as part of the June redundancies next week. She was part of the 1st proper team I was in when I moved from Torquay to Exeter back in 1999 and she was like the Mum of the team. She often reminds me of my own Mum and I will miss our weekly lunches. Tomorrow will be the last one we have and so we are going to the pub to meet the third member of our lunch group who is expecting twins at anytime (how exciting:D)!! We are all heading for new beginnings but I am sure we will meet up as often as we can.

Off now to watch Ace of Cakes. These guys make the most awesome cakes but as they are based in baltimore and the minimum price of a cake is $1000, I don't think I will ever get to see or taste one!!!

What no blogging!!

You must think I am leading a very exciting busy life - not really the case I'm afraid. In general on work days life is very boring in our household - neither of us really feel like doing much after a day at work hence nothing interesting to blog about!!

The end of last week was more exciting - I got to play in Sarah's new craft room. It is gorgeous and so different to the outhouse I saw a few months back. I think I made a new friend in Amy too. Thanks for a great day Sarah:D

Prior to having Amy's assistance I managed to make this card for the lady who works in Russ' office. She has had an operation on her knee and Russ being the cheeky blighter he is wanted to send her a pirate with a peg leg and crutch!!!! That was my challenge so I headed to my faithful Nitwit collections and Kay Miller Designs. Kay had a fab pirate kit and nitwits had an ouchie kit with all medical/accident related bits edit the crutch from one it and the lady pirate from the other and hey presto you have a peg-legged pirate on a crutch!!

The weekend was spent at my Parents house. Russ was stripping wallpaper and I was revisiting Knitting after many many years (around 25 I think!!!!!). My friend is expecting twins at any time and I have decided to knit them each a cardigan. You should have seen me on thursday afternoon trying to remember how to cast on and trying to understand online instructions!!! In the end I found out that I had cast on backwards!!!!!!!! My Mum showed me how she used to cast on when I went there on saturday and it was much easier- Mum's are always the best teachers aren't they!!!

Mum called to let me know she had a ride in an ambulance today!! After a few hours and quite a few tests in A&E (including one ECG that registered her as dead when she clearly wasn't as only my dear Mum can!!!) she was released and she was sounding well when she rang me.

Well I am going on a course tomorrow linked to my volunteering so I guess I should be thinking about calling it a day!!!

Custard Disaster - again

There is a lot to be said for custard from tins!!! At least I know when I open a tin I am definitely going to be able to eat the contents straight away. Unfortunately making my own custard is far from successful - even when I am using Bird's custard powder. This was my latest attempt at mastering the art of custard making last night. This time I had the perfect consistency but it kind of took over the microwave!! One day I am sure I will conquer this very simple task but today we had ice cream lol.

I had a lovely day in Plymouth yesterday at the crop. There was some amazing work coming out of the talented ladies there. I managed to get 2.75 cards completed but no pics yet - hopefully later in the week.

We have had some lovely weather here this weekend (although there was a few showers yesterday while I was out so Russ advised me - he was cutting the lawn!)and we have made the most of it by having BBQ's. We had fish yesterday and today we had my parents around for a full meal all cooked on the Barbie. It was lovely and despite having loads I could have eaten more (as always)!

Well it's the start of another week tomorrow so I must go and pack some breakfast & lunch to take with me.

Why....

..... do you get headaches/migraines when you have a full day of things you want to do?

Well this is what happened to me today. I was looking forward to making onion jam and lemon squares getting ready to go to the plymouth crop tomorrow and going to find out about ladies active but unfortunately all I managed was hoovering the lounge and washing and drying the towels and sleeping!

Hopefully I will feel loads better for tomorrow and manage to make lots of cards (so wanted to scrap some disney pics but it was not meant to be!) - maybe I can finally get some on my work on here!

Well I am heading back to bed for a good nights sleep.

where have 9 days of June gone!!!!!

I can't believe I have not blogged for 9 days :o Why have I not blogged- because now we are home it is back to boring daily routine which is no interest to anyone lol!

The major excitment for us has been watching the NBA finals between the Orlando Magic and the LA Lakers. Unfotunately Magic have lost the first 2 of 7 games but the last game was so close that I couldn't watch the end!!! We both have difficulty not searching online to see the results after a game as it is played in the early hours of the morning here and we record it to watch at more reasonable hour!!! (thanks FIVE - glad you have a purpose in our house now!!!!)

Newton Scrappers had their all day crop on Sunday - unfortunately the door would not open at the hall so we all took over my living room and banished Russ to upstairs - bless him. I really enjoyed having the girls here but was glad that it was just the 6 of us or we would have run out of room!!!

In the evening we had our first BBQ on our new BBQ (not actually ours in the picture). Russ cooked a whole chicken and it was sooooo moist and tasty (yes Mum it was totally cooked and no food poisoning;)). Lucy stayed to join us and apparently is still dreaming of it lol!

Well another working week is nearly over for me. I am surrounded by people with leaving dates who are giving daily countdowns to how long they have left to work ranging from 5.5 days to 40ish. For those of us still awaiting a leaving date it is quite depressing lol. At least I know within the next 8 weeks I shall have a leaving date and can start planning my future....

Seeing green blue and Yellow!!

Well I was back at work today and it was "A Day". I'm sure you have see the Bruce Willis multi million pound advert about Norwich Union's name change - well today was the day we became a unified company under name of AVIVA. To celebrate we had blue, green & Yellow Streamers, yellow party blower things and Ballons around the office. It was all very blue green and yellow everywhere! The best thing was the £5 per head buffet our team had - bang went the first day of my diet!!(I totally do not have any will power despite having a very healthy lunch with me!!!!)

What another glorious day we have had weather wise. I hope it lasts a little longer I want to enjoy it on my day off!!

I think I shall have a go at making a thank you card tonight for Russ' auntie but right now I need to go and start making some tea!

I'll leave you with a picture of the lovely flowers my Mum had waiting for me when we got home on Thursday. The stocks smell lovely as they a open up.