Resolved?

Hello and a Happy New Year!

Yes, yes, I'm a bit late. As usual. But there's a reason. I gave up making new year's resolutions ages ago - I knew I would never be able to stick to them so I didn't bother trying. Then last year in that post-family-Christmas-visit, house-is-a-disaster-zone, still-flippin'-working, hate-this-dark-wet-dreary-weather feeling of miserable anti-climax, I realised something quite ridiculous. I have done virtually no crafting for myself since I went back to work in September 2013. That's 16 months ago.

Not that I've been idle. In 2015 I made: one frantic, massive, 50-page scrapbook for the departing vicar. 48 birthday and anniversary cards for everybody else. 54 Christmas cards to send out. 20-odd candles for the church. 130-odd hearts for the church. And for me? A handful of candles. WHAT?? What's happened to ME? I've disappeared - got buried under a heap of the rest of humanity's needs and requests. Look, even my blog still has last summer's background photo on it. This has got to stop!

So for 2016 I HAVE made a new year's resolution, for the first time in years: to stop saying "yes" to others, if it means saying "no" to myself. I'm going to craft. I want to get back into scrapbooking, but not doing DT work and setting challenges and administrating stuff for others. I'm going to scrap for myself. Cards are for other people of course, and I'm going to continue to enjoy making them and sending them out. People who don't reciprocate will be taken off the list, sent bought cards or birthday wishes on Facebook.

My goodness, I'm sounding HARD! Too harsh? NO! No, I'm going to stick to this. (Besides, the church has enough candles and hearts to keep them going for a while...!) It's going to take a while to get back into it though. Today (day off) I decided to make a card for a few challenges, as I used to do regularly. It took 3 sittings, with me getting up and down, frustrated with an aching back and playing hide-and-seek with my mojo. I don't even know whether I like what I've created, but it's done now, and ready to send.

Less is more: the kissing technique. I "kissed" the clouds, the leaves and the tree stump, although only the clouds were completely solid stamps. The green ink I used on the leaves didn't work very well.
Simon Says Stamp: Create with critters.
Stamping Sensations: anything goes with a die.

Oh man. I've just realised that foxy looks as if he's got a tree trunk stuck up his... drat, drat. I'm so out of practice at this...

Pollen calendar

Is anyone else suffering with hayfever as DH and I are? Something has just started flowering, and from 2 days ago we've both been miserable. I was doing some searching and I found this fascinating calendar which seems to indicate that we're sensitive to lime tree pollen. And according to the cheerful little titbit at the bottom, a glass of beneficial red wine is not going to help. D'oh.
Source: metoffice.gov.uk

ETA: Very interesting. Both of our noses started behaving in a more civilised fashion around the third week in July. According to this chart, that seems to imply that the problem could be lime trees. We haven't got many limes close by, but there are a lot in the park about a mile and a half to the east of us. We've had more winds from the east than usual this year so maybe, just maybe, we've found our answer.

Catch-up

As you know, work has been getting in the way of my creativity and my blogging. No making = nothing much to blog about. Then I went from no making to not doing anything else overnight, and that's why you haven't seen me. It's also why my house is covered in a thick layer of dust and little bits of paper, and looks as if the complete contents of both our wardrobes have been moved into heaps in and around the ironing basket, and every door has creased shirts hanging from it.

Just after we'd waved goodbye to the visiting family after Christmas, a chest infection came to stay instead, and it stuck around for a long time. I had 10 days with a fever that paracetamol and the first antibiotics combined didn't touch, and 3 weeks of attempting to sleep sitting up. I haven't been that ill since I had something that wasn't glandular fever, when was living at home with a father who smoked. That's maaaaany years ago.

Once the second course of antibiotics kicked in and I was starting to get back on my wobbly feet again, I was asked if I would produce a farewell scrapbook for our Team Rector, who was leaving us on March the 8th. March the 8th was the only date on my calendar for the next 7 weeks. There was no life after it. "Ask me again after March the 8th" became my catchphrase. While I was deep into it, with the study floor mosaicked with black card-stock, photos, luggage tags, and printed die-cut labels (sorry and THANK YOU DH!), the Team Rector himself asked whether I would make him 60-odd hearts for the Parish Open Day on Valentine's Day. I couldn't really say "well actually I'm teensy bit busy at the moment" so I took a couple of days out and came up with these (and another 24, but you get the idea).

Meanwhile, as I had suspected might happen, the album grew into a bit of a monster. By the time I had finished it (officially at 9:40pm on March 7th) it had 50 pages and had taken upwards of 180 hours. Its sections featured the clergy and churches, parish events, parish groups, and 16 pages of messages from the people (blood out of a stone, anyone?) and matching photos of them. Sounds easy doesn't it? Nope, had to rally round volunteer photographers to snap them while the Rector wasn't about and also while he was. Subterfuge and deception right under his nose, in the very house of God!

Here are a few pages from it. I'm not going to show the personal pages, obviously. The colour scheme was black with the liturgical colours of red, green, purple and white, with the alternative colour of blue. I added gold touches as well, and used mostly the same die-cut fonts throughout for cohesiveness.

 

Here are the Team Rector and his wife receiving the album on the dreaded March the 8th. It's not easy to see here, but it's a good 3" thick and weighed enough to need both hands to hold it. I received a lovely little e-mail thanking me for it. I'm very proud.

 

That's what I've been up to. I've also made some cute Mothering Sunday things, but they will have to wait for another day. Watch this space!

Frozen!

Yes I know, this is going to get THAT SONG going round your heads for the rest of the day, and for this I apologise. Hehee!

My cousin's eldest turned 5 on Tuesday. When I asked her mother what her current craze was, I was told anything to do with Frozen, so I got her a purple t-shirt and the DVD. Of course, that meant that she had to have a Frozen birthday card too, which gave me carte blanche to go back to being a little girl myself again and play with colouring-in, glimmer, glitter and shine.

The snowflakes are from Sizzix's framelits set which includes matching stamps. The felt snowflake border is from Little Yellow Bicycle and the background paper is from Bo Bunny's Midnight Frost collection. I printed the image from the net, and coloured it using about half the Copic markers that I own, so I'm afraid I can't give you the numbers. Add Stickles Diamond and Wink of Stella in clear, silver and gold, and this is a card that shines with its own light.

I'm really looking forward to finding out how she liked it all, but really I know she loved it.

In other news, it's the final week of the World Cup, and what a week! With Germany wiping the floor with Brazil in a 7-1 massacre, and Argentina and Holland spinning out their goalless match until long past our bed-time with Argentina winning 4-2 on penalties... wow, what will the final bring? I don't know about you, but our fridge will be stocked with beer ready for Sunday night's final.

SIPIDI - See It, Pin It, Do it

I am on a team on the UK Scrappers forums called the Inky Minxes. Our team leader is Fiona, whose blog is Staring at the Sea. She has challenged us all to See It, Pin It, Do It and that means taking an idea that we've pinned on Pinterest and actually do it rather than just collecting ideas. How sensible is that?

I found a lovely idea for making a cake in a mug in the microwave, but have struggled to find a recipe that works for me and DH. So I've been playing with my own recipes. My first attempt was a dried-out, slightly burned, rubbery failure, but today I had another go and tweaked it a little and it was quite yummy. It began as gluten-free, dairy-free and sugar-free, but then I added chocolate chips and some Stone's ginger wine on a whim, and it promptly stopped being sugar-free and child-friendly!

Here is where I got it from, and these are my tweaks.

3 minute gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free microwave chocolate cake

All measurements are level tablespoonfuls.

3 tbsp rice flour
1 tbsp arrowroot
2 tbsp cocoa powder, unsweetened
4 tbsp agave nectar
1 large egg
3 tbsp Stone's ginger wine (or dairy-free milk)
2 tbsp olive oil
a handful of chocolate drops (optional)

Sift all the dry ingredients together in a medium-sized microwave-safe bowl and mix. Add the wet ingredients and mix well together. I used a whisk. Sprinkle the chocolate chips onto the mixture.

Microwave on high for 3 minutes. My microwave is 1000W which is quite a powerful one. Last time I think I overcooked it, so this time I put it in for 2 minutes, then another 30 seconds, then another 30 seconds, and it was just right. Not very pretty at this stage. I let it rest for a couple of minutes to finish cooking.

Turn out and serve.

We had ours with an Alpro vanilla soy dessert which took the place of custard, and it was all quite delicious. Very chocolatey.

I'm looking forward to next month's SIPIDI. I already have an idea. If any of my readers want to join in, just let Fiona know by commenting on her blog, and she will add your blog posts to her SIPIDI Pinterest board. Hopefully she'll get a nice collection of really achievable things, created by normal people rather than Martha Stewart!

Circles!

Over at Scrap Whispers this week, the challenge is a horizontal band of circles, inspired by Jenn K's beautiful LO where she has put her photos in the circles. My inspiration LO goes in a slightly different direction, and is based on one photo and a sketch from this week's UK Scrappers challenge.

I was in the local church choir before we moved to Singapore, and I still kept in touch with them. After two years, one of our dear basses e-mailed me to say that he, his wife and daughter were stopping over in Singapore on their way to Australia, and could we meet up? We had a lovely day walking around Chinatown and taking a boat trip down the Singapore River, before jet-lag took them over and they had to go back to the hotel and rest.

That was 7 years ago, and I'm back in the choir, and that dear bass now sits right behind me. He still talks about that day, but I think his over-riding recollection is of the exhaustion rather than the country!

Isn't the sketch a lovely one? So versatile - I can see myself using that one again, maybe the other way up. I really like those banners.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

British weather

Can I just show you this?

You may have seen on the news that the UK is being lashed by storm system after storm system over this winter. Many parts, including the Somerset Levels near where we live, have been evacuated due to flooding. A section of a coast railway in Dawlish on the south coast has been completely washed away leaving parts of the south west isolated by rail. People have been swept away by enormous waves.

It is not cold. It is mild but soaking wet, with wind speeds of up to 90mph as each storm system comes over - and we're getting them every few days.

I found this website earth.nullschool.net which illustrates in a dramatic way what is going to hit us over the next few days.

This was the storm we had 2 days ago that destroyed the railway:

If you have a few minutes to play, go and check it out. And send up a few prayers for those poor people who are facing evacuation from their homes, and looting to add insult to injury.

A few photos

The last few weeks in pictures.

Deer on the critter-cam. Aaaaah!

The annual Victorian Fair, in aid of our town's Christmas lights. It has got less and less Victorian, with only a few costumes around now. Still quite good fun though.

Somebody has been on the thieve. And so have all his little furry friends.

 

A tube of squirrel.

Early morning ablutions in the apple tree before all that church bell cacophony started.

Our tree.

Old chair, new chair

It has been pointed out to me, quite correctly, that I'm slacking in updating my blog. A huge thank you to Darnell for the kick up the backside that I needed! Mwah!

Let me show you my latest project. I've been on an Annie Sloan painting class to update our furniture. Amongst other things, we learned on the course how to "age" furniture by crackling the paint and rubbing with dark wax. We also painted two layers of different coloured paints and sanded some of the top layer off so that the older colour showed through. Not that I wanted any of that, I just wanted some pretty chalky coloured paint that you can use without sanding first. 'Cos I'm lazy that way. And they taught us how to use it for that too.

I began with an old kitchen chair that was in my bedroom when I was a child, and which my Mum last painted with a colour called Frascati (I remember the colour, not the manufacturer) to match my wardrobe when I was about 8. I chose that chair because it wouldn't matter much if I got things wrong. Well ironically, when I looked at it, it was already showing two colours of paint, and had genuine dirty age crackles - I couldn't help wondering whether Juliet would actually let me paint it if she saw it!

See? Poor, tatty, grubby chair. Destined to go in our new conservatory. With its bare skirting boards. See where this is going? ;-)

Yup, I did the skirting boards too.

Pretty isn't it? It's called Duck Egg Blue. I have a chest of drawers and a wardrobe to do too, but don't hold your breath. I need a serious amount of courage to tackle those. I think the scariest part is the thought of emptying them out, finding new homes for the contents, and getting them upstairs.

Meanwhile, back to the paper-crafting. That's a lot quicker and cleaner.

Autumn colours

Autumn is really beginning to set in now. The beech leaves are turning to copper, the acers are starting to glow crimson and orange, and the autumn fogs are obscuring the top of the hill and blotting out the sea. I can hear the tugs' engines throbbing and the ships' fog-horns blaring somewhere in all that swirling whiteness.

It is fitting that so many of the challenges involve autumn colours and I'm making the most of that because those absolutely make up my favourite colour combinations. The only problem is that I don't know many people with birthdays at this time of year, so I always seem to have a glut of autumn-coloured cards on hand. Does anybody with spring birthdays really notice if the colours don't match the season? Not me. My birthday is in May, and I usually get cards with squirrels on them. I wonder why? Haha!

This is for Basic Grey's "autumn colours" and Charisma Cardz's "favourite colour combination" challenges. I used BG's Indian Summer 6x6 papers, and this particular colour combination is pink, orange and brown, although any of the autumn colours press my buttons.

Go Minions!

DH's birthday is today. We went to see Despicable Me 2 last week - oh my goodness, it's the funniest film we've seen in years. He's become a little Minion obsessed! To pay him out for putting me through the banana song on repeat every time he starts up his iPad ;-) I've given him a Minion themed birthday.

1

A couple of weeks ago we met our newest little cousin for the first time. What a sunny little girl! She was up early after a disturbed night, refused her nap because there was so much going on, mummy forgot her snacks in all the excitement, and bless her baby socks, there wasn't a grizzle out of her all day. If the small face crumpled and went pink for any reason, she only needed someone to give her a big smile - and she forgot to cry and smiled back. I know my experience of young children is limited, but I've never seen anything like her.

She will be 1 on Sunday, and she deserved a special card.

If mummy happens to log on and see this before the card arrives, then please keep it from her till Sunday!

Basic Grey: mix'n'match (Green at Heart and Ruby Lemonade)
Creative Card Crew: bling (it doesn't show up very well, but the 1 and the blue balloon are glitter card-stock)
Simon Says Stamp: things with wings (the butterflies obviously)
Stampin' for the Weekend: die-cuts/punches (the punched butterflies and balloons, and the other butterflies are stamped)
Sketch Saturday: I rotated the sketch

Happy squirrel birthday to me!

Look what Karen from ScrapJazz found for me today! How cool, and how "me" is this!

April showers bring forth...

We have flowers in the garden already; a pink flowering redcurrant, yellow forsythia, daffodils, blue anemone blanda, the primroses are all over the lawn like little patches of lost sunshine, and as for our magnolia tree... it is simply stunning. It is so very white that at night the street light reflected off it actually lights up our dining room.

This time of year is delightful with the little birds flitting around, all busy and singing. We have at least two pairs of black-caps nesting in the hedge, and one pair of long-tailed tits, and umpteen blue-tits and great-tits, as well as robins, wrens, blackbirds, dunnocks, chaffinches, siskins, goldfinches, pigeons (of course) and the ever-present noisy pheasants. We have Mr and Mrs Pheasant, as well as two distinctive male pretenders; one very pale slender one that we call the juvenile, and one adult male with half his tail feathers missing, bless him. These make constant attempts on Mrs Pheasant's delicacy, and have to be chased off by hubby. He is very glamorous and proud, she has the grace of an agitated chicken, and always makes us laugh.

Here is Mr Pheasant. He just popped through the hedge one day last week and came face to face with Mrs Deer. They had a brief, slightly startled face-off, then each decided that the other was no threat, and he walked round her to hoover up the bird-seed under our feeder, and she went back to pruning our shrubbery. How lucky am I?

Anyway, on to today's crafty stuff. This is a card that I made from using up bits from my scraps file. Even the vase is a cut-down oval die, and the greeting is made from a label die but cut using the two opposite ends without the middle. If you see what I mean.

I'm entering it into these challenges:
Creative Card Crew: handmade flowers
Simon Says Stamp: April showers bring spring flowers
Pixie's Crafty Snippets Playground: snippets (and the BEST prize this week, I would LOVE to win this!)

Volunteers' Morning Tea

Back in 2011 when DH and I lived in Perth, Western Australia, we were heavily involved in the church, spending many hours each week working for them and with them. DH and I, along with other church members, were put forward to the City Council for a recognition award for our services to the church. The Volunteers' Tea was for all charities in the town and we shared a table with the WI and Toastmasters. We got a certificate and a photo of us shaking hands with the mayor, so I scrapped them both using Creative Scrappers sketch #247.

New look for the blog

I wasted almost an entire day today, just giving my blog a face-lift. I suddenly decided that I couldn't bear looking at the old one a moment longer. It last had a revamp in 2010 so it was about time.

These (ETA: I mean the new pictures at the edges of the blog, not showing in this post) are the most up-to-date photos of our woodland babies; one of last year's fawns from this morning, and I think the squirrel is a mother-to-be, because I've seen her buttons when she's been raiding the bird-feeder. We had to buy a new seed feeder for the birds on Sunday because when DH looked out of the window, the old one had gone. Not just been emptied, but physically vanished. I went and had a squelch and a slip and a slide around the swamp that is our back garden at the moment, and under the spruce tree I found a perch, and the handle, neatly bitten in two pieces. And that was all. No plastic tube, no base, or the other perch. Something or things had robbed it very efficiently.

That gave us a lovely excuse to go to our favourite big garden centre to get another one, a squirrel-proof one this time. DH said "aaah, poor squirrel" but they've been emptying their own feeder at the rate of half a bag of monkey-nuts a day - and burying them in the lawn. I'll be astonished if they can find them again.

We've had Mr and Mrs Pheasant picking their way up and down the grass as well, displaying and ignoring respectively. They are looking magnificent at this time of year. And I saw a pretty fierce robin fight in the acer yesterday, so despite the dingy weather, it's all happening out there.

An interview

Scrap Whispers is back folks! Back with a vengeance. The game has started, the teams have been allocated and dates decided at record speed. The first secret LOs will be sent out on Friday for the first players to lift.

Meanwhile we have some great challenges in store for you, all inspired by our wonderful Guest Designer Nora Noll. The first one is to scrap an interview. I e-mailed my DH some questions to answer, because he has a way with words and I know he could make me laugh. But he spent most of the weekend battling with our new, improved (NOT) BT hub, so I let the poor man off. Instead I had a nice little chat with our pet gecko. Well he didn't say much, but you can get a lot from body language.

I used sketch #242 from Creative Scrappers, and combined it with the Challenge of the Week #2 from Scrap Jazz which is spots, stripes and brads.

So, are you going to take up the challenge to scrap an interview? You don't have to be a Scrap Whispers player. Just drop in, create your LO and post it on your blog, link back to Scrap Whispers in your post, and then enter using the Challenge Entries button at the top of the blog. Easy. See you over there!

Christmas is over

Christmas is over, Mum and my brother have gone home, and that means that our race to get the house respectable in time has been won. My Mum and my brother arrived on Christmas Eve to stay until yesterday, and we only have one guest room, so the study/music/craft/general dumping room had to be cleared out so that Mum could sleep there. That really did take 6 weeks!

There has been a lot of church and singing in the lead-up. I played Mary in the parish Star Trail production for the whole of a precious week. I sang at several carol services, and DH and I both dressed up as carol singers in the town's Victorian Fair. We even had a wedding to sing at yesterday - a beautiful naval Christmas wedding.

I was the Server in church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and I was so worried about getting it wrong, or my brain freezing with nerves and not letting me add up the number of wafers required, but it went pretty smoothly. Less than 11 hours later, we had 6 for Christmas dinner: MIL, FIL, Mum and my brother, and DH and me. It was the first time we have hosted in more than 10 years, and I was using my new kitchen. No pressure then! I couldn't have done it without DH's help. It went well. The dinner, with everybody's varying diets catered for, was a success. I won't say that my lost sleep, jitters and panic were unfounded, but now I know that I can do it.

On Boxing Day SIL, BIL and our niece and nephew came over for their presents, and made so much excited noise that I think Mum turned off her hearing aid so she could have a little nap. Our nephew got nearly all the Skylanders Giants, I think. Our niece got a HobbyCraft extravaganza - a pink plastic box filled with card-making, scrappy goodies. At 9, her mother thinks she is old enough for a mini paper trimmer, although I was worried about the blade. She never does her crafting unsupervised though so she should be OK. I can't wait for her to come over and stay again, and bring her stash so we can make pretty things together.

I was lucky enough to get a lot of socks, shower gels, chocolate and scrappy things, which was what I wanted. I'm happy.

Normal crafting service will be resumed as soon as I have unearthed my desk, put away all my new things and the Christmas detritus. And...... come back next year to see the new ideas that we have for Scrap Whispers.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Every cloud has a silver lining

The weather has been 'orrible this week; miserable, dark and soaking wet through the whole of the South West in particular. Poor Clovelly suffered flash floods with a red torrent rocketing down the steep streets where donkeys carry people's groceries. It has been double-speed wind-screen-wiper, and lights-on-by-4:30pm weather. Proper mingin', as they say around 'ere.

I've been thinking about Christmas - well you have to cheer up somehow, don't you? Less Is More wants silver this week, and Creative Card Crew are requesting birds, and I have some Hero Arts stamps which get trotted out every year because they're so cute and useful. I think I've found my Advent Craft Fair design:

Orange, you are so terrible that it's funny

I have never before used my blog to call out companies for shocking service. But this is so outrageous that it made me laugh. Does anyone else remember the That's Life saga with the "but I've got no gas!" craziness when British Gas tried to bill a customer for gas when he wasn't even connected? If That's Life was still on, I would be sending this in to them so that everyone else could have a good laugh.

Here is my original e-mail to them, using their own "contact us" e-mail system:
"I am no longer an Orange customer, although I am still receiving text messages from Orange about promotions which I am not able to enter, and I am unable to unsubscribe from them. I would like my number removed from your database.

I have tried to go into an Orange branch with my request, and they were unable to help. I have tried calling your Helpline, but not only was there no number to press for anything close to my query, but the recorded message told me that there was an hour's wait to speak to a customer service representative. There isn't even an option in the obligatory subject line above which is close to my query.

I shouldn't have to point out how unacceptable this is.

Please would you remove my number from your marketing database?
Thank you"

Today I received this response:
"Please accept our apologies, we are in the process of improving our e-mail service, and cannot deal with your e-mail enquiry at this time.

For the moment, can we ask you to use one of our alternative Customer Service channels, where our advisors will be happy to answer any question or resolve any enquiry you may have.

You can contact us, between 8am to 10pm by :- 

• dialing 150 from your Orange handset or
• calling us on 07973100150 from a landline*
• If your abroad you can also contact on 07973100150**
• You can manage your account online, 24 hours a day at Your Account
• You can also manage your account and get answers to most questions, using our Your Orange app, available to download for all smartphones
• You can talk to one of our agents using our Click to chat services on our website
• Alternatively, our Orange helpers are always ready to provide support if you visit our social media sites @OrangeHelpers on twitter or search for Orange Helpers on Facebook

Apologies once again, but we hope to be back soon with an even better email service, so we appreciate your understanding at this time.

*calls are charged at local rates if you're a BT customer, but if you're with another provider it may cost more so do check
** calls are charged at international rates."

A-hahahaha! You've GOT to be kidding me!

OK. You goaded me.

They're so short-staffed at Orange that they've given the job of writing the official apology e-mail to one of their kids who hasn't passed an English exam yet. Advisors? Dialing? My abroad? Haha!

In addition, my complaint is that I am NOT an Orange customer so I can't do any of that stuff except the part about sitting in a queue for an hour being charged at local rates. But since they have suggested taking this to Twitter and Facebook, I might just do that....