Birthday girl!

So yesterday i turned 24. eek! i know 24 is not old, but i still don't feel old enough to be 24! The last few birthdays have not been very good frankly, but this one was great! i had chocolate croissants for breakfast with mango juice & opened my cards & presents. i got a birthday card from my little sister, who is 3. i can't believe she can write her own name! Do you see the the stickers, definately going to be a scrapbooker :)

Mum & i had the day off of work & Michaela came home. We went to Chichester for a bit of shopping & something to eat at Zizzi's (one of my favourites). i bought my first ever pair of knee high boots, they are flat & brown suede (yum!) & bought a few bits in Lush including some whip stick, which i ran out of 3 weeks ago & have been missing dearly. Then we went to a chocolate cafe in Southsea & i had some chocolate brownie cheesecake. This is the most amazing cafe you've ever seen, so gutted i didn't have my camera, but good excuse to go again! Then we went to my Nan & Grandad's (love them so much!) to get my pressie & card, which had the sweetest message in. Then Jen came round for a bit.

Then i went to Katies & she had some birthday cupcakes for me!!

2 cupcakes & 4 candles, geddit? A genius is she. i didn't have a birthday cake the last 2 years, so i was really happy to get to blow out some candles. i also got to wear the birthday tiara for the whole night. O, how i wish i was a real princess. Do you see the handmade card that Katie made for me? Yes, that is supposed to be me. Love it.

Full credit for this photo goes to Miss Katty B & her camera phone.

Here's a list of all the presents i received & who they were from:

Mum~ Photography course on how to control light sources (doing this in a couple of weeks), 2 pairs of socks, The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella (think she was trying to imply something here), a hairband & a green top.
Michaela~ Top from Gap, Pink Cardigan from Zara, & House of Flying Daggers DVD

Lloyd~ Pirates of the Carribbean 1 2 disc Special Edition DVD & Lost Disc

Nan & Grandad ~ Elsie's 52 Scrapbooking Challenges

The girls at work~ 3 bars of Aero, Orson Album. Betty Boo pen, 2 pairs of socks.

Jenny ~ Green scarf & gloves set, and beautiful necklace & earring set.

Katie ~ Beautiful necklace & earring set which came in a cute little box

Iain~ A fabulous present of the Harry Potter variety! (still can't believe you gave this to me!)

Thanks so much everyone for my birthday wishes, presents & cards & especially Mum & Michaela & Katie for making it such a great day, so happy to have spent it with you. x

*edited to add*
Jon & Amber got me a box of Flake chocolates & Nicola got me the James Morrison Album & The Wedding Date on DVD.

One more sleeps till my birthday!

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt

Last night i saw Snow Patrol & i'm still buzzing from the experience, they were awesome! They put on a pretty amazing light show & played for 2 hours! Plus they had some huge moving tv screens which they used special effects on, so those of us at the back could see everything that was going on. i loved their music before, but now i loves them even more. So even though i've been there done that & got myself a t-shirt, i'd still love to see them again. If you don't have their album 'Eyes Open' then put it on your xmas list, you won't be disappointed, promise! Gary Lightbody, the lead singer had a dreamy irish accent (pretty much any kind of accent will make me melt), he was very witty & down to earth. He stopped singing mid song to demand why some one was being ejected from the concert & when he was told that the guy had been pushing he stated 'does that not constitute being at a concert?!' and asked security to bring the guy back. We saw them at the BIC in Bournemouth & it was the first date of their UK tour (how lucky were we to get those tickets!?). Anyway Bournemouth is home to my sister so we got to spend some time with her, which is all good. Loves u M. x

For those of you wondering who Jake is, he's not some random kid i found in the forest & decided to take pictures of. He is the son of my friend Anna, who i work with & he is the cutest ever! i'm making a scrapbook for her to give to her hubby as a xmas pressie so we did a bit of photo shoot yesterday morning, which was fun but Jake didn't want to smile for us & we had to admit defeat when he declared 'enough pictures'.

it was a good day.

Tough Cookie

Meet Jake, who is three next week & doesn't like having his picture taken.

i've been busy scrapping away today. Shimelle taught a class, which i bought the kit for & used to make the 2nd layout with a few bits of 7gypsies stuff, she has some amazing examples on her website. i love her work! The class taught you to work from the middle out. This is what i tend to do most of the time anyway, but she has inspired me so much that so far i've managed to get 3 layouts done using this concept. My shoulders ache! i've also got another double LO done & i've got another work in progress. Had a lot of fun doing these. Also had loads of fun looking through everyone's work at UKScrappers i've been trying to leave as many comments as i can...

The UKS Cyber crop started today. This is my interpretation of Lynz's class. The idea was to use sequins, which i have penty of, but not in the right colours for this photo, so i decided to use scraps of paper instead. i'm going to do a whole page mosaic stylee me thinks. The embellishments were magnets i bought in a souvenir shop outside the Sagrada Familia. i'm not too happy with the journalling in my own writing, but frankly i'm too lazy to faf about with a printer tonight.

Well this week has been a bit of a whirlwind, i can't believe it's Thursday already! Sunday night i went to the Toby Carvery to celebrate Amber's birthday. It was hectic because it was 6 O'Clock on a friggin Sunday, and everyone wants a roast on a Sunday!!! But it was fabulous because we haven't all got together for a while. Monday night i went to Dave's. He has recently started renting a room in his ex-bosses house & it is like a showroom.There wasn't so much as a TV guide in the living room!! It was wierd, i need mess. Tuesday i received my UKS cybercrop class kit from Shimelle and despite strict instructions not to open it until the cybercrop, i did! In the evening i watched The Life of David Gale. It has an amazing ending, which is quite rare in films i think. Wednesday the lovely Katty cooked me the yummiest nachos i've ever had & even managed to get me to eat vegetables & has converted me to quorn mince. We just hung out with her housemate Phill & i don't remember the last time i laughed so much. Today i got sent home from work early because there was a very strange smell in the building. So i have been merrily scrapping since 3.30 this afternoon. I've managed to get 2 circle journals finished & two LO's. This first one is of the Placa Reial in Barcelona. i took the photo while we were queing for a restaurant. kraft coloured cardstock is my all time favourite for scrapping with. i used my first moo card on a LO. i think they are so cute! Paper is BG, chipboard Maya Road, stamp 7gypsies, rub-on American Crafts & i also used bits from an old spanish book i bought in a tiny shop outside the Palau de la Musica. The second LO is of a flower stall in Las Ramblas. i used foam tape to add dimension to the flowers. i'm not very comfortable with those flowers, they are too distracting. i'm thinking i should have gone with something more subtle as i really like the photo, but i'm not changing it now because it took me ages to cut all those out. It's for this week's ColorBlog challenge to 'use lot's of something'. Everything is BG, except the cardstock which i picked up at The Paper Mill Shop for about 20p or something. Tomorrow Michaela is going to try & get us tickets for Keane, as they didn't perform Crystal Ball at the Brighton concert, we have an excuse to see them again. i have so much craziness planned for the next week. i can't wait!

Perfect Day

Yesterday was amazing. The ceremony was lovely & so was The Wedding Breakfast. Nikki looked so beautiful & her dress was gorgeous. Giles' speech was so sweet & they both looked so happy & in love. i know that's how you're supposed to be on your wedding day, but it was just so touching. i'm so happy for them. Could i say SO anymore times?

W is for Wedding

This Saturday from 12.00 we will be watching my cousin Nicola getting married to Giles. i am soooooo excited. Can't wait to spend some quality time with my family (& take lots of pictures of them). Here's the album that i've made for the happy couple as a wedding gift. It is hard scrapping without pictures, let me tell you! i hope it looks good with photos in. i really hope they like it, i've tried so hard to create something that suits them. i have to apologise for the wonky scanning, but there were 20 pages to scan & i got lazy... i used Chatterbox refill pages, Basic Grey Black Tie papers, Basic Grey rub-ons, 7Gypsies stickers. (which i am loving at the moment). It was really refreshing to just choose a few materials & just create simple pages.

Stuck in a rut

i didn't manage to get it done in time, but i did actually manage to complete Ali's AZine challenge this week!! The challenge was to use at least three stamps, one geometric, one text & one organic. i used a MM foam stamp, heidi swapp rolling stamp, heidi swapp circle stamp all of which i stamped in purple. Then i used my hole punch to create a mask & stamp over the circles in black with a PaperArtsy stamp. Unfortunatly, you can't really see it in the scan, but it does look cool, i promise. i've decided i definately need to play with my stamps more often. i also challenged myself to use a colour i'm extremly uncomfortable with as this is challenge 8 on the color blog. In my eyes purple is just ick. Paper is from Cosmo Cricket, jems are from MME. Journalling reads: 'las ramblas sept 06'.





Last week was a much of nothingness. i haven't been in a very good frame of mind & haven't been able to shake it off so decided not to blog. i've also been stuck in a creative rut, which is annoying because i've actually had the time to scrap & wanted to, just not felt very inspired to. i think the lack of space to do it in is probably causing this. It's so much effort to get everything out. i keep most of my stuff in my room & some of it in the utility room. But it is too dark & cold there now to be able to scrap in, so i have to get the bits that i think i'll want to use & take them into the living/dining room. But then i inevitably decide i need other stuff so end up walking from room to room & it takes for ever to get a page finished. i miss having my own place.


On Thursday some of Lloyds family came round for lasagne & pizza. Tuesday marked the 4th anniversary since his bone marrow transplant so we are pretty lucky to be able to do stuff like this together.


Over the weekend i pretty much just watched films & slept, as i haven't had a chance to do that in a while. i did however, leave the house in order to see The Feeling in concert. They did a cover of 'Video Killed the Radio Star', originally recorded by Buggles, which had us all dancing. They also did a track from their new album, which is in the making. It was fun, but Keane are still my all time favourites :)

Spent the weekend in Salcott which is so in the middle of nowhere that i could't get signal on my mobile! i was visiting Adam who is one of the few things i miss about living in Colchester. We had a Prison Break fest. If you enjoy watching the likes of Lost & 24, like me, then you'll love it. Seriously the best program of the year. We also had a night out in Colchester on Saturday for Ollie's birthday. It was fun to catch up with everyone & have a boogie but we had to wait an hour to get a taxi home & it was freezing!! It seems as though when November 1st hit, the temperature dropped.

i haven't been to any fireworks parties this year, which is a bit disappointing. My poor cat Crackers is scared of all the noise and is snuggled up beneath a radiator :(

Today my Moo cards arrived & i am surprised how small they are! But i am really chuffed with the quality of them. Yesterday i had a delivery from Artbase which included an 8.5 x 11 album which was massive! i've decided to keep all my pages in theme albums. Theme's i've got so far are: me, Friends & Family, Occasions/Days & nights out/Events, & Travel and i'm going to have a portrait & landscape album for each, so i am in desperate need of more albums. Plus i will probably come up with a couple of more themes soon knowing me. Elsie's 52 Scrapbooking challenges arrived too as my Nan & Grandad kindly said they'd buy it for me for my birthday so i'm not allowed to look at it for another 27 days!!

Up the tower

Katie, Iain & i went up the Spinnaker Tower yesterday to see the views. Katie was my bag lady so i could take lots of pictures. This is the view up & the view down. One day i will tell u all about Iain's amazing Harry Potter Camera. We went to Frankie & Benny's for dinner which was yum yum. i had Calzone & also discovered they do the best cheescake ever. i want to go back & eat the whole restaurant up. All the staff were dressed up for halloween & we got free toffee apples. It was fun.