Darnfungled technology!

First of all- I had typed a witty and amusing post (yep, tis true) - went to press publish but my fist hit some random key on the keyboard and deleted my post. Not amused.

Second technological gripe - my broadband connection has disappeared at home. Vanished. Poof! Gone. Hence no blog entry since last week (see there's a valid excuse - I bet you all thought I was just being a baaaaad blogger didn't you?!). Suprisingly, the BT man called out today (on a saturday?!!!! We weren't expecting him until Monday) to check the line - but he's as mystified as we are. So quite when I'll be back online at home is anyone's guess. So here I am at you-know-where having a quick catch up with you all (well, seeing as I'm the unlucky cabbage to have landed the shift when the clocks go back I thought I'd do something worthwhile with my extra hour. A 13 hour shift I ask you - isn't there some kind of law against this?! Woe is me and my tired, withering body).

And the other bad thing about no net connection at home is that I can't share any piccies with you - and I've actually done some scrapping this week (erm, which is probably due to the fact that the net went down in the first place, and that I wasn't sat at the PC for hours in a trance as per usual). So hopefully everything will magically be up and running all hunky dory just as magically as it all broke down, until then you can look forward to the scrapping delights I have to share with you. Titter ye not my pretties, for one of these pages is quite unlike my usual style, and won a little prize for third place in the South Wales Crop challenge, might I add. I'll just tease you with the words "random" and "bright" for now. Nuff said really.

So ya, twas the South Wales Crop today. As well as taking part in the challenge, I taught my Autumn Days class, which seemed to go down well. Thank you to Chrissie for asking me to have a go, Gems for doing a fabby ole job as kit giver-outer, and to all the lovely scrumptious South Wales crop-goers who had a go and managed to keep up with what the heck I was gabbering on about !!

Gems and I had a nice likkle catch up, and much scrapbooking, shopping and scoffing of pineapple chunk sweets took place. Despite Gems insisting that she didn't like the sweets - she did a pretty good job of munching half a bag of 'em when she thought I wasn't looking - didn't ya?!!! I saw you missus!!! *wink*

And the final piece of news - today is finally the day of my sweetie likkle sisters' due date - but I must admit after all this "oooh, it's a big bump- she'll never go the whole 9 months" - I'm starting to wonder if the little blighter will ever show up! I'm impatient me! And so is she at the point bless her. I even dragged her around Ikea for hours yesterday in the hope that the long walk (and the fact that we were 45 miles away from home) would shake the baby out - or at least make it get a wriggle on. But no. I love her sooooo much and I know when likkle bubba does make his or her appearance she's gonna make a fabby mummy - I can't wait!

So.............to pass the time and amuse myself until bubba DOES arrive - I'm gonna open a little game on here to guess the weight of the baby! The blogeroonie with the nearest guess will win a little scrapbooking treat. All you have to do is log your guess in reply to THIS post, between now and when I break the news that baby has arrived *grin*

Get guessing!!! xxxxx

Sunday Bloggers

Whilst cruising UKS this afternoon to aid coming round after a lovely night out last night to celebrate my friend Sian getting a new job I came across today’s Blog prompt which I thought was just so heart warming for such a wet, dark and windy afternoon.

"What is the most romantic thing that anyone has ever done for you - has someone ever done anything so romantic that even now when you look back and think about it, you smile?"

Bit of a corny one here, but given the topic I guess most responses will be (!) – but it has to be July 13th 2002.

Lee had arranged for us to stay on the beautiful Gower coast for the weekend, and on the Saturday, led me down to the beach for a picnic. I was slightly suspicious of his actions - but he assured me it was just because I was soooo special and I deserved a treat. But moments later, he took my hand, dropped to one knee and took out a ring and asked me to marry him.

As romantic as it was – I couldn’t quite believe it all and was in fits of giggles, and had to ask him to repeat himself about three times until the situation sunk in.

We spent the rest of the evening high up on the sand dunes – drinking champagne as we watched the sun go down.

Four years on, we still haven’t made concrete plans for the wedding, although we’ve found the most ideal location in a place that’s very special to us – it’s just that we’re just sooooooo poor! Seriously, most of our money has gone into renovating the house (and according to Lee – my Scrapbooking stash! Fancy that?!) – but now that that’s all completed, hopefully we can now start about thinking of saving towards getting married.

Well, no other real news – Katrina has still not had her baby – seven days left to go until her due date but whether she’ll go that long nobody is sure – even the midwife thought she would have had the baby by now given her enormous size! I took these pics last weekend – I can’t wait to do a LO of the second one as it shows the only way anyone’s been able to hug her over the last couple of months due to her bump, by standing at her side!! They are all moved into their new house now – and I’m off to visit in a bit (I could do with the caffeine!!) – maybe I can coax the baby out with a bit of gentle persuasion?!!

I have done a little bit of scrapping – here’s the LO that I will be teaching at the South Wales Crop next week – I’ve sent it to Chrissie so I’m sure it will be up on the Scrappers Unlimited website very soon.
Other good news is that there is going to be a one-page article in Scrapbook Inspirations about the Swansea Crop and the monochromatic challenge they set us, and my page, along with Gems’ and Chrissies’ and a couple of the other crop-goers, are going to be used in the article.

Okey dokey – hope everyone is having a fab weekend – take care my blogeroonies!

Love, Nat xxx

I've been a-scrapping!!!

Ring the bells! I’ve been a-scrapping and have something to show you!! It's actually a sample LO for the weekly challenge which my UKS team, the Doodlin' Daisies, are hosting next week, so I won't reveal too much about the qualifying elements just yet - but suffice to say I had a jolly good time making this, which is quite different to my usual style. I went wild with the doodles - and to give them more impact coloured them in using acrylic paint. What fun!! The picture is of a flower I found last Saturday whilst we were walking Rocky through the woods behind the house I grew up in as a child. I was amazed to find a thick crop of these beautiful things - rising from the black ashes and charred logs which were the tell tale signs of an old forest fire. It really was a wonder of nature to see something so delicate and beautiful growing from something so ugly.



It really was a delight to find this flower, as to be honest; the rest of the walk was quite disheartening. Many of the trees have been felled leaving huge open and barren looking areas, and the old lake was very over grown - to the point that actually - it looked like land rather than the beautiful open water that used to be in its’ place. Even the pathways were either boggy or overgrown. Amazingly, the waterfall still looked as beautiful as ever though - I took hundreds of pictures and will try to upload some in my next post.

It really was heartbreaking for me to see a place I love and hold so dearly to my heart in such an unloved state. I feel privileged to have grown up in such beautiful surroundings - I truly believe having the freedom to run and play amongst the open, landscaped grounds and the woodland helped shape my imaginative and creative side to my personality. It is also a very historic site, being the former land on which a Sir (John Llewellyn) had his mansion; he was responsible for taking some of the first photographs of the moon through a telescope (the observatory in which this happened still stands - but surprise surprise the commemorative plaque has recently vanished and not been replaced). Sir John Llewellyn was also a great lover of traveling to far and distant shores - and would bring back rare and exquisite Orchid specimens which were displayed in his grand Hot House - the remains of which can be found by adventurous walkers up on the side of the wooded valley. Many places and landmarks throughout Swansea still bare the Llewellyn name in his honour. But otherwise, his legacy seems non-existent.....and the beautiful estate which he once loved so much, and I still love, seems to be forgotten too.

There is a site I came across once, (if you are interested in the sort of thing) all about the Llewellyn family, and the history of the estate - with beautiful pictures of how it once looked here. The opening animation is just a little further down from what used to be the view from my bedroom window. If you click on "The Story" link once you enter the site - the time line has some original watercolours and lovely old pictures, taken by Sir John Llewellyn (a keen photographer) himself, of the mansion, the Orchid hot house, the waterfall and lake the observatory - and at the very end there's a picture of how I knew it all - the little bench in the left of the picture is where my sister and I used to wait for the school bus to come in and pick us up! Also the Science and Nature section (each word is a separate link) has more pictures of the Observatory - which as I've said still stands to this day.

Anyway - hope I haven't bored you all to death with that history lesson there...but it’s something that’s special to me you know!!! So to wake you all up I have another page completed last month for the monochromatic challenge set by Scrapbook Inspirations for the Swansea crop. It opens out to reveal some hidden journaling - a thank you to Lee for the six years we’ve had together. My stab at a simplistic style looked a little lost on the table with all the other marvellous efforts from my fellow croppers - but I was still happy with the result as I feel I achieved the look I set out to.











And finally, a quick couple of pics of how my little patio is looking after the revamp we gave it last week. I’m pleased to announce that we haven’t killed anything yet, and I’ve not been near the nasty itchy scratchy trees that I was allergic too that we planted down in the garden.

Here’s a snap of my little bay tree, the rosemary and the basil in the shelter of the bamboo fencing. We also have some lavender, thyme and coriander opposite them where they can get the full sun they need. The copper strips around the pots are supposed to keep the slugs at bay – so we shall keep an eye on that one. Hope so – cos the roll cost me a fiver and as you can see wasn’t enough to go around the last pot!!

We’ve also had the additions of some little solar light since that picture was taken – which look all lovely now that the dark nights are drawing in. Lee also treated himself to what he deemed as a patio “must-have” – a terracotta chimnea. Fortunately, we had a couple of dry evenings to test it out before all this blooming rain blew in. Here’s a little pic of Lee playing about with the fire (now there’s a recipe for disaster if ever I saw it!) – ‘scuse the poor picture but I really could not keep still long enough for the slow shutter speed needed in such low light. So that’s one camera tripod added to my chrimbo list!!!

Have made a start on the double layout of Buryport harbour I mentioned a couple of posts ago - and so far it’s looking pretty fab and funky. I also have in my possession the most luscious Crate papers from the Cowgirl range, courtesy of the lubberly Chrissie, all ready to create my class for the South Wales crop next week. So tomorrow is going to be a me day! PC and telephone unplugged – no disturbances to my scrapping (so lets hope lil’ sis doesn’t go into labour eh?!) – and hopefully I’ll have something yummy to show you as a result!

Until then, my blogeroonies, take care xxxxxx

Toot!

A shameless self toot here, but......check out p55 of Novembers' Scrapbook Inspirations as my page is published for the sketch challenge. As I can't publish it anywhere else for six months you're all just gonna have to rush out and buy a copy aren't ya?!!

5.30am: Just nipping back to say, on actually reading the mag I've found they've also used the page in the beginners guide at the back, to illustrate cropping photographs - but I found the accompanying caption so funny I breathed in a massive gulp of air and nearly choked on my own tongue!

"Natalie Grant's tight crop is really dramatic!"

It just conjured up the thought of myself in a tight crop top and tight cropped trousers. And yes.......that would be very dramatic indeed mwoooohahahahahahaha! And darn scary too me thinks :)

xxxx

Suction?! Can we get some suction please?!

Cripes!! A whole week since my last blog! I really cannot believe how fast this year is speeding me by – it’s been a haze and here we are in October! Not that you would have thought it by the glorious weather we had today mind you! I wish I could say I’d sent the last week gathering witty and entertaining stories to amuse and enthral you, or that I’d been tucked away with an awe inspiring load of scrapbooking stash and produced hundreds of artistic and pleasing pages to excite and titillate you all……but sadly it’s not the case.

It’s just been another one of those weeks. Work. More work. Checking out Katrina’s new house and getting more excited about the impending arrival of bebe, now that they can finally prepare properly. Providing emotional (and transportational) support for friends attending important job interviews. Toothache. Terrible, pusstulent face outbreak. Exhaustion. I was, in fact, too exhausted to even attend the fabby Swansea crop and check out the snazzy new location (even the rumour that there would possibly be take-out pizza and a home-baked cake was not enough to tempt me out from under my duvet, where I lay all motionless and overwhelmed by the hyper-paced blur that is my life).

But there have been some highlights to the week that wasn’t.

We got a new hoover. Hurrah!!!

Ok, those of you who know me may be astounded to hear me whipped into such a frenzy over anything remotely domesticated……………however, those of you who know my dastardly Dyson will know what a truly momentous occasion getting a replacement really is for our household. I’d longed for a Dyson for ages, and we spent nearly three hundred of our hard earned quiddies on one. And it was a dream for a couple of months – it was a whiz over our wooden floors and left the rugs all nice and fluffy….I even recommended it to my mum who went out and snapped one up (which – just in case Mr Dyson himself is reading – does in fact work like a dream and live up to the Dyson reputation. Ahem – hopefully that’s enough to get me out of any law suits!!)

But then, piece by piece, my machine started to fall apart. And stopped sucking up. Not even a hair from my head could be slurped up by the cumbersome and racket-producing machine. In fact – I could do a better job on my hands and knees with a drinking straw if it wasn’t for the fact dogs’ hair ain’t too grand for ones chest. Seen their advertising campaign about the Dysons’ suction – and how it “won’t loose a sausage”?! Sausage my boobaloobs!!! I’ll tell you what I did nearly loose – my bloomin’ sanity. Ok, I know hurling the thing along the lounge on a regular basis when it wouldn’t do its’ job probably didn’t help much, but the last straw came when even the 10th layer of industrial strength gaffa tape I had holding together the trusses of the “magic wand” tube gave up the ghost. Pah! Finito! Me and Dyson – finished!

So – much to my domestic excitement this week (whoop whoop!!), we are now proud owners of a Morphy Richards something or other. There’s a pic for your perusal. It’s bagless and has cyclonic power, just like the other one – but muuuuuch stronger, I thought it was going to take up my stair carpet at one point! For gadget value, it has all these nifty setting depending on what you’re doing and lots of tools. Lovely. And it’s silver and blue and curvy. Nice. Best bit though- it was 40 odd quid in Makro!!

Right, before this blog starts to sound like a "Which? Guide to Household Cleaning Appliances" – what other exciting shenanigans have gone on this week?!

After four years, we’ve finally started doing some meaningful work on our garden. Now when I say garden, I use the term quite loosely as in fact, it’s a cliff side….but Lee has been hard at work levelling out the top area so we can at least have some use of it.

We had a nice little trip to Wyevale to look at our options with regards to fencing and what not – and came away with some bushy-hedge-tree like things – which turn out to be the only thing in the whole of the garden centre which I was allergic to. Within hours my skin was red, blotchy and itchy, and my eyes were streaming. Good laugh eh?! Well, they’re planted now, and the advisor at the store advised us (as he would – that being his job role and all) that they would surprise us – I’m still waiting for them to bare five pound notes or Belgian choccies and vino, but apparently he meant they’d surprise us by the rate “at which they’d become established”.

I also bought a bay tree, some different herbs and some nice big glazed pots, and a bamboo screen, and our previously cold, grey, concrete balcony area by the kitchen has now been transformed in to a tranquil and sweet smelling area that would be the envy of any respectable cook or potted plant enthusiast – well, ok, not quite, but it did look rather sweet this evening under the golden glow of the setting sun. If we have as lovely weather tomorrow I’ll try to grab a few quick snaps to share the magic with you……bet you can’t wait!!!

And finally, before I bore you all to death with a total non-scrapping blog entry - I must give an articulated-lorry sized toot for my mukka Gems – who has had a double whammy of fab news this week! Not only did she rightly win a place on one design team via their team call and competition, but she was also emailed by a second retailer, on the strength of her UKS gallery, to replace the incredibly talented to Fiona Beckman. What a way to join a design team eh folks?! It couldn’t go to a more talented and funky scrapper – well done Gems – way to go chicky!!!

I do actually have two scrapping ideas on the back burner which I hope to fire up this week, the first being a sample for my UKS team as we’re hosting the weekly challenge in a couple of weeks, and secondly I’ve got hold of some scrumptious Scenic Route papers (including some from the new Cape Town collection), which I hope to put to use, finally, on the photos I took at our day at Buryport harbour. I’ve got a few pics to use – so I’m planning on a double layout – which is a scrapping rarity for me – so hold on to your hats ladies and gents – it may be a bumpy ride!!!

Catch you all soon xxx

Well, I'll be blogged!

Not only am I whooping with joy that I've actually done some scrapping, but blogger's been nice and let me upload the pic too!! I actually need to take a better pic as this was done in a rush as I had to take it away to be part of a display, but I thought I'd better make the most of Bloggers' good mood!

The picture is of my grandparents and I on a day trip to Brecon, and I distinctly remember visiting this tiny toy shop in which you could barely swing a cat, and they bought me my first ever "My Little Pony". She was the blue one with a rainbow on her back, and rainbow coloured hair - for all you MLP fanatics out there!!! The page was created using some of the new Gypsy range from BG - I loved how these particular ones picked out the colours of my nanny's dress - and actually the bag around my neck was that colour too - although it doesn't show too well in the photo. that was a MLP bag too ya know!! Had a go at some weird doodley flourishes at the corner of the photo - but it was a bit of a disaster and I'm not that taken by it. Still, if you don't try you'll never learn eh?! It's also an attempt at the new, simplified and speedy approach to scrapbooking I mentioned I was hoping to move towards a few posts back. Lots of white space, quite literally, and it only took me four and a half hours hehehehehe! That's progress, believe me!!


And, to take advantage of Bloggers most wonderful generosity in the piccy department, here's a snap of my Road to Nowhere LO in this months Scrapbook Inspirations Readers' gallery. If anyone would like me to autograph their copy - it'll cost cha!! Mwwwooooohahaha cackle cackle!!! And I'll let you into a little secret - I actually cheated a bit on this pic as there were two cars speeding towards me on the road, but to help convey the usual isolated feel of the location - I zapped them out in my photosoftware!! Hohoho!! What fun eh?!


Have had a few email requests for an update on my sissy's latest pregnancy developments - thank you very much for your caring words and wishes. She was admitted today for further investigation regarding her general hugeness, high BP and feet like footballs (!!!) - but everything has been confirmed as tickedy boo and they do not wish to induce her at present. Although she still has four weeks to go, she is now measuring at the full 40 weeks, so basically baba could make an appearance at any time now!!!! Oooh I'm sooooooooo excited!! the only comparison I can make about how excited I am is like a kid waiting for Christmas - I've been a veeeewwwwwy good girl and I know Santa'll be coming soon - but it just ain't quick enough!!!

They were hoping that the scan today would finally reveal the baby's sex - but the naughty likkle monkey had other ideas, and once again, baba's legs were firmly clamped shut so it's likely to remain a mystery now until the big day!!!!

And…….they have finally been offered a house, which we are all off for a nosey about in tomorrow!

Other news.............I am totally lost without Lost. Just what am I going to do tomorrow night now that my viewing schedule has been rudely interrupted by the end of the series?! Can anyone recommend any good board games?!!!

For the season finale last week, I invited my buddy Sian around for the evening. I cooked a rather sumptuous African dish my grandparents brought home with them years ago whilst my aunt and uncle lived in Cape Town, and Sian, who is somewhat of a dab hand in the culinary department, was pretty impressed. Quite a feat for me I tell you (Nigella Lawson I ain't!!!) But she was a pleasure as guest, and even brought some treats for rocky and the cats, bless her little cotton/acrylic blend tootsie warmers. With the wine a-flowing and choccie being a-scoffed, we oohed, aahed and “my oh my”ed our way through the episodes. And what an episode it was ship maties – that series has more twists and turns than a curly wurly, I tell ‘ya!!

Can’t wait for the next series!!!!!!!

Right, tis all for now my blogeroonies – shall be back soon, I promise!!! xxx