Ellie Belly

Thanks for your birthday wishes - had a wonderful weekend (and Chrissie.........................whoops.........email on its' way!!!!).

Just a quick post really to add some updated pics of Ellie, I know my Aunty Jean in London loves logging on for updates on how our newest (and cutest) family member is doing!!

It's hard to believe she'll be 16 weeks old this week!! At the moment her two favourite pass times consist of firstly trying to put everything in her mouth - it's usually both her hands at the same time, but the occasional toy, burpie rag, or even someone elses finger does the job too! Her second one is being lifted high up into the air, as in this first photo, but she's quickly starting to weigh a ton so I hope it's a short lived phase!! Ellie's the queen of hats and looks sooo cute in them - but she wasn't best pleased when I insisted on a photo in this wooly little number:

Later peeps xxx

Thanking you!!

BIG thank you to you all for replying to my little dilemma, either here or on UKScrappers. For those who can't read the original post over there - I'm thinking about throwing in the towel at work and heading to uni to train as a teacher. Well, I've contacted the university regarding the course....so I'll keep you updated on whether I'm going to become a student all over again or not!!

Had a lubberly lunch today with the fabby Gems......not to mention some lovely surprise scrapping gifts and the most fabby hand made card for my birthday this Sunday! You would never believe it's the first card she's ever made (I'm very honoured in that respect!) - but she is super talented so I wouldn't really expect anything less than wonderful from her! So we had a great lunch and went for the full three courses – we were jolly glad we plumped for desert in the end too as they were yummy.

So, with a full tummy, my birthday celebrations are underway!! The Queen may very well have two birthdays, I’m sure that suits her fine, but moi, I like to celebrate over five days lol! Lunch today with Gems, having a fortune-telling evening and buffet tomorrow with family and friends, Saturday evening my Mum and Sister are coming around for a Chinese and to watch Most Haunted Live, Sunday night Lee and I are off out for a meal, and Monday I’m out for lunch again!!

My life is not usually such a whirl of social occasions, and although I’m not sure if I have enough outfits to wear, I’m looking forward to it :) And no time for house work – such a pity. (And I truly mean that – my house is like a pig sty. I haven’t hoovered upstairs for about a week – not good with four cats and a balding Alsatian!!)

Craftwise: I’ve been beavering away at a little Inspiration Journal too over the last two days; a place to record any ideas for scrapbooking that often spring to mind. Rather than having scraps of paper all over the place they’ll be handily together in one book. I’ve only got the page dividers to add and I’m all done – so hopefully will be back tomorrow with some pictures …..so watch this space blogeroonies xxx

Cross Roads

I'm not referring to that dodgy ITV soap of years gone by....

I'm at one in my life, and although I think I know what I need to do..........it's scaring the pants off me, as well as worrying me a bit about how we'll cope.

What am I gabbering about?! Well I've stuck a post here, - my full explanation is on the second page so have a nose and I'd love to hear your HONEST opinions (please don't just say things like go for it - you'll be great! lol!!)

Confused, Swansea xxxx lol xx

Random Happy Pics #3

Hoho - I bet you've been waiting impatiently for the next installment of my happy pictures haven't you?!!! Well that painful wait is over my friends...........

But it's a bit of a selfish selection I'm afraid - having worked the last couple of nights I've not had time to listen to the Paul McKenna CD's for four days and I've gone a bit off the rails and eaten like a wild beast!! So I've been wandering around my kitchen snapping things hoping it would remind me how to correctly embrace my love of food and set me back on track!!!!

First up - our pre-planned menu for the week - this pic is to remind me of what gorgeous food I can eat on the plan as long as I follow "the rules".


Second up is my fab and funky Kitchen wall clock - my sister bought it for us and it looks so fab against our duck-egg-blue kitchen walls :) I chose this picture to remind myself that I MUST eat whenever I'm hungry, and not be ruled by conventional thoughts about the appropriateness of the times that I should eat my meals.



Fascinating stuff. I'm sure you're enthralled by my choices lol! Here's to getting back on track! xxx

Picture the scene.......

. . . . Fleetwood Macs' Albatross rhythmically pulsating to a soft crescendo...........

...... the camera slowly panning into a sumptuous and mouth watering treat.......

....... a husky yet sensual female voice breathes:

This is no ordinary Peanut Butter Cup.

This is a hand crafted, Triple Chocolate Enrobed, Sweet Peanut Truffle.

Well it sounds good doesn't it?!!!! I made them myself from a Nigella recipe. I just love Reeces' Peanut Cups so jumped at the thought of making my own last week. And they were Delicious. With a capital D. Katrina came over to, erm supervise, her being the queen of all things baking, and even she, who has held a life long detest of peanut butter, could not get enough of them. The recipe made a batch of around 52, and between myself, Lee, Katrina and my mum, they were all gone within two days!!! (And I will point out that the McKenna System seems relatively unharmed for it too. I only ate them when I was hungry lol!!!).

I knew there was a Domestic Goddess in me somewhere!!!

Although the feeling soon disappeared when I had to scrape skets of melted chocolate off every kitchen surface and appliance. I bet Nigella doesn't have to do her own cleaning up. Harruuuumph.

Catch ya later lovelies :)

Random Happy Pics #2

Me ol' bam-boo, me ol' bam-boo, you'd better never bother with me ol' bam-boo. Well actually you should - that Dick van Dyke clearly didn't know anything about this exotic shrub - cos according to the label, it's no ordinary bamboo, but is in fact lucky bamboo. May looking at this picture bring you as much luck as they have brought me (ahem!)

Next up - blurry baby feet - but don't they still make your heart melt?!!!!!! Yummy happy feelings!!!

The Proof is in The Pudding

Well, ok I REALLY meant weighing, but being in such a skinny slim jim frame of mind I couldn’t resist titling this post in such a manner!

Yes, today is the first official fortnightly weigh day on the Paul McKenna system – where I get to see if this “new way” of approaching eating really works. Well, I can say – oh boy it REALLY does!!! I wish I could add a trumpet sound here ‘cos I’m so darn excited!!

In a fortnight I’ve lost SEVEN pounds!!!!!!!!!!

Without really feeling as if I should have! Without going out of my way or faffing about and concentrating hard on weighing and measuring as with usual diets!! I’ve eaten what I wanted, when I wanted. Just approached it all in a different manner.

During this fortnight I have consumed a McDonalds, a whole Chocolate Orange to myself (hehe), a curly wurly, two bags of crisps (which I might add I don’t even usually have!!!), a sit down curry (that’s the meal out I struggled to get through in one of my previous posts!!), some mini ring donuts, a slice of apple pie, a spotted dick and custard, some marzipan, onion rings, curly fries …………hmmm………trying to recall other little things I’ve had which most “diets” would ban you from!!! And I still managed a loss of about 3.5 lbs per week! How cool is all that?!

Of course – most people who have a lot of weight to loose usually have a big loss in the first couple of weeks of changing their eating habits so I don't expect it to continue to happen at such a rate– but it’s certainly a great start and it’s going to keep me motivated that all this seemingly non-dieting really helps loose weight!

Yay! Way to go me!!!

Random Happy Pics #1

As promised, here are some random pictures intended to spread warming feelings through the tummies of all in Blogdom lol!! Well, they make me happy at least :)

The first is of my lubberly handsome bubbah boy Griff, enjoying a bit of this glorious sunshine we've been so lucky to have this weekend. It's usually hard to catch a decent shot of any of the cats unless they are sleeping as they are such wiggly little minxes so I was pleased with this. I feel it's just screaming to be scrapped into a grungy layout with some hand written journalling filling up the white space to the left of the shot. Whadya reckon?! And as for random, you couldn't get more random than this - I accidently released the shutter - but man - look at that lush blue sky!! Spring must be on the way!! If that thought doesn't make you feel happy - what will?!!
Catch ya later xxx

DT stuff

Well here are my offerings with the Design Team kit sent to each of us from Lynn at Kraft Stop. The kit contained Making Memories paper, some Doodlebug cardstock, pink rhinestones, small green and white blossoms, a large gem-encrusted fabric bloom, acrylic word tiles, ribbon, epoxy stickers and a licence plate embellishment. I've tried to do something a little different to my usual thang as I already had the papers in my stash and scrapped with them already in the past. So here goes....

The first is a page of Ellie, tried to create a more clean and simple page to emphasise how plain gorgeous she is - my niecey gal don't need no embellishing lol!!!
The second LO is a bit different in the sense that I wanted to use as many of the different patterned papers as possible, but felt they were a little over powering all together, so thought this was a neat little way of introducing a bit of each to the page. Also altered the licence plate a little by distressing it with pink acrylic paint, as it felt a little stark on the page as it was. Close ups of the embellishments:
And finally I made two cards. One is nice and girly (please excuse the sqwonky shot for that one!), but for the second, seeing that the kit felt overly feminine – I challenged myself to make a more masculine card with it! I aimed for a kind of golfing argyle jumper feel – hmmmm think I kinda got there :) I’ve been a naughty girl today and had a sneak jump on the scales – I’m not supposed to weigh for the first time until Tuesday according to the system – but I will give you a little whisper that it’s looking good! Shhhhhhhh – our secret!!!

Also spent some time today playing with my camera shooting random things – and decided that I’m going to try to upload a couple of random happy shots each day to keep us all cheery through these cold weeks :) Aren’t you lucky?! It’ll be a little peek into my strange and random world for you anyway!!

I’ve also updated my slide show at the top of the page with my Chrimbo layouts I posted last week just in case anyone missed them :)

Until then, take care my blogeroonies xxxx

Happy days!

Don't you just love it when your food is as happy as you are to be eating it?! Spot the smiley gammon!!!