Sunday 31st January

It’s the end of January already!!!  The evenings and mornings are definately beginning to draw out now, but it isn’t any warmer yet! 

It’s Mum’s birthday today, she is 75 today!  We are off out to Andrew and Lynda’s in a bit for a cup of tea and birthday cake.  As my goal is to lose weight it is my challenge to refuse a piece of cake!  ARRRRRGH! 

I took Merlin for a long walk along the seafront while Maurice watched the tennis.  I took some more 52 walks pictures, including this one which is my favourite house in Worthing.  It’s at the bottom of Grand Avenue:

Sorry about the bushes in front, but I felt a bit embarrassed about taking this picture so hid behind the bush!

Saturday sewing..

I was all inspired after my day out at the quilt show on Friday, so spent a lovely couple of hours sewing!  This is a tea cosy kit that I bought from Village Fabrics.  I am making it to give my friend Sarah for her birthday (which was last week!)  I haven’t done much machine quilting before, most of my sewing is by hand these days.  But it’s nice to knock something up quickly now and again.  Aren’t these fabrics gorgeous?

Thursday Jan 28th

OOps!  A little out of order!  But here’s a picture of my lace/ribbon drawer that I tidied up the other day!  (Then untidied to make the picture better LOL)  I LOVE my macro lens!

Friday Jan 29th Ardingly Quilt Show

I went to Ardingly Qulit show with Burnice, Freda and Maureen on Friday.  OH I love quilt shows!  I just love all that fabric – almost as much as paper!!!

Here’s some of the quilts that were on display:

 

Monday and Tuesday

Here’s two LOs I did at the weekend.  Both of them qualify for 2 challenges!!

 

This first one is for week 3 of  Scrap Weekly challenge, that is, scrap a bad photo!  (I have to say I struggled with this concept!) These 2 B&W photos were taken in the 1980s when we used to do our own B&W developing!  We had a dark room in one of our spare bedrooms.  But we were never any good at it, and if you could see these photos better, you would see all the little white dots of chemical splashes all over them!  Plus the contrast is terrible!  But the really funny thing is, that I have taken these exact same photos just recently – still taking the same old photos 30 years later!!!  EEEK!  This LO also fits the bill for last weeks challenge on UKscrappers, that is scrap an old photo!

 

This one is for week 4 over on Scrap Weekly, ie scrap using tags in a different way to what you would normally do.  I have put them in a row and used them as the base for my title, but not one letter per tag.

 

This LO is also for scrapdolly’s 52in10, which is about how music affects your life.  Here I have written about my MP3 player and how I like to listen to Radio 2 on it while dog walking, but the reception round here is not too good, so I often have to listen to our local station, Splash FM.

January 24th

Been out in the garden for a bit just doing a little bit of tidying.  I thought I would try and capture my first flowers of the year – the mahonia bush:

January 23rd

This is actually another walk so should really be on my other blog!  We have decided to go for a longer walk one day per month and have even put dates on the calendar!  Here’s our first one:  Along the beach at Chichester Harbour.  We parked at West Itchenor (in the pub car park – more about that later!), then walked along towards West Wittering for about 45 minutes.  It was very wet and muddy!  Merlin had the best time running into the horrible muddy sand, and in and out of the water!  He is such joy on these longer walks!  WE stopped for a coffee out of the flask, and took a few photos.  It was a bit dark for photos really, not a sunny day!  When we got back to the car we went in the pub (The Ship Inn) and I had a coffee and Maurice had a beer.  It was the most lovely pub.  There was a bar area with tables and a restaurant area out the back.  But at 4pm there were several locals in there having drinks and the atmosphere was great!  We will go back for a meal I have no doubt!

 

January 22nd

Here’s my LO for Scrapdolly’s 52in10 challenge week 3.  @What would I tell my younger self?  See my other blog for details!  I can sound a bit regretful when I talk about this, so I have tried to make the journaling more positive.  After all, I have had a fantastic life even though I regret not going to university when I was 18!

 

And having read (at last) the photography magazine Maurice bought me for Christmas here’s another angle of my LO – a bit ‘staged’! (and I have just found out how to do the watermark LOL!

January 21st

I bet you didn’t expect to see these pictures in the middle of January!!!  We were having lunch overlooking the sea, and these crazy guys!

 

January 20th

OMG!  I have missed some more days!  But I have been working on my goals for 2010.  Another class on www.simplify101.com.  I just love the forum on there, it is small enough to get to ‘know’ everyone, and so very supportive.  Plus we are literally from all over the world!  There’s peeps from USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Japan!  Fabulous!!

 

I have made a start on my Goal Inspiration Board!  At the moment it is just pictures cut out of magazines, mostly of how I would like to look!

Here are my goals for 2010

I will lose 14lbs (1 stone) in weight by my birthday (25^th March) by eating more sensibly (cutting out crisps, cakes, biscuits) and exercising 3 times per week (exercise DVD, swimming or cycling) I will keep a food and exercise diary to help me keep this up.

During the month of February I will take a moment before meeting friends to remember what they have been doing and ask them about it. I will also follow up important life events such as job changes.

During the month of February I will go out just with DH to the theatre or cinema.

During the rest of January I will research for a course that will teach me MS Excel and practise using it at work.

At the end of January I will check our bank balances and transfer any money that is left into our savings account. I will analyse our spending for the month so that I know what we are spending our money on.

By the end of June 2010, I will have researched and bought a picture for the lounge room wall.

By the end of June 2010 I will research and buy bedside cabinets for our bedroom.

I had a BIG success today!  I refused a chocolate croissant today!  And it was warm!!!

January 17th

A stroll along Brighton seafront.  See my other blog for more pics.  Here’s The old West Pier finally crumbling into the sea

january 16th

oops I have missed a couple of days.  Some days I find it so hard to find inspiration, and it is so dark at this time of year!

But today we have spent most of the dya clearing out a junk cupboard in Lucy’s room.  Here’s some of what was in there:

Lucy’s art work from year 10, here’s a self portrait – it really does look like her!

And here’s all the soft toys!  This is a huge basket full of mostly TY beanie babies, remember those!  Lucy used to love lining them up pn her bed and her bedroom shelves.  Maurice used to go mad whever we bought another one!  Shame they are not worth anything now….  We are going to give them to a charity shop, and hopefully they will be able to sell each one for a couple of quid!  Notice Wallace and Gromit on the top!

January 13th

I am not working today, working tomorrow instead, so I have just been for a walk in the fresh snow (yes it snowed again last night GRRR! – can’t wait for it to go now!)

I took a camera so that I could include it in my 52 walks challenge and here’s my favourite photo:

I love this colourful terrace just round the corner from where I live.

Scrap weekly in 2010

You must check out our new challenge  blog here.  I am thrilled to be involved!  It has been started by Dawn when we were on Shimelle’s Blogging class.

 

I have to say that I fear I might be a bit out of my depth as the other ladies are a bunch a very talented scrapbookers!  But the really nice thing is that they are from all over the world!

 

Here’s my LO for week 2 challenge – 10 things.  It is the title page for my 2009 album, which ta-da!  I have finished!!!  The big picture is me Maurice and Merlin, and the smaller pics are of Nicholas and Lucy.  The journaling lists 10 things we did last year!

January 11th

Still snowy……

The back garden at lunchtime today from Lucy’s bedroom window.

January 10th

Nicholas has gone back to Bath today.  Fingers crossed they get there OK (and DH gets back!) as the weather is still cold and icy, although I do detect a little thaw today.

 

So I have spent the morning walking the dog, making a leek and potato soup for my lunch, and reclaiming my computer space!  It feels really good – I feel I can breathe now!  So I am going to look again at all those challenges I have signed up for and make sure I can do them!

finishing things and starting things

At the beginning of each new year there is always a plethora of new challenges – and I want to do them all!  I must be strong and not be tempted to do too many!  In fact, first of all I should finish a few things off.  So this week I have made a big effort to finish:

• My A-Z album of everyday things (only U and Y to go!) I have been doing this album since Jan 2008!
• My 2009 album (just printing off some photos for a December page and adding some finishing touches to other pages).  Here’s Nicholas’s 21st birthday page.  It goes into my 2009 album, and is this weeks challenge on UKScrappers!
• 52Questions set by Emily Falconbridge (done!)

New challenges I want to be part of:

• Scrapdolly’s 52in10 See my other blog for my first journal entry.  Might scrap this as 8 x 8.  I need to look at what albums  I have to use up.  But for now I will blog the prompts.
• 52 walks – a photography challenge.  Again the photos are on my other blog.  I think I will buy an Arrowfile album for these and some divided page protectors (make it easy!)
• http://scrapweekly-2010.blogspot.com/  This is a collaborative blog that we set up after Shimelle’s blogging class.  I am so excited to be part of it!  I hope that I can keep up with the weekly challenges though.  Here’s my LO for this week, talking about new challenges and goals for the new year and new decade:
• 
• Really would like to do some of the weekly challenges on UKScrappers too!  Might try and fit these into any other projects I might do.

Looks like a year full of scrapbooking! YAY!

January 8th

It’s 17 years today since we moved into this house!  We’ve done an awful lot in that 17 years.  It really is time I made an scrapbook album about this house…..

 

It’s still cold and freezing here, Scotland had the lowest temp ever in the UK last night at –21C!  I guess it was a few degrees below freezing here.

So Lucy and I made a snowman in the back garden today.  It wasn’t really the right kind of snow – too frosty, and it wouldn’t stick together very well.

Merlin tried to help!

And here he is Mr Frosty!

January 7th

It is still mighty cold, and set to continue for at least a week!  I can’t ever remember there being this much snow here on the South Coast in my lifetime! 

This morning I had a dentist appointment so I walked into town in the snow (about 30 mins walk).  Here is the town centre car park right outside the dentists at about 11am, totally deserted!  It is usually full and you can’t get a space!

 

There was a lovely sunset tonight.  Here’s a picture taken out of the landing window looking into next doors garden:

 

January 6th

Woke up to thick snow this morning.  I live quite close to work so had to walk!  Only me and Judi in today, no meetings or contacts.

First picture is from the end of our road looking back up.

This is Grand Avenue, Worthing from the railway end.

January 5th

  Brrrr!  It is cold!!!

Back to work this week, and I decided to take my cmaera in for more photos of the building as it is before the renovation work starts.  Here’s a couple of my favourites:

This is the noticeboard that is my responsibility to keep changing the display.  This display is about where to go to get advice:

We made these snowmen from paper plates. What fun!

Ahhh!  Mrs Goggins from Postman Pat.

January 4th

Back to work and normal routine today :(

This is my pile of books to read.  I am reading Jo Brand’s autobiography at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it!

3rd January

I went to my local crop yesterday.  I do so love going there!  This time I was really organised and had 5 LOs all ready to go!  This is one of those projects I am anxious to finish – It is the A-Z of everyday things, and sits in a lovely American Crafts 3 ring binder, thus allowing different size Los all in the one album.  I actually started this project 2 years ago, my first LO is dated Jan 2008!  After yesterdays marathon scrap I only have U,X,Y, and Z to do!

I decided not to crop this photo, so you can see I do need to do a little bit of organising on my table! LOL!

2nd January 2010

A heavy frost this morning – here’s what my garden looks like!

This poor rosebud won’t open now!

Happy New Year!

We put up our new 2010 calendar this morning – and we have written in every last Sunday of the month ‘DOG WALK’!  WE are challenging ourselves to do 1 long walk per month, and thought that writing it on the calendar would make us do it!

And WOW!  Look at this!  These are my new organised Cjristmas decoration boxes – thanks to Aby over on www.simplify101.com!

We sorted out all the old wine boxes, adn we have packed away the decorations in an organised way, and labelled them!  Even I will be able to get them down out of the loft now!

 

Now we just have a huge pile of old boxes and decorations we longer love to take to the dump!