Tagged!

Beautifullily has tagged me so here goes!

10 years ago:

• Was looking forward to my 40th birthday party
  
• Was living in my flat 
  
• Was working at the same school and was recovering from a visit from Ofsted
  
• Can't really remember any more specifics!! 
  

5 things in today's 'to do list'

1. Meet with choir to practice songs for special event in town on Thursday - more details on Friday
   
2. Sort out photos for the children’s year books - I've have loads and need to choose the best 20 for each child for their book
   
3. Tidy my (s)craproom desk- I bought some letter trays from Ikea yesterday in an effort to try to be tidy!
4. Book bouncy castle for my party - I'm looking at one with a roof and a slide
   
5. Write Tuesday’s blog entry - I use the schedule thingy to upload automatically
   

5 snacks I enjoy: 

1. Vegetable crisps
   
2. Kettle chips
   
3. G&B almond chocolate
   
4. Onken peach and wholegrain yogurt
   
5. B&J icecream (especially Phish Food)

(Just don't tell my Slimming World consultant!!!)

5 things I would do if I was a millionaire:


1. Buy my mum a house
   
2. Extend my own house into garden and up into the loft
   
3. Give up working full time
   
4. Buy gifts for my sister, nephews and friends
   
5. Go on a world cruise.
   

5 places I have lived:


1. Stroud in Hants as child
   
2. Portsmouth x 3 as a student
   
3. Surbiton x 6 for the past 29 years
   

I pass this tag on to Charlol. Looking around Blogland it appears that most of you have already been tagged with this so I offer this tag to anyone who would like to take it up - it's all yours!

Metal rules!

For years I have been using a selection of plastic rulers for my crafting. After a number of accidents with my craft knife, they have become very scratched and damaged with lumps cut out of them. 

I was shopping in Wilkinsons on Saturday and I found a steel ruler for a ridiculous price!

So now I am the proud owner of a lovely, sturdy. cut proof ruler and am enjoying cutting straight lines again! Isn't it amazing how some so simple can make all the difference!

More sneakies!

Only one week to go before I post my CJ, so here are a few more sneaky peeks!! Only 7 more sleeps until it goes! Yippee!!

Puppet on a string

Hooray! I managed to bring the right camera home this evening so I can now show you the pictures of the puppets the children made. The theme was Theseus and the Minotaur and the children were set the task of making Theseus, the Minotaur and Princess Ariadne. They made paper tubes for the limbs and either tubes or boxes for the bodies. The heads were polystyrene balls. 

The scene in the classroom as the paint was drying was rather macabre!

The children were thrilled with the finished results.

Here we have the brave Theseus...

...the beastly Minotaur...

...and the beautiful Ariadne.

It's taken two days, but their efforts were rewarded with some fantastic results.

Puppet pictures? Oh no there aren't!!

This post was supposed to be about the puppets the kids made at school. I took loads of pictures and came home on Thursday evening to download them! Guess what? I'd brought home the wrong camera! So when I get home from school on Friday there will be some pictures for you to see!! Whoops!!!

Grabbed by the goblins!

To make any sense of this post's title you need to take a look at this post by Emma first!

I'm sad to say that I did not heed the warning and found myself hurtling towards the Poppicrafts site!! Well, what bliss!!! I found loads of lovely brads and clips, which I just had to buy! I've got Mickey Mouse shaped brads (ready for my trip to Disney Resort Paris in August), monochrome print rounds brads (because I love back and white) , gold heart and circle shaped clips (because they looked lovely),  swirl and star eyelet charms (just because!) and a little surprise of some summery bits and bobs. What amazed me was that it cost less than a tenner including the postage! Woohoo!!

(This photo only shows some of each items - I've got 20 of everything!)

Pink Petticoat Party

As I'm celebrating a big birthday in August I thought I'd really better send out the invites to my birthday bash! I've hired my school and a having a bbq. I did the same for my 40th and it was great success. 

I needed to be able to mass produce an invite quickly so I downloaded the Pink Petticoat Doodleicious collection and off I went! I had some square pearlised cards from QVC and after a bit of a false start where I couldn't get the Mac to do borderless printing, I found the right drop down menu and printed a lilac background. Then the jolly old CraftRobo came into play. I'd printed the multi coloured flowers pattern onto glossy photo paper and also the plain purple background, so all I needed to do was cut a small 50 on the patterned and a larger on on the plain and stick them together. It took slightly longer than I'd hoped as the cutting mat lost it's stick so I had to go and buy some repositionable spray mount before I could finish.

I printed the details straight onto the card already so all I had to do was pop them in the pre-addressed envelopes and voila!!

I'm just sorry that you won't be getting one in the post!!

Child at heart!

At 16, and about to leave school to start his apprenticeship, my big nephew considers himself quite grown up at times. However, you can still catch him having a daft moment!
This was this months Scrapagogo kit again, with the stripey paper and the green strip from last months kit. All I needed to add were the little bronze metal hearts. Only now am I beginning to run out of the chipboard alphas and rub ons. There's just sooooooooo much stash in the kit. Love it!

Benjamin's Bling

Big nephew decided that he wanted a chain for his confirmation present. The first thought was a silver one. Then he changed his mind and decided he wanted gold. My sister said hat we could pay what we wanted towards the chain but didn't tell us how much it cost. We finally got it out of her that his chain cost 700 Swiss Francs - about £350! He is under strict instructions not to lose it!

Used this month's Scrapagogo kit again. The colours of the strips and he navy card went perfectly with his dark suit. The chipboard alphas go on and on! The strip at the bottom shows the opening and trying on of the chain.

Family feast!

Having received the gorgeous Gogo Kit for this month, I decided that it was perfect for scrapping some more of my Swiss photos. Lots of blue based cardstock, family themed rub ons and brilliant chipboard alphas from Heidi Grace.

While I was blog hopping a couple of days ago I saw these by Donna (Yorkshire Tea Jenny). I was struck by the band of patterned paper across the centre with the photos clustered around that, leaving space for the titles in a band at the top and bottom. I did warn her I would scraplift and so here is mine!

This is the meal on confirmation day at a restaurant called the Drei Konige (The Three Kings) down by Lake Zurich.

CJ sneak peek!

It's done! I've finished my first CJ and am ready to post it, but have to wait for two more weeks! I've really loved doing it, and I've been really disciplined, doing a little bit at a time. Usually Itend to do things in one big blitz, so this has been a bit of a novelty. I can be really organised (not that you'd know it if you saw my scraproom / house / classroom!)  and so planned all the elements of the cover, introduction, sign in and my own pages and made a list. I've been ticking them off one by one and now the list is done!

I don't want to spoil the surprise for my fellow CJers, but here are a few mini peeps at what I've been up to!

Pretty pictures - Part two!

Here are the rest of the pictures which wouldn't upload last night! We are very fortunate to have fantastic grounds which the children can enjoy.

And a not so pretty picture!

Pretty pictures

On Thursday evenings at the moment I'm running an IT course for the TAs at school. For the past couple of weeks we've been doing stuff with Word. This week it was digital cameras. I sent them out and about in the playground to see what they could find to photograph.

We had loads of daft shots of people, but alongside those were some which really showed how beautiful our school grounds are. So today here are a few photos taken by others. Thanks girls!

(Ahh, sight technical hitch! Blogger wouldn't let me upload all of the photos when I wrote this! Will try again later!!)

It's raining parcels!

I arrived home last night to find four parcels in my porch.

The first was some ink for my printer. I am a bit cross about this one because I've got to fiddle about taking chips out of old cartridges. I had just thought they would be compatible with my printer and work straight away! (my own fault, I ordered in a hurry and didn't read the blurb.)

The second was some red shiny book rings! After my disastrous shopping trip on Sunday, I hit the internet and found Scrapajack who had lots of pretty colours!! They are supposed to be for my CJ, but as I've now completed most of it working around the wired spine, I think the rings may look odd. I'm going to wait until next year when I get it back, and if it is very fat then I'll put the book rings on - if I haven't used them for something else! (And many thanks to the lovely Donna a.k.a. Yorkshire Tea Jenny, whose offer to send me book rings arrived just after I'd put in my order!)

Parcel three was my gorgeous June Scrapagogo kit - full of luscious yumminess!
The final box contained these! 18 6x6 albums, each containing 10 page protectors!

Every book has a different cover. I think I'm going to use them after my birthday and complete one a month as a celebration of my new decade! I'll even have a few left for special occasions and gifts.

A-maze-ing Brownies

Last night we had a great time with the girls making maze books. They spent the whole evening painstakingly making their books and decorating them. We'd taken photos of them a couple of weeks ago so they had lots to put in them.I can't show you what they did with the photos but here are some of their decorated pages. 

Confirmation with Cleo Crafts

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for this months Cleo Crafts Kit. It arrived almost as soon as I'd ordered it, but I've been hanging on to it until I could start to scrap big nephew's Confirmation.
So ta da! Here is the first of the pages of my trip to Switzerland! Everything comes from the kit. I was a little reluctant to use a whole sheet of the green 12 x 12 paper for the titles on my Robo, but I have the consolation of having a gorgeous pink sheet left for me to work with. (Now, if only I hadn't run out of printer ink I would have made it by now, but you'll have to wait a few days!)

My mum is second on the left and my sister is on the far right. I'm hiding at the back as I hate having my photo taken! 

Craft Central - Not!!

Following a conversation on UKS with my fellow CJers, I discovered that you could get coloured bookrings!! Woohoo! I've only just found out what book rings are and now they're coloured!! Well, having decided that I MUST have coloured book rings, I asked the girls where to get them and they came up with Craft Central. A quick Google and I'd found a store in the garden centre at Syon Park (about 30 mins away). I persuaded a friend that this was a matter of life and death and so away we went. Great journey, no traffic, lunch on the garden centre and then off to do craft shopping. Well, not quite - there is no longer a Craft Central at Syon Park!! All the signs were there but no shop!! So we went for a walk around the garden of Syon House instead and I took some photos, so here are a few. (Funny how now that I'm blogging my camera goes everywhere with me!)

Syon House

The conservatory - full of plants and sound equipment! There must have been an event of some sort happening later!

This was the lake I walked round!

We saw this heron with something in it's mouth. Whatever it was, was still wriggling!! It looked eel like! Heron then flew off across the lake and still had the wriggling thing in it's mouth when it got to the other side!! Me - I'd rather have an ice-cream - and I did!!!

'Fair' trade

Yesterday was our school fair and my class had a stall selling cards. This year we took a break from some of the craft items we usually make and used the Crafty Bitz Everyday Card Kits to create our masterpieces. The kits include the cards, die cut shapes and sparkly stuff! A week of lunchtimes and we had 75 cards to sell. I added a few of my own cards and Charlol sent along some of hers too. We were selling at £1 each or 6 for £5 and made £60. We usually aim our products at children, but were pleased to make this amount from the adult buyers. Now we just need to decide what to spend it on!

Baby face

Am not quite ready to unveil the cover of my CJ, so I'm delving back in time for an LO of big nephew as a baby. You've seen the grumpy face of a teenager, so here is his cute baby face - well with a slight hint of tantrum brewing!

Richterswil - a town in Switzerland!

Got home late from school last night, so didn't have any time for crafting, and the picture I took of the cards some of my children have made for the summer fair are on the camera, which is on my desk in my classroom!!

So here are a few more photos of my Swiss weekend. This is the church where the service was held.

Lake Zurich - taken from just up the road from my sister's house. The spire is the church we were at.
Lunch! A tropical chicken pizza without the pineapple - that'll be a chicken pizza then!
One 16 year old who has had enough of being photographed in a jacket and tie!!