Playing "Snowdonia holiday catch up!"

We are back from our hols and I am now playing catch up on some blogging and sharing a few holiday snaps!

Saturday 30th July!

After an early start we set off on our journey to Cae Llwyd, a cottage near Llanrwst, nestled in the Conwy Valley and on the outskirts of Snowdonia National Park. The children struggle to sit for 5 minutes without bickering, so a 5 hour journey was not something we were looking forward to. In anticipation of this we decided to get some in car DVD players to keep them both occupied but instead we should have just got some travel pillows!

We made very good time so as we drove through Llanrwst we detoured across the bridge and stopped off for our first cream tea! We followed with a short walk along the river and a quick pit stop in the park for the children to let of a bit of steam!

On our approach to the cottage my heart went into overdrive several times as we encountered some very steep, narrow and winding lanes. (Please remember I am a Peckham girl originally!) Perhaps following the SATNAV route was not such a good idea! Once at the cottage we were not disappointed, in fact I was rather overwhelmed by the views of the surrounding countryside!

The inside of the cottage was lovely too!

The neighbours are rather noisy bleaters though!

Later on we opened a bottle of wine and sat in the garden watching the sun go down and the housemartins zooming around above our heads.

And to finish a very long day we lit the wood burner and chilled out feeling totally relaxed!

Slow worm news!

Breaking news when I came home from my last day of work this term! Wandered around the garden in an attmept to clear a pounding head and what did I see...a baby slow worm with Jimmy! Not sure if Jimmy should be Jenny! LOL

Feeling shattered I am going to sooth my head with a large curry, a bottle of wine, and a looooong soak in the tub. Followed by 6 weeks of pure relaxation and pampering. Could someone please tell that to Jack and Amelia!

Meet Jimmy!

Life is as hectic as ever but my work records are done, reports complete and are being handed out to the parents today! Yippee, another thing I can cross off of my ever growing "To Do List!"

Jack has his Year 8 timetable and started the lessons this week. It's scarey to think that this he has been at Grammar School for nearly a year and that this time next year he will have chosen all his exam options. Goodness, he is still only 11. EEk, how old does that make me feel!

Life is still all over the place with Amelia, you just get over one hurdle and another is throw in your face. I just keep on jumping the hurdles as best I can.

Chris and myself have been very busy in the garden. I should be like some sort of muscle woman after carrying all those railway sleepers, concrete posts, gravel boards and fence panels about. Progress is slow but hopefully you can see that there has been some improvement in the chaos we call a "garden!"

So far we re-done the rockery in front of the conservatory, taken the borders right back and made a raised, slate border on one side. Dug up all the plants in front of the playhouse to make a step/ small seating area and fenced the back of the garden and planted out a new border.

"Phase II" of the fencing has been delivered and is waiting in the garden for us to find the time, energy and motivation. WE are attempting to clear the ivy and tidy a very overgrown contorted hazel in preparation.

The garden is looking rather bare but that will take time and I will enjoy watching the garden become established as I sit a sip a glass or two of wine!

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Our new little seating area just waiting to be "prettied up" with more flowers

and some solar lights.

New fencing & border at the back of garden...looking a bit bare!

Our pile of rubbish and rubble!

.....and at the top of the page, did you meet Jimmy the Slow Worm? He has ignored the chaos and has taken up residency under a rock in the rockery, right outside our conservatory windows. Last night Jack and me were watching the slow worm slowly slithering over the slate and Jack suggested that we should name him. Jack then decided to call him Jimmy (I don't know why) and he called out to Amelia. "Amelia, the slow worm's name is Jimmy!" Amelia replied "Really, how do you know!" LOL

A Barn Dance Style Card!!!

A friend at work asked me if I could make her a Barn Dance Style card for a Bridal Shower and like a mad woman, I said yes!! EEK.

I faffed around for ages trying to find inspiration but my mojo has, I fear, gone forever. I did however manage to tidy my craft room a little bit more. (At least the huge pile of 12x12 papers have found a new place and I can see some carpet!)

Eventually I felt I hit jackpot with some of the BasicGrey paper that I won on Facebook from a Cardmaking & Papercraft competition. The fabby "woodgrain effect papers" are from the Life of the Party collection and were just what I needed to get the ball rolling with this card.

I downloaded a couple of free "Western style" fonts and made my up a little Wanted Poster type sentiment, backed with a distressed piece of BG Mortifica and a little paper doily I attacked with some inks and glimmer mist. A few rustic touches of natural rafia "lace" and a bit of gingham ribbon hopefully complemented the theme. Finished of with the fabby image from the Charming, Holly & Madison Around the World Collection.

My card was made with the following in mind:

BasicGrey Challenge - Mix and match (I also used brads from the BG Suigared collection)

Creative card Crew - Anything goes

My Time to Craft - Use a die cut

That's life!

Long time, no blog but that's life as it is I am afraid. Got a "day off" today so as well as blitzing the house and updating my work records I thought I'd take 5 minutes to pop along to the land of blog and say hello.

Jack is doing nicely at school and getting back into his cricket so that ties up all but one Sunday between now and the end of July. Thing have been pretty hit and miss with Amelia and on top of all her other "issues" she seems really congested. I am clutching at straws and have booked in an appointment with an Osteopath, all I have to lose is the £30 fee. This is a new venture so we will just have to wait and see how it goes!

work in the house seems to have taken a back seat for now and we have been making the most of the dry weather and started working in the garden. Last weekend we had 10 big reclaimed railway sleepers delivered and slowly but surely we are making progress-well if you can call it that!

We are not gardeners and time has always been an issue, so we are taking some of the borders back to hopefully ease the time and attention we will need to kepp the garden looking reasonable-well that was the plan.

The huge clump of what I think are Japanese Anenomes are in need of a new home as we are stripping right back in front of the playhouse to make a step/ border running right accross. Lots of digging! Oh joy.

In between the digging I am revamping the playhouse with a dark preserver, can't wait to get it all back "in an orderly state" again so I can sit on the patio with a jug of Pimms and enjoy!

(The chaos I call my craft room is in a state of mid-reorganisation but I MUST get up there at some time over the weekend as I have 2 cards to make and I have also promised a friend a little goody bag of embellies!)

Off to search for another few hours in my day.

x X x

Crafty kids and altered boxes!

Well yesterday saw the end of another school term, Jack came home with loads of revision plus extra bags of washing in the form of his PE kits, Amelia came home bouncing out of the taxi wearing some rabbit ears she had made and laiden with some Easter goodies. On investigating the contents of her school bag I pulled out a creation wrapped tightly in blue paper towel, Amelia looked on excitedly as I unwrapped it. Inside was a lovely little clay pot boldly decorated in red, blue and gold. Fantastic, I thought- little pots to hold "stuff" are always welcome in our house - we seem to accumulate "stuff!" AS I admired the paintwork, I happened to notice the initials scribed into the bottom of the pot.......and they weren't Amelia's! LOL We discussed whose pot it was and Amelia was really quite concerned that she had another little girls work, I put her at ease saying that she could give the pot back today as she is going the the child's birthday party this afternoon. Problem solved! I delved back into her bag pulling out the second little creation wrapped in blue paper towel and this is what I revealed!

JUST what I needed - the head of Anubis!!! Not quite as useful as useful as a pot! Hmmm! Still in search of some creativity I happened to come across some nice boxes, just calling out to be altered...can you hear them? Now exactly how I will alter them, or in fact what I will use them for is another matter entirely!

Right, all is quiet here at the moment. I am really suffering , so heady and congested and practically no voice at all. My darling Chris has taken Amelia to her party, Jack is SUPPOSED to be doing homework and I am going to have a hot, steamy shower followed by a dose of Lemsip and some Olbas Oil! Atchoooo!

Getting organised? Hmmmmm!

Today I have "a day off!" It's 10am and so far I have; Done 2 loads of washing, loaded and unloaded the dishwasher, hung one load on line. Cut a little template for an Easter basket for Amelia to decorate, found some little Spring stickers from the depths of my craft room, shredded some green paper to make some grass and then did some reading with Amelia. Taken in some furniture, telling the delivery drivers I wanted it left downstairs. I have a large unit in the hallway and two smaller ones left in the middle of the front room! As soon as they had gone I decided that I couldn't wait for Chris to get home to re-arrange our bedroom. SO, I have moved one bedside table, hoovered behind it, dusted skirting board and told myself that I was strong enough to get one of the new smaller chest of drawers up by myself. TOO heavy, took drawers out and inch by inch I managed to carry the unit up. I am just having a tea break before continuing with the next part of my plan to get de-cluttered and organised. One day, I will live in a clutter free, chaos free, organised home! LOL...I DON'T think!

x X x

Crafty Individuals Mother's Day card!

So, is my mojo back yet? Not really sure but I did have lots of fun trying out some of my new goodies yesterday. The stamp design is a bit different from my usual cutie, comfort zone and am looking forward to attempting some different inking techniques with it too.

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This image I coloured in with my Copics, then attacked with some Glimmer mists and Glossy Accents. I used another "new stamp" well, I got it before Xmas but hadn't take it out of it's packaging until yesterday....does that still count as "new?" Anyway it was the Musical background stamp from Jennie at Artistic Stamper. I am planning on making up a batch of inked, stamped heart, butterflies and flowers on some recycled chipboard to have on hand IF and when my mojo ever gets back to it's former self!

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Right, best get on. My darling hubby if cooking a lovely roast dinner and I am going to spend some time out in the conservatory, sipping a nice glass of wine and colouring some images with my Copics. (Blows the dust off the box!)

My card is going into the challenge at: Scrapbook Sisters - 29 Mother's Day card Dutch Dare - Distressing Clear it out - Buttons (I did however struggle to part with this little mother of pearl button!)

Some crafty spending to revive my mojo!!

Just a little bit of spending to hopefully get the creativity kick started. It worked, well it had to seeing as I hadn't made a Mother's Day card for my mum until yesterday afternoon. I was eagerly looking out the window for the majority of yesterday morning in hope that Mr Postie would turn up trumps.....and he did!!!!! Scrummy flowers, seam binding and twine, will need to continue sorting all my stash in preparation for some more colours! I have really enjoyed trying out my new stash, thank you Tracy of Creative Treasures! I will reveal my latest creation shortly, after my mum has seen it!!! LOL

Happy Mother's Day!

x X x

Having a crafty sort out!

I am trying to find my missing crafty mojo hidden in the depths of a really messy craft room but unfortunately its gonna get a lot worse before I can see any improvement at all. A little while ago I discovered a long lost, rather large tool box lurking at the back of the spare wardrobe so I moved it into the craft room. There it sat, for weeks and weeks, possibly even months, me having to practically step over it every time I ventured in there. The worktops are not visble from underneath the piles of storage tubs, baskets, papers and general crafty clutter. Is it any wonder at all that I am not feeling inspired to get creative. Hey ho, onwards and upwards. I have cleared the contents of the large toolbox and stored into smaller boxes which fit onto my shelves and now I have some FLOOR! whooo hoooo! I can even whizz my office chair from my little worktop by the window over to the computer without crashing into anything! This morning I am starting to sort out my stamp collection. I feel it has been rather neglected as looking back at my creations over the last few years I have mainly used digi images. Don't get me wrong, I love digital images but I feel the need to a bit of rumaging around, organising, and storing in pretty little boxes! It's been so long since I crafted, I cannot even remember what I have! So far I have uncovered my little collection of Magnolia's, spurred on by a little purchase of 2 new stamps which arrived yesterday. Here is what I have uncovered so far:

I stamped several images yesterday and have since sat down with a nice cuppa and happily cut them all out.....next step.....................COPICS!!!!!!!

Those naughty knitting needle fairies!!!

My darling mum has been very busy with her knitting needles and is trying out a few new creations which really inspired me...yes, shock horror...ME feeling a little creative again. Thought I'd better act upon it quickly before it vanishes again BUT there is always a hurdle to jump isn't there.

There I was with a huge bag of scrummy wools at my feet, a stash of cute little projects to make and do you think I could find ANY knitting needles. Those naughty knitting needle fairies have come along and stolen ALL my needles while my creativity was AWOL!

Never mind, yesterday I took a very brief detour to my mum and managed to borrow a vey old pair of needles that we believe originally belonged to my Big Nan (Great Grandmother!) It was rather nice just sitting down and knitting just for the fun of it and even nicer knowing that my darling Big Nan had once been sitting down knitting away with those needles.

Right waffle over, I have given you a little sneek peak at what my mum has been creating and watch this space as we progress with a little more creativity. (Fingers crossed life doesn't get in the way again!)

x X x

A Magnolia for mum!

Today is my darling mum's birthday so what better reason did I need to TRY to get creative. I had a new pad of papers from The Paper Cellar that I have never even used so after finding what I needed in the chaos I used to call my craft room, I set to work.

I took inspiration from the sketch challenge over at Just Magnolia and although I had a few near disasters with a rather old little pot of liquid pearls I really enjoyed my crafty time.

I really, really MUST tidy my little room so that I can actually open the door fully, see a bit more carpet and desktop and use what little ctraft time I have a bit more efficiently!

Happy Birthday Mum!

x X x

Not exactly crafty but.....

...at least we have had some form of creativity in the Dingle house today. A year or two (???) after having our kitchen fitted we decided that a few wall cupboards would come in handy. I wanted to free up a few of the base cupboards for things like Jack's homework books that are constantly being scattered around the house and in danger of Amelia using them for colouring books.
I am going to shuffle around and organise over the next few weeks but in general I am very pleased with the results. We have also at long last got the back panel of the breakfast bar fitted! Whoo hooo.....onwards and upwards.

I have tidied all the mess that was created washed all the new cupboards and will shortly celebrate the progress with a nice glass of something.

They are a few things I am dissappointed in however;

* Can't get glass shelves for the glazed cupboards instore as promised and will possibly now have to wait weeks until I can organise the glasses.

* Still waiting for Chris to fit and connect the lighting.

* Have you noticed another flaw? I NEED more wine!!!!!!!