More garden fun..!

As some of you will know, I have tried my hardest to become a 'gardener'. This does not come naturally to me! I kill most house plants just by looking at them! BUT, so far the garden is actually blooming! I am very proud! :o) The front of our house had a pathetic little strip of grass which was useless, and I have wanted to dig it up for years, but never got round to doing it, until now! I unfortunately forgot to take a before photo, but i'm sure you can image from my description what it looked like! Rather than grass it was a mass of 3ft high weeds most of the time, which seemed to come back and multiply no matter what I did to them! SO, this is what Mark and I spent a whole day doing during this nice summer weather we currently have here in the UK (although it now seems to have gone again!)

We had some beautiful lavendar plants at the end by the footpath which the bumble bees and butterflies loved, but I think I got a bit carried away with the pruning last year and one of them died, so this one looked a bit lonely by itself.  I did think about rescuing it....

 

..but I didn't like them all that much as the smell of lavender isn't my favourite scent, unfortunately!  I also couldn't get the thing out of the ground for almost 2 hours, and ended up having to hack it to death thanks to the roots having grown into the pavement and concrete!  I had a work out, I can tell you!

I decided to trim it down in the end, and this is what I got out!  Quite an achievement that required a lot of muscle!

I will be putting some nice pots which my grandmother has bought us for our first wedding anniversary on the slate chippings, so hopefully that will look nice and I will post a picture once i've done it for you to see!

 

We have also been busy in the back garden again!!

Just a reminder of what it did look like, in case you have forgotten..

It now looks like this...

As you can see, the decking now looks rather shabby! We only painted it 2 years ago, and the paints supposed to last 5 years, but nevermind!  We decided to sand it all down on Friday and clean it up, and then oil it! 

My gorgeous hubby hard a work!  I had to take over in the end as he had to go and do some work.  I think he was grateful to get out of it! hehe

This is a much better look, don't you think!?  I've always hated that dark brown paint! :o)  This is just after I had finished sanding it all down.  We then had to get some decking cleaner and scrub it like mad and then pressure wash it all off which took forever and the garden was a mass of bubbles!

Me, hard at work with the pressure washer!  It was fun at first, then after the first block I was about ready to give up!  It wasn't too much fun watching the gigantic spiders come out from underneath it, as i'm sure they wondered what on earth was going on.  I am not a spider fan, they freak me out compleatly!  I am ashamed to admit that I did blast them with the washer.......and they did go for a small flight!

So, all that is left to do is oil it now!  I hope the rain goes away soon! We have a family BBQ in a fortnight and we are hoping the garden will be 100% finished by then!

Fingers crossed, anyway! :o)

Keep Calm Notebook

I decided to have a mess around with some notebooks I had lying around and came up with this design for my friend Heather who is a teacher! She's a very pink person too, so I hope she will like this and it will be of use to her in the classroom!  I thought it was rather on trend! :o)

Without the protector over so you can see the bling!

With protector cover, but you can just about see the bling!

Recipe:

Notebook

Ribbon

Hotfix Crystals - pink and clear

Keep Calm poster from Google Images

Yellow Card

 

As I have a Craft Robo, I have created a template especially for these notebooks so I don't have to holepunch each individual hole for the spiral edge.  So much easier! I like to replace the front page that the notebook comes with and use my own pretty card, as it's usually paper that it comes with, so wouldn't last very long.

I have fixed some hotfix crystals to the beginning letter of each word which took quite a long time!  But I think it was worth it for a subtle bit of sparkle.

Exciting news!

I recently applied for a DT position over at the Squiggle Stamps Blog and I am SO pleased to announce that I got one of the positions! Major squeeeeeeeee!

I can't wait to join the team and I hope all my blog followers will hop over and take a look at Squiggle Stamps Blog and take part in the challenges from time to time!  There is also a Squiggle Stamps Shop  which carries a unique range of cute and whimsical stamps designed by a talented team of illustrators available as Digital Stamps so why not pop over and pick a few you like to join in the next challange?  Everyone is welcome to join in the challenges...no rules except to have FUN!  If you do use one of Squiggle Stamps images, you have double the chance of winning - please do 2 link entries (one to your blog and another to the actual post).

I'd like to say a big thanks to the Squiggle Stamps team for picking me, I am so grateful.  I know this is really going to be a good thing for me, and will get me back into the swing of crafting which I desperately want to do! :o)

Also a big congratulations to the other 2 girls who also got a positions!

To celebrate I will be putting together some BLOG CANDY in the next day or so, so please pop buy during the week and enter!

Hope you all had a lovely sunny weekend and got the BBQ's out FINALLY!! UK summer is here?? Well, maybe I won't get my hopes up too much yet! ;o)

First time with Sunflower plunger and icing..!

I made this cake for my husband Mark's grandmother who was celebrating her 94th Birthday a few months ago now and haven't gotten around to posting about it until now!
I have got into cake decorating after going on a cupcake decorating course just before christmas with a neighbour and we had a blast! So off I went to Hobbycraft and bought a load of cake making tools to play with. This is the result I got when using the sunflower icing plunger!

I actually dyed the icing myself too, so I could get the right colours!  It was messy fun!
I layered the sunflowers up and curled the edge of the petals, as well as painting on some dye to make them look more life-like!  I had a few little misshaps when curling the petals, so thank goodness for icing glue! haha

I let the sunflowers dry before putting them on the giant cupcake as they just flop otherwise....tried and tested!

I used my craft robo to cut out a case to put around the edge too.

Marks grandmother was thrilled with the cake which apparently tasted great too.  It was a lemon cake filled with lemon fromage frais.

I was pretty pleased with how it turned out!  It was horrible cutting it, that's for sure! All that effort and then its gone! But it's worth it!

I love a bit of sparkle!

I was stalking some of my craft mad Facebook friends yesterday and saw that one of them had got some new digi images to play with that really caught my eye! So I asked her who these digis were by and an hour later i'd gone and spent a small fortune on a few!!!
The digis I am talking about are designed by a lady called Krista Smith and she has a wonderful shop called Saturated Canary where you can buy some great digi's, as well as a Blog which is a very interesting read and ALSO a Challenge Blog! I have decided to do this weeks Challenge which is called Bling It Out!

Here is my entry for Challenge #21....

Recipe

Saturated Canary Freebie Stamp - Fancy

ProMarkers - Baby Pink, Pale Pink, Ice Grey, Walnit, Cocoa, Forest Green & Yellow

Sakura - White Gelly Roll Medium #50

Adhesive White Pearls & Clear Crystals

Deco Pen - Just Glitter - Silver

Paper - NitWit Cotton Candy Kisses, glitter and Mirror Card

Martha Stewart Lace Punch

3/8" Mini Pom White Ribbon

White Sheer Ribbon

Pink Rose

I would also like to add my card to the following challenge blogs who I have recently found and like the sound of! -

Hanna and Friends Challenge Blog -  Pink

Creative Inspirations - Pink, Pearls and Glitter

Cutie Pie Challenge Blog

Thanks for popping over! :o)

A few Lighthouse cards for the men..

I have been a busy bee today!! I found this Kanban Lighthouse Stamp Set that I bought a few months ago, and never got round to using them!!

I really enjoyed making these cards, even though they are quite similar!  Great cards for men, me thinks!  Don't often create mens cards as I don't find them as fun, but this was different, which makes a nice change!

 Recipe...

Papers - Nitwit Collection - Land Ho Collection

Sizzix Swirls & Dots Die

Stamps - Kanban Lighthouse Stamp Collection (Stamp 05)

Promarkers - Red, Ice Grey 1, Ice Grey 3, Sandstone, Primrose,

Vanilla, Buttercup, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Cool Aqua,

 Duck Egg, Arctic Blue, Azure, Pine, Sunflower.

The image reminded me of where my husband proposed to me back in 2010, at Beachy Head, Eastbourne.  I think that's probably why it attracted me! :o)

Belle Toute Lighthouse, Beachy Head, Eastbourne, E. Sussex

For those of you who are interested, Beachy Head is a chalk headland, in Southern England close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m (530 ft) above sea level. The peak allows views of the south east coast from Dungeness to the east, to Selsey Bill in the west.  If you ever get the chance to go, you won't be dissapointed with the view, especially if its a brilliant day like the one in this picture!

Adding a bit of BLING to Glass Nail Files..

I have been using my Kandi Corp Hotfix Rhinestone Applicator recently and decided to decorate a few gifts for people who's birthdays are coming up!!

I found these glass nail files in the supermarket a few weeks back and they looked like they had design potential!
I have tried out these 3 design ideas to start with but I think I will give letters a whirl when I pop out and buy some more next week!  What do you think?

I am pleased with the end result, considering it was my practice run! :o)

I hope you like them!

My Handmade Wedding Stationary...!

Hi everyone!
I CAN'T BELIEVE I NEVER POSTED MY WEDDING STATIONARY ON HERE!

I was, and still am extremly proud of what I made for my wedding, and I even had it printed in Creative Cardmaking Magazine in the Letters section!

Creative Cardmaking Magazine - Issue 41

So, here is all the wedding stationary, favours and decorations I made for my wedding. I hope you like them and would love to hear your comments!

Chocolate Box Favour	X2 Readings
Invite, Save the Date, Place Name	Table Plan
Table Names	Order of Day
Candle Favour	Place Names
Menus	Kids Chocolate Lollies
Post Box Lid made of shells	Post Box
Post Box Front	Wish Tree with shell shape wishes
Wish Tree Basket	Wish Tree Poem
Aisle Chair Decoration

Hope you enjoyed having a look!

I'm Back......!

Hi everyone,

Oh dear!!! Looks like I failed getting back into blogging!  Looking at the post below, its been almost a year!  Oops!


I've had a bit of a nightmare trying to get used to this new blogger which is linked in with my Google+ account!  I was struggling with the previous 'new' version, which is partly why I gave up in the end with posting!  I have almost got it to how I want it - it will just have to do for now.

So, what have I been up to since last October I hear you ask? (If anyone still bothers to look at my blog, I don't blame you if you don't!)
The answer to this question is quite long! I think i'll just start with 2012!
My husband Mark and I have done a lot of jet setting recently, due to a business trip and our 1st Wedding Anniversary!  I can't believe how quickly the year has gone since our wedding last May.

Our first trip abroad was to Allen, Texas.  It's basically just outside Dallas and if i'm honest, just as boring.  But I managed to do a few shopping trips, so can't complain!  This was for Marks business trip.  We decided as we were not too far from Georgia that we would pay a visit to see my friends once Mark has finished his work.  So after a week in Allen we got on another plane to Atlanta!  Having not been to Atlanta before and not seeing my friend since my wedding, I was rather excited to be there to say the least...!  Georgia is beautiful, lovely and green and everything is layed out so neatly but doesn't all look the same in most places!

My friends in Atlanta, GA - April 2012

 We had a lovely long weekend with our friends and I was very lucky to be with Jen when she chose her wedding dress! The happy couple are getting married in a few months time and i'm honoured to be their Bridesmaid!  I also got to pick my dress too, which was great.  Counting down the day's until their special day!

Jupiter, FL - April 2012

After our long weekend in Atlanta, we then drove all the way down to South Florida to see some friends!   I think the drive was about 8 hours in total after a few stops along the way down the Turnpike!  I even had a go at driving, which I was really proud of!  It was very odd being on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road all at once, but it's good to force yourself to do these things in life, otherwise you miss out!

Universal Studios, Orlando, FL - May 2012

 We then drove back up Florida to Orlando where we paid Harry Potter World a visit at Universal Studios!  I was SO excited!! It was done so well.  When we went a few years ago, it was supposed to have opened but it got delayed by a week so we just missed it.  I'm so glad we got to go back again.  The ride was really good, but I think next time i'll take some motion sickness tablets!! 


We then drove back up to Georgia again and spent another weekend with our friends and then flew back home. :o(  It was a very busy 2 weeks!!

Our 1st Wedding Anniversary - Dominican Republic - May 2012

Our Wedding Day - 28th May 2011

Our next trip was for out first wedding anniversary!  We decided to book a last minute deal so we could go somewhere really nice at an affordable price!! We ended up booking a 2 week holiday to Costa Dorada, Dominican Republic in the Carribean.  We had a wonderful time and it was brilliant weather for the whole 2 weeks.  I even have my tan still, despite this horrible english weather!!

Once we got back we decided to knuckle down and get on with finishing the garden.  As you will see from my previous post it was coming together quite nicely, but it was a lot of hard work and rather expencive!!

Our Garden - July 2012

I have now pretty much finished the garden and we are both really pleased with the end result, especially now summer is here and I could make up my pots and hanging baskets!  They are gradually blooming, but it's taking a bit longer as the sun won't come out for long!  All I need now is a weeks worth of hot weather so I can sand down and re-paint the decking and then I will be happy! 

Anyway, enough of my waffling about life!

Hope you're all well and look forward to speaking with you all again soon, hopefully!