Getting there slowly!

I am slowly making my way through the photos, but I've had other deadlines such as wedding party invitations that I needed to design, print and get ready for my brother which took priority.

The Guy is heading over tonight as well, and other such tasks to do (my poor housework has seriously suffered!) so I thank everyone for their patience... You must remember I was not paid to do the photos for Jax Dance, nor was I thanked or mentioned at the show. I took 2 Saturdays of my own freetime to do this favour, and the fact I have to go through 774 photos to pick out the best ones, crop them and proof them as well will take me a fair time! I have currently spent (not including the 5 hours from my time of the rehearsal day and 8 and a half hours spent on the day of the show) 6 hours going through the photos and I have done about 100 or so of them.

Jolly good time

A big hello to all those people from the show last night :) Please leave your messages on this post here: At the end of the entry you will see a link "Add comment", so please leave your e-mail address and I will get back to you ASAP.

I have a whopping 776 images to go through so I hope everyone bears with me and it was also lucky that I stashed my spare battery in my pocket. I've never used up a battery so fast! Part way through the second half pressing the button wasn't doing anything and I checked the display to see the battery picture flashing at me.

Anyway, getting ahead of myself lol, we left Gloucestershire at 2.40 and once we arrived in Broham the first thing we had to do was go to the pub! We wandered down there, and it was a gorgeous day so the gang sat in the gardens to eat.


I hung out backstage with the gang for a short while, and managed to get this shot of Claire... I like to think of as a happy accident. There is a red light on backstage and Claire just jokingly posed as I caught her lol:


Matt outside practising:


and the gang on stage, just for an idea of how the photos came out:

Wii Fit

Moo stickers shipped. Hope they arrive tomorrow!!

Meanwhile my Wii Fit arrived today! That was a nice shock I must admit and my dad had come around to cut my grass and found it stashed in my green wheelie bin lol. I jumped on it and was actually really dreading my results!



It was nice and easy to set up, and thankfully I'm in the "ideal" section lol. Now when I started my wii fit age was 37!! I did bits and pieces for just 20 minutes... and by that time I had lost 1lb (can you believe!?) and my wii fit age had become 27. I love it. I can see me doing this everyday. It's like having your own personal trainer in your living room :)

Super duper!

Lol, I got flagged down on Eastern Avenue by a young guy in the back of his parents car asking if he could ring me. I looked at him blankly before he added: "About your tyres". Now, me being me starting freaking out internally thinking: "What's wrong with my tyres!?" and then a quick glance in my rear view mirror and I remembered that there was a big "For Sale" sign for my brothers Ford wheels that I had put up in the back lol. So I got home and phoned my dad who is sorting out the sale and let him know someone was going to be calling.

I feel so super cool now lol, I hoped someone would notice the sign in the back of my car. It's been in there for weeks though, I had kinda forgot about it!

I finally got around to doing my washing up, and if I get the ironing board out and finally get some ironing done after... ooo, I dunno the last month and a half to 2 months of not doing it, I would feel super duper productive!

I also had an e-mail to say my Wii Fit has been shipped today and I should have it Monday (hurrah!), my Moo Minicard holder arrived today and my Moo stickers I ordered through the promo should be here soon too I hope. I want some pretty stickers with some of my photos I took on it

Lauren Layout

I had this gorgeous scalloped edged cardstock I splurged on during my last trip to Hobby Craft (ok 2, but one's for me lol!) and I couldn't think of any supplies that I had to go with it at the time. That's when I started looking through my digital supplies and saw the gorgeous Daydreams kit by Gina at digitaldesignessentials, I printed one of the papers for the background, another paper for the type, the letters for LAUREN from the Rawhide alpha also from Gina (the October Idea Notebook) and epoxy stickers all on one sheet of A4 card.

I put clear page pebbles on the print of the epoxy stickers as that's what they're meant to look like after all, I printed one of the heart accents on to shrink plastic and heated it, I cut out the alpha and stuck it down with foam squares to give it some depth. I also believe I picked the font "Lauren Script" for the info lol, and voila :)

I'm working tomorrow...

Photos will be taken by a Photographer. Please make sure Jax Dance has an email for your son/daughter so we can email them to you after the Show - jaxdance.co.uk

That's meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I'm off to the rehearsal for the Jax Dance show with camera in tow.

Safari

I'm back and ready to post. Bit tied up yesterday. Now for those who do not know already there's someone else, but it's still early days and we're seeing how it goes so for this purpose am I here to protect the innocent lol. He will simply referred to as "The Guy" or "TG" (like Top Gear dog LMAO!) or simply "G". I will pick one and stick to it.

So me and the guy went out to a safari park and had a good laugh. For example:


The CD in the car was basically saying about Elands that they're shy animals and you won't see them... TG says: "That's why there's one in front of my car!!" LMAO!

It was so cool to see the animals up close and personal



and get called a Japanese tourist by TG for simply taking lots of photos!






Totally got lost in the maze too. We gave up and went back out the entrance haha

More can be found at my Flickr anyway. Had SUCH a laugh at the Tapirs... one was chasing the other and biting his butt HAHAHAHA!

Scrapbooking

Now I'm magically posting this entry as I'm leaving work, but I thought I'd need to post something simply because and I wouldn't be online.

I have tons of minibooks etc that I have not shared with anyone and there's a Circle Journal I participated in, goodness - 3 years ago? I simply ADORE it. The thing that made me think of it was a listing by celestefrittata at Etsy. It's in this picture here - it's the spells and charms one. Are they not so *fantastic*? So perfectly made and aged. I was seriously drooling over them, and if the spells and charms one was listed I might just very well have bought it.

Now, I love my book (but I suppose I'm biased, as I pretty much made and decorated it) and I don't think I have ever posted it other than at UKScrappers for my "Coven of Crafties" to look at their handy work. For those not familiar with a Circle Journal - a group of people make a journal and pass it round to the next person and they do something on it and then pass it on to the next person as they receive another book. In the end you get your journal back and full of goodness. Sadly these pictures just do not do this book justice. It needs to be in your hands to fully appreciate it.

The cover:

Title page (Rules for good magic, taken from a wiccan site)

My rules page:

Part of my entry:

Entry from another member:

And another one: (LOVE this one. I love the agedness of it lol. It opens to reveal some spells when you untie the ribbon. Awesome)


It was great fun. I can't remember what the theme was exactly but I got to work on pages ranging from Wicca (which was interesting as for your pages you obviously need to do your research), aromatherapy, healing crystals and what not. I really did enjoy it and I learnt so much from doing it.

My virtual Fridge

This deserves to be shown off lol. I got an A singing karaoke yesterday on the Wii. Is it me, or is it difficult trying to read lyrics and keep your eye on the pitch meter? Anyway, I'm off to do some dancing on the dance mat now. My lounge is my personal stage ;)

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edited to add:

Toot toot! 159 combo and AA rating for dancing :)

I know it's been said!

but I soooooooooooooooooo love this LENS!

Lauren after arriving at nan's:


Lauren and her daddy - my cousin Craig.

Laughing her head off after we tried tons trying to get her to smile - my Aunty Jayne (Lauren's nan) sang "Row, row, row the boat"


Love this expression, only this was right before she cried her eyes out. I suppose enough was enough of the camera by then lol!


As Lauren was at nan's house today, I took full advantage and snapped about 56 photos of her lol. Kenzie had the camera-shoved-in-the-face treatment last week lol. She's so adorable, and you can certainly see although she's a Barnett, she has so much Base in her - like that head of red hair! Yes, it's our family trait. I sometimes wonder if the kiddies are just going to remember me as that crazy lady with the camera, and forget what I actually look like as the camera is always in the way...?

You know you're a crafter when...

... You have a pritt stick on your beside table. Reason? I sometimes journal right before I go to sleep, and the Pritt Stick is there to glue in photos lol.

I apologise for lack of bloggage. This week has been so unbelievably eventful.

More piccies!

Well knock me down! I didn't expect what I woke up to this morning at all. I was kinda drifting in and out of sleep at 8.15am (which for me is good. Even at the weekends I seem to get up EARLIER than I do in the week! Yet come weekdays I have to drag my butt out of bed. Maybe it's the alarm I dispise? Or the fact I got to go to work?)

I jumped up out of bed thinking I'd get a start on some of my projects for the class before I get the call as we're going down the pub for dinner today. It's mum's birthday today and was my parent's 27th Wedding anniversary on Friday, so no cooking at the parents house lol. I walked over to my curtain and opened it up and saw this:


Complete with neighbour's washing! Her last lot was our a month and a half. This went out on Thursday. But OMG. Snow! Now I went out and came back about 10.30pm? and it was bucketing with rain. There's no way it would have settled, so it must have snowed a ton to have settled overnight after lots of rain.



and the horses:




We were lucky with these. We walked through the field to the park and they were just standing there really, and we went to the park but got dodgy looks from the parents, which was a shame cos we wanted to go on the swings! So I snapped a pic of the play horse then we went back. A lady and her daughter were grabbing long grass to feed to the horses right at the sty we needed to jump over to get in the field to walk back, so I got these as they were next to us :) Then it rained, which I should have realised really as the dark clouds were coming our way!

I seriously can't explain how much I love this lens. I just adore the shots and it works in low light really well. As I said at my nan's house I usually get lots of blurry and dark photos which irks me so. Now with this I got gorgeous ones! But having said that, the focus is very difficult to get right at the moment. For all those good shots you see, there's another background-in-focus-and-the-subject-is-blurry shots lol. I just got to practise lots. The snow tree shot is a good example. I normally have my camera on Apeture Priority. For the tree I had to choose macro just because the branches are thin and it helped focus on them better.

It's here!

My baby arrived!



Nicely packaged in a little box. It's so cute lol! And such FANTASTIC photos! I'll put most of them under a cut ;)

SPS: Self Portrait Saturday shot:


And on to my Saturday:





(more under the cut. Click For larger)

Pieces of home

The Jinky "lighten and whisper" action I used kinda makes purple pink lol. My room is really Lilac, white and silver, honestly.

About ready to burst to share some news tomorrow :) I'm just waiting until it's in my hands until I tell!

Some funny things to share:
C @work: "Now we have faster computers, does it mean we have to work faster?"
J @work at 3pm ish: "Tell you what, work for another 2 hours and you can have 2 days off" but of course, it's the weekend ;)
Downstairs neighbour: "I've been putting my green wheelie bin out..." Am I'm the tooth fairy. There's about 6 months + worth of rain in that thing. I can't even move it.

And the fabulous felt book idea I had, goodness, I feel like such an idiot. the felt sheets are 9"x12" and I've been planning page layouts for 4.5"x6" haha. it should be 9"x6", I did it completely in half when it should be half of the longest side. What a donut. Still the 4.5"x6" pages would be kinda cute and mini book like rather than just... well... book like.