Blogmas 2019 - Part 1

So back in Dec 2017 I made my first attempt at Blogmas and despite struggling here and there I managed to do it. At the time I said never again, I had enjoyed it but it had been a little tedious and too much hard work at times. Fast forward to 2019 and here I am ready once again to give Blogmas another go although this time I will not be putting any pressure on myself to daily blog, instead I will post as and when I can or when I have something I want to share. In all honesty I had wanted to start on Dec 1st but being sick last week and having a busy weekend put an end to that. Anyway I am here now with my first post.....

Decemeber Daily

Another thing I said I wouldn't do again is a Christmas journal. I have started them so many times and apart from one year I never got past the first couple of days so they just ended up getting ripped apart and binned. As my creative mojo appears to have returned I decided to do one again this year  but make it a little simpler by doing something along the lines of a Project Life journal. For this years December Daily I am using a Simple Stories Snap album and papers that I got from a online store called Craftie Charlie. In addition I will be adding bits and pieces from my stash to decorate and embellish my pages. I also have some ideas saved on my Pinterest that I am planning to try and use within the album. The pictures below show the album and some of the pages that I have made so far, and I have to say I am actually enjoying it. As well as daily pages/photos I also have some ideas to fill the album with details of our Christmas traditions etc.

As the days and month progress I will share some more pictures of my journal both on here and over on my Insta page (there is a link to that on the right hand side of this page). I would love to know if you do any thing like this at Christmas, leave me a comment below if you do.

Christmas Planning
Usually by this time in December I am one of the smug ones who is happily announcing to everyone that we are done and all the gifts are bought, wrapped and under the tree. This year its a totally different story in that we are nowhere near done, we still have a load of gifts to buy, nothing is wrapped and we haven't bought one single Christmas card let alone written any out. Thankfully we still have a few weekends until the big day so there is time to get it all done, in fact I am hoping that we can get a big chunk of it done this coming weekend.

How's your Christmas planning and shopping going? Are you all done or are you still running about trying to get everything organized?

Jane x

August 2019 - Birthday Weekend Celebrations

Hello again and welcome back to my blog.

Last Saturday saw me celebrate my birthday oh yay, I am officially another year older! Usually Tom and I celebrate our birthdays over a weekend by spending some time together as well as with our families. However Tom was working overtime on Sunday so I took a days annual leave on Friday so we could have that extra day together.

On Friday we paid a visit to Bluewater where we did some shopping and Tom bought me some birthday gifts. As always I was a very lucky and spoilt girl, I got some super cute new Converse, a Disney Spirit Jersey that was a huge bargain, it was reduced from £50.00 to £24.99 on the tag but when we went to pay it actually came up at £14.99 (would have been totally rude not to get it at that price!). I was also bought some chocolates, some Disney & Pixar dvds for my collection and bottle of Brockmans gin. After our shopping trip we popped in to see my parents before we headed home to relax and watch some more Stranger Things. We never watched this when it first came out but have decided to give it a go as we have heard so much about it. We have now finished Season One which we both enjoyed, just need to crack on with seasons two and three now.

We didn't do much at all on my actual birthday, in fact we were rather domesticated and spent some time outside in our little garden space. Tom cut back two of our plants that had become so overgrown that they were reaching into our neighbours above windows - thankfully he had a ladder big enough to enable him to get to the top to trim them back. Our outside space isn't officially our garden but the council are happy for us to make it pretty and put in some plants and flowers etc. It took a little longer than planned to complete it all but once it was all finally done it looked so much better. After all that hard work it was time for a coffee and a birthday treat - a lovely slice of red velvet cake which is my fave!

Tom took me out for dinner on Saturday night to our most favourite steak restaurant which is called Constancia. Its a small, local independent restaurant with the most fabulous food and we always receive such a warm welcome from the owner which adds to why we continue to support it. Price wise its not the cheapest place to go hence the reason why we save it for special occasions. As always we had a fab meal and by the time we left we were fit to burst.

Tom was at work on Sunday so I had the day to myself and for the first time in ages I actually managed a good few hours in my craft room. I did a couple of 12x12 layouts and about 8 Project Life pages for our 2019 and Florida 2018 albums. The 2019 album is now pretty much up to date but there is still a very long way to go with the Florida album, there is no way its going to be finished before this years trip. I am going to have plenty of scrapping to keep me going over the coming months, just need to make sure that I dedicate some time to it on a more regular basis.

So that's another post over, as always thanks for stopping by to read. Hopefully I will be back with something else for you to read soon.

Love and hugs,

Jane

Easter 2018

Well didn't the long weekend just fly past, did we really just have four days off work instead of the usual two? Still, on the plus side this week is another short one for me as I am only at work today and tomorrow, Thursday is Toms birthday and on Friday we are heading up to Scotland to spend the weekend with our friends.

Image taken from www.veteransdayusaquotes.net

Despite the rubbish weather we had a nice Easter break although Tom was working some of it so we didn't get to spend the entire weekend together. We went to Bluewater on Friday to do some shopping, we both had some vouchers left over from Christmas to spend so we went to see what we could treat ourselves to. In the end Tom didn't get anything, he is saving his until after his birthday but I got a shirt, a t-shirt, a new laptop case, a book on photography and a few new Disney DVDs for our collection. We went for lunch in Tapas Revolution which as usual was fabulous, it was quite busy so we had to wait a while to get a table but it was so worth the wait. The food and service here are always first class and its now our fave place to go when we are craving a little taste of Spain. Our food choices consisted of :- chorizo cooked in cider, calamari with aoli, cherry tomato, olive and goats cheese salad, tortilla, garlic & tomato bread and patatas bravas. For dessert we shared a portion of churros with chocolate. I think the bill for all of this with drinks came to about £48.00 including a 10% service charge.

While we were at Bluewater and out of curiosity we decided to pop into Virgin Holidays to price up a package trip to Florida for next year. I am not quite sure how much we expected it to be but the total cost of doing it as a package was way more than we thought it would be, especially given that you don't actually know what villa you will be staying in. I think that if we do return we will be going DIY again, we have a couple of villas on our wish list so we need to check their availability and costs and then make THE decision!! Watch this space......

Saturday was a bit of a nothing day really as Tom worked overtime on Saturday night. We just did a quick Tesco run in the morning and I cooked us a late lunch before himself headed to work and I curled up on the sofa with Daisy and my iPad. Of course I had a couple of G&T's too, would have been rude not to!!

While Tom slept off his night shift on Sunday morning I pottered around, did a few chores and watched Aladdin before we headed over to his sisters house for a family Easter lunch. We had a lovely afternoon, lunch was a delicious roast followed by meringue's with fruit and cream and then a cheeseboard. The highlight of the afternoon was seeing our gorgeous great nephew who is now 15 months old. We don't see him as often as we should/would like but I definitely want to change this and start to see more of him as he grows up. Once we were home we spent a couple of hours catching up on vlog watching before we headed to bed. Oh I should also add that the Easter bunny came and paid me a visit, I got a lovely Lindor egg and a Easter Stitch!

Tom was at work all day on Easter Monday and was up and out by 6am! I managed a bit of a lie in then got up and headed to my craft room to have a play. I spent an hour or so catching up with Project Life and then I decided it was time to re-arrange some of my scrapbook albums. Now this was no small job as I have loads of albums, some of what cover special events like holidays etc and up until yesterday the rest were kind of sporadically split. I had one that was just layouts of us, one of friends, another of London etc, etc. The albums that are for big holidays like Vegas/Disney will stay as they are but all the other albums were emptied and the layouts are now 'filed' by year. It was a bit of a mammoth task and it ended up taking me about 5+ hours to complete but I am so happy with how my albums are, plus going forward it will make scrapping and looking back on events a whole lot easier. All I need to do now is make tags for the albums so I can see at a glance what's in each one. Tom got home about 7pm and we spent the evening having some snacks, chatting and watching a few more vlogs, it was the perfect way to spend the last few hours of the long Easter weekend.

As always thanks for stopping by to read, if you like my blog please feel free to leave me a comment to let me know you have been here. If you have a blog of your own leave a link and I will pop by to check it out.

Love and hugs, Jane xx

Project Life 2018

If you are a long time follower of mine you will know that I have attempted and completed Project Life a couple of times in the past. However its not something that I have had a go at in quite some time, the last time I actually completed a full year was in 2014. I did start it again in 2015 but I never actually got round to finishing it, I think I made it to about August before I lost my way and gave up. Despite having a ton of PL cards I really haven't looked at it since then, although I did sort through my cards at one point last year to gift them to a fellow crafter who was just starting out.

As 2017 drew to a close I started thinking about getting back to scrapping and crafting as I really didn't do much at all last year. I am so behind where scrapbooking events such as holidays and birthdays are concerned and to be honest I am a little daunted as to where to start as I know I need to go back at least a year and a half to even begin to catch up. The only exception to this is our holiday to LA and Vegas last year which gave me a bit of renewed enthusiasm to scrap again, however I still have a long way to go before I can say its complete. When I first started the album I felt a little out of my depth mostly due to having lots and lots of pictures that I wanted to include so I decided to do some of the pages Project Life style as it meant I could add plenty of images and as well as being able to add journaling. This was definitely the kick start that my motivation needed and I now feel ready to attempt to get my albums up to date. I have been looking on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook and now have plenty of inspiration to create pages and pages of proper 12x12 layouts.

In addition to getting back to scrapping and with a new year upon us I decided that I would once again do Project Life. Its such a quick and simple way of keeping up to date with all the moments and memories that wouldn't necessarily warrant a individual scrapbook page. I feeling really motivated and am planning to do it weekly although when there isn't so much to record I will just combine the weeks. I am really excited to be doing this again, its my challenge to myself to keep it up to date and complete it. Like a true crafter I have plenty of PL stash, however I may just need to add some of the newer collections to my supplies.......ssshhhh don't tell anyone but the deed is already done and a new kit is currently on order. There are loads of kits available and plenty of UK suppliers, my faves are Hey Little Magpie and Papermaze.

So here are the first two pages of 2018, the next two are prepped and ready to have journaling and images added to the pockets.

Are you planning on doing anything creative this year, or are you planning on recording your memories in a special way? Leave me a comment and let me know, if you have a blog of your own leave me a link and I will pop over and take a look.

Thanks for stopping by, love and hugs as always.

Jane xx

Project Life Updated

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What a wet and miserable day today has been, so glad we didn't have any plans to go anywhere or do anything. Instead I paid a quick visit to the local Farmers Market in Bermondsey Square to stock up on veggies. I came home and made a pot of curried parsnip soup to be used for lunches in the week and a three cheese and tomato tart which we had for lunch today.

After a quick bit of housework I headed to my room to play while Tom took control of the tv!! I pretty much lost track of my Project Life around mid June last year and I wasn't going to bother going back to update it as I thought it would be more trouble than it was worth but a friend suggested doing monthly pages rather than doing weekly ones. So with the aid of my fully up to date Erin Condren Life Planner I set about doing some pages. I managed to finish off June and then I did 3 more double pages, so that's July, Aug and Sept now complete. I also started to lay out the cards for my Oct/Vegas page which I think will probably cover 4 sides so I can include a fair bit of journaling and photos. Below are some pics of the completes pages.......let me know what you think, and how you tackle Project Life if you are doing it.

Today is also a special day for our family, it's the anniversary of the day my cousin lost her beautiful daughter. It's now five years since the Angels came for our girl but not a day goes past without her being thought of. So tonight we shall raise our glases to the brightest star in the sky, love you Hayley xx

Thanks for stopping by and if you like what you see please leave me a comment and feel free to share my blog with any fellow bloggers you think might like it.

Love and hugs as always, Jane xx

Layouts and Project Life

Evening all....

Can you believe we are now in September?? I for one am rather sad that Summer is over and that the cold, long, dark nights are on the way, however on the plus side it does mean more staying at home which in turn means more time to craft!! Got to love a cold wet Sunday spent at home in the craft room!!

Tonight I am sharing with you a layout I completed using papers from a Kaiserkraft collection pack, for the life of me I cant exactly remember the name. The pictures are of my niece Scarlett with her cousins Lewis and Alex, they were taken at a family party earlier this year. The colours are not what I would usually go for but I do quite like them, just need to find some pictures to match up to the rest of the papers.

I have finally managed to get myself up to date with Project Life, and for some of the pages I have used my new Stampin Up project Life cards, they are quite simple compared to some of the Becky Higgins stuff but as they all co-ordinate nicely they make pretty quick pages, see what you think. The SU ones are the second and third pictures....

All is going well with Stampin Up, I have had a few good sales and I now have finally got my first party booking. Its not for a couple of months so I have plenty of time to plan some make and takes for the guests.

Hope you are all well, as usual thanks for stopping by.

Love and hugs, Jane xx

My First Blog Hop/Blog Tour

Last week I was invited by my friend Sarah to participate in a blog hop tour. You can see Sarah's post and her blog by clicking on her name above. Sarah has asked me to answer the following four questions:-

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do I write/create what I do?
4. How does your writing/creating process work?

1. I am not really working on much at all at the moment, I have been making tags and I have just finished making 2 Exploding Boxes that were made to order for a colleague at work who is getting married soon. Originally she wanted them as gifts for her Bridesmaids but when she saw them she decided that they would be perfect for her and the Groom's Mums instead. I have to say I wasnt overly keen on the colours but once the boxes were made up and embellished I loved them. I had also forgotton just how much I like making these pretty little boxes, think I could be making a few more in the coming months. To ne honest I havent really been scrapping much at home recently, most of my scrapping has been at the Kingshill Crop that I attend once every two months. I have however been keeping upto date with Project Life, its nice and simple and so easy to update. Its my go-to Sunday morning job, I make a coffee and head to my room for an hour or so to update that weeks page and prepare for the next week. Below are some pictures of the boxes and my more recent PL pages...I would love to know what you think of them?

2. I think that I have a certain style of scrapbooking and its a style that I tend to stick with about 90% of the time. Most of my layouts are very simple and clean with fairly straight lines and just a little bit of journalling. I subscribe to the Basic Grey Page of the Month Kits and I love doing these, they always push me out of my comfort zone just a little as there is often a lot of elements to them. I have also been getting inky recently making some vintage/distressed type tags (pics in previous post).....again this is really out of my comfort zone as I dont usually do the inky fingered kind of crafting!! Saying this though I absolutly love, love, love making them and am on a mission to add a mix of colours to my ever growing stash of ink pads. One thing I want to start making more of this year is mini books, below is a Vegas themed one I made up using a kit I got while we were there last year, I just need to print off some pics to add to it (and if I can do that this week the book can be a anniversary pressie for hubbie next weekend). I also want to get on and complete the two items below...not sure yet if I will paint/ink them, or cover them in pretty paper. Think it will probably end up being a combination of the two, but whichever I choose I will make sure that I take some pictures and add them here.

3. I have always been a crafter, even as a child I had 'making' things as Christmas and Birthday gifts. I have tried knitting, rug making, flower arranging, glass painting, decoupage and probably a lot more that I have long forgotton about! I was an avid cross stitcher until I discovered scrapbooking (which I was introduced to by a friend who no longer scraps). I bought a starter kit at a craft show and was literally hooked overnight. Despite the fact that hubby and I have no children I never seem to have a shortage of things to scrap. My main subjects are my nephew and niece.....and they are the ones that I really scrap for, I want to create a whole load of memories for them to share with their children and grandchildren one day. As a family we have inherited from our grandparents and other family members so many old photos of family and friends but we have no idea where they are or who they are with in most of them. I hope that by creating scrapbooks future generations of our family wont have the same problem and they will be able to look back and see what we were doing and where we were going etc.

4. My 'layout creating' process starts with my photos, although as a lover of 12x12 paper I have been known to take (insert the word stage here) pictures that will co-ordinate with the paper. I get my inspiration from all sorts of places...other blogs, sketches, Pinterest and of course UKS. Although most of the time I just tend to follow my instinct and go with flow.

Thanks so much for stopping by and looking at my blog and a big thanks to Sarah for nominating me. For the next part of the blog hop I am going to tag/nominate my fellow blogger Sandra Please stop by her blogs next week to see her post.

Love and hugs, Jane

Bank Holiday Crafting

Evening all..

Hope you are all well and that you all enjoyed the Bank Holiday weekend. Hubby and I had a lovely one, spent time with family and friends as well as a little bit of relaxing at home. A perfect weekend all round really.

I didnt get to scrap at all on Saturday which was NSD (National Scrapbooking Day)so I made sure I got some time yesterday to do a couple of layouts as well as update project Life. The first layout was done using some left overs from one of my Basic Grey Page of the Month kits..the picture is of my very dear friend Michele and I in Portugal last Summer. I love how relaxed and happy we both look...wish my skin had that healthy Summer glow all year round too!!

The next layout was created using a few sheets of paper from my stash, I think its maybe Echo Park but I am not 100% sure. The title is American Crafts Thickers. The pic is of hubby on the terrace of our villa in Portugal last year, with just a few of his empties (I would like to add he didnt drink all of that in one night!!).

Finally here are three more weeks of Project Life...

As always thanks for taking the time to stop by and have a peek at my blog, please feel free to leave me a comment if you like what you see.

Love and hugs, Jane xx

The Mojo is Back

Afternoon all..

As promised in my last post I am back to share with you some pictures of my recent craft creations. Firstly I have my Project Life pages to show you...thanks to a relaxing day at home yesterday I am totally upto date with Project Life. I know I say this a lot but I really do love PL, its such a simple way to record memories and create something for future generations. I think there will be a lot more of it going forward, there will defo be a 2015 album and one especially to record my 50th birthday which is also happening next year. Anyway I hope you like my pages...



When I went to Ally Pally last year I bought a plain MDF money box that has been sitting on my shelf ever since. It has been moved around a few time with plans to 'pretty' it up but it never happend - until this week that is. I finally grabbed the box and my paints and set about making it look nice. Firstly I gave it a coat of Rose Paperartsy paint and the original plan was to then layer with with more paint and crackle glaze but I changed my mind and gave it a coat of Sparkle Modpodge instead. When that was dry I added some Dear Lizzy papers from a pad I got in TK Maxx last year. I then inked some of the edges with a grey chalk inker and then I added the buttons on the side of the roof, lace along the back and the fabric rose border to the front. Finally I added a large gem and pearl swirl using my Bazzil jewel template. It looks perfect in my craft room now its all done....just need to start filling it up now so I will have plenty of spends in Vegas next year.



Hope you have all enjoyed the Easter holidays, back to work for me tomorrow, such a shame when I am really in the mood to stay home and craft!!

Thanks for looking,

Jane