Wet Wednseday

I think we may have already had our summer here because it's been cold, grey and a bit wet since the weekend.

So, I was sitting in the office today feeling a little bit down when my friend emailed me this, it really brought a smile to my face and I think it's just so cute. I was also quite surprised that Paul didn't suggest it was a picture of me in the shower when I showed him!:

I'm afraid I can't give credit where it's due because I don't know its origins but, if somebody does then let me know and I'll make sure they get a mention.

I have very nearly finished my long list of chores for the evening so I'm hoping to get a bit creative with this:

The title has been in my head for a few days now so I'm just gonna build from that, if you're lucky I might actually have it finished in a few weeks!

Happy Wednesday

Jo x

Summer's Started

It has been a glorious weekend here and I've had such a lovely time.  Yesterday was spent with Paul just pottering about and enjoying each other's company and today I have been scrapping.

Now I was going to cut the grass today but when I went in the garden this morning I saw these:

My favourite flower, the daisy.  Now they weren't there yesterday and only just appeared today when I went out to cut the grass, I took it as a huge sign to leave the lawnmower in the shed and find something else to do while the little daisies enjoyed the sunshine..................that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! :)

I went indoors and decided to do a bit of scrapping, I did this layout using Shimelle's weekly sketch:

A very recent picture taken last week while I was staying with Paul.  The weather was so nice that we decided to take Pippy (his gorgeous dog) down to the beach.  I used the October Afternoon Seaside range because it's so lush and so perfect for these pictures.

These beach huts were built last year so they are only slightly weathered and certainly not battered by the elements.  Just when I thought the layout was finished I found this little gem:

I know it's a bit early but I'm hoping it's a sign of things to come and we're all going to have a great summer to enjoy.

The clocks leaping forward today has made my routine go out of the window, not only did we lose an hour (maybe it was the grass cutting hour that was lost and the long lawn has nothing to do with the daisies) but today has flown by.

Time to get myself back in work mode for tomorrow morning :(

I hope you've all had a great weekend.
Thanks for stopping by.
Jo x

Waves on the Shore

Good evening and welcome to everyone who's found me via Blogging For Scrapbookers.  I'm Jo, one of 7 J's. Two brothers, two sisters and both parents all have names beginning with J.  I think my mum did it so she could open all of the post and just innocently proclaim that she thought it was for her!

I love the sea and being near the sea but live somewhere totally landlocked, we can all dream and my dream is to one day live near the sea.  Especially I love the movement of the sea and the waves and the way this week has gone made me think of just that very thing.

My week has raced by, it's felt like giant waves crashing all around me and I've been caught up in the current.  It's been a nice week though and I just went with the flow and let those big ole rolling waves crash around me, I relaxed into them, didn't stress and arrived at the weekend.  Now that the weekend is here I would like my waves to be much more gentle, I would like them to feel like they don't have the energy to make their way up the beach but when they eventually do they want to hang around for a second, feeling the sun on them before slowly slipping back into the wash.............in other words I don't want my weekend to go as quickly as my week :)

I also love sunsets and yesterday when I got home from work I was treated to this:

 Granted it's not a sunset over the sea but I thought it was beautiful.

Today I was far too busy too look at the sunset because I had some fantastic news. Paul, my partner who live 107 miles away from me (BY THE SEA!!!) is coming to see me for the day tomorrow.  I wasn't expecting to see him for another 3 weeks so I was over the moon and happy to do a full day in the office and then come home and scrub the whole place to within an inch of it's life!

Other plans this weekend are to catch up on everyone's blogs, follow new ones, make lots of comments, scrap - yes I have waited until very nearly the end of March before deciding I would like to do a Document 2011 album! and cut the grass.

Keeping with the theme of beaches, I'll leave you with this layout of Maddie building castles in the sand:

Another layout I managed from the Gotta Craft monthly kit.

We rented a house on Sandbanks of all places (no I didn't see any rich footballers or Harry Rednap) but this was our garden, our own private bit of beach!

Enjoy your weekend
Jo x

Midweek Tea Break

I have been so busy and on the go all day so I thought it was about time I had a little tea break!

I'm joining in with Shimelle's Blogging for Scrapbookers but, as usual, I am behind.  I'm not letting this get me down though and I'm still basking in the glory of already using tabs and having ventured into the land of Google Reader! Ok so it was a quick venture and must have been long ago because I total forgot I'd ever sorted out my settings but, nonetheless, it was something that I knew about which is a great achievement for someone like me who's had an iPhone for over a year but still hasn't worked out how to put songs on it!

Anyhoo, that is how far I've got but I will catch up and even if I don't, due to this class, I have found hundreds of great blogs to read with great stories, people and ideas!

I've got a couple of layouts to share from this months Gotta Craft kit, I've done 4 layouts so far but I don't want to overload so here's a couple:

I love this picture of my friends, Clare and Allison.  It was taken 20 years ago but I can still remember where we were, what we were doing, the songs that were playing and the laughs that we had. The Echo Park - For The Record papers were a perfect match to Clare's top which just goes to prove that all things do come back into fashion after a couple of decades!

We They were such divas back then which is good because you don't use too many Thickers on a title that short and you get rid of the pesky V.  I made the little scalloped embellishment after seeing something in a shop and thinking "I can do that".

I love this picture of Maddie, taken when we were on a Halloween weekend away in Stourbridge.  Back then she still loved having her picture taken and wasn't prone to living in pyjamas!

It's a picture I've wanted to scrap for a while but there was one thing stopping me.  Under the embellishment on the photo is a big sign reading "please do not let your dog foul the footpath".  Who wants that on a layout?  It's a sure sign that not much thought was given by the council concerned to the possibility that someone would want to scrapbook a photo of their child on the swing gate! 

My tea break is over and I'm sure there are a few more chores to squeeze in before bedtime.

I hope you've all had a drop of sunshine to enjoy today!

Jo x

Another Busy Monday

Back to work today but I had such a wonderful weekend with Paul and Pippy.  On Saturday we managed to find Paul a bargain deerstalker, he absolutely loves hats!

He certainly looks the part and he is a huge Sherlock fan.

Saturday gave us the "Supermoon" it was the closest the moon had been to earth since 1992 and it meant it was 40% larger and 30% brighter, I forced Paul to come to the beach with me to see it and he certainly wasn't disappointed: 

It was mesmerizing to say the least. 

And I was pleased to work out how to take night pictures on the camera!

Today I have set the weekly challenge over on UKScrappers.  Here's my example layout: 

As it's my second time of setting a challenge I asked for 2 photos to be used.  Also no cutting into a nice new sheet of 12 x 12, only scraps are allowed, which is good for stash busting.

I've really got back into using my stamps and this is one of my favourites: 

Spring is in the air and so is talk of street parties for the Royal Wedding so I thought bunting was appropriate for the last element of the challenge: 

Alfie is so cheeky jumping in my bed, if I sit on the sofa he tries to sit on my lap but, when we got him from the rescue centre he was half the size he was because he had been starved.  Not only was he starved of food but also of human company so we forgive him anything.  We're used to him jumping in our beds, we're used to him climbing over us on the sofa and we're used to every meal coming with a side order of dog hair but we wouldn't have it any other way :)

Happy Monday

Jo x

Who's Got His Hat On?

The sun! I've had a great day today with Paul. We took Pippy out for a walk down to the beach and it was gorgeous:


We stayed until the sun started going down, just people watching:


I've even had time to get some scrapping done, two layouts finished:





As well as a work in progress:


I will take proper photos of them when I get home.

I hope everyone's enjoyed a sunny day.
Jo x

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

WOYWW

We have had some lovely weather here this week kidding us that Spring is here but today it's grey and wet.

I've actually got something on my workdesk today, a layout I've been working on using this months Gotta Craft kit. Like most people who get kits I get so excited when I know it's been handed over to the postie and is on it's way to me. When it arrives I grab a coffee and really take time out to look at it then, put it back in it's pizza box and tuck it on a shelf. The arrival of this kit was no different except……I cut into it straight away!


The desk is a bit messy but I was scrapping until midnight.


And I had a go at making some embellishments using punches and cotton.


Head over to Julia's blog to find out what everyone else is up to this week.

Have a good Wednesday
Jo x

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Crime Solving Sunday

I was up with the lark this morning getting the horrible jobs like ironing and shopping out of the way. Now I will spend the rest of the day scrapping and crime solving with good ole Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote following by a bit of DCI Barnaby on Midsomer Murders!

I had a lovely day at the crop yesterday and managed 2 whole layouts!  One took all day and one took about 10 minutes.......I really need to do some more of those 10 minute ones to make a dent in my stash mountain!

I haven't had a chance to photograph the layouts I did yesterday but I do have a couple to show that I did a week or so ago:

This is my youngest nephew George and it's taken on the hipstamatic app on the iPhone. It's one of my favourite pictures so I wanted to keep the layout quite simple so as not to distract from it.

At Christmas I kept swinging him around singing 'he's the baby, he's the baby' and he didn't stop giggling, pretty quickly he started finshing off the line by saying 'baby'.

The next layout is one of the backdrop to the show Wicked, which me and Maddie went to see for her birthday last year:

This week is going to be a busy one and I have to be super organised because I'm going to Paul's for the weekend.  I'm so excited because I haven't seem him for nearly 5 weeks!

Hope you're enjoying a peaceful Sunday

Jo x

Spring's Almost Here.....I Hope!

Another few days have flown past and I don't know where the time has gone.  The weather has been great, although frosty in the morning, and spring is surely just around the corner.

Saturday we went to dinner with friends and had a lovely, homemade Key Lime Pie.  It was so delicious that I was too busy stuffing my face to take a picture!  Sunday was a lazy day, which is just what Sundays should be every now and then.  The weather on Sunday was bright enough for me to photo a couple of layouts I did at a recent crop, I managed 3 on the day so I can't have been sitting too close to Sandra :)

I love this picture of Pippy (Paul's dog) and Alfie:

Pippy really is a lady and I love her to pieces, she follows me everywhere when she's here and she certainly lets Alfie know he's beneath her!  You can't see her very well but she's perched above him on the back of the sofa.

They are friends though and she does let him lay on the sofa with her sometimes.  When they first met she definitely let him know she was the boss and used to growl if he tried to play with her.  Now, if he's lying on the sofa, she will walk past, give him a quick headbutt and then run off!

I know I'm biased but Alfie is the most gorgeous dog and I can often be heard singing "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Puppy" to him :)

This title is so true, Alfie is a master and preempting where you are going to sit and jumping there first!  He loves a cuddle but really doesn't seem to understand that he's not a lap dog!  As I type this he's lying on the sofa next to Maddie with a look of disgust that says she's taking up too much room!

Talking of sofas, here's a pic of my new ones:

So much brighter than the old ones featured in the layout above.

Tomorrow I am planning on winning the triple rollover on the Lottery and then I'll plan how to spend all that money (the same as I do every Lottery day) one day I've got to win so my dreams and plans don't go to waste :)

Hope your week is going well

Jo xx

Ready to Relax!

I have been so busy since I last posted so this week has flown by!  Last weekend I was busy shifting furniture and I got 2 lovely new sofas.  To get the sofas in I had to remove over 60 cups that hang on hooks in my hallway, I then had to get my old sofas out which is no easy task.  Now I loved my old sofas, they were navy leather, battered and worn and you would just sink into them.....I loved them but I knew they had to go.  One of the sofas was a monster and I, with the help of my sister's partner, had to get them downstairs.  Now my stairs don't go straight down, there's a turn in the middle but, after much struggling we got them out.  The next problem we had was the dump wouldn't let me take a van in so we had to put them on the roof of my sister's car outside the dump and then hold on to them as she drove in, I just love jobsworths!  Anywhoo, lovely new sofas that I have forgotten to photo and share, I will another time (they're cream leather by the way)

Work wise I've been out on the road meeting clients and it's been exhausting but lovely.  It was awful going back into the office and trying to get through a mountain of work though!  I guess we all have to pay for the little pleasures in life :)

I did managed to squeeze in a crop this week and I actually managed to do a layout, I used the sketch on Shimelle's blog:

Maddie loves PJs, especially all in onesies.  As soon as she gets home from school she puts them on and at the weekend she lives in them and basically that's what the journalling says on the layout. 

This layout only shows one pair, I've got another 4 pairs to document!

Today I got in and did all of my boring housework so that, as soon as I wake up tomorrow, I can scrap.  In the afternoon we're (yes I am getting Maddie out of the house!) going to my friend's house for an afternoon of looking through her stash and then a lovely dinner.

I hope everyone's had a good week.

Jo xx