WOYWW

This is my first time participating in WOYWW. See Julia's blog  http://stamping-ground.blogspot.com/ for details and stop by and leave her some praise.
I hope I am doing this correctly...It is Wednesday in Britain but still Tuesday here...don't think I can stay up till midnite:(
Hope it is OK to post now...

My next door neighbour and I get together once a week to make cards or to scrapbook. Lately, we have been making flowers. Sometimes we make sets of 2 or 3 flowers for scrapbooking embellishment clusters. Other nights we make really big blossoms to sew onto hairbands or hairclips. It is very relaxing work and quite addictive. I have to share a secret...my neighbour is much FASTER at this than me...I am such a slowpoke at all crafty things!
The green woven basket contains the fabric circles that I have already handcut. I keep a little wheel of pins in there too as I like to pin each "set" after I singe the edges.

The big clear tote with the green lid contains all my folded up (well, actually, stuffed in) material, fabric scissors,  lighter, candle, beads and other embellishments for the flower centers. Everything I need to create flowers is in that bin!
That way, if she hosts the evening, I can just grab my little box and I'm good to go.

Now for the embarassing bits.  Yes there are unfinished projects lying out too. I am just lucky that there is a sort of hidden corner to my desk to hide things a wee bit...(who am I kidding, right!!!!!)  Look right...waaaay over to the right...You will see a 3 drawer unit full of the bits and bobs needed for my current long term project. I am making a wedding album for a gift.  There is also a huge bag of blingy ribbon just behind those drawers and a stack of completed wedding pages behind that. I think I have about 16 pages done and maybe 8 or so more to go. It has been just a fun project and DH would like me to make one for us to keep as well.

Under the wedding pages there are 2 scrapbooks (to be sold on Craigslist) and my January.Counterfeit Kit Challenge kit...yes January...eeeek! The Feb challenge starts Feb 5th so I have to get my butt into gear and scrap my Xmas photos with this kit.

Yes...that is an empty frame hanging above the desk! The other side of the shelf has a semi finished layout that I have cleverly hidden with the tilt of the camera. There is actually another shelf above that white shelf you can see. It hold family photos and as they don't like their pictures posted on the internet, I angled the camera to hide that shelf too!

Earlier today Little Miss C and I made these two flowers and sewed them onto "Goodie" brand hairbands. I love this brand as little Miss C has long, very fine hair and they never slide out. They have little ridges that hold tight

She was very proud that she did the "sewing". She almost finished one and then let the needle graze her finger...she didn't cry...just said "OUCH" and then told me I could do all the sewing parts....

Hope you enjoyed my desk and hopefully by next month my January Counterfeit Kit will have been all used up!

A Day At Home

Spent the day at home, cleaning and catching up on laundry. I am one of those anal laundry people.  I seem to have a mountain of items that I prefer to wash alone or with 1 or 2 select other items. I do countless loads of 3 or 4 items. Thank goodness my machine has a sensor that adjusts the water level!

Of course I prefer to think if myself as "The Laundry Queen" rather than the anal, nitpicky, OCD  laundry  lady!

I have one last card (from the card class night) to share with you all. It does not have any glitter, just a tiny touch of bling on the rhinestone brad.  I embossed  the flower with the Big Shot and then sort of shaped the petals with my fingers. This card  was quick and fun to make.  The card base is chocolate brown although it barely shows up in my photo.

 I have not done up the inside yet as I have not decided what to put on the cream cardstock insert. I am thinking it should be a birthday greeting with perhaps a small swirly stamp in each of the bottom corners of the insert...What do you think?

A Few Shopping Deals

Tonight DH and I went up to Timmy's for the first day of their 99 cent latte specials. Timmy's is only a few blocks from home and DH was a bit tired so I was surprised when he asked if I had any sale/coupon bargains left to capture this week.

Yep, I had a few things left on my list that were Sun/Mon loss leaders so  I jumped at the chance to grab them.  We set off to Shoppers Drug Mart...In and out in 5 minutes flat and saved roughly 65%.  The drive-thru at Tim Hortons took longer! Poor DH got roped into buying 4 Alcan Foil as there was a limit of 4 per person. He usually hates this part but loves tin foil for his BBQ meals at home and up at the lake. 4 for the house and 4 for the RV...bonus! The teensy Palmolive are for the RV as well. They fit in my storage baskets under the sink!

A lot of the savings were just the loss leaders but I had some coupons as well. Final breakdown after coupons:
Tide 3.99 each
Kotex  2 pkg  of 18 at 1.25 each
Kotex 2 pkg of 20  for 1.50 each
Campbells soup  34 cents each
My wallet was happy!

I love a quick coupon shop.

Garrison Crossing

Sometimes my DH likes to go look at open houses on a Sunday afternoon. This morning he asked if I wanted to go out to Chilliwack and look at some new homes. He is thinking that the house we retire into should have the master bedroom on the main floor. There is still lots of time till he retires, but he wants to have an idea of floor plans, neighbourhoods, amenities, prices etc before we are there. I am always happy to go along as it is fun to see the latest decorating ideas!

We drove out the valley and along the way I noticed more SNOW than we deal with and tons of rain creating huge puddle the size of small lakes. There are huge mountain east of Chilliwack so it makes sense that they would have more rain...but I wasn't expecting flooding like that when there was not any water/flood warnings on TV etc.

After touring and ruling out several one and two storey rancher subdivisions, we set off to see what was new at Garrison Crossing.  This is the old army base in Chilliwack and they have redeveloped it into a pretty little community.
It was fun to see the original barracks and houses that were remodeled from top to bottom with totally new floor plans, porches, rooflines etc.  There were homes for every price range.  We would be downsizing a bit, but many seemed just too small. We quite liked one house (well most of it), but were struck with the reality of just how far we would be from friends and family.

We set off home, happy to realize that those friends and family meant more to us than the $200,000. we would add to our retirement fund if we moved out there! All in all, it was a nice outing.

I have another card to share. Not sure yet who it will be for...if not one of my friends maybe one of my daughters friends. It is amazing how often my cards get flipped through and culled by those girls! teehee

 I think I used the wrong ink as there is a sort of haze around the cupcakes...or maybe it is from the glue pen that I used before I glittered the heck out of those little morsels! With my diet, this is as close to cupcakes as I am going to get.  I have grown to like the haze...that's my story and I am sticking to it!

 I love to read any comments so would love to hear what you think!

I don't know what that little dark spot is on the bottom of the phrase...I swear it is not there IRL. Here's a close up of the phrase..oh, I figured it out! It's a shadow...Thank Goodness!

Valentines card for my husband.

Made this card for Mr. Scrappymo!.

He always remembers special occasions like Valentines, Anniversary dates, Birthdays, etc. He pulls out the card and presents it with a flourish!

For once, I am going to be prepared and try to give him his card at breakfast.

This is another card with lots of glue and glitter...I have a few little specks of glitter on my fingers, just from photographing the card...hehehehe...He is going to be one glittery guy on Valentines!

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The little heart is punched, versamark ink smeared all over it, sprinkled with embossing powder and then finally heat sealed.
Boy, that heart is so tiny and even with tweezers to hold it, my fingers felt fairly overheated when I was heating the embossing powder!

Coupon Shopping

Mr. Scrappymo! went off to have a leisurely lunch with his buddies. One friend recently had a heart attack and DH has been anxious to see him and hear how his recovery is going.

I got dropped off a Guildford Shopping Mall as I wanted to do a bit of a coupon shop. I had my price matching all circled on the competitors flyers and my trusty coupon binder in tow and I was off to conquer the bargains!

Here is a picture of my haul...The best part is DH walked into the store just as I was finishing up with the cashier and he manhandled the bags down into the car...teehee

Pricematched the U pads to RCSS...,,,the Walmart price is handwritten in red to the right (an additional savings of .50 cents).
Pricematched the Dawn from  Save-on Foods...an additional savings of .01 cent each... I smiled a bit at this one as my Gran always said "a penny saved is a penny earned"
Pricematched the soup to Shoppers Drug Mart...an additional savings of $1.40 per can.

Coupons:
Soup $1.00 off every 4 cans..saved $3.00
Always pads..........................saved $1.00
Purex soap............................saved $2.50
Royale toilet paper.................saved $2.00
Royale paper towels...............saved $2.25  (DH used these for the BBQ...I boycott them myself. Think what we could save if I got him to boycott as well!

To calculate my total savings, I added my subtotal of $50.30 plus the $24.38 savings by pricematching (see my red ink prices).  If I did not price match and had just paid the Walmart price today, my subtotal would have been $74.68

As you can see, after my coupons were deducted, I paid $37.06. Pretty darn close to half off...YAY!!!
This jumped to $41.68 after the tax was added on....Ouch!

All in all...not a bad haul!.

Happy Friday to me!

Just finished with my weekly weigh-in and I have lost 10 and 1/2  pounds in the last 17 days. I had a huge loss the first week (water loss) and then 2.6 this week.  I hope to steadily lose 2 or 3 pounds a week for a next few weeks. Unfortunately, this is weight I have lost before and regained...my bad! Hopefully I will keep it off by continuing to eat in a healthy manner.

Just wanted to share my delight! This is all part of my plan for my OLW  "rebuild".

A couple of cards I made

After a long day at work, the Domestic Diva took me to a "cardmaking do" that her  cousin-in-law organizes.  I treasure these card classes as her c-i-l is really talented and always has lovely design ideas. To top it off, she is a fabulous baker and always has an enticing spread of goodies and appetizers out for everyone to enjoy. You always feel welcomed and totally relaxed although that does seem a bit of a contradiction when you are frantically rushing to finish all your cards!!!  Poor Domestic Diva started her day at 5:30 am to get ready for work and finally arrived home from card class at 11:15 pm.  Three cheers for such a kind, special daughter as she had to work again the next day...
I wanted to share my favourites with you today. This butterfly Birthday card will be mailed off to my Mom. She will be 87 in February.  She likes to receive handmade cards and always saves them to give back to me a few months later!  

The little butterflies are all embossed with different patterns. Here is a wee close up.

.

This next card is going to be for my girlfriends...no, they don't have to share it as we made two of each of these....teehee 

I  have thrown in a close up of the Eifel Tower and the crown as they are really heavily glittered. I think the camera is making them appear more colourful than they actually are. In real life  they just look sort of shimmery. 

Of course we had to  do a cream insert for the inside of the card. For some weird reason, my camera did not pick up the dark brown edge of the card around the cream insert. We stamped the envelopes to co- ordinate as well! Sorry...I forgot to take a photo of that...

I stayed the night at DD's to save her the drive to my house and back. It was so much fun to have a chat on the long drive out and back...sometimes it seems that there just isn't enough time to have a really good natter.

Wednesday's Words Of Wisdom

You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

via Pinterest

Wednesday's Words Of Wisdom

                                     Discipline is doing what you know
                                                              needs to be done,

                                                                   even though you don't want to.

                                                                                                                     author unknown

A Few Of My Favourite Things - 2nd January Counterfeit Kit

I loved the Xmas kit that was featured (and promptly removed) from the Cocoa Daisy January kit.  I played around with my stash and came up with my version...I am calling it A Few Of My Favourite Things. I plan to use it for some layouts about my favourite Christmas ornaments and Christmas vignettes.

I do have some ideas to include some pictures of little Miss C's ballet recital so I threw in a second small Pink kit. Thankfully there is a bit of red/ivory and aqua on some of the pages as little Mr P would like a boyish layout about singing  Xmas carols with me, on our Tuesday walks. 

Our snow finally arrived on Saturday night so perhaps I can even use some of this kit for layouts of the grandkids playing and walking in the snow. I will combine elements of the 2 Xmas kits if needed, but for now am calling this pink one, Christmas Kids.

10 on the 10th January 2012

This year I am joining in Shimelle's 10 on the 10th.  On the 10th of each month you blog about any 10 things you fancy. Any 10 things you like. You can link them up on her blog http://www.shimelle.com/

This month I am going to list 10 goals for 2012.

1.   Blog more.
2.   Take and finish an on-line class.
3.   Learn to use my basic Photoshop program.
4.   Journal more on my layouts.
5.   Finish up my unfinished layouts.
6.   Embrace my OLW (Rebuild).
7.   Eat more vegetables, less fats, and smaller portions.
8.   Get back into walking (after my surgery).
9.   Plan more date nights with my husband.
10. Make more time for me.

January Counterfeit Kit Challenge

It's time to get my kit on!!! My counterfeit kit that is. The Counterfeit Kit Challenge is up and running with their January challenge. This month we are counterfeiting  Cocoa  Daisy.   You can see the kits here.http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/2012/01/january-2012-kit-reveal.html

I love participating in this challenge. I get to create beautiful kits from shopping within my own stash and I get fab tutorials and idea links every month.

At first, nothing called out to me as I tried to chose which of the 4 Cocoa Daisy kits to copy...then I saw the patterned paper with the chair motif. As soon as I spied it, I wanted to create a kit for layouts of all the remodelling we did on our house and the new furniture we purchased in 2011.  We still have to add little decorative accents in the rooms to help pull it all together but that is the plan for 2012!

Here is my take on the Cocoa Daisy kits...I have called it "Come on in and relax". I chose the browns and greyish aqua papers as those are the colours of my rooms.  I have added a rusty red page as I want to accessorize our living/dining room with aqua and red.  Dh hates red so I figure I will show him how great red will look via my layouts! I think I will call it rust though, instead of red...to help get him on board!!!

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

In keeping with my One Little Word of 2012...REBUILD....

I am going to post some Words of Wisdom each Wednesday. They will all relate to my One Little Word and will be my helpers to steer me through the week.

Without further adieu

                                                         CHANGE
                                                              YOUR
                                                     THOUGHTS
                                                        AND YOU
                                                          CHANGE
                                                               YOUR
                                                            WORLD
                                                                                              Norman Vincent Peale

Santa Maybe...coming down the Xmas tree tonight

Dec 10th was little Miss C's ballet recital. We bought the tickets,  drove one hour away to the recital , bought a rose, bought legwarmers ( to help the fundraising)  spent about an hour and a half watching all the dance skits, and  drove a hour back home. All in all, we watched  little Miss C on stage for all of two minutes!!!  Oh my!!!

It was so cute.  The kids were all great...the little 2 year olds were precious. Miss C danced to Santa Baby...only she thought the words were Santa Maybe...coming down the christmas tree tonight! 

DD gently told her that she thought the words were Santa Baby...coming down the chimney tonight.  A couple of days later, Miss C told DD..." I listened really carefully at class today and it is Santa maybe...comin down the Christmas tree tonight".

DD reminded her that Santa comes down the chimney...Little Miss C camly stated she knows the words are  Santa Maybe cuz depending on whether you have been naughty or nice, Santa may or may not come to your house.   

She had her little brother convinced that Santa was coming down the Christmas tree and he had great fun demonstrating for me how Santa had to jump from the fireplace hearth over to the top of the tree!!!

Oh to be young again...teehee

Santa gonna bwing you cove

Ohhhh, little Mr P is such a cutie!

He will be 4 years old  in April and  is sure developing a sense of humor. He loves to tease and to tell jokes. When he mixes up the punchline, it is still so funny. No one can resist laughing along with his giggles.

Grandpa asked little Miss C if she was on Santa's "good list".  She glanced at him and quickly replied "of course".  She then got a little twinkle in her eye and mentioned that little Mr P was on the good list too. She  added that Grandma was also on the good list but Grandpa WASN'T!!!

Poor Grandpa, he was a bit shocked...As Miss C turned her head to the side to hide a teensy smile, little Mr P noticed...he jumped right into the joke and confirmed that Grandpa was actually on the "naughty list". He too struggled to hide his smile, and had to turn his head away a little bit. Grandpa and the two of them bantered back and forth with this joke and little Mr P shouted out with glee...

SANTA GONNA BWING YOU COVE. 

This statement was delivered with a full on gigantic grin, with the giggles just barely stifled.  When Grandpa seemed confused, it was shouted out again...full giggles this time. Poor Grandpa did not understand. ..he smiled and eventually wondered away into the living room.

Little Mr P was not letting this funny joke go. He burst into the living room shouting it one more time. When Grandpa still looked a bit confused, Mr P decided his punch line needed a little clarifying...

You know...SANTA GONNA BWING YOU A LUMP OF COVE!!!!!

Ohhhhh, everyone laughed along with our little Mr P.

Rebuilding me in 2012

01-01-2012

Oh my!  I love the look of that date written out on the page.
Today is  is the first day of many changes for me.  To help me on this journey, I have chosen once again to embrace the concept of One Little Word to guide my year.

Last year I chose Focus to aid me in my continuing journey to cope with post concussion syndrome. I did some one-on-one work with a specialist and learned some good coping mechanisms.  I am proud to say that I achieved my goal of reading a book from cover to cover. For the first time in 3 year, I started a book and finished it, connected the characters and remembered the plot etc.  I learned some valuable skills to get me to this point.  I am hopeful that with the addition of an Ereader, I will be reading more books in the future.  The ability to triple space, increase the font size etc is key to my success.

This year I have chosen REBUILD as my word.

2012 will herald many changes for me. My first back surgery will be in early spring. A second one will follow, once I regain my back stability.  Once my back is sorted, I will be able to proceed with shoulder
surgery and then finally get my knees replaced.
Rebuilding me will be my focus this year. I want to rebuild myself in many ways...

Rebuild my eating habits so I will be in better shape to get through all that lies ahead.
Rebuild my emotional health so that I keep positive on a daily basis throughout this journey.
Rebuild my attitides towards exercise and sports to encourage me to build my endurance.
Rebuild my daily life to eliminate energy vampires and negativity.
Rebuild my positivity to help me become a better person, inside and out.

It should be an interesting year.  I am looking forward to the journey.