de-decorating

Why is it that 'decorating' is actually mainly de-decorating? It takes soooo long to tear down the wallpaper, clean the walls, wash the ceiling, strip paint off the radiator, and navigate all the mess you're creating in the rest of the house because you're doing nothing else! Here's our dining room in it's current stage:

We have managed to paint all the woodwork, and put lining paper up on two of the walls, so at least it's starting to feel like we're getting somewhere!

Our little girl has been at nursery a bit this week so that we could get on with it, but when she's been at home she seems to not even notice the mess, and has even chipped in by helping us clean walls and floors:

I also had my first ever driving lesson today! Well, apart from when hubby tried to teach me the basics in a car park a couple of years ago! It was quite scary as well as exciting, I am looking forward to my next lesson. I want to be able to take my daughter out places when hubby is at work, it's so frustrating when it's a nice day and we can't get to the beach (unless we want to spend an hour on a bus!).

Before we started all this I did manage to get my next layout done for the journaling junkies blog. It was to scrap about how you find balance in your life, juggling all the different things you have going on. Very apt for me at the moment! If you want to read my journaling you can see it on the jj blog here, and if you feel inspired then please join in and email your layout to Stefanie!

Right, I'm going to scrape a bit more lilac paint off a radiator, then I shall enjoy an episode of Cougar Town and a glass of wine, before painting some lining paper. Hmm, I never try and do too much at once, do you?!

x

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flouring the floor

Yesterday afternoon we baked banana bread, though a lot of the ingredients ended up on the floor or in my daughter's belly! She's getting good at helping though, she squished the butter, broke the eggs, cut (with a blunt knife) the bananas & then mashed them, and mixed it all up. Now I've just got to train her to do the washing up and to clean the floor afterwards too!

The bread got a little bit overdone on the outside, but took ages to cook in the middle. I'm not sure if this was because I was using a silicone baking 'tin', perhaps it took too long to heat up? Does anyone else have any experience with silicone bakeware? I've got fairy cake cases too and not had any trouble with them, so I don't know! It tasted fine anyway!

The weather has been somewhat dissapointing here, on Tuesday it was gorgeously sunny but I had to work. It was suppossed to be sunny for the rest of the week, but has been grey and dismal instead. I bet it will be sunny at the weekend when I have to work again! Still, it hasn't been raining, so we managed to go to Bournemouth beach today with my friend Rosie. We had a picnic and threw stones into the sea - it was nice to get some sea air, but I wanted it to be warm enough to go for a swim!

What's the point of living by the sea if the weather's never nice enough to swim in the ocean? Next time I'll take my wetsuit!

x

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pocket-sized plans and some Q & A's

Yay, I've finally got a slideshow of my layouts sorted, you can see it on the right hand side of my blog. Okay, I admit at the moment it only has 6 layouts in it, but at least it's started! I can tick off one plan. My only goal this week is to peel all the wallpaper off my dining room wall - we're decorating next week! Here's a 'before' photo of the room, I'll show you the 'after pic when it's done!

I was really chuffed this week to have been tagged on two people's blogs. The fabulous Meghann asked me to join in a little Q&A session, and then I was suprised to find out the brilliant Laura had also asked me to take part! Both ladies have great blogs on scrapbooking, fabulous bargains they've bought, and various other entertaining subjects, so if you haven't seen their blogs before, go take a look!

Here's my answers to Meghann's questions:

1. If you could own any car, regardless of cost, what would it be?
I can't drive yet, but I know my dream car would be bright yellow!

2. If you could spend an hour with any person in the world, living or dead, who would you spend it with?
C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia have been my favourite books since I was about 7. They are one of the reasons I love to read, and they inspired me to write my own fantasy story. I'd love to chat to him about the stories, and about his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien.

3. What color is your living room?
Cream and Red.

4. What vacations/trips do you have planned for the summer?
We're hoping to go camping in South Wales- near Tenby, and then to stay in a hotel near Swansea for a couple of nights.

5. What is your favorite flower?
Daisies.

6. Chocolate or vanilla?
Chocolate.

7. What person do you think knows you best in the world?
My husband Alex, closely followed by my best friend Rosie.

8. Do you have a laid-back or keyed-up personality?
That's a hard one, I'd like to say laid back but I think I'm pretty keyed up these days. I suppose it depends on the situation.

9. What goal do you want to accomplish this year?
To learn to drive.

10. What is the best photo you've ever taken? If you can, share it!
This was a hard one! I have so many photos that I love, mostly because of the people or places in them. I'm going for this one though, as I think it captures my daughter's spirit really well:
 

 
Here's my answers to Laura's questions:

1. If you could only every eat crisps or chocolate ever again, which would you pick?
Crisps. In fact this question has prompted me to eat some right now - cheddar and onion McCoys (my favourite!)


2. What are you most proud of?
My daughter.

3. Do you have any weird phobias?
I'm scared off moths, is that wierd? Probably. I don't like it when they fly, especially when they fly at me!

4. Which teacher inspired you most at school?
I don't have one that I can single out. I had quite a few that I remember for various reasons, but not one that particularly influenced me.

5. Which Friends character are you most like?
I would say Phoebe, my husband says I'm more like Monica! I guess I do like things tidy, and I love to cook, so that's fair enough.

6. If you could be a super hero, what would your powers be?
I'd be able to fly.

7. Do you like your handwriting?
Yes. Especially when I write with a cartridge pen with blue ink.

8. What has been the best Christmas present you ever recieved?
A Commodore Amiga 500. It was a joint present with my brother when I was about eleven, we had hours of fun playing Lemmings and Captain Planet! I knew it was hard for my mum and dad to save up for it, and we really appreciated it.

9. Would you rather be too hot or too cold?
Too cold. It gives you an excuse to snuggle.

10. Are you still watching Lost? And if so... do you have a clue what is going on????
I gave up around series 3. I might watch them all when it's completely finished!

Hope you found that interesting! Now, as I understand it, I need to set some questions and tag a few people to answer them. My questions are:

1. Do you blog on a laptop or desktop?

2. If someone offered to buy you a plane ticket to visit a country you've never been to before, where would you go? (I'm not offering though - sorry!)

3. What do you most like to cook from scratch?

4. Which animated movie is your favourite?

5. What craft project / scrapbook layout etc are you most proud of? (Share a photo if possible!)

6. Do you still have a teddy bear / soft toy that you love? If so what's it's name?

7. What's your favourite online store? (Does not need to be craft related but can be!)

8. What's your earliest memory?

9. Picnic or posh restaurant - which would you choose right now?

10. What have you done recently to make someone else feel happy? (Can be as simple as listening when they wanted to talk).

Here's the people I'm inviting to play along. They all have great blogs which I love to read, so make sure you check them out!

Clair, Deb, Debbie, Rachel, Rosie, Sian.

Now I'm going to make someone else feel happy, by playing with my daughter instead of blogging! x

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I must scrapbook this...

I've been organising photos on my desktop, and I found a folder with some childhood pics that my mum emailed to me a couple of years ago. It was in this folder that I discovered the picture of my sister looking just like my daughter does now (blogged about here), but that photo didn't make me recall any particular place or time. These ones did:

They are from a family holiday to Scotland, when we stayed at a cottage by Lochgoilhead. This is the holiday I remember most strongly from my childhood, probably because I was a bit older and going through a pensive stage. I was at that 'in-between' age, where I still loved mucking about with my younger siblings, but also liked to distance myself from them at times, finding my own quiet spots to sit and think for a while.

My brother had broken his collarbone, as you can see his arm was still in a sling. I accidently leaned on his shoulder during the holiday and it hurt him a lot, a fact which I wasn't allowed to forget for quite some time afterwards (he still brings it up occasionally)! I also managed to wreck my mum's favourite wellies, she had leant them to me and stupidly I ran into the Loch, to try and get back a boat made with a plastic bag for a sail - it had escaped from me, and in the attempt to recover it (I didn't want to pollute the Earth), the Loch water poured into the top of the wellies and filled them right up. They were great wellies too, navy blue with yellow string at the top. They were never the same afterwards. I was almost as upset as my mum. Another thing to feel guilty about, and contemplate during my pensive moments.

We played a lot of games of the 'Hotel' boardgame, which I've never played since, and am not sure I'd want to because it might spoil the memory. We also went indoor ice skating, hiked to a waterfall, and visited some ruins. But the best bits about the week were just us, hanging out in the cottage. It was right on the Loch, with steps down to the beach, and floor to ceiling windows in the front room so we could watch the boats go by. We ate and played and chatted and chilled.

I hope our family holidays turn out to be just as memorable for my little girl. Sometimes a certain 'fresh air' smell takes me right back to that holiday, and it makes me a bit sad (that I'm grown up and those days are gone) and very happy (that I had them) all at the same time.

I'll have to scrapbook these pics! x

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grey days, bright cards

The weather is annoying me. It keeps being clear and sunny when I'm getting up, making me excited as I pull on my summery clothes and plan what we can do outdoors for the day, only to cloud over and look threatening and miserable by the time we've finished breakfast! This has prompted me to make a couple of bright cards, to send to people in the hope it will cheer them up on a grey day.

The first is a card to just say 'hey'; a how-are-you-doing, I'm-wishing-you-lived-nearer kind of a card. I wanted a nice, simple design for this one (my cards can get way too fussy sometimes), so I got my inspiration from a sketch at Twisted Sketches, you can see their post and the DT's cards here. Here's the sketch and my take on it:

The second card is one uses inspiration from a few places. The first was from a lady named Alison, I found her blog Lime Green Life via the Copy & Paste blog last weekend. I saw this fabulous robot she'd appliqued (see her post here):

and I asked her permission to 'copy and paste' the cute little guy. She said yes so I made my own robot from card, wire and a bead:

Then I just needed inspiration for the card itself. I had seen 'Claire's Weekly Challenge' at DoCrafts.com, so I took the colour scheme and the idea of squiggled rope from her photo of boats, turning the rope into tangled wire to fit the robot theme:

Finally, the quote 'we are all individuals' is one of my fave bits from the film 'Life of Brian' (clip here), and I have it on a postcard on my craft room wall so it jumped to mind when finishing off the card!

I'm not sure who I'm going to send these to yet, but hopefully when I've decided they'll make the recipients smile!

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Lookalike

When sorting though some photos on my desktop I came across this picture of my sister, from approx 16 years ago:

It was taken when she was roughly the same age as my daughter is now, and when I showed the picture to my husband, he thought it was our daughter! She looks so much like my sister did, with blonde hair and blue eyes that neither me or my husband have. They also have the same cheeky smile and cute nose. Here's a pic of our daughter for comparison:

It freaked us out a little bit when we realised how like her she looks, as now we feel we know what she'll grow up like - we just have to look at my sister and we can see how our daughter might look at 18. It's like a glimpse into the future!

Of course, I had to do a layout about this, and I was inspired by a sketch I'd seen on Sketchy Thursdays:

Here's my take on it:

It took me forever to place these little button-shaped brads around the right hand side of the page, but had the film 'Footloose' on in the background so I was happily singing along whilst positioning them all!

I made the large cream ribbon flower following a tutorial on Little Birdie Secrets, you can see the tutorial here. The little ribbon flowers are shop bought - I'm not able to do anything that fiddly!

I'm so glad I had a daughter - it's a brilliant excuse to use lots of pretty colours and embellishments on my pages!

x

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I'm a journaling junkie!

Yay! I'm joining the Journaling Junkie team for my first design team spot. I'll be with them for 3 months, starting ... now! I'm super excited about it, I've been following the blog for a while now and I love the challenges - they make sure you're putting your thoughts and feelings into your layouts. I think it's really imporatant to make sure we include journaling in our albums because we might not always be around to explain the story behind the photo. So take up the challenge yourself - check out their prompts and get some chunks of writing on your pages!

You can see my intro to the team, and my first layout for them, here. I'll give you a peek of the LO but you'll have to hop over to them to see the full page!

If you've found your way here via the JJ blog then welcome! I always like to meet new people so I'd love it if you leave me a comment to say hello! I have lots of things on my blog: scrapbooking, card-making, cooking pics and stories about the antics of my little girl, aged 2. If you want to filter all my posts are labelled - look under 'tagged posts' on the right hand side and you can click to view only the posts with 'scrapbook layouts' for example. Hope to see you again!

Jennifer x

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too many plans!

You may have noticed that my pocket-sized plans are not getting updated weekly. I think I forgot how many other things there are to do.

Also, the things I plan to do always take longer than expected, as they just reveal more things to be done. For example, vacum packing some clothes meant we went up the loft, and discovered mice-droppings and nibbled clothes (we knew about the mice, and had caught and evicted them, but hadn't realised they'd reached these clothes). So rather than just popping some stuff into the loft, we had to get down these other things (mainly baby clothes), do lots of laundry, sort them all out, and vacum pack them, as well as winter jumpers etc. We're nearly done with it now though!

Sorting some scrapbook pics into an online gallery wasn't so easy either, as I realised that our camera has been putting the wrong 'date created' onto our snaps for over a year. I have been going through hundreds of pictures and changing the date on them, so when we look back in years to come we won't be so confused (they had said, for instance, that my daughter's birthday in march was actually in september a year and a half before!). I have re-dated them all now, but not got around to organising the scrapbook pics for a gallery yet.

So, to conclude, my plans were not as pocket-sized as I thought. Even the paper-mache money box is taking longer than expected (so many layers!). But they are still plodding along, amoungst housework, toddler games and the odd bit of crafting!

On the crafting note, I have some exciting news, which I shall publish on a seperate post. For now I'll leave you with the promise that I shall get an online gallery done this week. Yes I shall!

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Starting them young...

My little girl has been watching me when I'm crafting, and now she's trying some techniques out for herself:

start them young I say!!

x

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What am I like?

The girls at Copy & Paste (http://thecopyandpasteproject.blogspot.com/) are having a blog party this weekend to celebrate their 1st birthday, and amoungst inspiration and giveaways they also asked readers to fill in some 'blanks' about themselves in a few sentences they'd provided. I liked that the sentences were so adaptable, so I decided to play along:

1. Everyone knows that I like to have fun but you'd never guess that I used to be a clown, with my mother who is still one. I was called 'Jolly Jumbles', hence my blog name!

2. I'm proud to admit that I like Friends re-runs but my guilty pleasure is America's Next Top Model

3. I'm inspired by my friend Rosie and it surprises me when I inspire her

4. I'm always creating things but I'm never without worrying what other people will think

5. I've got lots of books but I've always wanted to own a children's bookshop

6. I tried to learn crochet and it got put in a box and forgotten about

7. If I never go to New Zealand it will be a dream unfulfilled

8. I didn't pass my Textiles A-Level when I was at college and now I wish I'd paid more attention and put in more effort

9. It's not that I don't love spending time with my daughter but I'd really rather she went to sleep without so much fuss in the evenings

10. Doing creative things makes me feel proud of myself

11. Someone once told me that you should work to live, not live to work and then I tried (and am still trying) to pursue my dreams

12. I'm happy to say that I have a wonderful husband and super-cute daughter and even have great friends who are always there for me. Love you all!
 
I shall leave you with a photo from my clowning days. Wish I still had the red-and-black striped hat!
 

x

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ice creams and doorstop sandwiches

The weather here on Bank Holiday Monday was a bit disappointing, with lots of rain showers. However the sky did clear up for short bursts of sunshine, so we did manage to have an ice cream while watching a couple of events at Poole Street Arts Festival:

Then on wednesday I visited Bath with my friend Rosie and her fiancee David, helping them to look at some wedding venues. It was great to go back there (we lived in Bath for 4 years for Uni), I love wandering around the streets there as they bring back so many memories!

We had sandwiches for lunch, and mine was a huge doorstop style one which I could barely get my mouth around:

They showed me the new shopping area which wasn't built yet last time I visited, and which I think has been done really well:

And they took me to a great independent bookshop called Mr B's, which has a great vibe and a lovely selection of books. I really want this bookcase which they had in their children's section (I'll have to see if hubby can make us one):

It was a lovely day, because on top of all that we also got to look around the Royal Crescent Hotel, The Assembly Rooms, The Guildhall and The Roman Baths, to consider them as wedding venues. We even got a free cup of tea at the pump rooms, I had 'Amber Mist' which was delicious. All the settings were gorgeous, now my friends just have to work out if they can afford any of them!

More later, x

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getting through the scrap pile

I lost my scrapping mojo for quite a while after my daughter was born, and only regained it last November when she was a year and a half, and I was taking part in blogging for scrapbookers. So I've still got a lot of photos to scrap from that time, especially as it included getting married and moving house, as well as the many little girl photos!

Here's a couple of layouts I've just finished from that pile of pics. The first is a layout about the house we lived in when my daughter was born, though she won't remember it as she was only 5 months old when we moved! I wanted to make sure it was captured as part of her history:

I scraplifted the page from the new pull-out challenges section from Scrapbook Magazine - mine's based on Rachael Elliott's 'Spring' layout from issue 45. Her's was a page about spring, so I obviously adapted it a bit, but I have the same sketch and a few details like the dictionary definition of the title, and the little butterfly on the chipboard element.

I love this quaint puffy tree sticker from paperchase:

It took me a while to decide on a title for the page, as it felt wierd calling it 'home' when we haven't lived there for a year and a half, but 'baby's 1st home' made it too fiddly. In the end I decided I'll try to document all the houses we've lived in and will live in, giving them all the title 'home'.

(Stash= metallic cardstock: DCWV, lilac cardstock: PMA; patterned papers: 'best friends' collection Scrapbook Magazine freebie, 'disney princess paper pad' Sandylion, 'wild raspberry pink paisley' K&Co, 'a little bird's tale - houses' Heidi Grace; Journalling spot: 'best friends' collection SM; adhesive stones: PMA; chipboard padlock: Dovecraft; butterfly sticker: DoCrafts; tree sticker: Paperchase; letter stickers: PMA; dictionary definition of home, lilac flower, green ink pad, craft knife, journalling pen: from stash.)

The second layout is of a photo from a month later, on the day she was 6 months old. I was thinking I'd get a nice photo of the three of us on all her birthdays, and 6 months old seemed like a milestone to start it off. Then she was ill on her 1st birthday, and hubby was working on her 2nd, so while there are lots of pics of her, there are few of us with her. Never mind! Sometimes we just have to give up on certain ideas as lost causes don't we?

This is scraplifted from Laura's 'happiness is' layout, which she made as part of Shimelle's crop party, and then Shimelle, SJ and Leanne scraplifted it to suprise her. I decided I wanted to join in because all their layouts were so great! (You can see Laura's post about it here.)

I got several lace doileys at a local jumble sale - for 5p each! I really like how they look on layouts, though they can be a bit tricky to stick on (I use a combo of stapling and a glue pen):

(Stash = patterned papers: 'lilac dragonfly' and 'green fall' PMA, 'wild raspberry pink paisley' K&Co, 'nana's nursery' DCWV; scalloped cardstock: PMA; Letters/numbers: PMA; stamps: Studio G; eyelet: WRM; ribbon: Anita's; adhesive stones: PMA; brads: PMA and Karen Foster; card flower detail: 'retro floral' PMA; raffia, fabric flower, lace doiley, bunny rabbit sticker: from stash.)

I'm getting into using sketches / scraplifts to start a layout, it really helps to speed up my scrapping process so I get more done! I'm now scouring the web to pick some challenge blogs to follow, so far the only sketch site I've decided on is Twisted Sketches. Anyone got any favourites they can recommend?

My final craft activity of the week was making a card for my nephew's 18th. I wasn't sure how to start it as I don't really know what he likes, except for X-Boxes (of which I have no stash!), so I just tried to pick some boyish colours. It ended up quite glittery though, hope he doesn't mind:

I'm also halfway through making a papermache piggy bank with my daughter, but that's another story...

See you soon!

x

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