Dolly's Dreamings

Dolly goes topless

I made this last Sunday but what with one thing and another it never got uploaded.

The title just had to be really!

Love the memories this one evokes.

I am having a very quiet weekend this weekend.

I just don't really feel up to doing anything.

We wandered around town this afternoon and it was a fairly aimless exercise that cost me a fortune in new clothes 9cheer me up impulse buys) and new candles. I have a bit of a candle addiction.

It's interesting as I couldn't have told you where we were. maybe I should take pictures of it more often to see where I have been LOL

Taking photos hasn't been high on my agenda either so whilst moseying around I took a picture of Nigel's sat nav.

Anniversary canvas

I am loving being a part of Show and Tell Friday hosted at Kelli's house and today I wanted to share soemthing hand-made for my show and tell.

It hasn't been shown on my blog before. I made it last year for our anniversary and realise that if I don't show it soon it will be another anniversary.

It is a hybrid project and has stood for a year on my desk in my craft room.

I inked the canvas - it is a 10" x 8" canvas - and then used paper printed from digital kits - prima hybrid kits actually and then the embellishments were also printed, mounted onto card, inked etc.

There is a lot of doodling and scallop edging and I have enjoyed having it to look at all year.

We look so young in the photo of our wedding day (and my goodness did we ever wear big glasses!)

I am dredging the barrell tonight with my photo of the day. I have been way too busy to take one so this is a photo of the set of drawers I spent two hours sorting and tidying last weekend. Actually it is one set. i have two sets and did them both.

Wishing you rainbows

Short post today - gosh it is late.

I made this for a friend who has been having a tough time recently. It was using new Hero Arts stamps and my new SU aqua brush - which I have to say I am in love with - and very old twinkling H2O's that have never been used.

the paper was from the scraps box from ages and ages ago and the ribbon is Maya Road, I think.

My picture of the day is Kira

She is like her daddy and so NOT a morning person. She sleeps on our bed and frowns her way through the alarms, lights and gentral bustle int he morning and occasionally stirs and gives us a disgusted look.

Love her!

Washday Kit

Dawn Inskip has two brand new kits released today.

they are both available at NDISB and PBP in her stores there.

The first kit is a great alphabet called Etchy Sketchy and it is one that I can see I will use over and over.

The big kit - and it is a big kit with a full alphabet, papers and loads of doodles which are way too cute, is called washday.

I am so lucky I had these kits to play with at the weekend and made these three pages with them.

I have to say the labels are just so cute .

The first page is my very own little dirt magnet. As soon as I saw that label it just shouted out my boy! I wonder why.

The second page was such fun to make. I took a photo of Nigel's beloved Goldie and imagined what his worst nightmare would be. those poor teddies on the line. He was terrified bless him.

The third page is Emily - a little bathing beauty.

I love the delicate flowers that were int he kit.

Do pop over to dawn's stores and check them out.

Now today is the 25th - except I sort of forgot.

It is the first time I have forgotten since startingt he project and I realised part way through the day, so i have taken some of the pictures and will take some tomorrow.

It's not cheating ..... truly. It is artistic license.

I have taken my picture of the day and will add it later once I have downloaded it.

Right now - dinner calls.

So here it is

Picture of my calendar. I said I would use of these each month and as the month was almost done figured it ought to be today.

Intensive brain ache!

I have been ona  course today and boy was there a lot to take in.

The trainer is someone I know well, having done many courses with her, and she is a very good trainer who makes courses interesting, entertaining and valuable, but there was a lot to take in and my brain feels tired! Mind you - that isn't rare!

It is at a really nice venue  out int he countryside and this was a shot I took in the garden during the lunch break.

Just after lunch we had a bit of a shock. If you are squeamish then skip down to htext just above the second layout.  

There is a resident cat there - a lovely old chap who often comes and joins the sessions if they are not too full. He sits nicely on a delegate chair and seems to take it all in. Today was a really full course and so he was kept firmly outside on the patio. This clearly upset him and so to convince us of his worth he obviously thought he had to prove himself.

So just after lunch we looked out and spotted him sat very proudly next to ....... sorry about this .... the cutest baby bunny. Sadly he had done what cats do and the bunny was his gift to us .... a gift none of us wanted. One of the delegates was very brave and moved the bunny over to a distant part of the garden where the cat followed. I so wished we had let him in when he wanted to come in!

I have two pages to share today. The first one above was a quick page made as therapy last night!

It is Emily doing what she does best - posing for the camera and being cute.

The second page was made for ATDML this month and was about how lucky we have been to have been upgraded numerous times by Virgin. Their Upper Class suite is wonderful and it makes flying a whole different thing. Seating areas that you can invite a friend to join you at, beds that go fully flat, a sit up bar, a proper table with linen and glass and silverwear plus the cutest little airoplane cruet set (and when I asked if I could buy one as they were so cute they said they didn't sell them but just gave it me to take home with their blessing! ) We have been very very lucky and it is why we always fly Virgin!

FREE You mean the world word art

When I am busy one of the things that relaxes me is adding to my stock of word art to use.

I made this earlier this evening and added it to my stockpile. I love having lots of word art to use

If you would like it you can download it HERE. There are two png versions ..... one blue as shown and one more muted and natural in colour.

Chasing your tail

No

I am not talking about the fur family chasing their tails.  Actually Kira probably couldn't chase her tail even if she tried. that is one stuffed cat. They had fresh chicken for tea and she ate soooooooo much. Fiki eats very little - she finished his. Boushka didn't finish hers. Kira had it. Plus she had a massive plateful of her own as it is her favourite. Considering they have tummies the size of walnuts I have no idea where she put it. She must have had a whole chicken breast! Piglet! Anyway - I don't mean them chasing their tails I mean me.

Do you ever have those days where you feel you are chasing your tail all the time. Like a hamster running round his little wheel and getting no-where. or like the duck, calm on the surface and paddling like mad underneath the water.

Well - you get the idea!

Today's picture of the day is a perfect example. 2 boxes of cereal. Healthy, good to eat. Just a shame I didn't get the when I did the week's shopping and had to go get them separately.

Every job I have done today seems to have created a dozen more. And the week looks set to follow suit!

This is a page I made last night. It is my week 7 page for PAD or project 365. It was actually a hard one to scrap as some of the days int hat week were some of the worst I have had. But 'tis done and dusted and saved ready for printing.

I have a feeling that this week is going to be one where I don't manage to keep wine just for the weekends. I have a feeling I need a glass tonight!

Dreamers

I was having fun today scrapping away - I LOVE Sundays.

Well I love them apart fromt he hour of ironing and the rest of the housework.

And the sorting out of my computer.

Something bad happened last night and my e mail has gone all funny. I use Incredimail and it happened once before and took an age to fix and I can't remember how to fix it so have had to mail the help desk.

No idea why it happened, but it did.

Anyway, back to scrapping. Nij challenged me to scrap a garden picture and I hapepened to have these two from last summer when we re-did the patio. What seemed like a good idea at the time - a page with lost of green and brown so it would look like a garden and unmounted pictures would just pop up out fo the page - went horribly wrong.

It is way too busy. the photos don't pop out, they get lost, and I hate it. But i am blowed if i am taking it all apart. Most of the stuff is sewn on so it will stay as it is an languish in an album no-one except us looks at anyway! And I guess it does what it says on the tin. It records a moment in our lives. Maybe badly, but it records it.  And this is one that doesn't really look any better in real life either!

I also scrapped this daft digi page.

The SLYMI challenge this week was to cut out a photo which I had already done with angels but this was just a fun picture of the family to play with.

I snapped it a few weeks ago when the three of them were zonked in the lounge. the background wasn't very nice so I thought they should have somewhere better to dream - so they are now dreaming against the Purbecks.

I didn't have a lot of inspiration for the picture of the day today. But it does record what i often do on a Sunday.

Those of you who know me well know I am not the world's greatest cook. I don't like cooking, I am not good at cooking and I am a creature of habit. When I find a meal I can cook and can bear to cook I tend to do it over and over.

This is the raw ingredients of tonight's dinner as I started to prepare it. Of course there are more ingredients than this. I forgot to put the shallots out - though they did make it into the dish, and I figured the Colemans packet wouldn't add to the artistic effect fo the photo LOL

I can smell it cooking now and it smells wonderful actually.

First day of Spring

OK

so I know it is way too early to be the first day of spring, but it is gorgeous here. It is mild and bright and beautiful and just feels quite springlike.

We went out for a frapaccino, as you do, and took my car and, as it was so nice, we had the roof off for the first time since last Autumn.

I am doing Shimelle's new Here there and everywhere class and so we took quite a few photos whilst driving around.

One of them is my photo of the day which is me in my little silver dream machine enjoying the spring warmth and sunshine.

The other is Poole Park and has, of course, a bench in it. I have always said when I die I want a bench in Poole Park. It is one of my favourite places in the world; one of my happy places.

The page I am sharing here is one I made last month for mel and Jill for their design team gallery at ATDML.

They always send such great stuff to work with and I love creating for them.

This page is a bit of a laugh really.

It's San Francisco, right. Alamo Square  - that definitive view of the modern city spread out behind the gorgeous painted ladies of Alamo Square.

We visited San Fran in 2001 (I think) and stayed a week and really didn't like it. It is the one place int he USA we didn't enjoy.

BUT - this is NOT San Fran.

The photo was taken at Legoland just outside San Diego and is part of their Miniland USA area.

The san Fran dioramas were stunning and so realistic. The skill in building these out of lego is amazing.

I must dig out my photos of the real Alamo Square and scrap them together.

My Precious Shell Case

I have something very special for Show and tell Friday this week. One of the most special things I own.

If you want to know more about Show and tell and see the other great things people share then do go and visitKelli's House as she hosts this wonderful idea.

I have wanted to share this as a show and tell for ages but I haven't been able to get decent photos of it.

Even now the pictures are not wonderful but I think they just about work.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I have been a real Daddy's girl all my life.  (I have to stress that was not to the exclusion of my Mom .... my Mom was my best friend int he world.)

Just because my Daddy isn't here anymore doesn't stop that and so I guess it is inevitable that one of the most precious things I have in my home is a Daddy thing.

My Daddy joined the merchant navy in 1941 when he was just 14 years old.

Growing up in Liverpool the sea always called to him and he said it seemed like a good idea to join at the time. He was tall for his age, he lied about his age, the war was on and he was taken aboard.

I guess checks were nothing like they are today.

  Within a few weeks he found himself caught up in the battle of the Atlantic seeing dreadful things no-one, let alone a 14 year old boy, should see.

I remember him telling me he cried to go home, but there was no way he could.

He served in the merchant navy for 5 years, leaving at 19, and this shell case is one of the few things that he had as a reminder of that time.

He had a few poor photos and of course he had his tatoos that he regretted for the rest of his life, but apart from the shell case, not much else survived from this period of his life.

When I was a little girl I was fascinated by the shell case.

It was made from one of the mortar shells that was used on one of the ships he served on. In this case we know it was the Empire Noble as the name is carved in as part of the design.

The shell case is brass and very heavy and it stands just over 12 inches high.

A man called Tony carved it - his name is there too - and made it for Daddy as a gift.

The case is incredibly detailed. A lot of it has been hammered to give it a textured effect and to make the smooth areas stand out even more.

It must have taken this man hours and hours to make and it oozes the fact that it was a labour of love and he enjoyed what he was making.

The name of the ship, the Empire Noble, is there, and the year it was carved, 1944.

There is a village around the bottom and it was a port where the ship had berthed for a while.

It represents a place called Takoradi in Ghana. this was an important port for the navy and also had an air base. Daddy visited there on two occasions.

The detail in the carving of the village is amazing.

The shell case also has an anchor and my Daddy's name on it.

For as long as I can remmeber it stood on the hearth of every home we lived in.

When I was about 7 I was allowed to polish it and how I LOVED doing that.

It was always kept bright and shiny and treated with great respect.

When Daddy died it was the very first thing I removed from his house.  I felt it had to be moved to a home with people and love in it straight away and I can remember telling Daddy in my prayers that it was OK the shell case still had a home and was very very treasured.

 

Just as it always did throughout my childhood, it stands on a hearth. 

It is made of something that was only ever designed to be thrown away once it has served its purpose. 

 It is made of a base metal, is of no monetary value what so ever, and yet it is one of the most valuable things I have in my home.

Thank you so much for letting me share this with you.

Now I have finally got some workable pictures I will be scrapping this story too.

Now from the very special to the totally mundane.

My photo of the day represents a great achievement LOL

I hate doing the supermarket shop plus I still feel quite poorly.

So my boot is testament to my housewifely dedication.

A boot full of provisions!

On a final note I want to share a page I made from my sickbed this morning.

The photo is my friends grand-daughter when she was a bridesmaid for a wedding

She looked so beautiful - and just like an angel.

I am going to print this off for her and frame it. I think she will love it.