Dolly's Dreamings

It's Done ... and so are we!

Well, it has been a long old process. I think it was sometime in March that we first started planning and talking about the bedroom and bathroom and now - the refit is complete and we are shattered but thrilled.

Bedroom before the refit

 

and after

 

 

 

Bathroom from bedroom before refit

 

 

and after

 

Today has been a busy day as the lads finished off the bathroom and we changed knobs, sewed and hung curtains, sorted out all the electrics, ironed 4 new sets of bedding (that was tough I can tell you) cleaned the entire house to within an inch of its life and then dressed the rooms and put everything back where it should be.

The house looks fab but we are shattered. It doesn't feel like ours yet - more like some sort of posh hotel, but I am sure we will get used to it.

The cats are freaked out by it all - they haven't been in the bedroom and en suite for two weeks. You should have seen them when they went in LOL

We still have pictures to hang etc but we are sleeping in our own room again tonight and I am off to have a bath in my new huge ultra deep bath.

By the way - in the photos - the carpet is still pink. the cream carpet gets fitted on wednesday and it should look so much nicer.

Have a fab weekend everyone. I am leaving you with some hapy pictures xxxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost done

The end - as they say - is in sight.

The bathroom fitters - only three today LOL - say they will be done in the morning and OMG it looks awesome.

It certainly doesn't look like ours.

It looks like someone has taken the bathroom from a very posh hotel and put it in ours.

I can't get over how big it looks and how smart and classy.

We have just finished decorating the bedroom this evening. We can only work in there when the fitters have gone as they are using our bedroom as a sort of ante room for the bathroom. The bedroom walls are painted, and we have done the wallpapering.

Nigel picked a very bland paper - typical us. we play it safe when it comes to decor. the more cream the better.

However, I convinced him to change the paper this morning and we went and bought the paper I really wanted. NOT bland LOL.

It is truly gorgeous paper, all embossed and luxurious and quite a statement for us. We also put up the border on the painted walls. I searched everywhere for a border I liked and bought this off ebay. It couldn't have worked better with the fabric and wallpaper.

Nij is just changing the headboard now.

Dawn Inskip has a store at PickleberryPop and they are celebreating their third birthday this week and they released a whole load of lolly bags (grab bags) They are all gorgeous but I  confess to being a tad biased and think Dawn's is especially lush.

It is absolutely gorgeous and has so much stuff in it including 2 full alphabets and such wonderful papers.

I have two things from it to share today and more tomorrow.

The hybrid card was so cute to make.

I totally love the flowerpot and Dawn's kits always print so perfectly.

I print them out on matt  paper ( areally nice quality paperI use for printing digital pages too) and if I want things more dimensional i stick them to a thick card before cuttingt hem out.

The page at the end of this post was one of the amur leopards from our photo safari day. Isn't he the most beautiful cat you have ever seen? Mmmmmm - maybe not as beautiful as Pepo, my ultimate star and maybe not as beautiful as Kira, Fiki and Boo, but pretty spectacular all the same.

Family comes in all shapes and sizes

  The page here was made for last month's design team work for Mel and Jill at ATDML.

I loved the photo so much.

I took it on Father's Day (I think it was my photo of the day that day) and it is just so lovely of my two boys.

Fiki may be a devil cat and the wickedest boy in the universe, but he is such a softie - he really is. He loves to be hugged and cuddled and is a real lap cat when the batteries finally wear down.

He is the Duracell bunny though - the batteries last a LONG time.

It has been a busy bathroom day today. Last night we painted the bedroom walls and today we had no less than 4 workmen int he house. the tiler finished the tilinga nd did the grouting (it looks awesome) the plumber fitted the water softner and helped the fitter who connected everything up except the loo and the elecritian fitted the downlighters, the extracor and the sockets.

It is starting to look more like a finished room.

I think it is going to be fabulous and it looks huge - way bigger than it did and yet we will have more in there as we never had a shower before.

My photo of the day yesterday was to show how lovely my bath looked. I am thinking I might take some of the rubbish out of it though!!!!

Today's photo is of the wonderful new all singing all dancing shower or at least a little bit of it.

I went out and looked for things for the bathroom today but dodn't find what I was wanting but DID find two utterly gorgeous pairs of shows. they are both Clarke's shoes, one pauir black and one paire the most gorgeous taupe and beinge. Very smart and posh and comfy even though they have quite high heels. I love them. And they were so cheap! The taupe ones were reduced from £60 to £17.99. The black ones were reduced from £50.00 to £14.99. And they are sort of for the bathroom. They will be just next door int he wardrobe so you see, it sort of counts LOL

Finally I thought I would share this e mail that I kind of liked.

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. 
Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway;

It just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.
He invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quietened down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer's neighbours continued to shovel  dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.
Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off! 

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, Never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up. 

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

• Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.

• Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.
• Live simply and appreciate what you have.

• Give more.
• Expect less

BUT REMEMBER

The donkey later came back,  and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him.

The gash from the bite got infected and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.

MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON:

When you do something wrong, and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you. 

 

Sketch mania and some respite

I actually managed some scrapping again today having spent the last couple of days doing other things that I haven't enjoyed nearly as much.

The curtains look fab in the wardrobes though and as soon as the men have gone we will have tile pictures LOL.

It all got a bit on top of me yesterday as every single room int he house seems to be a mess. The dining room has become my overflow workroom, the bedroom and bathroom - well bombsite springs to mind. the lounge has the cats in, the scrap room seems to have lost its 's' and the spare room is a mess cos all the stuff fromt he bedroom , including us, are in there. The middle bathroom and library and kitchen are OK but need a damn good clean and there seems no point till the work is finished.

  Anyway, I needed a pick me up so I went out and bought towels for the new bathroom today - and I love them! I could just spend hours at Dunelm - I love it.

The page at the top was one I made using a page maps sketch. I am loving using sketches as a basis for the big cat album.

The second page here is using this week's pencil lines sketch.

I have been printing the big cat pages out and the album is already looking good with 7 pages complete. The aim is to do all 20 pages in the album before the end of August.

Photo of the day to follow when 'the men' go!

Tribute to my Mom

I am sharing this page I made for Mel and Jill at ATDML last month and have kept it till today on purpose. Today is/was my Mom's birthday.

I was born just before her 28th birthday - in fact I was due on the day before her birthday but, as usual, I couldn't wait. I was also born the day after my nana's birthday and the day of my nanny's birthday. We are July people, all of us LOL.

The picture is an old one of Mommy taken before I was born. I think she looks beautiful in it. She would have disagreed. But then I think she always looked beautiful.

Mom hated her nose. She broke it - I am not sure how, when she was young and it never set quite right and she had quite a bony lump on the bridge. It worried her more and more as she got older and caused quite a lot of her 'nerves'. I was often told of Mommy's 'nerves'. I think, from all I heard and putting two and two together, she was a very nervous and shy person who eventually had some sort of breakdown when I was about 7. I know part of it was exacerbated by her nose and she used to hold her hand in front of her face when she met people as she was so self-cosnscious. I guess it must have been bad because when i was 7 she had a nose job on the NHS and I guess they didn't do that lightly. I remember going in to see her in Odstock hospital and she had two black eyes. I wasn't meant to go but I cried so much for her Daddy relented and took me. I don't think it looked much different but she obviously did and that was what mattered.

Anyway the nose wasn't the issue. I called the page Aspire and I mean it. I aspire to be like my Mom. She was an amazing person who was truly loved by everyone around her. She was kindness personified and only ever saw the good in people. She was the one who took in every waif and stray - quite a few of my friends came to stay with us for extended periods because they needed her TLC. She had an amazing sense of humour and was in many ways very naieve. She was my best friend and I was totally and utterly bereft when I lost her suddenly just before I was 30. Not a day goes by when I don't think of her and miss her.  

No page can ever do her justice but this is a suitable tribute to post today of all days.

I have had a busy day today sewing. My poor little sewing machine didn't know what hit it. It sewed fabric and it hasn't done that before. It was bought to sew paper and that is all it knows.

It has spent several hours today making cushion covers and curtains for inside the glazed wardrobe doors.  It makes for an interesting picture of the day today though. Not often you see me sewing material and being all domesticated.

Now - the winner of the RAK - Dawn Inskip's wonderful Wizardry kit - was Kim. I wasn't sure how everyone did the randomisers with computer wizardry so I wrote the names down on bits of paper and picked one at random. Old fashioned and dated ... but it worked.

Kim I will e mail you the details of how to claim your free kit.

Thank you to everyone who commented but - more importantly - thank you to everyone who visits my little piece of cyber space on a regular basis. I hope I make you feel welcome and please, keep visiting.

Finally I made another page for Twisted Sketches last night. I love their challenges and this one was to use the sketch and also to use buttons or brads.

I am trying hard to complete an albym of our big cat photo safari and the sketches are really working well for me.

i am making a digital album and then printing each page off as I go. the album is already looking good and I am pleased with it.

Thanks for another great sketch to inspire me ladies and I thought your work was awesome.

The page this time features my all time favourite cat at the centre, the gorgeous Pepo.

Lovely afernoon out

After the painting of this morning we went out this afternoon to somewhere very local but very special.

Many of you will know that Nij is into his trains ...... thankfully computerised though I am sure a model railway is never far from his mind.

Well near us, at Sandbanks (yes the millionaire area of the world - the second most expensive place to live in the entire world.... and no.... living 'near it' doesn't count LOL) there is the most wonderful place called the Luscombe Valley railway.

A really nice man, Richard Knott,  (pictures below in  the white shirt) has created the most magical railway in his garden. Yes it is a huge huge garden of acres in size.

It is all beautifully landscaped with track after track running through tunnels and workng yards and stations and interchanges and is a railway run with genuine steam trains and diesel trains. These tiny trains pull huge loads - up to six or seven people in most cases plus the traina nd the driver.

It is only open a few times a year and he and the enthusiasts and friends who help him do it all for charity.

This year it was raisng money for prostate cancer.

The grounds (and the house) are beautiful, the views over the harbour superb, the welcome tremendous and riding on these little trains was just amazing

It was such a lovely afternoon.

If you want to read more about it the web site is here

Card sketch, Free kit and thanks

Happy Sunday everyone.

 

The sun isn't shining but it is Sunday so who cares eh!

First I want to send a huge thank you to my friend Paula (apart from the fact she is such a lovely person it thrills me every time that I have a friend in Buenos Aires). Paula has been a great source of encouragement to me over the whole bathroom business. And she knows from experience what that has been like. She has just been through it. But LOOK at what she has ended up with. It is so cool and elegant and .... finished. Paula it is gorgeous and you must be so thrilled. Your words of encouragement have helped and I am looking forward to being back in my own bedroom eventually.

That is going to take a little longer now though! We were planning on being back next weekend as the bathroom work is sheduled to be finished Friday (I actually think it will be before then) but the carpet in the bedroom isn't being fitted till next wednesday (11 days time) and it seems pointless to move it back in and then out again. I can't wait!

The page a the top of this post is my latest 365 page (yes ... I am up to date again LOL) and I used largely products by Dawn Inskip again.

I have another card sketch today. Once I am back in the land of the properly housed and bathroomed people there will be another class page - hopefully next Sunday - but this week has just been a little mad to be honest.

Now I had two cards made witht his sketch and I am blowed if I can find the second.

I will come back and add it in later when I find it but breakfast calls right now so I have to fly.

 

 

 

DON'T FORGET you can win the latest kit by Dawn Iskip just posting in this entry or on yesterday's entry where you can see the kit in all of its glory.

 

I wanted to RAK someone as I am so grateful to all the people who pop by so regularly. That is why I haven't advertised it on forums because I want to RAK a visitor who just visits anyway.

 

 

The good news is - apart from the fact I have painted the doors now (and quite a bit of my hair to be honest!!!)

I have found the other card I made from the sketch.

 

I wanted to share it as it is a flipped version with the elements of the sketch there but in different places. I LOVE that you do that with sketches.

 

FREE RAK of awesome new kit release

Firstly I want to thank Dawn Inskip who has been, as ever, so generous.

Not only do I get to use her wonderful kits to create with but she has also donated a free kit to me so I can RAK someone.

I feel so grateful to people for popping by, often on a  daily basis, to read my blog. My blog is my daily therapy and indulgence. I love writing it. I love pouring out whatever is on my mind and sharing whatever I have created. If no-one came it would still give me so much pleasure. But the fact that so many people drop by, visiting and sometimes leaving a comment, makes me very happy.

I wanted to RAK someone just to say thank you and thought it would be nice to give away a kit. I asked Dawn if I could (because frankly if I RAKed something I had made it wouldn't be worth having) and not only did she say yes, she donated the kit too. So thank you so much Dawn.

So all you need to do is leave a comment in this post between

now and Monday noon and I will pick a random post and that person

will receive Dawn's new kit for free.

 

And believe me you will love it. It is such high quality, prints well for hybrid work and the papers are to die for.

I am including two pages I made with the kit. I love the doodles, but I especially love the quality water colour papers that I think I will be using over and over again.

It's been a busy day here - decorating. well Nij has done most of it as I really didn't feel well. My foot swelled up ... no idea why ... and I felt sick and tired. felt much better after a lie down and so helped with gloss painting.

Nij repaired the ceiling and then painted it and the room is starting to look much fresher.

We have to remove the border and paper and put the new up and paint the walls.

I can't wait to move back in to our own room. As Nij says, it feels like we are on holiday at the moment. Mind you - that's no bad thing really. It's the only one we are having LOL.

 

Everything in the two pages comes from the new kit apart from the house (from Dawn's Boo kit) and the border ont he Fiki page from Dawn's Balance is Beautiful kit.

You can see all of dawn's work here and here.

So here's to one of you owning this fab new kit for free.

On a scale of 1 to 10

OK so on a scale of 1 to 10 today was about a -2. Not a great day.

I knew it would be tough - but it was worse.

First off I had a wonderful evening yesterday. We had a fab meal that lasted hours on Poole Quay at the Wok and Spice and then went out on the balcony outside there to watch the fireworks over the quay which were gorgeous. (Nice of them to lay them on specially for me on my birthday wasn't it!)

Having had a poor night's sleep - Fiki had a bad night so that meant we did too! - I was up early as I knew 'men' were coming.

The plumber came to move the things he had done on wednesday that we were not happy with and the electricians came to put in an new fuse box and check everything was compliant.

I knew there would be no power so popped into work and to Tesco thinking when I came back all would be brilliant.

It wasn't.

there was a problem with the power and they couldn't find a leak (no idea what that means) but every light switch in the house was off the wall, all the furniture had been moved out to get to every hidden power point (now I am no slattern but i don't move wall units out every week so it was dirty behind there) There were men everywhere and I was so horrified I didn't know what to do, so I cried a bit then ran away to Jakki's till it was all over.  I am so lucky to have a mate like Jakki.

Anyway since I have been home I have managed to sort my iPod out and have loads on there now LOL. You know me - any available space and I fill it.

The picture at the top of this post if my lovely new iPod in its lovely new docking station and is my photo of the day.

The page here is one I made last month for Mel and Jill at ATDML and is a very very old picture of me which is poor quality but i wanted to scrap.

I was about 15 and it has been years and years since I have worn a bikini and I was obviously self conscious of my tummy even then.

I have a suprise in store for people tomorrow. I will have a lovely RAK to give to people who post comments and it really is a LOVELY RAK so be sure to check in.

Happy Birthday to me

I have - well am having - a wonderful day today.

I had lovely presents including being a very spoilt girl from nigel with an I Pod touch and a really mega docking station and case and everything.

It has been a bit of a steep learning curve but we have it sussed now.

I had a wonderful gift from mel and Jill of a divine canvas album and some cute Disney stencils from dawn.

I had i tunes vouchers and from Jakki I had my cinema treat last night and a girly heaven box with a phone charm, lush pens and note books and pads (all very girly) and some girly socks (cos she tells me off cos i wear Nigel's!)

Plus Jakkia nd Gary came over and took Nij and I out to lunch and cocktails and it was all rather wonderful.

I have had a terrific day and thank everyone on so many forums for their good wishes.

Will be back to blog properly tomorrow. Now I must go and have more fun LOL

Pictures of us at lunchtime.