Circle Journal

So i don't know if it is just down to my ears still playing up but yesterday and today i have been feeling like crap! My body aches, my ears hurt, I'm constantly cold - my poor body must be working overtime trying to keep itself healthy.

In other news - I got my first circle journal back about a week and a half ago. It is lovely and i am so pleased how it has turned out. Thank you to all the ladies who took part and put their time and effort into my journal. The theme of our team was Love/Hate. Below are the pictures of my circle journal.





I have been waiting very patiently for Robin McGraw's book to come out here in the UK, Inside my Heart, and I see that it now has. I still have a voucher from Christmas for Waterstones so I want to pop by and pick this book up. It looks awesome and so fits in with my word for the year - CHOICES. A definite must have for me!

I have a question for you all......how do you manage your finances in your household. Do you have two accounts, one account, a personal account and then a bills account? I'm looking to revamp our finances situation and was wondering whats working for you. If you don't want to answer on here feel free to email me.

Off to do the work that seems to be mounting higher and higher on my desk and then i am off to start the weekend! Have a good one everyone.

Mouse and Cheese

OK you guys, you have just got to watch this video. It had me in stitches! Sit back and enjoy.

This is my level of humour gals!

Last night we seemed to have had a bit of a blow up in the house. Anyway, this left me with an entire evening to do what i wanted. I went upstairs, sat at my desk and just began to scrap. If you read yesterdays post you will know that my creativity has been lacking lately but i am pleased to say that last night i found it once again.

First i want to show you a layout that i did a few weeks back. I entered it in to a magazine but i have not heard anything back yet so i assume this one did not make the cut and that now i can post it here for you all to see. I so love how this turned out and it is a very different style for me.

Then this is the layout that i started ages ago but finally found the creative juices to finish it. I'm pleased with how it has come out. I used Fancy Pants paper, ribbon, 7 Gypsies tag, Lil Davies alphabets and the blue letters i got free with my Scrapbook Inspirations magazine a few months back. Halfway through my title i realised that these felt letters only come with one M so i improvised and turned my W upside down. I don't think you can really tell....can you?

Oh yeah, on second thought, i just wanted to add in that the little white swirls you can see around the photo are from Kirsty's site. I downloaded one of her overlays, made it a little bigger than my photo and only got the edges of the swirls to show. Thanks Kirsty!
I also managed to make a start on our team circle journal. I had a really good idea for it and the cover is turning out far better than i thought it would. Yahoo to me!

In other news, my diet/healthy eating is going very well. I lost 1.5 pounds this week and i am going to start incorporating some exercise into my day so that i can begin to build up my fitness level. Yesterday i had a look at taking part in this years Race for Life. For the past three years i have been tempted to join in but this year i think i am going to take the plunge and enter. If your reading this mom, i am going to try to get you to come with me so be prepared!! lol.

I am still battling with my ear infection. I had to go back to the doctors on Tuesday and i still have both an inner and outer ear infection. Man......this just isn't getting better! Anyways, he gave me some antibiotics and told me to come back in a weeks time. Lets hope it works this time.

Tonight i am hoping to carry on with my shirt, do some more work on my circle journal and also spend an hour(providing i can actually manage that) doing some salsa dancing with a workout DVD that i have at home.

Well, that's me for today.

I'm outta here!

Have a good one.

Life

So I'm going through a bit of a rough time at the moment. A lot of emotional stuff is going on and unfortunately it is affecting my creative flow. I haven't felt like doing anything except watch TV, bath and go to bed. I have a layout half done, a new circle journal to do, a shirt to finish, a trousers to make, swaps to do and i don't have the energy to do any of it.

Isn't it strange how things are brought into your life when you need them. Yesterday, i was reading one of Joyce Meyers books and her statement hit me straight in the middle of the eyes.
Do i want to be pitiful or powerful? I want to be powerful! So, i am lifting my chin up high and walking through the next couple of days like this - even though this is not how i feel on the inside.

This morning i opened up my email from Oprah and this was her quote for the day.
"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."
—Nora Ephron

Shall I Laugh or Cry?

Last night i suddenly realised that i have not updated my blog for days and days - definitely not like me. Then i began to run through what i had been up this past week and it hit me. Sewing is what happened to my week!

Let me share with you what i have learnt this week from my sewing adventure (and this is in no particular order):
1. This is not something that you can simply do for half an hour and then stop - It pulls you in and makes you feel like you want to finish the entire thing even though it fully knows that it will take you at least another week to finish it!
2. Just because someone else finds something easy does not mean that I will - When i went to go buy my fabric and my pattern, the woman who sold me the patterns told me that they were easy. If this is what easy is then i have NO hope of getting this shirt finished. Don't even think about showing me a difficult pattern, lol, i can see myself running a mile!
3. It takes all night just to figure out which pattern pieces you need and in which size.
4. Fabric has a grain - Can someone please tell me when this happened? Was i off sick the day our home economics teacher taught us this lesson? I had to Google it to find out just what it meant and how to find it!
5. Follow the pattern - So before i started cutting out my fabric i decided that in order to give myself a little extra material i would cut about a cm away from the paper pattern all the way round the pattern. My shirt is now too big and looks like a tent! Arggg
6. When you start to sew, expect to miss at least three things - "What three things did I miss"? you ask. Well first i completely missed one of the pattern pieces that i needed for my shirt. I didn't even cut it out of the fabric! Secondly, i completely missed a step in the "Easy instructions" that was provided and thirdly i completely missed that fact that this patter calls for a zipper!! Since when?? lol
7. You can always unpick - LOL - if it was up to me i would have just left the colour the way it was, but with my mom their she insisted that i unpick it and do it properly...lol. Mom's!
8. Practise makes perfect - I had to re thread my machine that many times that i can now do this blind folded! Wohoo to me.
9. Sewing has a whole new lingo of its own - Yup, that's right. It has its own lingo with its own secret words and secret meanings and i feel like i am sitting on the outside of this secret circle looking in.

As I didn't have a zip, I tried to fix it and alter it myself. 10:30pm last night this is how i left my shirt - feeling very disappointed with it and myself.

I still have the hem and sleeves to do but am thinking about leaving the shirt for now and perhaps starting the EASY trouser pattern that arrived in the post on Saturday.
On the scraping front i managed to complete another cj and also started a new layout. Here is a sneak peak as it is not finished yet.
I have a new circle journal to make for our UKS team cj and i also want to get some layouts submitted to a mag tonight.
Have a good day everyone