Craft & Easter...

I got an easter egg from my Mother-in-Law!! Every year she gets one each for the kids, and one Smartees one for Desmond...but this year she got me an egg too!! Yay it only took me seventeen years with my husband to be part of the family.

Desmond loves his smartees but colour sorts them out first ... and I looked over and he had done this ..



Sad little man .... !! What was even sadder - when he took a photo and I laughed at him - he says "What dont tell me your not going to scrap it...!" (Me thinks he knows me too well).

Did a fair amount of crafting over the past week or so. Still have to get photos I am happy with of some of them ...

Copied Laineys last class...



I was sorry I had to miss this class, so soon after Crafteire I bet the place was buzzing with chat and laugh and the rehash of the weekend.

Then I joined up with a monthly kit club. Got my first parcel this week, come complete with loads of stuff .. and a wee baggie of coffee - "Irish Nut" - I guess becasue we are so well known for our coffee and nuts here in Ireland (the nuts I agree with ..................)



And it was a lovely big package too!! And I love getting parcels in the post.

So I did this layout - I loved these papers - and figured they suited the old photos. Misjudged the stamping of Times and had to squeeze in the S. so not happy with that but there ya go...




And there is still loads of paper left to play with!! (and that easter egg to eat too, which I will do tonight ... )

Didn't we have a lovey day ... Eventually.

We had the most roundabout day, we had to go up to Cavan to meet with our builder, who has been working on our place up there since the first week in January, and only now has asked us for some money .... when he is almost finished.

So we had to drive up there first, two and a quarter hours due to road works in f**ing Kells ( I hate that town).

And then ..... he was not there !! But the place is looking fantastic. He has the walls done, the new hotpress sorted. He has the upstairs floored and the ladder in. Its cool upstairs. I bagged one room, Des the other!!

So we then had another two and a half hour drive across NI to Belfast. Stopping off for something to eat, small choice, as usual ...

But once there it was very easy to find the way to Ikea. You simply head out to the George Best Airport and Ikea is right beside it. Its signposted, thanks to the AA!!

The place is HUGE. But its easy to make your way around by following the arrows, that way you get to see everything. Its very well set up and everything in the catalogue is on display. And nearly every colour version was there too.

We picked up two storage shelving systems designed for kids stuff and a desk top and have made a new work area for me!! No excuses now.

The drive home was much easier, we went straight down the motorway, stoped at Dundalk for something to eat. Spotted an Italian restraunt and car parking space just when we had decided to give up and go to McDs!! The food was delish.

I spent yesterday assembling them and moving my stuff from the corner of the sitting room down to its new home in our bedroom. The shelves are very high, seeing as we picked up the wrong ones, but its made a cool looking workstation. I need to pick up a bar stool type of chair to be able to reach the table! But I am trilled with it.

Amazing amount of stash to be moved ... how come the more storage space you have the more stuff you seem to need to store?

Exciting day tommorow.

Hey Hey going to see my house again tommorow. I'm So Excited ...!!

Thomas the builder phoned late last week to say he is almost finished, and we are finally being asked for some money. The man has only been working on our house since January, and here we are three months later and he is only now looking for some money. He has been a dream to work with!! Lets hope the results are as good as we hope.

Heading onto Ikea after meeting Thomas, to do a wee bit of shopping - and to pick up ten catalogues!

Beannachtaí Lá Fhéile Pádraig

Liadan .... reidh dull ar scoil.

Today - Saturday - she has a party over in her cousins to go to and then we have a family party in Angies tonight. Best part of today - Desmond and I have three free hours in the afternoon. Whatever shall we do!!

Test...

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

Happy Birthday Son

My baby boy is 17 today!!Wow those seventeen years went well, and fast. I am very proud of the man he is rapidly becoming. He has a very kind and generous streak in him, and is a very loving person. He is not afraid to show affection or to tell us he loves us. He will hug me goodbuy in the shops, say he loves me at the end of a phone call to me, even if he is in a large group of his peers.

Its been a hard rough road for him health wise over the past three years, we nearly lost him a few times, but thankfully we have made it to the other side.

Crafteire - the Final Part...

Sunday ... slept better the night before so didnt waken as early. Felt much better for the rest, despite knowing that I was up and about at 2am.... part of me feeling like I should have simply stayed in the bar!!

We got well and trully stuck into the class today. It was brilliant. We started off with making a mini book out of six by twelves and bamboo sticks - the type you use to test a cake (or when your having a barbeque).It was certainly interesting and tonnes and tonnes of making in it. Not sure if I would ever make it again and still have to finish it. But you never know the day you will end up glad you know how to do something!!

After that it was the messy end of the day, painting the tyles we made the night before. Our table quickly dispensed with the paintbrushes and went for the baby wipes!! There were powders and glitter to be added after the paint.

Lunch was much better today, except for the instruction of where to go... "Lunch will be in the ABC room, for those of you who dont know where that is, its where the shop was the first year Crafteire was on!" .. yes very helpful. But a kindly waitron took us there. We were at big round tables this time, which makes conversation much easier. At least you can see everyone at the table.

After lunch it seemed like no time till we had to finish up and go home. Yet it was 4.40pm!! Des & Liadan came down to pick me up, which I was glad of, and which worked out well, as we stoped off at Corby's on the way home.

Dee & Fred ordered in Chinese for us all and a bottle of wine later and I was home again home again. Took me till Monday afternoon before I really got a chance to look at all my lovely stash!!

Crafteire - Part Two - Saturday

Hope I can fit this all in!!

Started off my day bright and early, slept ok, but missed Des so much - as the song says The Beds too Big Without you :-(, so woke up at 6.50am.

Still the leisure centre was open at 7am so I got myself ready and set off for a swim, it was lovely there was only three of us in the pool. It was lovely to start off the day with a few lenghts - a Jacuzzi - and a sauna followed. Was back in my room and had my hair dried when my breakfast arrived up as planned. How indulgent to be sitting watching the morning news eating your breakie.

Down to the crop room by 9.30am ... the place was really starting to fill up with the extra arrivals who had missed the Friday night. I ended up moving from my original spot so that three people could sit together. So ended up on a table with JulieM, JulieFrog, LindaB & Jamie who I knew from the Donneycarney Crops, and from our CJ teams. I am in two circles with JulieM, one with JulieFrog and LindaB, and another with Jamie. So I was amongst friends... well acquaintances to start with Friends for sure by the end of the weekend. Great bunch of women altogether... such fun and laughter we had.

I had my first class at 10.15 with Linda Kelly ... we did a lovely chipboard and acetate book. I learnt how to stamp onto acetate, and Linda gave us some great tips for stamping, perhaps some may have felt she was teaching them stuff they knew, but I found all her advice brilliant. It was great fun, and the book is lovely. Its blue and brown which are great colours, very modern, but great if you have photos of both boys and girls.

Then I had a break where I was not doing the next class, so I worked on the book some more. I was glad to have that time to finish it off, felt it gave me less pressure during the actual class knowing I had that hour afterwards to complete the project ..

Got some shopping done too... well now that I knew how to stamp, and what ink to buy, I needed to get some stuff!!

My next class was with AmberJane. We used Fancy Pants papers, and again the kit was very generous indeed. The main focus of this class was to alter premade die cuts, and we used Stickles glitter glues for this. Well I fell in love. Little pots of glitter glue with nozzles. I found them very easy to control, a bit like royal icing onto paper!! The papers were lovely for this class, but quite girly, I used a photo of the three lads taken at Christmas, and intend to finish off this layout by putting in some small passport sized photos of each of them.

Back to crop room ...got a proper look at my kit, more shopping time!! Then we had a break for lunch, soup and sandwiches in the same part of the restaurant as the previous night.... bit disappointing really. I don't really like soup, so turned that down, and the sandwiches were just plain boring really. Luckily I had some Tim tams stashed in my bag for with the coffee!!

After lunch and it was straight back to work with us. Did a couple of make and takes - Annamarie was doing a mini book using the bind-it-all machine. Its a very neat little machine. Not sure I would use it much, although I am developing a liking for mini books. They just come together so quickly and easily. Make good gifts too. I also did a mini booklet with Beckie from Rusty Pickle. It was very much a premade self assembly job. But again I got to try out those Stickles!! Yummy yokes altogether.

Then it was into Annamaries class. The space in the class room was quite limited, and this was beginning to bother me at this stage, also I was getting hungry as I had such a limited lunch. So I have to admit that I found it very hard to concentrate in this class, and had to ask Annamarie to show me the layout a few times. I actually ended up skipping out of the class a bit early. I had the layout well started and will finish it off this week. Again the papers were really only suitable for girls.

After grabbing a coffee and some chocolate I felt a lot better able to face the next class. This was the master class with Jane Dean. This was something we were all really looking forward to as we had no idea what it was going to entail. We had been asked to bring a rolling pin and a pitza wheel!! So you can imagine the laughter around all that. It turned out to be great. We had air drying clay that we were going to turn into Mosaic type tiles and decorate a plain box with them.

As the bar stop ed serving hot food at 7 about half the class ran out after Jane did the initial run through ..but she knew we were going and had told us she was going to be available all evening so it was OK.

I am sure the bar staff didn't know what hit them, loads of mad women charing in just before 7 to make sure to eat.

After a very pleasant hour over the dinner, and sharing a bottle of wine, it was hi ho and back to work with us!! Making the tiles was tremendous fun, rolling out, stamping, cutting... suitably crafty to appeal to us all.

We adjourned to the bar, bit by bit, but I have to say come 10.30 I was done in and took my drink up to the room with me.

What a Saturday....

Crafteire - Part One - Friday.

Wow what a weekend. Non stop make and do....!! What more could a girl ask for.

I got collected from my house and brought to the hotel on Friday afternoon, thanks again M. for the lift. It was great to have a bit of company for the journey down. Booked in at 4pm and had fully intended to spend the afternoon, or at least some of it, down in the swimming pool. But took off the shoes and socks, realised I was hungry so was really indulgent to myself and ordered room service!! First time I have ever done that, but it was so worth it. So spend the afternoon watching telly before having a shower and getting ready for the evening. Where lets face it I did not know what was ahead of me.

So headed down to the crop room for 7, where we were handed name tags - very official and important looking neck wear. We were also handed a bag of three different papers and told to make something !! All we were allowed to use was our imagination, a photo, and pens. It was amazing how many different variety's of scrapbook pages could be produced from the same papers. I was very happy with my layout even thought I knew it was not going to be a winner.

Then about 45 of us adjourned to the hotel resturant for dinner. The food was great, dispite being from a set menu. I had chicken salad, pasta, and then some jelly like desert. Service was dreadful. No-one came to take drink orders, and we had to ask the same waitress four times for a wine list. So an otherwise excellent meal was let down by human error. Which was a mistake on the hotel's part as they could have had 45 women sitting drinking all evening ... instead we were all up and back to the crop room straight after dinner.

Scrapped till 11, at which point I figured that I had better phone Desmond, to say goodnight. Went back into the crop room but was starting to flag so I was back in my hotel bed by 11.45. What an evening.

To be continued ....!!