The verdict :(

Well, it looks like I'm going to need my tooth taken out. The emergency dentist took a filling out to treat an infection under the tooth and has put a temporary dressing on it, meaning I can't really eat anything as I can't close my mouth properly to bite. I now need to find a dentist to extract the tooth as it is unlikely that it can be refilled. Easier said than done. We moved here two years ago and since then I have been trying to get registered with a dentist but none of them are taking on patients around here :( I've got two different types of painkillers and some anti-biotics to take so I'm not going to partying tomorrow night...

Better go and find myself a good dvd to watch tomorrow. Any suggestions?

xx

Sleepless night

i'm off to the emergency dentist after being up all night with toothache. Wish me luck! X

Messy christmas!

Hope you all had a fantastic time, we certainly did and i'll be back to tell you all about it after i've finished cleaning the midden that is my craft room! x

O Christmas Tree

Hello :) I've not been around here for a few days because I've not been very well but I'm feeling a bit better so I thought I'd pop on here before I go and brave the crowds at the Trafford Centre (wish me luck!)

Saturday was great fun. I really enjoyed the concert and was surprised at how many songs I knew. I think Mr P was a bit scared when I started singing along but never mind! The first half of the concert was songs from Jason's new album (which are covers of 50s and 60s songs) and the second half was a bit of a "cheese-fest" with songs like Sealed With a Kiss and Nothing Can Divide Us. Great fun :) I did take some pictures and a little video so if I remember I'll try and post a couple of them on here - judging from your comments on my last post there are a few Jason fans out there ;)

The Christmas Markets were absolutely packed. We didn't stay there long because I was feeling a bit shivery and I'm not very good with big crowds of people as I get a bit panicky. We're going to try and get there again before they finish next week but might run out of time! To be honest, I was a bit disappointed by the stalls we did see as it was a load of tat and very expensive. When they first started doing the markets a lot of the items were handmade and were being sold by the original artists but this year it seemed to be the same sort of mass produed items on a lot of the stalls :(

The craft fair we went to was very good and I got a little felted heart brooch and some fabric badges which were very cute. There were a few bits and bobs I would have loved to have got but it was the wrong side of payday!

I'm still doing JYC but am still behind. The pictures on this post are for the day (can't remember which day it was ) that was about Christmas Trees. I'm off all over Christmas and New Year so there will be some serious scrapbooking going on then :)

So here are some of my favourite decorations on our Christmas tree. We go for the "more is more" look here and there are very few branches on our tree that don't have something dangling from them...

The bell bauble was from Tesco and the snowman came from the church fair a couple of weeks ago:
More Tesco decorations. They had a big half price sale on them a couple of weeks ago and I went a bit nuts!
This one is an iris folded bell that I made a couple of years ago:

This bell came from a flea market at the Civic Centre in Uppermill last year. There were loads of baubles with it which decorate our mini tree on the dresser.
I'm going through a bit of an obsession with owls at the moment and this little guy is very sweet!

And finally, Missy snoozing on "her" chair. I thought cats were supposed to be elegant but neither of mine are when they're sleeping. Mollie's even worse. She lies legs akimbo showing everything. Naughty girl ;)

I took all these pictures on my new phone (I'm still working out all the features on it) and uploaded them directly onto Blogger before coming in on the computer to edit the post and add my writing. It makes it so much easier than having to dig out the lead from the camera and resize pictures etc before posting them. I love technology sometimes!

OK, enough from me, I'm off to finish my Christmas shopping and find a dress for my Christmas do. See you tomorrow

xx

What we're up to today...

Not that you're all waiting on the edge of your seat to find out! lol ;)

Well, for once Mr P is off today so we are going to take a trip into Manchester. First of all we are going to go to a craft fair at Whitworth Art Gallery on Oxford Road. It's on today from 10-4 and tomorrow 10-2 (I think, but I'll check when I'm there today) and hopefully I might be able to pick up a few pretties :)

Next we are off to the Christmas Market to drink some gluwein and scoff chocolate pancakes and maybe pick up some Christmas presents :)

Finally we are going to see Jason Donovan at a concert at the Apollo. I won some tickets on Century Radio a couple of weeks ago and tonight is the night of the concert. My sister (yes the same one I've blogged about before) thinks we are "deeply sad" but I really don't care. It should be good fun, it's something we wouldn't have been doing and it's a free night out :) Always a good thing in my opinion :) When I was about 9 I was the biggest Kylie and Jason fan and managed to convince myself I would marry Jason Donovan when I grew up (either him or George Michael, hmmmm, we all know what happened there!) so it will be like going back to my childhood :)

Mr P has been laughing at me because everytime I win tickets for anything in a concert it is always for some strange thing. Last time it was a Queen tribute act!

Hope you all have a good Saturday

xx

Oh just for the nostalgia, here's Too Many Broken Hearts. Come one, sing along, I know you know the words....

Blogging from my phone

Hope this works!

Excited :)

My new mobile has just been delivered and I am rather excited (shallow, I know)! I've been using an ancient Samsung for ages since my last phone broke but now I am in possession of a nice, new, shiny N96 :) I'm off to have a play with it now :)

See you later
x

Simple pleasures :)

A great book and a brew :)

I got this book this week (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson) and started reading it last night. Absolutely fantastic, I can see this becoming one of my favourite books :) I'd heard good things about it but hadn't expected it to be so funny and you can't help really liking the characters. Miss Pettigrew is the sort of friend that every woman should have. She's so unflappable and always knows what to do. I wish I knew a Guinevere Pettigrew! I'd had a bit of a dull and boring day yesterday and this was like reading a sort of fairy tale for grown ups, if that makes sense? It's one of those books that is so sweet and charming, you can't help feeling warm and fuzzy. The perfect antidote to the credit crunch blues :)

We're being a bit naughty here tonight as we are having takeout pizza :) yum yum! We were supposed to be having a relatively healthy homemade pizza but someone (naming no names but for once this culinary disaster wasn't down to your's truly...) forgot to put the kneading paddle in the breadmaker so after 1 1/2 hours there was still no pizza dough! For a one off it's not going to hurt but we are going to be eating a lot more healthier after Christmas :)

Oh and before I forget, thank you all for your lovely comments about my Christmas cards :) It's something I've been doing for a while but it's something I've been a bit self-conscious about because my sister has been less than complimentary about it in the past. She thinks by making my cards I am being "cheap" and "tight", not realising it costs me more in materials and time and effort than it would do to buy a handmade card in the shops. Oh well, you can't win 'em all :)

See you all tomorrow

x

Catching Up

Well, I managed to do 2 days of JYC on time but then my internet was off so I am a little bit behind! I finally got back onto the internet today and have read all my JYC emails and have an idea what I'm going to do for them so hopefully I'll be able to catch up quickly :)

Today I have been Christmas shopping and have almost done all my shopping but I have had a row with my sister about presents. I much prefer to have a surprise to open on Christmas day but my sister says "you either tell me exactly what you want or I'm not getting you anything", which I think misses the point of giving gifts! I'd rather she gave me something she has really thought about, even if it didn't cost very much. On Friday she made me write a list of exactly what I wanted for Christmas (she's getting me books) but said there was "nothing in particular" she wanted. So today I have been shopping and bought her a lovely (expensive) present which I spent a long time choosing. She then rang me up and said she had decided she wanted a very specific perfume and when I told her I'd already bought her present she told me to take it back. I'm so angry with her. She doesn't know what I got her and I spent ages choosing it. Next time I'm not going to bother. She will get money in a (shop-bought) card. I'm tired of being the only person in our family who actually bothers thinking about what people want so I have decided that from now on I will do the same as my sister and my mam and just give people money in a card. Grrrrrrr. She makes me so mad!

Ok, rant over. JYC Day 3 coming up....

Every year I always make my all my own Christmas cards. I think the last time I bought cards from a shop was about 7 years ago and (for me) part of the fun in Christmas preparations is making all my cards, knowing that each one will be individual and the people I send them to won't get another one exactly the same!

I normally start making my cards pretty early (one year I started them in July!) so that it isn't all a mad panic before Christmas. This year I got a Cricut for my birthday and so I have been using this to help me a lot this year :)

Here is a selection of some of this year's cards:

Hope you like them :) See you all tomorrow

x

Let it snow!

Ok, cheesy title but this was the scene that greeted me this morning when I opened my front door :

We hadn't expected it to snow so it was a great surprise. Even though it has been getting colder these last few days (and we had some snow that didn't stick yesterday), this is the first "proper" snow we've has this winter and I was so excited! I was supposed to be in work today so I got in my car to attempt to drive to work. I didn't even make to the end of my street as the roads hadn't been gritted and my car was slip-sliding everywhere. Luckily I could take the day off work so me and Mr P wrapped up warm and donned our wellies to go for a walk in the snow.

We decided to go along the canal. It was so pretty with all the snow...

A lot of the canal was frozen over completely but there were one or two bits where the ice had started to melt and all the ducks were huddled there. I'm really glad I'm not a duck because they looked freeeeeeezing!

When we walk along here in the summer we often like to stop at this bench and watch the barges go past, but the bench was thick with snow this afternoon so unless we wanted a wet bum we had to keep going!

Although it looks very peaceful in these pictures, we actually met quite a lot of people along the way and stopped to have a chat with them. That's one of the things I love so much about living here - everyone's so friendly. There was an elderly man with his little dog, who was wearing a cute little red jacket to keep her warm, and one man who was clearly a lot braver than us because he was wearing shorts! It was below freezing! They must make 'em tough up here...

We walked along this road to the next village because I wanted to go to the scrapbook store there to get supplies for my Journal My Christmas album. We were talking to the owner there who lives a few streets away from us. She said her road hadn't been gritted this morning (and it's one of the main roads in the area too!) and so all the cars were crashing into the parked cars. Apparently a few drivers just abandoned their cars and walked to wherever they were going. The local newspaper said that one of the other nearby villages was completely cut off and there had been a lot of accidents because of the weather.

So pretty - it's like a scene from a Christmas card. I hope it's like this on Christmas Day but more often it's just cold and rainy!

The clouds were so thick you couldn't even see the tops of the hills!

We stopped at one of the local pubs for lunch and had a Cointreau coffee to help us warm up - yum!

Coming back from the village we saw a snowman that someone had built. All the schools around here are closed because of the weather so the children have all been sledging and playing in the snow. Being the big kids that we are, me and Mr P had a snowball fight before we set off and I'm proud to say I gave Mr P a good whupping :)

When we got back we decided to let the kitties go out at the back to see the snow. This was the first time they've been outside so we put little ribbons on their collars so they didn't get frightened and run off on their own. We are going to let them out when they are a little bit older but they haven't been done yet so we didn't want to take any chances!

Missy was a bit unsure of the snow and didn't really go far from the back door, surprising as she is usually quite adventurous.

Mollie seemed to really enjoy it and even went in the snow. She was funny because every time she took a step she shook the snow off her paws :)

They're both curled up in front of the fire now after their little adventure, snoozing and stretching.

Strangely enough, today's Journal Your Christmas was about the weather, so I am going to use my blog entry for today along with a couple of my favourite photographs from the ones above.

What's the weather like where you are today?

x

Journal Your Christmas

Over the last few months I have really started getting into scrapbooking a lot more. I have made my own cards for years and really enjoy doing it and I think scrapbooking was a natural progression for me (and I get to keep some of my creations - selfish I know but I rarely keep a lot of the things I make!) One of my friends won a scrapbooking kit and she gave it to me so I have been having great fun playing around with layouts. My lovely boyfriend bought me a cricut for my birthday recently so I have been having a lot of fun with that too!

This year I have signed up for the Journal Your Christmas class at www.shimelle.com. The aim of this is document my Christmas by completing a scrapbook layout each day. It was a bit of a last minute thing deciding to do this so I don't have a lot of the supplies I'll need. Also, I know full well I am never going to be able to complete a layout every day so what I plan to do is to follow the journal prompts every day and try to write up on here my responses to the prompts so that I capture my immediate feelings and emotions as the month progresses. I have some time off work booked over the next couple of weeks and I'll be off all over Christmas and New Year (lucky me :) I love my job!) so I'll catch up with my layouts then. See, I've thought this through!

So today's prompt....to write a manifesto about why I have decided to do this project, so here goes...

I love Christmas. It is definitely my favourite time of the year and I love all the traditions and fun associated with December 25th. My aim this December is to capture my thoughts and feelings about Christmas in a creative way. The run up to Christmas can be pretty hectic so I'm looking forward to having some "time out" each day to focus on this project.

At the moment me and Mr P live in a little house in a beautiful little town and it's just the two of us and our crazy kitties. We're hoping to start a family next year so hopefully this will be our last Christmas without children. In years to come our Christmas's will be very different to how they are now so I want to be able to look back at this time and remember how things were.

I have been learning a lot about my family tree this year and one of the things I have found frustrating is that there's no-one round to tell me the little details about what their lives were like. In years to come hopefully my great-grandchildren will be able to look at this album and see what it was that Great-Granny loved about this time of year (as well as the things she wasn't so fond of...)

So there we go, one down, loads more to go! I'm really looking forward to my next prompt :)
x

Christmas Chaos

Ok, Ok, I know I'm a bit early but last night we started to put the Christmas decorations up as both me and my OH are in work all next week. We got the tree up but there are still lots of other bits and bobs to do. Matters are not helped by my two little "helpers" who are driving me nuts! It's their first Christmas and they seem to think that I have put the tree up as an extra-special toy for them to play with. I've already had to fish Missy out of the tree twice this morning and Mollie is showing an alarming interest in chewing the (fake) branches. What can I do to stop them doing this?!?!?


How can you get cross with them though when they are so adorable? (Ignore the bits on the carpet, there were bits everywhere by the time we'd put the tree up!)

We got Missy and Mollie a new bed a few weeks ago because the landing where they sleep is a bit drafty. Don't they look cosy?

Missy (on the left) is doing her "I've done something silly and you don't know about it yet" face on the picture below:




















Mollie is the smallest of the two, but she doesn't stand for any messing! She's giving Missy a cuff round the ear in this picture...
























So cute!

























One thing I am a bit worried about is Missy has decided she likes climbing on top of doors:


















I'm scared she will fall off, especially when she starts chasing her tail!

























Last two piccies now before you all think I'm some kind of demented cat-lady (actually there could be some truth in that....)

Mollie loves to sleep on people, she's so elegant and lady-like:

Missy on the other hand is a bit more independent and likes to bask in the sun (not that we see a lot of it round here!)

I will be back again hopefully tomorrow with lots of Christmas goodies to show you all, I might have been away from this blog for a while but I have been very busy! x

EDIT Can anyone help me with putting pictures on my posts? It took me ages to get it laid out how I wanted it in Blogger and then when I published my post there were lots of gaps between pictures and writing that weren't there before and some of the writing moved to the side of the pictures?!?

New additions to the household...

.....this is why I haven't been around here very much!

Can you believe someone wanted to drown these two gorgeous bundles of fluff?















Meet Missy:














And Mollie:














They like to play fight but always ended up curled up sleeping together....














I will be back soon when I'm not fighting for space on the keyboard with two kittens!!! x