See what happens...

...when you don't throw anything out. My Mum was sorting through her office and found a stack of what she thought were blank CDs. Turned out that when she checked she found an old CD of mine. It was full of all the photos I took whilst I was in Greece in 2005.

What happened in 2006 was that my laptop croaked and I lost all my old photos - everything from before we moved to Edinburgh. Which meant all my holiday photos, school leaving photos, prom photos - everything. I managed to get a few back with help from some friends & those which I had already scrapped but these I thought were lost completely.

I thought I'd share a few of them with you...






That last one was taken by the awesome barman at a cocktail bar. He was new, and was having as much trying to make all these cocktails as we were drinking them. Well almost, there was this one that John ordered that was just foul! I wouldn't have asked my worst enemy to drink that lol.

Back to the present - I have been playing with my new phone. My contract was up and I decided that as my old phone was scratched and tatty that I should get a new one as I was still paying the contract. I chose the new INQ1 social network phone. It has Facebook, Messenger and all sorts of things built into it. I'm just waiting for the 4th March now when my new free tarriff upgrade changes so that I wont be charged for using them.

Thought if anyone else has this phone and knows how to change the SMS settings so that it automatically writes with capital letters at the beginning of each sentence I would be greatful as it really bugs me to write in all lower case.

Rainbows last night - they must be settling in because they are getting louder lol. The first couple of weeks none of them would hardly speak a word unless asked to. Some are still finding it hard to gain the courage but some of the girls are loving it now - telling us about their week off and what they've been up to. They were decorating shoe boxes last night to use as mini time capsule type things - the idea being they put in some of the favourite things and then open the box again once they finish Rainbows and see what's changed.

Monday nights also mean 24! Yay Jack Bauer saving the day again! I don't think I can wait till next weeks episode... I'm not going to spoil it though in case anyone hasn't watched it yet.

Don't forget I'm introducing the new writers on Craft Journal this week so go check that out too.

Lisa x

All we need is love...

..tah dah dah tah dah. I love this time of year - Valentine's. I have to admit that I am one of those soppy women who love a good rom-com chick flick, and I do believe that although some things in them may well be extremely cheesy - I want them to happen to me too!

My absolute favourite chick flick is 'Love Actually' and one of my favourite scenes is at the beginning in the church when all the band jumps up and starts playing to the suprise of the bride and groom. That was a kind of long explanation of the title of the post but hey, I'm in a lovey dovey mood this week lol.

Having Valentine's Day at the weekend was great. Both John and Me were at home so we got to spend the whole day together. We cooked a delicious Indian meal and settled down to watch a film.

We've been doing that much more recently - making the time to be able to settle down and watch a film or something and it's been great. We spent way too many months taking on too much work and hardly being able to spend any quality time together. We have definetly got to keep this new 'us'.

Saturday was also the beginning of my 9 days off work. The last time I spent a week of work was last summer and I am so glad for some me time. I've been having real trouble with my back again so hopefully being able to rest this week will fix that too.



I have been able to catch up a little on some things that I needed to do. I was sent some awesome crafting books a couple of weeks ago to review and I have finally finished them. It's taken so long because I wanted to actually attempt a project from each book to see exactly how easy they are to follow. So today I made this shopping bag from Irresistible Bags. It's actually designed as a bag to fetch in your fresh vegetable from the garden - we're actually going to attempt to grow some this year so it'll come in handy.

I'm still working on the new design for Easy Craft Projects - it's going to take a lot of work but hopefully it's all going to be worth it.

The new writing team has been chosen at Craft Journal too and I'll be announcing it later this evening.

Lisa x

And so it continues...

...snowing at least.

Our road has been iced up since last Monday and it seems no closer to getting back to normal. As I write this, the snow has just turned to sleet. I think we've only had 2 days where snow hasn't fallen in the last 8 days!

This is the UK! It doesn't snow here. Or, when it does, it only lasts for about an hour, doesn't settle anyway and within a day you'd forgotten all about it.

What is with the world at the moment? We're having the worst snowfall in 18 years and record low temperatures. And over the other side of the world, they haven't had rain in weeks and are suffering terrible bush fires. Are we stuck in a version of 'The Day After Tomorrow'?

Well here are a few photos I took last Thursday - it snowed 4 inches (my sister actually got the ruler out) in two hours. These photos are from my parents front window.




Due to the extreme weather, things have just been so strange the last week. We just didn't know when we'd be at work, what we'd be doing or anything.

Though... we have our brand new dishwasher fitted thanks to John & my Dad. We may actually have clean dishes around our house now! That makes me sound like a right scruff doesn't it? lol. We're not that bad, it's just that we're always so busy. Even when we're at home we have so much other work to do, and by the time we've waited for the water to heat up there just isn't any time to actually wash many pots (or it's stupidly late and we should be in bed).

It's a good job that our gas bills will be cut back lots though seeing as we received our power bill the other day. We thought that it would go down slightly (or at least stay the same) as we'd be paying off 12months of electricity and gas over 6 months - but no - it's gone up another £10. Our bill is huge to say there is only two of us in this household.

Oh well, we all knew it was coming I suppsose - even if we didn't want to think about it.

Here's a photo John shot this afternoon whilst Millie was doing her usual 'I'm king of the world' routine. She does pick her times to go on top of my unit - when my craft room is in moving status & everthing is out all over the place.


What I have ahead of me this week...

Doctor's checkup tomorrow. They'll probably just tell me I'm overweight still and send me on my way so nothing new there. I have 3 more days in work before a whole 9 days off! Yay for me. We've got some cookery type party thing to go to that was delayed from last week because of the snow. Apart from that, there's nothing out of the ordinary...

Just my little busy life as usual.

Lisa x

It's not melting!

It's amazing how much agro some snow can cause in the UK. I'm in Derbyshire and in some places it made travelling nearly impossible on Monday & Tuesday. Today it's a little better with the main roads being clear but all footpaths and less major roads are just frozen over - including ours.

Driving home on Monday wasn't great. I was doing ok until I turned into our road and some little s***s decided to throw snowballs at the van, nearly sending me into other parked cars as the van was skidding on the road. Thankfully I was able to steer the van away and didn't hit anything.

It was almost dark when I got home on Monday so I wasn't able to getmy camera out until Tuesday morning when things were starting to melt. Though they havn't melted much and with more snow on the way tonight possibly - things are not looking up.

These are a few of the pictures I took...





Apart from the snow, not much has been going on. I've had a couple of days off work but I'm not getting much done due to my back playing up again. Hopefully I'll get some scrapbooking done tomorrow and catch up with all the things I should have been doing for the Love Yourself class.

Also, I wanted to tell you all about my search for writers for Craft Journal. If you're interested in writing about your crafting, having an excuse to spend time lookiong at new products and online inspirations... then look no further. You can find out more here.

Lisa x