Hello 2018 - long time no blog!!

Hello again Blogland!!

No resolutions are being set at Parkhurst Towers this year as I never ever stick to any of them but I thought tonight was as good a time as any to revive ye olde blogge and get back to sharing some of my crafty makes.

I have no idea how prolific or not I might be, but I am looking forward to taking part in some of the crafty challenges that I use to take participate in. 

To kick things off I am taking part in one of my favourite blog challenges and that is the Penny Black Saturday Challenge.  December's challenge was Winter or Christmas and I made this card for Mr P for Christmas.

The stamps both sentiment and image are from T for transparent set 'Christmas Hugs' which were new for Christmas 2017.  The image was stamped twice and coloured with Promarkers and then one image was fussy cut out and mounted with pinflair gel over the base image for some dimension.

The heart dies are by Cheery Lynn and the background paper is by Craft Creations.

Well that was pretty painless - it seems that blogging is like riding a bike and you don't forget how to do it!!  Fingers crossed I can now regularly remember to photograph crafty makes and come here to upload them

Memos, Mail, Me on a Monday - the best convention ever edition

Once again it is Monday so it is time to go and give a little wave to Sian over at From High in the Sky.  I am recovering from a wonderful convention, our third convention at Port Zelande, Netherlands (sixth time for the band) and then a glorious extra five days spent in NL.  I am not feeling the blues too much because at the end of the month I get to do the UK convention in Leicester (it will be after that I get the post convention depression).

For me this shot sums up the awesomeness of the whole weekend - three amazing gigs by a band that just somehow keep getting better and better, shared with 3,000 people from all over the world.  (photo by the super talented Phil Slessor).

And when we weren't at gigs we were socialising, catching up with some of those friends we only get to see every two years.  I even learnt how to do a little crochet, the weekend always supports a different charity and Denise and Margriet made lots of roses to sell.  On the Friday afternoon they held a crochet-along and offered to teach people how to make the rose brooches.

We also made time to eat cake -

 And exchanged little gifts

Sadly all good things do have to come to an end - we were very grateful that the convention ran for four days instead of the usual three but on the Monday morning we had to say farewell to our lovely cottage mates and we then made out way to Nijmegen to catch up with old friends and spend a few days enjoying the Netherlands.  The weather was glorious and I sat out on our hotel balcony enjoying the first strawberries of the year - not what I was expecting to do on 28th March!!

I finally made it the Keukenhof - I have always wanted to see the beautiful gardens here and I was not disappointed.  Sadly this was the only bad weather day that we had - it stayed dry but was pretty cold and windy.  But it meant that the park was fairly quiet and Mr P didn't get too hot pushing me around in the chair.

This is me with Nijntje (or Miffy as we call her in the UK).  I learnt that she is a Dutch creation which explained why there were lots of models of her around the park.

And then on Saturday we had to make the journey home, we had a good journey and ended up on a shuttle an hour earlier than intended.

Killing 35 minutes in the shuttle with silly selfies!!

And now I am back home, this Monday finds me catching up with laundry, taking a food delivery from Mr Tesco (the freezer was virtually empty) and frantically preparing for a retreat next weekend.

I am going to dash now, there is so much to do and pack before this Friday.  If you get a chance do go and give a wave to Sian!!

Memos, Mail, Me on a Monday - the Pink or the blue arsed fly edition - take your choice!!

Hello I am still here - alive and kicking!!!!  Just barely any time to blog at the moment, even though I want to  But I am busy in a good way - lots going on with the parents at the moment plus uber-busy-ness for myself too.  The first convention of the year is looming, I have been baking for Queen and country - I swear we have no real food in our freezer at the moment - just cakes LOL!!  

And I have another retreat coming up as soon as we get home from convention #1 and a break in the Netherlands.

So first all of what has the post yielded this week - well there was this - can a girl ever have too many scarves???  The answer to that question is a big fat NO!!!!!!!  There is no such thing as too many scarves and to prove it I now have a pink scarf with flamingos on - it will match the new hair!!

 I resolved end of last year to only buy one stamp set from each new Penny Black release this year - I broke that resolution this week!!!!  The new release was divine and I narrowed it down to two sets and three cling stamps in the end - ooooops but they are all so lovely and I know I will use them lots and lots!!

And it is also the time of the month when we get our monthly Birchbox - a lovely selection this month, I think I will use everything in the box this time.

And on to today, I have mainly been blonde since I was 16, apart from the odd flirtation with auburn and some red streaks over 7 years ago, I have pretty well stuck with the same blonde highlights.  So this month I fancied a change and thought that convention time was as good a time as any to have a complete change and I fancied pink - I didn't want fluorescent pink or candy floss pink but something that would last more than one wash - so this is how it turned out -

It will fade down to a much softer pink after a couple of washes and I think I like it, I do a double take in the mirror at the moment LOL - and tonight under artificial lights it looks more red than pink, in fact Mr P even called me Ging-er earlier - he likes to live dangerously LOL!!!!!

The rest of today has involved deciding what Marillion t shirts to pack for the convention - I only have a couple to choose from!!!!  (There are about 10 t shirts missing from this photo) - I will get it down to about 8 eventually!!

I also need to finish these as gifts for so many of our friends - the now traditional convention chocolate sets -

But I did finish some special gifts for some of my friends that I am sharing a cottage with -

But I must dash now - my packing is calling me, I need to have most of my stuff and all the foodstuff packed by tomorrow evening and my to do list is growing by the minute.  If you get a moment go and say hello to Sian over at From High in the Sky and if you have time please join in with us Mondayers.

Memos, Mail, Me on a Monday - the edition where I pretend to be uber organised

It is time for my weekly round up of the weekend and the mail received and to join up with Sian over at From High in the Sky.

The weekend sped by - I have yet another cold (despite taking every supplement to boost and turbo charge the immune system known to man) - we think this is cold # 9 since the beginning of December.  I am beginning to get seriously fed up with having a red nose, sore throat and chesty cough - it is getting so boring now.  On Saturday evening I went out with a load of the office staff and volunteers from Children with Cancer Fund for a lovely Italian meal - I dosed myself up with Lemsip and felt vaguely human for a couple of hours.  It was lovely to catch up with everyone as I mainly work from home with the work that I do for them, so it was nice to go out and feel like part of the team.  Of course being a dreadful scrapbooker I didn't take a single photograph LOL!!

Sunday was then spent getting ready for next weekend's crafty getaway to Hereford with a load of crafting friends.  We have a passenger in the car this year so I can't just grab a bag of dies, a box of stamps, a bag of punches and a huge pile of cardstock/patterned paper and wing it like I normally do, this year I need to be disciplined and restrained with my packing.  So I have made up loads of card kits - die cutting my pre-coloured stamped images and their mats and pairing them up with papers and cards.  I used the lounge floor to lay them all out and make sure everything was paired up properly.  I lost count after a while but I think I have enough to make about 60 cards - that should be enough for a weekend I hope!!

I also prepared a huge pile of sentiments to save me having to pack sentiment stamps -

And today I started on packing my holdall - I am hoping to have everything packed by tomorrow night as a friend arrives here on Wednesday to travel with us and I want to spend time with her, not doing the packing.

This might come as a shock but I didn't have anything nice in the post at all this week - I didn't even have any bills, it was a very boring week mail-wise.

Well I am going to get on as I am now going to finish packing up the small craft tote with all my tools, scissors and adhesives in.  Have a great week everyone and hopefully next week I will be able to show a huge pile of cards that I made at the weekend.

Memos, Mail, Me on a Monday - the edition with the green hearts

It has been Monday all day today so that means it is time to drop by and say hello to Sian over at From High in the Sky.

It was one of those over before you know it weekends, one of those weekends where at the end of it you wonder if you actually managed to achieve anything.  It was pretty quiet as Mr P was working lates, so on Saturday I headed over to my parents, where we watched the final Hunger Games film - I still think the first two films were the best and had the better story lines - it might have been better to have made a longer film for the final book rather than splitting it into two films, but that does seem to be the trend these days with film franchises.

I had some lovely mail this week - I had some vouchers for Ernest Jones and some Christmas money so I treated myself to some Chamilia beads for my bracelet.  I had looked in our local store and having set my heart on some red beads they had already sent back all their Christmas beads.  Luckily online they still had lots of Christmas stock and a very handy three for the price of two offer so I was able to get two nice red beads plus a lovely heart that is part of the new range.

A little bit of crafty stuff came my way too - I don't know why but when I first started buying the spellbinder nestability dies I never got the ovals - they are not so easy to get now, I am waiting for the large plain ovals to come from the US but in the meantime the scalloped ovals and some fancy floral ones have arrived.  Also some lovely music themed fabric - I have a project in mind for it and you will just have to wait to see what it will become.  I now need to track down the small plain and scalloped ovals.

Monday has found me doing the usual mixture of laundry and housework, also I am getting ready for tomorrow's WI meeting.  In the WI we celebrate February by joining in with the Show the Love campaign - green hearts will be in abundance at tomorrow's meeting with lots of different crafts to join in with - I will be doing some simple cardmaking with green hearts on my table.  So my final job of today is to get packed up ready for tomorrow.

Have a great week everyone and if you share about your Monday and mail then don't forget to go over and visit Sian and give her a wave!!

Valentines cards

I had a new stamp to get inky for my Valentines card for Mr P.  It is from new Penny Black T for transparent set 'Hearts Aplenty'

The papers used are Basic Grey 'Two Scoops' and the sentiment is from Stampin' Up.  The image was coloured with Promarkers.

The second card used a digi-stamp from the Flirty Flamingo set (The Lovely Studio formerly Pink Petticoat).  Again the image was coloured with Promarkers, die cut with a Stampin' Up labels framelit and mounted onto pink glitter cardstock

And as always I had to make a jokey cash cow card using Penny Black 'From the Folks'

The sentiment was made with Stampin' Up alphabet stamps and the crystal heart is from Majorcrafts.

Memos, Mail, Me on a Monday - the edition with yet another band t shirt

Yay if I get on with this post it looks like it might appear on my blog whilst it is still Monday - lets keep everything crossed that my photographs play ball when I try to upload them!!

It was a cold but quiet weekend - Mr P was mainly on lates so I was left to potter about quietly on my own.  It was a weekend of recovering from round one of root canal work and hypothermia.  The root canal work wasn't as bad as people suggested it might be but on my return home I got locked out of the house for 45 minutes and I had no gloves.  It was all Mr Ps fault - he went for a shower leaving his keys in the door.  This meant that the front door can't be opened and with the bathroom being at the back of the house and the fan heater going it meant that he didn't hear my frantic banging on the front door and the continual ringing of the phone till he finally came out of the bathroom (and it was shave day so he was an extra 20 minutes in there!!).  My poor hands were the same navy blue as my coat by the time he let me in, but don't worry he is doing penance and as luck would have it the details came through that afternoon of the 2018 Arundel retreat and he agreed there and then that I should go on it LOL!!!!!

Apart from spending Saturday evening with my parents, we watched the third Hunger Games film on DVD (we will watch the final one next week), I spent the weekend at home, mainly crafting and working on some Valentines cards - here's a sneaky peek of what you might see on the blog tomorrow -

This week was a quiet week for crafty mail but I did receive my monthly Birchbox -

Some more lovely pamper treats to try and the small sizes make them handy for packing for holidays and weekends away.

I also got another Marillion t shirt - you would think that I had enough by now, with over 20 hanging in my wardrobe but I just had to have this raspberry pink one.  The ladies tour shirt at the end of last year was a beautiful teal coloured one but it sold out really quickly so they had to quickly get some more but couldn't get that colour so got pink and purple instead.  I had emailed the band's website to find out if they had any left in the alternative colours and as luck would have it they did have a pink one left in my size.  So this little beauty dropped through the letterbox at the end of the week, it will definitely be worn at this year's conventions!!

I had better wrap this post up before it becomes Tuesday with a reminder for you to drop by Sian's blog From High in the Sky to give a wave to Sian and see what she is up to this Monday.

Have a great week everyone!!