WOYWW 11th April '12

Good morning! I can't believe it's Wednesday already, again. These seem to come by so quick now! My friends tell me it's a sign that I'm getting older.... one even told me that "Life is like a loo roll, the closer you get to the end the faster round it goes!". My days are numbered, I fear!!

Anyway, if you're here to see what's on my Workdesk... I'm afraid you might be a little disappointed. My workdesk hasn't seen any crafting in a week! There is a good reason though as you will see in a minute. First, lets have a reminder of my little space....

Hmmmm, yes, the less said about it the better. It's cramped, cluttered, got waaaaay too untidy waaaaay too quickly. There's not enough storage and the printer keeps getting in the way. OK, this photo doesn't really show it at it's best does it? Let's get a better picture instead.... how about this one?

Oooh! That's a bit better! It's clean, tidy and uncluttered. It's had a fresh coat of paint too (although none of the pictures I took really did the colour any justice.) The only problem is.... there's no craft stuff!! Himself and I will be using it purely as a computer desk from now on. My shelves in the alcove now store my filing instead of buckets of stamps etc.

So nice and clean and pretty! So, do you want to see where I'm working now?

Here's a sneaky peek...

Ooh I'm in a naughty teasing mood! Sorry.... here's a few more photo's.

This is the sight that now greets me when I walk in the door.

The anticipation of being able to sit here and craft is nearly killing me! I haven't been able to do any crafting yet because Himself and I only finished it very very late last night... or maybe I should say very very early this morning!

As lovely as the desk is, it's the shelves that really make me happy! I can have ALL my craft stuff accessible and I've still got some room to grow! Yay! These shelves fill up the whole of one wall, and I couldn't actually take a photo of them in one go...

The left side.... and....

The right hand side!!

As you can see there are still a few things I want to do in this room. We need another office chair for the 'computer' desk. A few items that have ended up on TOP of the shelves (thank you to Himself as I can't reach up there!) I shall have to ask him to get them down for me so I can find an alternative home for them. I also want to build/find some storage for my ProMarkers as they're currently dumped in that expanding blue bin on the shelves. I have another shelf to put up in the little alcove above the buttons, I need to build/find some way of storing my ribbon reels AND I need to make some curtains. I have some fabric in my stash I just need to sit down and do it. What's the betting that there's still no curtains/blinds in 6 months time?

So what do you think of the room? I was thinking about experimenting with a little video so I can show you around personally. I've never done that sort of thing before... shall I give it a go?

Fancy seeing some desks where *real* crafting has happened in the past week? Head over to Julia's blog and have a look at some other people's creations!

Blog Makeover

Oh my! Oh my!! Isn't it lovely?? Shimelle has done such a brilliant job on this for me and I'm so honoured to be one of only 5 people from the 'Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers' class that got a makeover like this. For once I was quick off the mark for putting my name down for stuff. Unlike normal, when I'm usually about 3 weeks too late!

So, I asked Shimelle to make it look more 'website-y' and less 'bloggy' and I think she has managed to do that really well. I wanted nice clean lines and a not-too-cluttered look. Lovely, lovely, lovely!! Now you can see my 'about page' and my 'fat to fit' page tabs on the Right hand side, along with ways to contact and connect with me. I'm mostly on Facebook but just recently joined this thing they call Twitter. So I'm still getting to grips with that! Also, Shimelle has handily (and very neatly) listed all the classes, meme's and communities that I'm involved in. I'll be adding more as I join and take-part too.... if I can find out how to resize all the little logo's.

I am soooo happy with the end result! A big "Thank you!" to Shimelle for working so hard and putting up with my rather large amount of questions and modifications. It's brilliant!!

So what do you think?? Come on, be honest!!

Honey, I'm home!

Oh My Giddy Aunt! How long has it been??  Well, the two weeks suddenly turned into 5 weeks... mostly due to horrible plasterwork that was lurking under all that 80's wallpaper.  Yup, you guessed it... 1930's horsehair plaster!! Ugh!! What a nightmare that was to work with!  Everytime we filled and sanded one patch, another patch crumbled... we did eventually catch up with it tho'... until we put a coat of white paint on, to find sooooo many more crevases suddenly showed themselves.  We also had to have the ceiling replastered due to finding artexing hiding behind the wallpaper - (I wish now that I'd had the money to replaster the walls too).  However, all the hardwork is now finished and is soooooo worth it.  The room looks FAB!  I'll have to take few pictures later on this week to show you, but want himself to get a few finishing touches installed before I take them.  Also, it needs a serious tidy up as I've just dumped my scrapping and art stuff on the shelves... Need to make another trip to IKEA for storage boxes. Not sure himself is going to be too pleased with that idea - considering how much I've spent at IKEA just recently!

The other reason that it's taken so long is that we've had loads of weekends being taken up with other stuff... like seeing friends, going camping, visiting family, going shopping... oh and the UKS Mad Hatters Cybercrop!!

Camping
The camping was seriously good fun!  Thanks to Tim, Tammy, Sarah and Jonathan for wanting to take us newbies along.   Six adults and 4 kids in 3 tents near Birmingham made for a really great weekend.  I realised that the last time I'd been camping was 14 years ago!!  Himself, on the other hand, had NEVER been camping. We borrowed my parents camping gear, just to try it out and see if we enjoyed the experience. Needless to say, we came back from that weekend away, completely hooked! Which meant we simply HAD to go shopping for a tent the following weekend.  Managed to get a great deal, but now need to get all the other stuff... before July when we go camping with the 'crowd' again.

Oh, ought to mention that we had our 7th Wedding Anniversary during the camping weekend too.  What a day that was... we spent all day in Cadbury World eating chocolate!!  It was a great experience... not particularly romantic, but definitely very delicious!

Visiting Friends and Family
What can I say about this?? You go, you stay, you chat and eat and drink and sleep. You do a few interesting things (such as Crich Tramway Museum and a lovely old windmill) and you get to meet a new little 5 month old friend, who was just gorgeous!!  Bronwyn was born 13th December to our friends Nick and Wendy... what a beautiful baby she is!! I even got to have a cuddle without her crying too much, which only made me broody again! LOL. I think I can wait for another one, but then I see a new little baby and it sets me off all over again!

Some friends from Inverness came to visit us too, in the past week.  What a joy it was to see them.  It was lovely just to have a good chat, do some shopping and see the kids playing together.

UKS Mad Hatters Cybercrop
Oh what a fabby job was done by the leadership team on UKScrappers again for this cybercrop.  Yet again the classes were fabulous and the LO's produced were gorgeous.  I temporarily moved all my scrapping stuff down to Tammy's house where the two of us spent the whole weekend producing yummy new Layouts. The menfolk entertained themselves and our little monster for the whole weekend. What bliss! No kids, lots of scrapping, lots of chatting and lots and lots of hot chocolate to drink.  Sooo looking forward to the next one!!

Well, that's about it I think.  I shall be updating regularly again, now that I have my PC back and the room all nicely decorated around it.  Hopefully I'll see you all around!!

PS. Pictures to follow as soon as I've downloaded them all from various cameras and mobile phones!

Connections

Just a quick note to say that I'm not going to be posting much over the next two weeks or so.  This is due to us finally starting the decorating process on the room that will be known officially as "The Study" (and un-officially as "my Scrapping Space"). Himself is most determined that this is NOT my scrapping room even tho' I will be doing my scrapping in it... it's a STUDY.  LOL.

So far the room has had it's cupboards ripped out and our PC is currently in a pile in the corner of our bedroom awaiting the day it can finally be put back together on it's new desk (which is currently sitting in the garage waiting to be assembled).  I'm planning a trip to IKEA for some other bits and bobs (including the 'scrapping' desk) to finish the room off.  All Hail the Glorious Empire of IKEA!  We shall make another pilgramage to the hallowed halls of flat-pack shopping sometime next week, so I'm hoping the room will have had it's wallpaper stripped and walls painted, floor carpeted and new light fixtures installed in readiness for flat-pack assembly to commence as soon as possible after the shopping trip.  Anyone want to volunteer to come and help??  Thought not!

Until, then I shall have to make use of his company laptop and some very kind friends computers to get my daily fix of UKScrappers, ebay and blogs!!

Watch this space for before, during and after pics... they should be good. Can't wait to get rid of this 80's wallpaper!