Crafty Clearout over on My Ebay

For those of you who regularly read my blog you will know that I love to make cards.  It is not an understatement to say that I have accummulated an enormouse amount of stash since becoming hooked back in 2003!  As part of my Declutter for the New Year regime I have been ruthless with this stuff and will be putting lots of it up on Ebay so that it can go to someone who will actually use it;o)  Don't worry, there's still plenty left for me to use, believe you me!

There will be everything ranging from a guillotine, light box, pretty papers, diecuts, crafty storage and brands like Martha Stewart, K&Company and Anna Griffin.  So what are you waiting for, just click here at  Lolo's Ebay Listings and you will be whizzed straight to my auctions.

Happy bidding!

xx

Thrifting - it's a family affair!

What a beautiful Saturday it is here today.  Perfect blue sky and glorious sunshine, my little market town was very busy this morning.  Combination  of nice weather and everyone has been paid their month's salary!  I feel very spring like today, do you?

Onto to the thrifting.  Last weekend I took my Aunt, who was visiting with us from the States, out on some thrifty trips, hence the title to this post.  She is very like me and can spend many an hour poking around looking for hidden treasures and is extremely crafty.  So would you like to see what I found?

 

After spending far too many years in jeans I found myself recently becoming hooked on dresses to wear with my Uggs.  In this cold weather they are just the most cosiest, if not most attractive, thing to wear.  Although I have to say I personally do not find them that ugly.

Then there was this gorgeous green and red box of loveliness that caught my eye.  How could anyone give such pretties away!

The box alone is worth the money, and inside just look at all that red and white polka dot.  I could stare at this box all day long :o)

A delicate embroidered doiley, exquisite workmanship.  This is going to be put onto the front of a crisp white cushion for my bed.

There was a little street market, you know the sort, few stalls with fruit and veg and some cheap clothing, but tucked at the back was a little man selling wool and haberdashery items.  You don't see many of these stalls around now and we loved having a chat with him and a good browse through his very well priced items.

I mean Ric Rac ribbon at just 30p a metre!  The same for the double faced satin ribbon and the bias binding.

Close ups of the ric rac, it really is very good quality for the money.  The stall man is there every Saturday, think I'll be popping back.

Kids beading set.  Not sure what to do with these, might string them and use to decorate cards.

Candy stripe double sheet.  Am seeing some pillow cases, or perhaps an apron?

Lastly some wooden pegs that are already destined for my craftroom wall to display things with and also handy for holding cards out of the way when waiting for glitter and stuff to dry.

If anybody has any other ideas for my candy stripe sheet I would love to hear them.  Hope it is sunny and blue in your part of the world. x

Abba World

I've loved Abba since a child when they won the Eurovision Song Contest, had a bit of an obsession over Agnetha and really wanted to be able to sing like her. Oh how my poor parents suffered many a rendition of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' and 'Chiquitita' sung completely out of tune by me!

So you can imagine my delight when my OH suprised me with tickets to go and see the new touring exhibition 'Abba World'! It is my valentine's treat and he will happily follow me around oohing and aahing at all the memorabilia. Aint that sweet! The exhibition is being held at Earls Court and as it is a Sunday we can drive there and park for free which is a plus in this cold weather.

Apparently you can even step up on some stage thingy and be interactively beemed onto a video performing with all 4 band members, and you get to take it home!  If you want to find out more about it just go here.

They look sooo young in this piccie!

Look at them all now!  Agnetha looks stunning!!

Gosh browsing all these piccies on Google is bringing back some memories.  I remember sitting through Abba The Movie like a zillion times at the cinema, posters in my bedroom, buying their singles and LPs , think they are all still in my mum's loft.  Tuning into their every performance on TOTPs, no MTV in those days you know!  Aaah what lovely times they were.  Who was your favourite out of the 4?

Happy weekend bloggers!

Thank you card

Afternoon my little bloggy friends!  Nearly the end of the week and also the end of my least favourite month, January.  Especially this year as I have had real trouble with date writing, always end up putting 01/01 instead of 01/10, my hands just won't do it :o)

As promised here are a few piccies of a Thank You card I made for my nan to send to her family in the states for some flowers they sent her for her birthday.

Cut some A4 pre printed cardstock to make an A6 card size.

Added some bling and ribbon to a co-ordinating die cut heart.

Preprinted velvet coated cardstock strips are just so handy and look really professional.

That's it, short and sweet today!  Thanks for popping by. 

Weight Loss Wednesday

Gosh is it really that time again already? Where did the week go, is someone speeding up the clocks, sure feels like it!

I've recently discovered an oriental food Cash n Carry near me and am now addicted. They have so many different types of everything it's mind boggling. Will need to be reading up on the internet to work out what to do with all that stuff. I did buy some simple things that I already had experience with, some marinades and sauces that work out much cheaper than in the supermarkets. I also stocked up on my favourite item which is Rice Noodles, just love em! Plonk in bowl, cover with boiling water, wait 10mins and voila they are ready. My type of cooking :O) The food must be quite good for you as you don't see many overweight people in China.

Anyways I digress, what I really should be telling you is how much weight I lost. Well I can't, coz I didn't. Lose any that is :o(  But on the plus side I didn't put any on either, woohoo! My eating wasn't so bad it was more the lack of movement of my big fat behind.   Aah but I have a solution.  Wanna know what it is?  Alright then, here you go!

It's a Carl Lewis Air Walker.  And the even better bit is I picked it up for free off of a lovely couple on Freecycle who no longer needed it.

So plans for this week are, lots of swinging in front of TV, ooh err, and lots of noodle stir fries.  Sorted :o) xx

Christening Card

Afternoon bloggers!  Bit brighter here today which made it slightly easier to photograph a card for a christening that I made this morning.  Don't get much call for these so was a bit stumped, so after much deliberation I decided to go with simple and elegant!

The gorgeous blue satin ribbon was a find from a local charity shop and it is really really soft and sumptious.

Background paper is from the ever trusty Anna Griffin, one of her earlier ranges, not sure if they still produce this print.

I found some die cut bibs in my stash, very handy :o)  Embossed some heavy white cardstock with the Cuttlebug Polka Dot folder.  I use a Quickutz Revolution die cutting machine which isn't very wide and I think it may be ruining my embossing folders.  Have been looking at the Sizzix Big Shots for ages now and they have come down in a price a bit since release.

My sentiments are mostly produced on my PC, but recently have been frustrated at the quality of the printed ink, prone to smudging etc.  I thought it was down to the ink but then a kind person explained to me that I just needed to change my paper to photo paper.  Which I did and I have to say it's brilliant, perfect printing and it's a heavier weight with a slight sheen.  Much more professional looking.

I'm doing a thank you card next which I'll blog about tomorrow.  Thanks for popping by.

Bacon is good for me!

A little something to make us smile on a grey day here in the UK.  This clip is taken from the US Wife Swap series, the boy wants his bacon, it is very funny.  Apparently amongst the younger generation over here this is now one of their favourite sayings which can be heard across many a university campus!

Weight Loss Wednesday

Okay here goes my first weight loss post, yikes!

So was it a good first week?  Did I stick to my plan?  How much exercise did I do?  Yes these are all very good questions but sadly not with very good answers!  I could write about many a reason, alright excuse, why things went a bit awry but I shall be a good girl and just admit that I was LAZY!  Yes there I've confessed, I did zilch, nada, nothing to help my cause.

So I was a little bewildered to find when I gingerly stepped on the scales that I had managed to lose 0.5lbs!  Oh I know it's not much and some people might say not really a weight loss as such but hey I didn't go up!  Just think what I could have achieved if had followed my plan.

Right my plan for next week is to just add in more walking where possible and short bursts of running up and down my stairs.  On the food front I want to go a week without getting anything from my local bakers, toughy that one :o)

Tune in next week to find out my fate!

PS:  who has taken the sun and hidden it somewhere, it's been missing for days where I am, anyone got it?

My first decorative birthday cake

We celebrated my nan's 85th birthday the other day. For this grand occasion my sister and I thought we would make her a special cake. Our nan is always knitting for either us or the charity shops, she does it so she doesn't spend all her days knodding off, awww bless her :O)  So the theme for the cake was decided. Now all we had to do was make it.

Started with a basic victoria sponge recipe by James Martin in two 8inch tins.  Filled the two halves with Apricot conserve and buttercream, then put some extra conserve on the outside of cake so the icing would stick to it better.

Next we rolled out a square of pink royal icing and then went over it with a texture roller to give a material knitted kind of look.

This was then layed over the top of the iced cake and we just teased it around a bit so it looked more lifelike.  Stuck it to the icing with little dabs of the apricot conserve.

Edible glitter, every girl should have some in their store cupboard!  It is just delightfull and comes in so many yummy colours.  I get mine off of Ebay here if you are wanting to buy some.  Brushed over the icing numbers with egg white and then just sprinkled the glitter over them.  Tip:  be sure to put some baking paper underneath so you can decant the unused glitter back into the pot.  You don't want to waste any!

 Making the ball of yarn was a bit tricky as we didn't have one of those heavy duty plunger type pipers so it was quite a job pushing the royal icing through the normal bag type I can tell you.  Note to self:  must purchase one of these!   The knitting needles were just cut down skewers and I cast on a few stitches with real wool.

The end result!  Extra touches of glitter were sprinkled round the base and we wound one of my tape measures around the side of the cake which looked quite effective.

We had soo much fun making this and after all our hardwork we were very hungry.  So we whipped up some more cake mixture dolloped it into cupcakes and 30mins later we were eating these yummy little things.

And yes you guessed it we covered them in glitter to! :o)

Thanks for popping by.

And the winner of the crochet mag is ......

Hoorah it is the weekend! What better time to announce the winner of the Crochet Mag.

I did the usual, plugged the number of entries into good old Random Number Generator. Pressed the button and waited for it to do it's magic! Within micro seconds it had decided on my winner.

The result is that this.................

will be going to .......................

which is the lovely Sharon over at Clover Cottage.

Congratulations Sharon!!! Just click through my profile to send me an email with your details and I'll whizz it in the post to you.

Art of Crochet - Issue 1 giveaway

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.  

WINNER ANNOUNCED OVER NEXT FEW DAYS.

Morning bloggers!  Anyone fancy a freebie!  I've acquired a spare copy of Issue 1 of the Art of Crochet.  It doesn't have the wool and hook but it does have the DVD and all the instructions and patterns.

Just leave me a comment by midnight on Thursday 14th January and I'll announce the winner of the draw over the weekend.

That's it, simples :o)  xx

Weight Loss Wednesday - A Bit Scared!

It's official, I've eaten far too much food over the past year.  How do I know this?  90% of my wardrobe does not fit me anymore!!

So in the spirit of the New Year I am going to commit to losing 28lbs/2stone, yep told you I had eaten too much :o)  To help me on my mission I have joined in with Jennifer over at Rosey Little Things.  She has a lovely blog and is very inspiring, if you want to join in with WLW just hop on over there and e-mail her.

The challenge for me in the coming 7 days before my next weigh in will be the flipping FREEZING weather we are experiencing for what seems like forever here in the UK.  I'm a comfort food eater at the best of times so it ain't gonna be easy!

Wish me luck :o) xx