Jen's World

{Happy New Year Folks}

A very slow family evening showing very little interest in celebrating the new year in.  Sophie worked until10:30, and then for the first time desserted the family and went to a friend's family party.

At the last minute we all got together and shouted and jumped up and down watching the fireworks, and probably took 100 awful photos.  I can't face looking at them tonight, but might show you tomorrow. I missed my little girl tonight though, although we did shout HNY down the phone.

Hopefully get to the beach for a lovely Winter walk tomorrow!

Happy New Year to all of you, and I hpethis new year brings you love , health and happiness. (And I guess a little bit of wealth would help too!}

{Back to work already}

Wow, this Christmas holiday went quick for me, and I was back to work in a flash.  part from defrosting the windscreen for 10 minutes of my precious time, everything went well at work.

I then took the plunge and rejoined Slimming World!  My weight was a shock, but it had to happen at some point, I had to take stock of the situation and do something about it.  I feel better that it's done now, and I start tomorrow.  My "very healthy" lunch is already packed up in the fridge ready for tomorrow.  I wonder howlong I can continue to make it the night before?

I am not totally sad to see theend of this year tomorrow, it'snot been a totally bad year, but I wouldn't want to repeat it again.

I'm working New Year's Eve, and will have to drive to pick up my daughter from work at some ungodly hour, so no drinking or snacking if I'm following my new SW diet anyway, so it'll be a pretty boring evening watching the TV, or a board game of monopoly with the boys, their favourite Christmas present this year.

I shall record all my New Year Resolutions tomorrow, I am always up for a new start, and a change in my habits, so I do take the whole thing very seriously.

Oooops!

I guess no-one reads this anymore, but in case you do, I hope your Christmas Festivities went well. 

 I had a fab family Christmas with my sis and her family and my Pa over.  My niece and nephew are both so grown up now, in height and age! Monopoly and remote control tiny helicopters kept all the boys busy.  Sophie worked her poor tired feet off waitressing all over Christmas, and is only just recovering from a really terrible cold.  It really knocked her for six.  Both Justin and I are fighting it at the moment.  I am feeling quite unwell today!

I've had to take quite a break from my blog over the last few months.  Mainly time and a few other issues.  I've taken a real back seat with my Scrapbooking lately.  I resigned from Scrapagogo Design Team, I just couldn't keep up with doing so many designs to order and would much rather scrap for myself.  My camera was out of use for many months, and so both my blogging and scrapbooking was affected by that.

Another thing is I have felt very unhappy about myself generally over the last few months.  My health has deteriorated a bit, I have been walking with a walking stick now for some time, my weight has ballooned, and I just don't tackle the heaps of "stuff" that needs doing.  My latest was to send out no Christmas cards.  How sloppy!!

On a more optimistic level, I can do something about my weight and I am tackling that as a New Years Resolution, one thing I am pretty good at keeping.  I need to be more organised and get more stuff done, but this is hard as I am working much longer hours now.  I'm much happier at work than I have been for a long time, so that is a definite plus in my life.

I shall be back a lot more regularly, get some scrapping done, now I have  had a good rest, and at last get some photos taken.

I use Facebook regularly for anyone who reads this and really does want to talk to me more regularly.

Have a Happy New Year, but I will be back before then, I promise.

{Changeling}

I went to see this film tonight.  I had great expectations of it, as a bit of a 1920s costume drama, which it was, including the old 1920 cars and LA trams.  Angelina Jolie was fantastic, I hope she wins an Oscar, she deserves it.  It was a harsh reality film ie true story, about the corruptions of the LAPD etc.  But some scenes were brutal and disturbing and it was only a 15 rating.  I'm not sure I would want my 16 yr old to see it. I think some of the scenes will haunt me for a while, but it was such a moving film, one that will stick with you for a long time.  Don't find out the ending before you can see it, that's what keeps your willing all the way through.

My Pa has his old girlfriend from his teenage years staying for a break with him, so I invited Felicty to come with me tonight for a girlie night out.  We had such a fab chat about our lives, and got on so well.  It's only the second time we have met, but we spent plenty of time over a meal and coffee discussing life.  But we were a right pair hobbling around with walking sticks.  I loved her company, and look forward to her being my guest for Sunday lunch.

{So Much To Catch Up On}

I have been missing for a while, but you can blame Facebook.  It's just a tad easier to update.

So this is brief, I don't want to bore you.  We had plenty of snow over the weekend, so I got some pics of the boys in the snow, Sophie was at work most of the weekend, so I couldn't catch her in the daylight.

The boys attempted to make a snow man, but the attraction of stamping on a large snowball was much more fun than building one, so every large snowball was smashed to pieces or thrown over the otherone's head!  Yes they may look a innocent and delightful here, but they are NOT!

The boys really played me up and were not keen for photos to be taken.  I guess they are becoming more and more reluctant for photos as they get older and wiser!

I managed to get quite a few action shots, but this is the best one, and I'll be honest I can't remember whether Elliott ducked or it hit him square in the chops!! Whatever, they didn't last long outside, and were back inside pretty quickly in the warmth and on the computer!

Last night I cleared up my scrap room which I had been dreading.  It was an absolute tip after making cards, gift wrappings etc for a very close family friend's 90th BD, a week or so ago.  Clearing up prevented me from scrapping.  However, I got it cleaned up yesterday and sorted, and eventually scrapped. I finished one LO, and have nearly finished the second.

This LO is a pic of Bella my little neice.  The story goes how everytime I brought the camera out, even if I didn't mention a word, she would hang her head down and look at the floor.  She wasn't having any of it.  She was so difficult to snap, so I will have to be content in scrapping photos without a full face at the camera.

This LO is based on another one I did last year of me but in blue, it's sort of reversed, as I was looking the other way, but as I was looking through my albums, I thought why reinvent the wheel,when I already have a LO I have designed and could get inspiration from?  The doodles and dots are from templates, I am not clever enough to do those on my own.  Black chipboard letters are Heidi Swapp, coloured letters Doodlebug.

I have another LO on my bench, it's more or less done, it just needs some sticking down.  It's a LO that's a bit different for me , but a complete copy from Jennie Bowlin's gallery, but very clever, and it really works, and is all about an old house I used to live in. 

Well I really should be tucked up in bed, it's gone 2am again!!

Night night!

{I've been scrapping tonight}

At long last I have my confidence back, and I have scrapped tonight.  I've done one layoutand am well into my second.  Yay!!!!!  I'll show you tomorrow.

J

{I Scrapped Today - Yay!!}

This afternoon I finished off the LO I had on my bench.  It was feeling a little dull, but I think it's ok now with a couple of touches of orange.  I used Jenni Bowlin's September kit, all greens and browns. I loved the Scenic Route paper I used here, but I guess my photo was a bit sunken as it had a matt finish, I always think gloss finish pops off the page a bit more. It's a little family pic of my brother, my SIL and my gorgeous neice Bella (Doesn't she look like her Daddy?  I had waited ages since I last saw them in Jan 2005 to come over to England and stay at our house with 2year old Bella.  Jenni Bowlin's kit had this fab littlechipboard houses, and this idea just sprung to mind after starting off with a LO in her gallery.  I free cut out the heart, and then went from there.  The felt flowers are thick and sumptous, and I used three of my beautiful ceramic buttons that I bought from the V&A museum a couple of weeks ago.  I loved all the embellishments that came in this kit, all the buttons, felt trimmings and the sparkly strips.

Being totally in the zone, and listening to Norwich City "lose" on the Radio, I was inspired to start another LO, and picked Pencil Lines #106 sketch.  I can't believe it is their second birthday.  I have always been a great fan of theirs, I love sketches, and they all do amazing LOs week on week.  This week they joined together with One Little Word.  The word they picked was "keep".  It didn't take me long to print off a new photo of my neice to match the colours of another old Jenni Bowlin Kit from last April, and I think these photos really do pop!  I made a silly mistake, and printed the photo out stating A4 but with  5 x 7 photo paper, so ended up with just a quarter of the photo.  Bella's little mouth showing in the corner was just too cute to chuck out, so I printed the photo properly and then used them both on the LO to emphasize the cuteness. I turned the sketch around to fit my two landscape photos, and used a doodle template to add the doodles.  I really like the brightness of this LO, and was so chuffed to have found a great way to use that bottle top.  Jenni Bowlin is keen on these type of embellishments, they are a bit too american for me, but if you are lucky you can just about find the right occasion to use one, and not only did the colour match really well, but it suited a little cutie LO.

Hopefully more scrapping tomorrow  (Or should I say today!)

{Sunny Saturday}

It's beautiful here, and the area around is looking very autumnal, beautiful colours on the trees.  I'm really trying to encourage my children to have a photoshoot down by our local Whitlingham Broad (lake if you don't come from Norfolk!) there is an expanse of woodland with water in the background, wooden gates etc and ideal for a photo shoot, but Justin is at a friends, Sophie is at work, (and then way too busy all weekend!) and poor Elliott is suffering from something.  High temperature, tired and aching, he really isn't well, so I have nobody to take photos of and landscapes aren't quite me really. This one of the photos from my last Autumn shoot 2006.  The boys look so young here.  Flat hair!!  It'salways spiked up now.  I buy more hair gel, gum and hairspray for them than I do toiletries for me!

I've finally received a note from Canon to say my camera has been mended Yay!!!!!  And I hope to pick it up on Monday, so maybe leaving the photoshoot til midweek would be better so I can use my own camera.

I've had a very difficult and upsetting week, it's come down hard on me.  One of the children have been up to no good and have been indefinately grounded, I've had some difficulties myself which I've shed many a tear over, but I've made a decision at last and now I feel tons better.

On a positive note I had my appraisal at work which was brilliant, and my manager thinks I am a fantastic performance manager, and she wishes she could bottle what I have and share it amongst her other managers.  I was so chuffed and took the compliment very gracefully!!  What a change there has been in me at work over the last 12 months.  I actually enjoy my job now, and for those of you who don't know the CSA finally ends as a government dept at the end of this month and we become a "comission" we have mangaged to retain our civil servant status, but I guess that will be terminated at some point.  As from Nov first I will work for CMEC.  As long as my pension stands as it is now, I'm a happy bunny.  A pay increse would be good too.

I have a LO on my bench at the moment, I love it, but it's missing something at the moment, it's looking a bit flat, so I might look at that this afternoon whilst listening to the football.  Norwich are playing away at Bristol today.  I'm a bit flabberghasted by the match fixing accusations this week that even reached the national news!!  I know losing at home to Derby who only had 10 men was a shock, but I don't think we would go that far .

Sam and I celebrated our 25 years of being together last week.  That's more than half my life, that's incredible.  We lived together after the first year, so that's 24 years of being in our house, we still live in the same one.  We went out to the hotel where Sophie works for Sunday Lunch to celebrate.  She booked the table and when we got there she completely ignored us and I thought, we'd better not disturb her.  It was a much more upmarket hotel than I remembered it being.  It's £28 for Sunday Lunch, you got about 6 or 7 choices for each course, 4 courses, and there was some veggie choices for me.  The restaurant manager showed us to our table, and it was at that point I could see we were getting quite a bit of attention.  Sophise served us as did several of her waitressing friends, the service was good and fast with some complimentry drinks.  By the end of the meal, it took us a leisurely 2 hours to get through the meal, all the girls had introduced themselves, and the Restaurant manager came and chatted with us, telling us how good Sophie was, she worked hard etc.  I then in the distance saw him pull out a teatowel from her pocket while she had her hands full of plates, he obviosly didn't approve of it poking out of her apron, so he kept a very tight ship.  I think the discipline is so good for her and the experience at 16 of dealing with the public, taking money, dealing with complaints, working in a team all just from a part time job whilst studying is doing her the world of good.  We had a fab meal costing just £19 !!  I think we got a very large discount there, and we will definately go back.

{A Shorter Post for a Change!}

I finished the class page from Wyverstone Charity Crop from September. Lisa very kindly did a wonderful class and we had a lovely kit to make it with,and I have enough to make another two LOs.  Lisa did cut a window to display her photo behind the LO, but I wasn't brave enough to cut with a knife, but I did raise some of the embellishments on foam tabs.  Once I had neared the end of the page, I started to add some doodling to make it look a bit different to Lisa's and added some orange bling and buttons.and a title.  I'm really pleased with it, so thanks Lisa, great class.

I'm well on my way to finishing another LO using Jenni Bowlin Kit for September.  It involves a big heart and a pic of my Brother and his family.  I'll get that done tomorrow.  I have decided I am ready to get back into designing for the Scrapagogo DT again.  I've had a good rest, feel under much less pressure, and can't wait to get the kits again.  November's one is looking so gorgeous, and I might get it in just over a week.

{A Full Day of Culture}

Family History is one of my loves and I have discovered many 4th, 5th 6th cousins all around the world.One of the very first I met online was Jane.  We are 5th cousins and have been sharing lots of photos and certificates, parish register findings etc for about 8 or so years.  Jane lives with her husband Richard in New England in the US and their children have flown the nest. She has a tremendous love of textiles, costumes, furniture, architecture and a great love of history.  She and her husband were asked to lecture at Oxford University, so they planned their business trip a year ago and we always hoped to meet irl in their really tight schedule.

So on Sunday I travelled up to London (by train, then double decker bus, by train and then tube!!) and met them at The Victoria and Albert Museum.  We had no idea what each other looked like, so we hovered in the lobby, trying to pick out someone that fits your imagined online friend.  It didn't take long.  We caught each other's eye, and then looked away again, around the busy lobby and then back at each other. "Jennie?" she said I said "Jane?" and we burst out laughing, and I felt an instant warming to a complete stranger, shaking hands madly.  Her husband then appeared at her side, and we dashed straight off to the cafe for a very long chat and a coffee.Wow I loved the V&A museum, it was an incredible and beautiful building.  I felt a bit stupid, because I knew nothing and Jane and Richard were both Museum Curators back home and already knew everything that was in the museum. So I decided to learn as much as I could and decide to pick 4 or 5 things that really did it for me.  One of their passions is William Morris and his patterns for wallpaper, curtains and upholstery.  When I discovered how the prints were made, I immediately identified with the printing process as some thing very similar to stamping on a scrapbook LO with clear stamps and a an acrylic block, but William Morris was printing with wooden blocks.  A design for example would be painted by himself and then 30 or so different blocks cut to represent certain lines of the pattern, and each one would be stamped over the top of the other one, using pins to line the blocks up until the pattern was finished. This is one of the original paintings he did.  I loved this, it had notes written in pencil at the top, you can see where he tested his brush for different colours around the top and if you enlarge the photo you might be able to see that he continued to draw the pattern outside the painted area.  I began to feel a bit inspired regarding my scrapbooking, about stamping, colours, vines and  doodling.  His pattern that inspired me the most and I shall use to create something at some point was the Acanthus wallpaper pattern. I could use this as patterned paper for an Autumn LO!!! I just love it to bits!!

I saw a beautiful gilded mirror that really attracted me, it was so massive it took up a whole wall with two large boxed candelabras each side.  I commented on the fact that they had hung it a bit too high as you had to stand on tiptoe to see in the mirror, and I was advised that mirrors in those days were used in large houses to reflect light rather for vanity!! Well I knew that really!

  Lunch called and we had another hour or so sitting eating and chatting, putting bits of the family tree together and trying to solve some of the brickwalls we have hit in our research. After lunch I saw another couple of things that really caught my eye, one was a sunflower that was made out of metal and had once been part of a railing!  I want that railing,in fact,I want the sunflower to sit just outside my front door,it looked so cute, just imagine a whole fence of them!  The most interesting thing was that it was actually made by Barnards here in Norwich and they donated it to the museum.

I guess metal sunflower railings beat white picket fencing anyday!

We looked at lots of costumes, all very gorgeous, but very hard to photograph as they are all behind glass casing and the lighting is not far off.. well dark to be honest.  But something I was really fascinated with James ll 's wedding outfit.   It has been so well preserved and perhaps ought to be kept with the crown jewels because it was made from silver thread, and on the day would have been extremely shiny.  Of course now it is tarnished, but none the less beautiful, and I would imagine very hot and heavy.  I tried to take a close up, it's blurred because I had to take it without a flash.  I love that lace cravat.

It was a rainy day, but the inner court yard of the museum caught our eye and we went outside for a breath of fresh air, and discovered all the trees were full of lemons!  There was a lovely cafe outside and an area with fountains I guess the kids during the summer sunshine would be running through.  Definitely a place to go and visit again.  The entry is free, the food is god and reasonably priced for central London if you are careful.  The last thing I have to show you, I hope you are not bored yet!  This I loved because it reminded me of one of the Hotels in Las Vegas (The Bellagio??) were an enormous decoration of blown glass hangs from the ceiling.  This one was so beautiful.  Very difficult to take a photo as it's in such a massive and dark dome.  In fact I thought my photo was as good as the one they were selling for 50p in the gift shop on a postcard.

Oh yes, one more thing, (sorry)  there was a circular balcony looking down on to the floor below and suspended from the ceiling above was a flattened brass band!!  I leaned over the balcony for ages trying to work how complicated it must have been to display.  Each flattened and sprayed brass instrument had about 3-5 wires hanging it absolutely completely flat almost like they were all sitting on a glass shelf, but they very slightly moved with the climate control air flow that was present.  Such a fantastic artistic display.

I left my new found friends/fifth cousins and tubed it back to Liverpool street and the journey home.  I'd had such a wonderful day, and on the train I reflected back on how I initially felt being with two total experts and feeling a bit stupid because I knew nothing at all about the artifacts displayed, but I soon found my level, found what I liked and why, and I have brought home so much inspiration for my scrapbooking, and one thing that I did buy in the gift shop were some ceramic buttons with William Morris designs on for more LOs!!