LittleBirdyScraps

Hi folks, remember me?

Yes, I'm sorry.  I have been discouraged by my lack of spare time and the fact that my laptop is still only truly happy whilst sitting on top of my printer, from posting a post.

This week my printer has joined in the rebellion, and if printers could laugh it would have no socks on now.  A week or so ago, it told me that it had no black ink left.  Replace Black Ink Cartridge, it said.  So I rummaged about in the drawer and found - oddly - two quite incorrect cartridges, one of which I had opened before I realised how incorrect they were, and two proper ones, one of which I inserted.

Replace Cyan Ink Cartridge, said the printer.  Okay.   Obviously it had forgotten to mention this earlier, but I'm a forgiving sort of person so I smiled indulgently and rummaged about in the drawer, which sadly failed to yield any cyan ink.  I went online and ordered a couple (buy one get one free).

Three days later the cartridges came through the letter box and I wrestled them open and put one in the printer.

Replace Pink Ink Cartridge, it said.

Okay.  Indulgent smile missing now.  At this point I thought I'd wait a few days, til I had some money in the bank and could afford to Buy One Get One Free.  I didn't really need to print anything off  - plenty of photos on my desk to scrap already; nothing to churn out for college til next week.  But then Daughter said that she had some terribly urgent homework to do that HAD to be in tomorrow, even though she had inexplicably failed to have a go at it during the ten days she'd just been off school....

There was nothing else for it.  I drove to the shops and Daughter jumped out with my last tenner and spent ALL OF IT on a pink ink cartridge.  I can get two for 7 quid online, but Never Mind.  The homework had to be done, as a mother it is necessary occasionally to make financial sacrifices for the sake of one's children *cough cough*.

Home again, I continued making the dinner whilst Daughter went upstairs and carried out the instructions I carefully shouted up to her, for changing the cartridge.  When she's done that, I thought, I can print out some stuff for college, update my notes, etc etc.  While I was standing there dreamily stirring something and fantasising about such rubbish, Daughter stuck her head over the banisters and shouted down to me:

'It says, Replace Yellow Ink Cartridge.'

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

So I have now ordered a full set.  I can't remember this ever happening before; it will be interesting to see which cartridge runs out first once I've replaced them all.

And here's what I've been up to, with my pile of previously-printed photos:

 

These are some photos taken many, many years ago, when obviously I was far too tiny to be taking them - probably not even born, in fact - of the street party we had for the Silve Jubilee.  Don't ask what those blue things are, I just saw them, very clearly, in my head, whilst wondering what to put in that bit at the bottom.  They're a sort of balloon/crown/alien amalgam. (Yes, you did ask after all, I heard you!)  Sorry it's a bit small, but my columns aren't wide enough to make it any bigger!

 

This one is very RED.  And bobbly.  Sweet pic, tho - I'd already scrapped the original (horrors!) and so had to scan it.  Oh, and I'd cut it into an oval shape (more horrors!) so there wasn't much of it left...

One of my son, in the amusement arcade on holiday.

 

And here are a couple of pics I really like, altho they're a bit badly composed, lol, of my son and a good friend a few years ago.

Now, don't forget to go for the Dotty Divas Challenge - another fab prize this month, of a kit from Label Tulip!  I love the ad challenges, you can do absolutely anything with them, use the colours in the ad, lift the design, use it to inspire a technique or a subject for your LO.  We've already had some gorgeous entries, with another couple of weeks to go AND a wonderful Bazzill cardstock pack also up for grabs from Cardinal Colours....Wow!

Happy scrapping!

Dotty Divas Ad Challenge #4!

Mmmm....butterscotch.  Mmmmmmm......really fudgy chocolate icing.  On top of brownies.

No, stop.  They're supposed to be for the cake sale.  But - mmmmmmm....

Anyway.  The latest Dotty Divas challenge has arrived, and here it is:

I really wanted to see this being used other than as an inspiration for the title - although there's nothing wrong with that! - and Kim has done it with her gorgeous LO.  Go and take a look!

Also this week our guest designer is Christina Clouse from our sponsors, Label Tulip .  They're giving away a beautiful kit AND yet again  Cardinal Colours are providing a fantastic 25-sheet pack of Bazzill cardstock! 

I made this

...my black ink ran out, so I rummaged about in the drawer and found four new cartridges, of which only two were the right sort.  Oops.  Bit of mis-ordering there.  I printed a thing or two and then the cyan ran out.  So I got online and ordered some cyan, which turned up on Monday.  I put the cyan cartridge in and the printer told me it had run out of pink as well.  Well, maybe it would have been an idea to mention that before, printer.

So I stuck with the photo I had already found of my daughter taking a picture of herself.  Which is all 14 year old girls seem to do...

Today has been a hectic day, which started when I got up IN THE DARK and found that even after I had showered, dressed and made a cup of tea, IT WAS STILL DARK.  I have some issues with this, but apparently it happens every morning and there's nothing I can do about it. 

I wanted to leave quite early so that I could get to uni before I was meant to be there, as opposed to the last time when I arrived 15 minutes late.  If you leave at 7.20, I was told, you will get there at 8, whereas if you leave at 7.40 you could end up being 15 minutes late.

Unfortunately I had woken up at 4.30 so I don't really know how I'm still awake.  Today was the day of our Presentation.  I won't bore you with the details except to say that we had to compare our school with another one.  And whilst we could use a powerpoint presentation, the tutor did ask God to save him from a whole day of such things.

The tutor also told us that because last year's students did such a RUDDY  GOOD JOB of their presentations, he had decided that this year he would actually be including them as part of our assessment.  So, no pressure.

Now, I like to think that I can talk pretty good, so I had decided not to read anything off bits of paper and to create a super-groovy selection of visual aids from my scrappy supplies.  You know, corrugated cardboard, acrylic paints, cardstock, markers etc.  Glue.  Lots of glue.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake, just as Victim #1 had finished her trembling, breathless presentation, of turning to ask the tutor something.  It wasn't 'Can I go next please?', but he thought it was and said yes, I could.  I hadn't even softened my blutac, for heaven's sake.

Nevertheless I rose to the occasion and started sticking things to the walls whilst banging on about mission statements and the school ethos.  It was all going okay until I got to my conclusion, which had no visual prompts and therefore, I realised with sudden clarity, needed to have been practised a LOT more.  I probably shouldn't have said 'Oooh, I'll just get my bit of paper, haha'.  And in any case, when I looked at the paper nothing went into my brain.  Reader, I missed bits out.

Apparently, we all passed, which was good news, although when we get our written feedback I'm expecting mine to include the words 'blabbering' and 'shambles'.

Scrap Whispers Blog Hop

Yay!  We're hopping again!  If you can see this, it means my laptop hasn't spontaneously combusted, and neither have I.  One of us needs to keep it together...

Here we are with the latest Scrap Whispers blog hop.  If you didn't start at the beginning you can go back and do that now.  This week we are lifting the lovely and very productive Mary Eason - lots and lots of LOs for us to choose from!  This link will take you to  her Scrapjazz gallery, and it's prettybig.

Mary has the sort of LOs that are a joy to lift - plenty of colour, which I love, and a huge variety of designs and subjects.  I guarantee if you take a look at her gallery you'll find something you want to have a go at!

I loved the vibrant colours and bold lines of this one:

 

I'm afraid I saved the thumbnail so it's tiny but gorgeous.  Honestly, I wasn't intending to make mine look even bigger and more wonderful!  Here it is:

 

As usual, I've taken appalling liberties with the original design, and I can't even pretend I've turned it round or whatever.  I just go with the flow, man.

It will be remarkable if two of the DT choose the same LO to lift this time round, as there are so many all in the same place - like trying to work out which blackberry to pick, lol!

Next you need to hop on to Nilsa to see more scrapliftery!

The Scrap Whispers Challenge is well under way, incidentally, even though I have been a bad team leader and behaved in a demented fashion at emailing time.  Another challenge this weekend, too, so don't forget to come over and join in.

Scrap Whispers Challenge #47

This week's challenge over at Scrap Whispers is from Sarah - she's given us a recipe which specifies what stash we can use on our page!  To see the actual recipe, hop over to the site - after you've had a look at this, of course!

 

Also this weekend I have made the page below, for a challenge over at Lotus Paperie:

Unfortunately you can't really see the paint I painstakingly splashed all over the background, but never mind.

I was hoping to wander downstairs and do yet another page, for the Scrap Whispers blog hop this week, but that will have to wait since apparently I am going to the pub.  After I've cleaned up the kitchen...

Bit of a hectic week again, but that's par for the course on a college week.  This time around I decided to get a bit gobby, when we had a lecture.  Now, I've never done this university stuff before, but having read what we were recommended to read, and taken a look at the luverly bumph we have been given, I came to the conclusion that lectures are for listening to.

It works like this: student looks at details of upcoming lecture and probably downloads slide show and prints it out from study website.  Student does any preparatory work that student feels necessary, maybe reading around the subject a bit.  Student turns up and crams self into stupid chair with tiny fold out table that will take either a cup of coffee or a pen, but not both.  Student listens to lecture, using accompanying printed-out stuff to  make notes on.  Student might ask a couple of pertinent questions at an appropriate point, before trolling off to the library in order to borrow books offering further enlightenment.

See?  It's all about independence!

OR, if you are a different type of student, probably perfectly pleasant and friendly, you might do it like this: Turn  up a bit late again, sit there talking to people while the lecturer smiles pleasantly at the noisy students who are making the lecture start late, don't have anything with you that refers to the lecture at all.  Make faint 'Uh?' sounds when you see other students taking out their slide show print-outs. Loudly ask neighbour where the bloody hell that came from, then explain in great detail how you didn't have time to do that.  But you'll do it later.

Make no effort to look at your handbook, unless it involves a great deal of flapping about and cries of 'what page??'  Shortly after the lecturer has started speaking, ask a question.  It doesn't matter what the question is.  It may have very little to do with the subject in hand; it may be about something that you should make the effort  to look up in your own time; it may be something really silly like 'where did you go to school, then?'

Continue to do this as often as possible.  You may find that you can think of another damn fool question before the lecturer has even finished answering the previous one. There will be other equally irritating students around you who are happy to add an annoying extension to your stupid questions.  No need to look for them, you will recognise the SAME BLOODY VOICES EVERY TIME.

At some point, probably when you have reached the sixth slide after only an hour of the 90-minute, 20-slide lecture, you may observe some students behaving strangely.  Are they gripping their print-out so hard that their knuckles have gone white?  Are they playing aggressively with their highlighters in a manner that suggests they would like to insert them somewhere unpleasant? When you open your mouth to speak, do their eyeballs roll so much that they drop out and trundle across the floor?

Let me help you out here.  These people are Irritated. Beyond. Belief. By your Stupid. Pointless. Relentless. Bloody. Questions.

Aaaaah......that's better.

Scrap Whispers Challenge #46

Today's the day at Scrap Whispers - my challenge, folks!

I thought it would be good to reminisce a bit, so your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to think about something that really floated your boat when you were young(er).  A record you wanted, a concert you were desperate to go to, some clothes you were after for ages, something - anything - like that.

The twist is that it must be something YOU DON'T HAVE A PHOTO OF!  So you can download something, cut it out of a magazine, draw a picture or just do it without.

Here's mine

The journaling says something like: As children, we used to visit Bishops Park in Fulham, near to our home (and where part of The Omen was filmed!).  Inside the entrance on Fulham Palace Road, behind a chain link fence, was a huge adventure playground.  Not like the mass-produced playgrounds we have now; this one had been built by people with hammers and nails, and painted in bright colours.  Every time we passed it, we used to pull and whine to go in there.  I don't know if it was because of the 'rough' children my mum claimed were in there, or just the element of danger, but however much we begged, the answer was always the same:  Not Allowed!

I found some photos of similar adventure playgrounds on flickr and google.  The very best one was in a place called Port Phillip (sp?) - it was JUST like the one we saw in the park.  But the photos were just thumbnails and wouldn't reproduce at a decent size.

I love these places full of nails and splinters!  How much more fun for children to be allowed to do something where they actually have to take notice of hazards and find a way round them, rather than being forced to enjoy the same set of apparatus as a couple of thousand other playgrounds.  No graffiti problems either!

I remember reading about a playground in Norway where they had all these wonderful things like rope swings and tyre swings, rope bridges, high walks, all the stuff that makes yummy mummies shriek with panic....and they just put down loads and loads of tyres to cushion any falls.  In two years they had one or two broken bones - no more than any other playground.

As you can tell, I still feel some resentment towards my poor mother!

Now, if you hop over to Scrapjazz,  and take a look at the October sketch challenge, you'll see this page that I did a while ago

Dig that letter S!  I love using this technique, as it ends up somehow looking as though the letter has been cut from the patterned paper behind it, and I like how it looks when there is more than one paper there.

Scrap Whispers Challenge

Okay, it's time for this week's challenge over at Scrap Whispers!  Nancy has provided a sketch for us to work from:

Here's what I did with it:

I've got into the habit very recently of doing all my scrapping at the weekend.  This is causing a few squeaks, since this particular LO and others for the Scrap Whispers DT, need to be uploaded by a Saturday night.  Managed it so far, though!

Today I did this one, for a challenge over at Lotus Paperie:

I love the Jenny Bowlin paper.  I was going to just draw round the chipboard letters because I wanted a low-key sort of effect, but when I laid them on the page I really liked them so I stuck them down!

This afternoon Visible Teenager was on Sky Sports 3.  I had a phone call when I was looking through the library catalogue at college one day, from some bloke at Sky, who wanted to know if it was all right to use Visible Teenager in a news item.  Some time ago, Ronde Barber (not sure if I've spelt that right), an American Football player, came and did a coaching session with the London Warriors and there was a film crew there.  They interviewed some of the players and decided in their wisdom that Visible Teenager would look good on the telly!

I felt very important when the guy rang me, as I was getting all hands-on with the library catalogue and then was able to take a mobile call at the same time, before going to my email and dashing off a reply giving him permission to use the piece.  Wow, I'm clever!

Wasn't so clever this afternoon, though....

We don't actually have Sky Sports 3, so I rang round and found a friend who does, and who was prepared to let me and my son sit in her house until his face appeared on the telly.  A couple of hours before the start of the programme, Visible Teenager went to the gym.

So there I was, happily combining scrapping with cooking (not in the same room), peeling my potatoes, dropping them into the pressure cooker, waiting for the water to boil and then slamming the lid on....all the time gluing bits of Jenny Bowlin to some Cosmo Cricket.

Only, I think I must have taken a bit longer with the glue stick than I thought.  So although I timed the lid-on bit of the process, the poor potatoes were bubbling away for far too long before I took any notice of them.

Consequently, when I tra-la-laed my way to the cooker and removed the lid, I was faced with a number of disintegrating potatoes.

I should explain at this point that I have been feeling rather stressed all day.  Maybe it was the late night and the early start, staying at my man's house and having to take Youngest to rugby at stupid o'clock.  Or maybe it was the rushing around thing, accompanied by the 'Mum,I need some money' thing, when the money I actually have is probably not even enough to keep us in milk til the end of the week.  (Don't ask...)

The potatoes tipped me over the edge.  As I poured the starchy water into the colander, it became clear that only the potatoes on top had disintegrated.  The ones underneath had dissolved and the water wouldn't drain through the colander because it was full of potato particles.  I jumped up and down and groaned a bit, then tipped the potatoes back into the pan and back again into the colander.  Some boiling water/potato mush splashed onto my hand and I yelled a bit, then as the water stubbornly stayed in the colander I stamped a bit.  The mush went back into the pan, the pan went BANG onto the hob, my foot went SMASH into the oven door and I stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind me. 

Do you think it might be hormonal??  I didn't stop being violent for some time, gunning my poor old car down the road to pick Visible Teenager up from the gym, turning the radio up REALLY loud, and finally nearly having a fit when the silly old fool in front of me insisted on driving at 25 mph, before coming to a dead stop because he thought he couldn't get his car through a gap big enough for an aircraft carrier.  When he saw me gesticulating at him in the mirror, he refused to move off again, the silly old fart.  This gave me an excuse to LEAN ON THE HORN, after which I felt quite a lot better.

He wasn't that old, by the way.

I wonder if any of the people who saw me behaving like a nutter at that moment, had seen me travelling in the other direction earlier, just after Youngest informed me that he had mislaid his wallet for the third time in a week.  I couldn't shout loud enough.

Anyway, Visible Teenager came up a treat on telly.  He smiled!  He spoke clearly!  He didn't look at the adult in front of him as if the adult were a piece of poo on his shoe!

SO - go and ask your menfolk if they were watching Sky Sports 3 when Ronde Barber was on, and the red-headed handsome boy spoke nicely to the grown-ups.

Stupid potatoes. 

Ooooh, Dotty Divas!!

On reflection, that title may have been influenced by my very recent encounter with my daughter's friends' facebook pages.  I could equally have called it 'dottttttttyyyyy divvvvaaaaassssss' but none of you would talk to me ever again.

I'm supposed to be doing homework right now, but sadly I have succumbed to the delights of the internet, including, as you may have gathered from the above, posting messages on the facebook pages of 15 year olds.

Aaaaaaaanywaaaaaayyyy, here is this month's Ad Challenge over at Dotty Divas

The Design Team have come up with a fantastic set of pages, some of which focus on the famous coffee which I am not going to name in case they spookily add comments to my post - as those of you without a life may remember is what happened with the famous holiday camp I mentioned in a post yonks ago.

Annnnnnyywaaaayyyy.  Here is what I did.  No coffee...

 

...just a rather sweet photo of Visible Teenager which I've been wanting to scrap for a while.

Now, because I am still typing at chin level and my hand keeps hitting the mousepad and somehow deleting huge chunks of this post, I'm going to mention the super duper prizes before I go and do some homework (also on the laptop, but never mind).

The American Crafts Thickers are still in the prize pot!  TEN packs, hot from CHA!  And, as if that weren't enough, Cardinal Colours are going to sponsor Dotty Divas EVERY MONTH - you'll be in with a chance of winning a fab pack of 25 sheets of Bazzill.  But don't take my word for it, go and take a look here for some more details...

Stop The World...(and Scrap Whispers Challenge #44!)

Oooer, it's all going very fast round here.  I seem to be spending a lot of time feeling hot and clammy from overexertion, and making the horrible sighing sound I always make when forced to do more than ten minutes'  housework at a time.

After my lovely six weeks off work, I have gone back to school to find that I need to do lots of extra bits for the child I support, as he has now been statemented.  Also I seem to have agreed to be responsible for buying staff milk. That's not the milk produced by the staff, fortunately, but the milk they have in their tea.  We need a cow, it would be much more efficient although obviously not semi-skimmed.

Then there is the course I may have mentioned a few hundred times.  I'm being a good girl and keeping up with the homework, even though Youngest has no appreciation of the notion of peace and quiet.  He has been in here this afternoon, sitting on the end of my bed staring dolefully at me because he is bored and I'm not doing anything about it.  I keep flapping my hands at him and saying 'but I'm doing homework!'  It has no effect.  I have let him down badly by not dashing to Asda to buy naan breads so that I can make his friend a naan bread pizza so that his friend can buy a sandwich for Youngest, as he promised to do after tasting one of my yummy creations.  (I should probably be excited by this, but I haven't got time.)

Visible Teenager is not impressed either.  He interrupted my already interrupted homework by coming in to ask for a pair of tweezers, which he needed to remove some tiny black hairs from his belly.  He expressed disbelief when I told him how much the tweezers cost, then insisted on showing me these horrible deformities on his body, which I could barely see and wouldn't think were that important anyway.

In the end I flapped my hands and said 'I'm doing my homework!'  but he said, 'I've seen your homework and it's easy.'  This was a predictable response, given that he thinks he's doing four degrees.  I did explain that an A level isn't the same as a degree, but I don't want to belittle his efforts...

Anyway.  Here is my layout for the Scrap Whispers Challenge #44.  Because it is Georgina's birthday this week, we have all done a birthday layout.  I used an old photo I found, which has not benefited from being copied but never mind...

I was pleased that I managed to complete this, as we've welcomed a new sofa and a new dishwasher (actually both free and donated by friends) into the house this weekend.  My man was already looking extremely frazzled by the time we reached my house with the new sofa and found Daughter sitting on the old one watching telly when she was supposed to have done something about moving it into the hallway.  Then we had to take the legs off the new one to get it through the door.  Fortunately for Daughter, she was the only one who could work out how to do this.

Today I have been helping my man get his new Volvo (of vintage origins) off a trailer and into a container.  Just to make things difficult, he had to jump start the winch on the trailer - for the third time  this weekend.  And then when I got home and tried to plumb in my new dishwasher, I discovered that the hose is smaller than the old one and won't fit over the waste pipe.  Grrr.  (I also discovered that the space behind my dishwasher/washing machine, smells of goat.  Not quite sure how that happened.)

On the Good News front, Youngest's rugby coach called me over this morning to ask what I had been feeding him.  Not only has he grown mightily, he has also developed some sort of motivation for the game, which has delighted his coach and also nearly knocked him off his feet during tackling practice.  I pointed out that he has new supplies of testosterone coursing through his veins, as evidenced by the stonking great spot on his nose.

They are concerned, however, that he doesn't speak very much.  I didn't realise that this was a necessary element of a game of rugby, but they are determined to get him to talk to people.  I'm having no part of this, since my problem is roughly the opposite, ie I can't get him to shut up.

I did ask Youngest why he didn't speak to people, and he said that he doesn't really need to, beyond calling someone's name when he wants them to pass the ball.  Seems fair enough to me.

So, there you go.  Waffle, waffle, waffle.  Today or tomorrow I will be showing you what I did for the latest Dotty Divas challenge - if you entered then you'll be eligible for the fabulous prize we've got this month.  (If you didn't enter, know now that it was TEN packs of the new CHA Thickers!!!  Yum!!!)

Vote Vote Vote Again!

Hello folks, I've just discovered that one of my LOs is a finalist (well, they said it's me, but I think it's the layout, lol!) over at Lotus Paperie...It's this one of my son cooking

 

...which was taken from a sketch and uses quite a few bits and pieces that I had lying around.  I always like it when I can use up my bits and pieces!

So, if you're in the mood, it would be great if you could pop over there and vote for me.  Or, of course, any other LO that you might think is even better than mine!

And have a good Tuesday!  (I'm trying, I really am....)

Scrap Whispers Challenge

A great challenge this week, from Nilsa.  Find a layout you love by a digi scrapper and lift it!  I chose the layout below, by Dawn Inskip

 

Dawn has a shop as well, for all your digi requirements!  I'm not a digital girl myself, but Dawn's creations are absolutely gorgeous so I'm sure you can find all sorts of scrummy goodies there!  This is what I created with good old paper and scissors

 

This is our little cat, Sonny, spoilt rotten and forever being squeezed and hugged and kissed...he's still got his little furry hazelnuts and even they are a source of pride in our rather strange family...!

Just a quickie today, I've been clearing out kitchen cupboards and my poor son still hasn't had his tea yet at 8 pm....something smells cooked now!