Oh dear

Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear. I'm not doing very well on the blog front this year am I? It seems that boyfriends, Nintendo wiis, gerbils, journals, freeview tv and the ultimate tool of procrastination - the internet - are far too distracting. Oh and my day job (yawn). I daydream EVERY SINGLE BLOODY DAY about being some amazing artist/illustrator/author/all-round creative with my own business or stuff published by people throwing lots of money at me. When I should be working I have a sneaky peek on etsy at the Quit your day job articles. The thing is, these people CAN quit their day jobs because they actually DO stuff to make that happen. As it stands I couldn't even be a part time etsy seller because, guess what, I have nothing to sell.

To be quite frank, I'm sick of being a loser. Without going into too much detail, I've had a bad week. I'm sick of other people (bar a handful) and I'm sick of myself. I'm not trying to turn this blog into something negative but what started out as somewhere for me to showcase all kinds of creativity has now become somewhere I just witter on about a load of crap. No one wants to read crap.

So from now on I vow to
1) Treat others how they treat me (if they ignore me, I ignore them back. Simple as)
2) Blog more inspiring things
3) Unleash my creative spirit

Lets see how I go.

On a positive note, I have been progressing with my Wreck this journal. I can't be bothered to keep posting pics but should anyone be interested you can see my antics here

Crappy Blog Day

I came online as the boyfriend was occupied by playing Playstation with his friends.

I thought I would get a couple of hours "me time" - which I did.

I thought this "me time" would make me write a worthwhile and interesting blog post.

I was wrong.

How do people do it? How do people find the time to hold down a full time job, maintain a house, write a blog, have a social life AND a creative hobby?

Do they have super powers? Or magic watches?

Where can I buy a magic time stopping watch? Oh how I've wished for a magic time stopping watch. Maybe they sell them in the same place that sells creative juice and magic fairy dust.

Happy New Year

First of all, Happy New Year. Right now, I am enjoying 2009, I know we're only 2 days into the new year but I'm hopeful its going to be a good one. My year began with the best New Years Eve I've ever had. Normally I hate NYE, its so forced, crowded and expensive, but this year was different. We made New Years Eve our housewarming party AND it was fancy dress (One of my all time favourite things ever is fancy dress). I brought the beehive back and dressed up as Amy Winehouse again, my scrummy boyfriend (who surprised me with a pink ipod on Christmas Day, knowing I wanted one but would never ask for one) dressed up as the Gingerbread Man from Shrek!!! Argh! I love!

New Years Day. Hangover not too bad. I guess I was drunk but not in Amy Winehouse proportions. Spent a chilled out day in my house with my boyfriend.

Today we decided to hit the sales and I did two things I've been meaning to do for a long time - get a second hole pierced in each earlobe (its only taken me 9 years since the idea first popped into my head) AND I finally bought some new trainers! Yay!


Its funny to think that this time last year I had no idea what was to come... the highs and the lows and the plain surreal. I wonder what I will be thinking about come January 2010!

Desperate Housewife

Everything I touch turns to crap.

Maybe I'm being a little dramatic but thats how I feel today. I thought I could get by in the kitchen, but I'm starting to learn that I can't. Nick gets home from work before me so he does the majority of the cooking, good thing really otherwise we'd starve! In addition to the exploding egg disaster I have since made a spaghetti bolognese, the bolognese was nice but the spaghetti looked like sludge, I don't know why or how but it wasn't pretty AND I somehow managed to burn the bottom of the saucepan. We also managed to burn our wok when making stir fry (though I will only take half the blame for that one).

Today I stupidly thought it would be nice to bake some cupcakes as I received a cupcake book from my friend Emma as an early Christmas present.

I imagined myself to be a little bit like Bree from Desperate Housewives...

I really shouldn't delude myself. I did the quiz. I'm not a Bree, I'm a Susan. I do like Susan and I suppose I am a bit like her (a little ditsy, a bit artsy). But anyone who watches Desperate Housewives knows that Susan cannot cook to save her life, whereas Bree is the domestic goddess of Wisteria Lane. Just for today I wanted to be Bree.


I just found this picture of Teri Hatcher who plays Susan in DH on google. To my amusement she has a book called Burnt Toast. How fitting to the occasion.

I picked out a rather tasty sounding recipe for Rocky Mountain cupcakes - chocolate sponge, chocolate frosting, topped with popcorn, marshmallows and, yup, more chocolate.

They look good. They taste bad. They look like heaven and taste like hell. I cannot offer these to people on Boxing Day, they may as well eat charcoal bricks. All I can say is thank goodness I'm not responsible for conjuring up a Christmas dinner tomorrow, I'm off to my parents house. We won't even talk about the buffet I'm doing for 8 people on Boxing Day (how hard can a buffet be, right?).

Whatever you're doing, have a very happy christmas.

(Marcia Cross and Teri Hatcher images from google.)

Raspberry Milkshake

I love quotes, but what's the point of a quote if you can't share it? So I've decided to do regular 'Quote of the day' posts. Things I've said, things other people have said, stuff from the past and the present as well as inspiring quotes I have found.

So for my first quote of the day I thought I'd share something delightfully whimsical...

"Imagine," said the wise man, "that the moon was made of raspberry. Would all socks be pink and all flowers meringue? Perhaps... and when evening falls shall we slide down the crescent laughing as we splash into warm waters of sweet milk, how enchanting life would be."

That quote was from.....





.....a tube of pink raspberry milkshake scented body scrub! Who knew toiletries could be so magical?

The blogger is back!

The blog isn't dead and buried just yet, oh no, I am back, baby! Yeah so its been fairly hectic but we unofficially moved into our house about a fortnight ago but I've been so preoccupied with work and christmas that I haven't had any internet time. Or internet for that matter. But we got our connection up and running yesterday so I am back in the land of the cyber geeks - yay!!! :-D

At first I found it weird leaving what had been my home for 12 years behind, my bedroom in particular, but 2 weeks down the line I feel much happier. One of my favourite things about my new house is the view from the bedroom window. It looks on to fields (nice) and in the fields are a few (sparse) trees lining the fence but the thing I found exciting was that these trees seem to attract all sorts of birds I rarely see, you know, not your common pigeon/sparrow/blackbird, but instead bluetits, a very festive robin and what I think was a jay (thanks to http://www.surfbirds.com/ - god I am such a geek!). I even went out a bought a bird feeder but what I've really got my eye on is one of these-

A "Quirky Birdhouse" from firebox.com ( http://www.firebox.com/product/1571/Quirky-Birdhouses ) HOW. CUTE.

My only worry is the cat that has been lurking around. Don't get me wrong, I love cats, but this particular one, who we've nicknamed Robocat (long story) keeps coming into our garden and eyeing up the birds, I saw it leap up the fence the other day and I had a mild panic it might catch itself a little birdie. LOOK!

Guess if I get a cute little caravan it will provide my Tweety Pies with a safe haven away from Sylvester up there =^_^=

Journal Wrecking Antics

Back again. Twice in one day! This isn't a proper wordy post, just some more of my journal wrecking antics!

Drawing on the edges...






Throw something (the colours of my new bedroom!)


Taste the rainbow...

The Undomestic Goddess

I've been neglecting the blog a bit lately, along with my social life and pretty much anything that doesn't involve a paintroller or flatpack instructions. I am off sick today. I've got the luuuurrrg. Worse than a cold but not quite flu. So anyway, I thought I'd write a little post.

The house is coming along nicely, the living room is pretty much there. It's still the only room of the house that feels homely but hey, we'll get there eventually. My favourite corner of the house is this one-

Mmm... cosy. The two spotty cushions are my second etsy purchase. They are from Marie's Cosy Cushions (mariescosycushions.etsy.com). They compliment the blue wall (MY blue wall) perfectly!

I'm not the most useful of people, not the most domesticated either, but last weekend while the boyfriend was finishing up painting our bedroom I thought I'd make us a nice lunch (anything to avoid cleaning my paint roller!). His mum had bought us a microwave egg poacher and I'd been keen to try it out. In my head I had visions of him coming downstairs to find his poached egg on toast and a cup of tea waiting for him, nice and hot. If we'd had an oven at that time I could have got really carried away and gone all Bree in Desperate Housewives / 1950s domestic goddess... you know, the kind of woman who wears an apron over a prom dress just to do some baking.

The sad truth however was that he came downstairs to find me with a scowl on my face and swearing, standing at the sink washing up, with bits of egg floating everywhere. It had only gone and exploded. Waa! Beans on toast instead then!

So much for this domestic lark.

Inner Child vs Adult Self / Dec 'n' Wreck

I have been such a busy bee this week! We got into our house around 2pm on Tuesday and one of the first things I did was not cleaning or painting or indeed shifting all my belongings into the house, nope, I chose to decorate the fridge with magnetic letters! I always wanted fridge letters when I was a kid but my mum thought they were "messy" so I had to make do with leaving messages on our neighbour's fridge. Sad I know.

Sometimes I feel really excited that I'm all grown up and that I have a whole house I can do as I please with and invite people over whenever I want to. I like the idea of being able to spread myself across several rooms without being told to tidy up. It's a bit like being on holiday. But there's also the other part of me, my inner child, that doesn't want to worry about mortgages and electricity bills and just wants to play in her pretty pink bedroom. Becoming a real adult does scare me a little because I don't feel like an adult. It doesn't feel that long ago since I went to the pet shop with my mum and begged her for a hamster, then we went to our local supermarket to buy sweets, cake making ingredients and Nintendogs for my pink Nintendo DS.

Infact, it wasn't that long ago... must have been about March time. This year. What am I, 25 or 5?

I mean, do these look like the feet of a sensible adult?

(This photo was taken in our hotel room at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas. The slippers, if you haven't already guessed, are from the Flamingo)

In other news, in my busy schedule I did manage to fit in some more journal wrecking time.


^^^ The magazine words page


^^^ What I did with the page the gerbils chewed up

I think I may buy a couple of these journals as christmas presents for two of my friends, which reminds me, I need to crack on. My christmas present purchases right now consist of a dvd for my mum.

That is all.

When I asked my dad what he wanted for christmas his answer was "your happiness" which is very sweet but not very helpful! This year I can't face the shops so I'm going to see how much I can do online.

Here goes nothing........

Chocolate Duck Egg

Tomorrow is the big day. The day the house officially becomes ours. We won't be moving in tomorrow though because we have no furniture! Our living room furniture from Homebase will arrive on Saturday and our bedroom furniture will arrive on a Monday sometime in the next decade from Ikea. Miow!

My boyfriend and I had been talking about colour schemes for a little while. Bearing in mind, I'm a girlie girl whose bedroom is currently various shades of pink and purple (I also have a blue ceiling with white clouds painted on it) we managed to find colour schemes we both agreed on. But there was something that was niggling at me and it wasn't until the other day that I realised what it was.

I cannot live in a house with brown furniture and cream walls. There I said it. Not that there's anything wrong with brown and cream, I just don't see myself as a cream wall kind of person. The house is a blank canvas and I want to colour it! My boyfriend said he wanted a 'chocolate and cream' coloured living room. Brown and cream are not my favourites, but he looked so sad when I suggested they might be a bit 'drab'. He said (and I quote) "but I've always dreamed of having a chocolate and cream living room". When I told him I wanted purple and teal he told me they didn't go together!

We reached a compromise, chocolate and teal with some cream thrown in to brighten it all up a bit. Fine. Only when we were out shopping the teal accessories he kept pointing out weren't very teal at all, more brown with a streak of teal. Disappointing.

Then I had a brainwave. We already chose teal and white for the bedroom so how about chocolate and duck egg blue for the living room? Duck egg blue is light, bright, trendy and fun. And easy to find accessories in. Perfect. It didn't take much persuasion either, my good friend google proved to him that duck egg and chocolate do indeed go together.

These candles I found WEEKS ago prove me right.

Must go purchase.

I'm also really keen to get a nice rug as the house has mostly laminate wood flooring. Imagine my joy at finding not one, but TWO great rugs in our colour scheme.

Top image is from http://www.dunelm-mill.com/
Bottom image is from http://www.argos.co.uk

And so, if all goes quiet on the blogging front its not because I've given up, its because I'm busy unleashing the interior designer lurking within me! ;-)

Gerbilicious wrecking

Yesterday I continued with the journal wrecking...

There's something about coffee that if the thought of it gets planted into my head then I can't stop thinking about coffee until I drink a cup. Usually only at home because the coffee at work isn't that great.

This book belongs to...

I'm so glad I had some Tippex for the 'write your name in white' part :-)

And the moment you've all been waiting for (well I have coz it's just too cute)




Nice to get a helping paw, and lets face it, seeing those two cuties chewing the paper is ALOT nicer than seeing my ugly mug trying to gnaw it!

I wonder how long it will be before I'm no longer known as Crazy Lady With Gerbils and become Crazy Lady With Journal...?

Let the wrecking commence!

So today has been my first proper day of wrecking that journal. It began by me going to bed with it last night* (oo-er!). Sweet dreams little journal...



*If you don't have a copy of 'Wreck this journal', I'm not creepy... one of the instructions is to sleep with the journal, honest!

When I woke up I realised that if I was going to take photos of my progress it would be alot easier if the book would stay open so I had to follow another instruction...



And crack the spine!





Ouch!

After being pressured into sleeping with someone that wasn't my boyfriend (I am still talking about the journal here) I decided it was time we both got ourselves clean



I'm alot cleaner now but the same can't be said for my journal!



Once the book had dried I thought I should write about my 'experience' of sleeping with the journal while the thrill of it all was still fresh in my mind



(Click to enlarge. It really is riveting.)

I will leave it there for now. Stay tuned for more wrecking adventures (I'm particularly looking forward to the 'Burn this page' page, and no, I'm not a pyromaniac).

Feisty and Kooky

Wow I've been so busy this week I haven't had chance to blog until now! I am quite enjoying the blogging, normally I'm one of these people who gets obsessed by a new idea for a while then quickly gets bored and moves onto something else, so managing to keep this up for a couple of months is something pretty remarkable for me! haha!

Yesterday I learnt two more things about myself, I was called 'feisty' by my friend Emma and 'kooky' by a work colleague. Hence the title of this post. The feisty partly comes from my ranting about a certain Swedish flat-pack furniture store WHO by the way, have now said they can only deliver to our area on MONDAYS! I'm normally someone who is too lazy to write a complaint letter but I am pissed off. The house will officially be ours on Tuesday but we won't be able to move in until December because we will have no bedroom furniture and there's no point camping when I've got my lovely bed at my parent's house. Sigh.


As for the kooky (heh I love that word!) ...well I haven't a foggy! We were preparing to go to a charity quiz night (which I did pretty good at if I do say so myself, oh yes I knew what the capital of Tasmania is, much to the surprise of my colleagues, clearly I'm not as dumb as I look) and I was randomly asked if I watched Star Trek, "Do I look like a Trekkie? The most sci-fi I get is Heroes!". To which the reply was "Well you are a bit kooky". I took it as a compliment :-)


AND in other news, look what arrived in the post for me today...

To quote Russell Brand: 'citin'!

Tis exciting. I'm looking forward to doing some wrecking. I may even join the flickr group for it to track my progress and have a nosey at what other people have done to their journals. Ahh the shiny new journal sits all pristine there on my lap, waiting to be wrecked. Unfortunately I should be going to bed right now so the wrecking will have to commence on another day.

Night night xxx

Ikea: Scandinavian for flat-pack hell

Today my boyfriend, my mum and I took a trip to the land of reasonably priced Swedish flat-pack furniture. I believe that Ikea is one of those places you either love or hate. Or in my case, love THEN hate.

My dad hates Ikea. He says there are no windows and no way out. I just laugh at him and call him a drama queen.

A guy I work with also hates Ikea. He says he doesn't know any couples who have managed to get round the whole store without arguing. Lies. A few weeks ago me and my boyfriend Nick spent our Tuesday evening strolling around the store happily planting ourselves on various sofas and beds (in the name of research of course). We didn't argue once, but then we only walked away with some funky tins and some cheap drinking glasses.

So today when Nick suggested we take my mum and her credit card to Ikea I thought it would be a nice little morning outing. Nice little morning outing. Only the last word of that sentence is true.

We arrived to a busy cafeteria full of people getting their 95p cooked breakfasts. Nick wanted a cooked breakfast but they stopped serving at 11am and we arrived at 11.01am so we had to settle for a nice cup of tea instead. The shop was pretty busy and for someone who can't stand crowds of people I think I did ok. Even when we were queueing for ages to order some furniture to be delivered and then being told that we'd have to pay TWO £30 delivery charges because the table and chairs come from the store and are delivered in 24 hours but the bed and the bedside cabinets come from the warehouse and are delivered in 2 to 3 weeks. Ridiculous!

By this point I was feeling hot, flustered and hungry, my mum needed to visit the loo and Nick had a thumping headache. Alas, we battled on like troopers to the market hall (cattle market hall, more like).
Blah blah blah plates, candles, frying pan. Look for lamp we liked. Not in stock.

Next up, self-serve furniture area. Pick up our chairs. Can't reach the chairs because they are in the staff only bit. Where are the staff? Don't know.
Eventually find the staff and make our way to the tills with our chairs. Pay in 3 separate transactions (take it home now stuff, see you in 24 hours stuff, see you in 2-3 weeks stuff).

Make our way to the collection point to collect our table. Why we had to collect it from there I don't know... IT'S FLAT-PACK! From the collection point we go to the delivery service point ready to shell out another £30 for stuff we don't even want delivered within 24 hours only to find that the delivery charge will actually be £55 because our goods come to X amount and we live in "zone whatever". Fifty five f*cking pounds! We managed to reduce our delivery charge down to £45 by reducing the value of the goods being delivered by shoving them into the back of Nick's mini but still, £45 is obscene when you consider that Homebase charged us £6!

4 hours later our ordeal was over. I won't be doing that again in a hurry.

Ikea is a four-letter word. I can think of some better 4-letter words to describe THAT!

Your cat might attack it, but it's hot

After a truly crap day at work it was a delight to come home and find the postman had brought me this-

My first etsy purchase! Its a little $2 zine named 'Threads' by champignons.etsy.com. I don't really have much in the way of disposable cash right now but as it was only a quid and looked really adorable I thought I'd buy it to inspire myself. I took the photograph of it using my mobile phone and then added vignetting. I don't really know why I added that, just thought it looked good and suited it.

Vignetting is a nice quality.

Ahem! ANYWAY, so yeah, as much as I'd like to, I can't really afford to be buying myself a whole heap of handmade goodies, I gotta be buying kitchen utensils and stuff. Boring. Although when kitchen utensils look like this its a different story-

My mum bought me these the other day because she thought I'd like them. Hmm lets see, do I prefer boring plastic/stainless steel utensils OR novelty utensils? Hmm... she knows me too well! The guy on the left is a pizza cutter and the little dude on the right is a potato scrubber, for all those baking potatoes I'm gonna be scrubbing y'know. HOW. CUTE.

Kitsch* for my kitchen!

*Something amusing I found on urbandictionary.com, one of the definitions of the word 'kitsch' includes the sentence "Your cat might attack it, but it's hot". How funny! And its a clever title for this post, because cats like threads too! (no I'm not insane, its just been a very long week!)