The sniffles

I'm ill. Boo hoo. I made a start on my Speshal Dare for this week and was planning to get it finished off last night but by teatime I was feeling really rough, so I spent the evening curled up in front of the box instead.

I had a hilarious conversation about Troy Bolton with Danielle yesterday. Well, we have a lot of hilarious conversations about him. It went a little something like this:

Danielle: Mum, can Troy Bolton come and play round my house one day?

Me: He lives a long way away munchkin, so it might be a bit too far for him to come.

Danielle: You could ring him and ask him. Do you know his phone number? While you're on the phone, ask him what flavour juice he wants to drink. We've only got blackcurrant. Do you think he'll drink it? And does he want to play with My Little Ponies?

It went on for a good fifteen minutes. Lots of burning questions that all need to be answered by the one and only Troy Bolton. If anybody knows his phone number, please let Danielle know so that she can get her answers. Thank you.

I've been tagged

by the lovely Maria. I have to list 6 weird things about myself. My first thought was, "Oh, that'll be a piece of cake" but I've been thinking all afternoon and, do you know, I actually think I'm completely normal and totally un-weird. Oh yes! Well, ok, maybe I'm telling little fibs. So, here goes:

1. When I hang washing on the line, it all has to be in some kind of order - pyjamas in pairs, all the pairs of pyjamas together (sorted by child and they must go top then trousers, top then trousers - no way can I have two tops side by side), underwear all in a row (sorted by owner again)....blah blah, I think you get the picture. If I let John hang the washing out, I have to go and rearrange it later.

2. Before I go out, I have to check the back door is locked at least 6 times.

3. I always have to spend a penny last thing before going out (sorry if tmi lol), even if I've only been 2 minutes earlier.

4. When I'm cooking, I can't reuse any cutlery. Even if I've used a spoon to stir something, I won't reuse it to stir the same pot - I have to get a clean one out.

5. If I get interrupted when eating my breakfast cereal (even if I just put my bowl down for 10 seconds to answer the door for example) I can't eat them because I think they'll be soggy. What a fruitcake!!

Well, I'm stumped for a 6th right now but I think I've made myself look strange enough already so I'm happy to leave it at 5. I'm going to tag Marja, Kaz, Paula, Jenny, & Suzanne (not sure who else is remotely likely to read this that hasn't already been tagged lol)

I am in love........

...........with French Twist from Autumn Leaves. It is just scrummy, and the colours are so me. I haven't been so taken with anything stash-wise in a long while, so I'm going to treat myself to the lot. When's it out? Who's going to be stocking it? I WANT IT NOW!!!

My Ebay sales are going well - another £50 over the weekend, so I'm well on my way to my first million. Only another £999, 870 and I'll be rich.

I took this photo of Max yesterday and have to put it on here because it's so rare for me to get a full face shot without him poking his tongue out or yawning. Isn't he handsome? Or am I just biased because I'm his mum?

Everyone is Speshal.....

.........even me. The Speshal Dares blog has had a makeover and some fab new girls have joined the team. Oh, and for some reason that I still haven't fathomed, they asked me too. How fab is that! So, it's official "I is Speshal".

This is what I did for this week's dare - to find out more about this week's theme, you need to click the link above. Check out all the other awesome work the girls have produced this week too. You won't be disappointed - that's a promise.

My piece is an altered memo board; it started life as just a plain white dry-wipe magnetic board from WHSmith (£2.99). I covered most of it with Creative Imaginations and Scenic Route papers, ribbon and ric rac.

The heart in the centre is a Maya Road chipboard one, covered in some CI papers.

The little flowers are magnetic pins - these came with the board and were just plain black so I covered them with Lil' Davis glitter chipboard flowers and buttons centres.

Some Heidi Swapp plastic lettering and MM Tiny Type alpha for the "Note to self" and voila! The little pictures bottom left were drawn by Danielle and Charlie. I'm sure I don't need to tell anybody, because it will be instantly obvious, but the lady in the multi-coloured dress on the uppermost pic is me! And yes, I really am a triangular shape (with no neck) irl. I'm not usually legless any more, mind you, so maybe it's meant to be me when I was younger.

Twice as ice

This is Max enjoying an early morning snack. He managed to break a huge chunk of ice from the sandpit lid and was running around the garden like a lunatic with it before he ate the lot. Can you imagine the brain freeze that must have given him? He's such a nutter. But at least now he's de-iced the sandpit he can drink out of it - he was starting to get desperate and even drank out of his water bowl. Oh, and Maria - I definitely win the competition for the longest grass but that's because we're setting up a wildlife conservation area; well that's my excuse anyway lol.

So, what's everybody up to over the weekend? We have a trip to the library planned for tomorrow. I got a phone call to say that a book I ordered in is ready to pick up. Finishing Techniques for Handknitters I'm hoping that it'll give me a few tips on how to get a more professional look to my knitting. I can knit pretty well, but it's my sewing up that lets me down a little. Well, ok a LOT! Casey's books are also overdue (since November, eeek!), although thankfully they don't give fines for kids' books. Phew!

I have a little secret that I can finally spill the beans on real soon. I don't know how I've managed to keep my big gob shut but I'm so glad that I can at last let it all out. (No, I'm not pregnant!!)

Aaaaaaaaaargh!!

I decided to add another slide show for a few of my favourite photos - it was sooooo hard to choose just 15 or so pics, let me tell you. Only thing is, I've spent about half an hour trying to match up the pink I used for the skin of my first slide. But, do you think I can do it? Nope. Boo hoo. I'm going to come back to it tomorrow I think, so it can be white for now. Oh, and one is a rectangle, but the other has rounded corners. *sulk*



On the plus side, my ebay sales are now up to 80 quid. At this rate, I'll be able to retire by the time I'm 36.



Before I go, I want to share this photo of Danielle - doesn't she look seriously peeved with me? Haha.

I'm in the money

Ebay have a 10p listing day today, so I just spent about an hour listing a few of Danielle and Charlie's clothes from last summer. Within half an hour, I've already made £67. Not bad eh?

Thanks for the thumbs up for my blog colours - the background is growing on me already and I trust other people's judgement far more than my own because I have no eye for colours at all - one look at my layouts will tell you that. :)

Want to see what I did this afternoon? As if I don't have enough knitting to do, I made these. They only took a couple of minutes each and I thought they'd look cool on a layout. If I ever scrap, that is...........

Ta Da......What do you think?

Of my new banner, I mean. Pretty funky, eh? Of course, what I'd love to say next is that I designed it myself and it only took me 5 seconds to throw the little beauty together and upload it here. But that would be a lie. Because it was, in fact, made for me by the wonderful Kirsty Wiseman. Is there no end to that woman's talents? I would put a link in here to her blog but I haven't figured out how to do fancy links in blogger yet so I need to find somebody to hassle this morning who will tell me how, mwahaha.

I'm still not sure about the background colour of the blog itself but I'm leaving it for now to see if it grows on me. I was going to fiddle with it some more last night but decided to knit instead. I now have 4 projects on the go, all in various stages of completion - big mistake! Oh, and one more that's all sewn up but waiting for me to finish embroidering the flowers on. I feel like I'm getting nowhere because none of them are anywhere near finished. I hate sewing too, so when I do eventually get them all finished I'm going to have 4 lots of sewing to do all at once. Ack!!

Just the beginning

Yikes, I'm now officially entering the world of blogging. Abandon hope all ye who read this blog - prepare to be bored stiff.

For anybody who's remotely interested, I'll explain the meaning behind my blog title. My daughter, Danielle (4) is madly in love with Troy Bolton. If you haven't seen the film High School Musical, he plays the lead male role. The Start of Something New is a song that he sings with his female co-star, right at the very beginning of the film. Danielle sings it 24/7 while fantasising about married life with Troy, so it was the first thing that popped into my head.