The one where....

I had tea at The Palace......

Warning - photo heavy post !!!

Won't chat too much - sadly we weren't allowed to take photos inside the gardens.I must just say though that I was actually about 5 feet away from The Queen so it is probably the closest I will ever get to her. I would so have loved to take a photo but I didn't want to get thrown out !! Prince Phillip was there too and the Count and Countess of Wessex (Edward and Sophie) and the Duke and Duchess of  Gloucester and the Duke of York.
Here are a few memories from the day.....

ready for the offf in the garden...

On the way -past Marble Arch

Lots of these driving around

Here we are, uh-oh look at all those people...

As Dad can't walk very far he has a disabled badge and we were lucky to get parked right by the Palace and only had to walk across the road - and we went straight in too...

I would have loved to have shared photos of the lovely tea we had, there were cups of tea with little tiny bridge rolls and tiny cucumber sandwiches, tiny scones, ginger cakes - victoria sponge and many other tiny nibbles.

The weather thankfully was sunny all the time. The brass bands played during the afternoon as we wandered around the beautiful gardens -it was hard to believe that we were in the middle of London  and was truly something to remember and I am so glad that Dad enjoyed it too.

Crafty Sunday

Today,I've been to the monthly Craftystash crop again and managed two finished and one nearly finished third layout.Oops-I've just noticed those two stray birds shouldn't be there just above the right photo !!

When I got home there was  a very upbeat,bouncy husband....for his Father's Day present, the boys bought him a very special ticket to go and see his hero Alice Cooper ( I know, I know !) He is doing a one off concert at the 100 Club in London tonight and there were only 350 tickets so he was ready and waiting for me to take him to the station - just had to get a photo ......All I can say is - I'm glad I'm not sitting next to him on the train ..........

A Workshop - and bag progress....

A friend of mine Hilary is arranging a workshop with Ifa Zainon in July and I promised Hilary I would mention it  here in case anyone fancied a day scrapping on the outskirts of Cambridge.It is on the 9th July from 10.00 - 4.00 in the Trumpington area .Sadly I won't be around that day but the classes look lovely from the sneaky peeks Ifa has posted on her FB page...There is a kit provided for £35 for two classes,refreshments and a light lunch .
You can find all the details here on the their Facebook page .. Or you can contact Ifa on her email-  huzaifah_zainon (at)hotmail (dot) com .Love  the look of those little flowers..

 ..

How am I getting on with my holiday bag you ask .....well,I've managed 15 squares so far...I was crocheting like a woman possessed last night - AND  I've sewn all the ends in so far!! I've got 27 to make and then the handle ...

Am off to do a bit more now ....enjoy your weekend whatever you are doing,lots of barbeques tomorrow as it's supposed to be very hot - please let it be nice weather for my special  garden party next week!

Hooky Happenings

I'm at it again- In order to get my oldies photo box out the other day for a cybercrop layout I had to move mountains of krud  a few little bits out of the way and one of them was a crochet book ...you know how it is - I ended up sitting on the floor surrounded by dog, photos and other bits and pieces and flicked through this book .....
I  remember seeing this blanket when I bought the book - but it worked out ridiculously expensive so I shelved the idea- and  I couldn't find a colour near to it in another range........anyway - I got the bug again and have decided to order a few balls at a time as I go along....
This is the blanket -isn't it just gorgeous?

this is the book it came from -

I've also decided to make one of these for taking away in the summer .....

but I 'm going to make it in blue ... three squares done so far ...hope I get it done before our hols ... it might be just nice to sling over my shoulder with bits in on holiday...

there are about 27 squares to make so I reckon I might get a few done if I have a bit of a blitz over the weekend... watch this space !!... Not too confident about the sewing of the inside bit though .....

Another Cybercrop Layout

This time it's one of Jane Hewitt's - using October Afternoon papers - I had such fun rifling through the box of old photos of the boys and you will definitely have a giggle at my 'big hair' and wild cardi in one of the photos - well it was cool at the time - honest !!

Here's a closer look at the photos - no sniggering !

A Blog Hop for a blogaversary...

The lovely Sandie from itchifingers is having a 'blogaversary blog hop' today in celebration of having her blog for a year....and I was thrilled when she asked me to take part.... here is the link back to her blog if you get lost or  find any of the links not working - and hopefully you have come to me from Alexa's blog
We are all going to post on the theme of celebration....
At a risk of being boring - I'd like to share a very special celebration day for me - which was for my 50th birthday...
I have been a lifelong fan of The Osmonds since my teen years and for my 50th birthday my OH treated me  to a meet and greet package when the Osmonds came over for their Anniversary tour. This tour was slightly different to normal as ALL of them were performing together, this included Marie and Donny who normally perform separately to the brothers... I got to see them rehearsing and doing the sound check for the concert-there was also a question and answer session. I got to meet - hug- and chat to all of them and then had front row seats for the evening concert...I know everone has different tastes but for me, this fulfilled a lifelong dream and it is a day I will always remember...here are some photos from the day - I also met Antony Costa as he had come to watch his 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here' buddy Jimmy Osmond .

A photo of them alltogether after their rehearsal..

A shot of Alan and Donny - Alan doesn't perform so much now..

Getting a close - ish shot of Donny...

Yours truly with Antony Costa...

So - that's one of my favourite 'celebration ' memories...I hope you enjoyed reading it (even though you MAY just have heard  this story before !!)

This post has been brough to you by the letter F.... the letter you need to collect for Sandie's giveaway.

Congratulations on one year of blogging Sandie....

and now I'd like to hand you over to the lovely Lynne who is the next person to hop to ...

Happy Hopping ! 

Being a munchkin - a challenge

One of the challenges over at ATDML this weekend is to use stash you bought at the shop....
I used some of  the new range of papers just in from Graphic45...I love their ranges and I couldn't wait to get my hot little hands on this one - The Magic of Oz- mainly because the Wizard of Oz was always one of the films the boys watched and watched over and over again when they were small and it holds a special place in my heart.... I remember walking down to the video shop ( that was the only way you got to watch any films in those days!) we would hire the video nearly every week. In the end, the nice man in the video shop said' you might as well have this video as you hire it so much'!
When my eldest did his very first play at school - it was -yep you guessed 'Wizzie Oz' as they used to call it..

So here is my layout using that lovely new range -of my eldest who is now 26 when he was 5 'Being a Munchkin' and my dear mum's hand is patting his face after just finishing his make up - sweet memories indeed ...

Next one !

I've really enjoyed doing this double layout of Ann Freeman's as it has brought back some fab memories of a good couple of days away with himself exploring Harrogate and a Tim Holtz class thrown in as well :-) the papers used were 7Gypsies and really leant themselves to a grungey theme...

ATDML Cybercrop

There's a lot going on over at the ATDML blog this weekend. Mel, Jill and the design team have come up with lots of classes and challenges all weekend.The first challenge was to 'tag it' - make a tag ot tags of some sort, so here's mine ...

I used mainly Girl's Paperie and some odd flowers I had and some little butterflies sewn together.

The first class was one designed by Mel using Fancy Pants -

The layout has an interactive fold out bit at the front -with - unusually forMel-quite a bit of measuring ! But actually it was no problem at all and a really good idea fir the front of the layout - it even has a magnetic closure ...

Right - I'm off to get the boring stuff out of the way - shopping and hairdresser's then I'm back to play some more later ..have a great Saturday .

Fit for the Queen?

My trip to the Palace is getting very near now - just two weeks away. True to form I have some of my outfit for the day ready and still some to sort out ...

I've got the dress .....typical me - flowers, but I thought it was 'garden party-ish' and summery ( it doesn't look very summery today, but I'm hoping the weather cheers up a bit ! )

It's got cute little gems on the side ....
and I've got a hat/fascinator ..... it's got pinky tinges round the edge of the flower but you can't see it that well here......

So, being in a house with all men , I could do with a bit of female advice .......

I've got a pink jacket.......that I may or may not wear depending on how the weather is....now,I can't make my mind up ......I've got shoes and a bag in mind ....but haven't bought them yet.....

Sorry, I can't get the bag picture any bigger........What do you think???

Creamy hat and shoes ,pink bag,pink jacket ?

Or should I go for pink shoes and creamy bag ...or another combination.....

I think I am definitely sticking to the creamy hat - and am pretty sure I'm sticking with the pink jacket but can't decide on bag and shoes colour ?? Looking at the bloomin weather today I think I might have to buy a matching umbrella as well ........

Patchwork cards courtesy of Mel from ATDML

After doing the class on Saturday where we made a lovely patchwork heart with pieces of paper- I was intrigued to see this post today by Mel who designed the class. The papers were Emma's Shoppe and I loved the combination she used (I'm not a lover of the crosswordy type paper in that collection - only because I can never seem to find anything that I could use it on....anyway - as I need a card for a friend's birthday this week I decided to rummage through my tote and find the scraps from the class - there were actually quite a few to play with. Once I started I thought ..hmmm just another one so I've got one ready if I need one - and I ended up making four ...I used an old favourite Happy Birthday Penny Black stamp and some self adhesive paper lace .

So - that was a really good idea of Mel's to use scraps up and I've now got 4 cards in reserve if I need them...Not brilliant photos I know but it's late and I took them with my phone .

Been cropping

Today was the day for Eclectic Keepsake's monthly crop. As usual,in the morning we did our own projects- this was the layout I made with the new Girl's Paperie papers... I used a few little Prima flowers too and a couple of Girl's Paperie embellishments..

I really struggled thinking of a title for this - even looking in my little book didn't inspire me - so I ended up calling it 'silly grins' - at one point we were going to call it 'happy' - then Deb suggested i could make seven separate  layouts of  himself-all  named after the seven dwarfs. I could definitely do ' happy' ,'sleepy' 'dopey' and 'grumpy' but lost the plot a bit when we got to 'doc' and 'bashful' !!

Deb,Jane and I sat with Karen and had a few giggles along the way.Karen had made  some lovely cupcakes as usual,this time we had orange ones and chocolate truffles ones- sadly I didn't take any photos of them today but they were yummy.

Then it was time for lunch and then the class designed by Mel from A Trip Down Memory Lane...The layout was using Crate Paper  Emmas Shoppe and was gorgeous...

I used an old photo of me when I was about 5 in a swimming pool in Cornwall.. I've always loved swimming and I remember the water being really cold and even that didn't deter me !

I thoroughly enjoyed my day catching up with friends.and as always it went very quickly.

10 things on the 10th from my day

Shimelle is running a monthly feature called '10 things' where we can share any ten things we like on the 10th of each month...
Mine today  is a bit like scrapping your day without the layout - I thought I might share some of my exciting fun filled day with you .....

Scenes from  my desk at work.....

My 'saving for shoes' pot that I occasionally put some £2 coins into for holiday fund that sits beside my work trays ....with birthday teddy keeping watch...

Cheery faces on the my desk calendar this month...

Just in case anyone forgets my name on my memo board behind me !

Still got photos of my beloved Jess and Annie - no longer here but not forgotten...

Walking past my favourite little shop on the way home for lunch....

Newly planted flowers enjoying the rain outside the library on the way to the car....

My poor sore arm trying to carry three Tescos carrier bags, handbag,and hold umbrella up whilst fishing for car keys lost in the depths of my bag as always....
 and trying to take photo as well!

Fighting to get in the car and holding umbrella up until the last minute so hair doesn't get wet ....

A quick burst of 60 Minute Makeover and a cup of tea ....

Aaaah - nice surprise - a boy's home early and someone is very pleased to see him ...

So that's 10 things from my day so far - how's your day going ??