Another crazy adventure...

The response to my blogiversary giveaway has been underwhelming, parhaps you are all so busy and all presented out from Christmas! I will extend it till Sunday as my time on the laptop is limited since the hubster got an exciting new game for the laptop and keeps hogging it. So check out the giveaway here and leave a comment if you wanna enter!

So my twixmas has been very busy. We had to head down to London to connect with my sister Mara, who was arriving at Heathrow from Turks and Caicos. We decided to make a little break of it and went down a day earlier and here we are on the escalator heading to see STOMP, which was amazing!! They make music using bin lids, zippo lighters, newspapers, clapping and brooms. We couldn't believe how talented they were and we were engrossed the whole way through. Before London we went to Birmingham to check out the sales and it of course involved a huge Costco pizza - hello!! Arne was craving a bit of diner lovin in London and so we headed to Ed's diner where I got a delicious oreo cookie milkshake. Hmm hmm good! Before heading to London I also whipped up a delicious lime and coconut drizzle cake. Recipe here. Highly recommended a succulent and zesty cake. If I have time I will post my top ten of 2010 later on today. For now some more sales shopping...

So this is *our* Christmas...

We asked my mom to take a picture of us by the tree - she is not the greatest photographer in the world and so she got half the tree and half the fire. Inside our crackers were Who am I stickers and so we played a round of this. My dad tries to overcomplicate matters though and can't just answer yes or no. He was Simon Cowell and he was doing a little run through of all the info as he went and then wanted to contest some of our answers afterwards! As you can see I have a habit of tying the bows from the pressies on my head and seeing how many I can get on there. Above is our Christmas table. My mom likes everything to look nice and I think I inherited my creativity from her - altho I prefer to display it in the kitchen and in the scrapbook room. I baked a lime and coconut drizzle cake yesteryda and will post it and the recipe later this week. My husband was very pleased with his new atlas from my mom. I was sure this huge box was a canvas of our wedding pic and instead was equally as happy to find a huge amount of scrapping stash. The things I was happiest about was finding two huge albums as I have loads of pages that need to be filed away and sorted into albums. Don't you just love the new heart snood the hubster got me? I am wearing it day in and day out. I also got some beautiful red, heart patterned, fleecey pjs and am snuggled in them now. We braved the sales today in Birmingham and it was madness. I also slipped on some ice and banged my head so have a nice little egg and a headaches now! Not to be recommended - tred carefully! What did you all get from santa? Don't forget to check out my giveaway which is now ending on the 29th as I have to go to London tomorrow to pick my sister up at the airport. Woo hoo!!

Not a creature was stirring...

My parents are out doing last min shopping and the hubster is in bed with man flu so I have a few moments to myself to post a couple of pics and the one layout I have managed at my parents with the limited stash I brought with me. This is completed for twisted sketches and the twist was celebrate - so I thought of Arne's birthday where we ate carrot cake with our good friends. I went for the title low key as this is the type of "party" my shy husby prefers than the big party I threw him! Here is my mom showing just how cold it is here in Shropshire...

Our tree which we haggled down from £30 to £12 - Lord Sugar would have been proud! Mom keeps complaining that it is a bit thin on top, but for that price who can complain?!

Yesterday we had a lovely day out running errands with my mom. We stopped for lunch at a delicious carvery called The Four Alls. Check out how high our plates were loaded!

Lastly don't forget to enter my one year blogiversary RAK here. There is a treat for scrappers and a treat for bakers up for grabs.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Singing, singing all the day, giveaway, oh giveaway!

So to thank you all for being such loyal followers and in celebration of my *almost* blogiversary I have decided to do a two-tier giveaway. The first RAK up for grabs is for all the scrappers out there and consists of: * Ten patterned pages in red and green with Christmas phrases * Four sheet of stickers - borders and phrases * One set of silver tag letters and brads The second RAK is for all you bakers out there. It is a gingerbread patterned apron and three different sized gingerbread men cutters. Cute huh?! In order to qualify (and it is open to international friends!) you must leave a comment here and state whether you want to qualify for scrap stash, baking stash or both. Also state whether you are a follower or not as followers will be entered twice. If you "big me up" on your blog then let me know and you will get another entry.

* In your comment either share you fav Christmas pressie you ever received or your biggest baking disaster! *

Good luck!

(It will close on the 28th)

I hope you don't mind...

Some Christmas baking. Chocolate one bowl cakes by Martha Stewart and Hummingbird's vanilla frosting. Some decorated with choc covered honeycomb and a big mint creme on top. The others sprinkled with candy cane goodness...

On a platter....

Check in tomorrow when I will be doing a scrap related AND a baking giveaway.

A winter wonderland...

One of my best things about coming home is the QVC shop in Shropshire. Sadly, due to the snow, they hadn't had a new delivery for a few weeks. However I got all this lot for just £12!! Don't you just love all the card playing stash and the Christmassy papers. The crocodile is a fab tool which can emboss, cut and put metal borders on paper. Here is my parents garden. How gorgeous is this winter wonderland...

Check back here tomorrow for my blogs *almost* one year anniversary giveaway. I will be giving away some fab stash from the QVC and it will be open to my international friends too. So check back tomorrow and tell you friends! xx

Stranded...

So it took eleven hours to travel from Leeds to Oxford and a large part of that journey was stationary. The worst part was at 11.30 we were ten miles from our final destination - my granny's 90th birthday - and we only got there at 7pm. Ridiculous right?? So clearly I spent most of my weekend in a car and don't have any scrapping to show but I am taking part in the Favourite Things challenge and have been scanning my blog looking for me fav page of the year. Here it is: Reasons why it is my fav: * The pics were taken on a fab getaway to Liverpool and have great memories attached to them * 2010 has been all about the glimmer misting for me. * These were the first paper flowers i ever made and I am very proud of them. * It all fits together well and has been on our wall all year. What are your favourite layouts of this year and why?

Duvet day * Sniff! *

Since Friday night I have been riddled with this awful sore throat, tickly cough, aching joints and head ache and I battled through school yesterday but am now having a day off as it doesn't do my throat any favours shouting at kids all day long. So this comes from my duvet...my poor neglected blog. The funny thing is I have scrappped a lot recently but the borrowed camera is now having a few technical issues and i still can't figure out the SLR I got on ebay. So I can't share! Good news is I won this RAK from the lovely Darlene. It is coming up to my one year blogiversary and I am planning a RAK for that. So tell your friends. I am hoping to get up to 40 followers by then as my blog has hit a plateau. Here are the goodies I will be recieving - yay! In other news my sister Mara has arrived safely in Turks and Caicos to spend Christmas with my little sister Gems and her husband. I am *trying* not to get too jealous. Check out her blog if you wanna see more.

How clear is that water?? Seriously?!

However if baking is more your thing at Christmas then check out her baking blog where she has just made these delicious looking brownies - hello! Trouble is I don't even have an appetite - now that is how you know that I am sick!

So there you have it. I am still alive, perhaps not kicking, and wanted to share a few pics with you.

Like a lightbulb...

To get in the festive mood I made gingerbread cupcakes. They were a bit dry as I did my usual and didn't have all the correct ingredients but went for it anyways...hmmm..not to be recommended! I made nutella icing and then tried to rescue them by creating a cute reindeer style decoration with an m&m, peanut eyes and pretzel antlers.

Hump day almost over....

All geeked out...

So the geek party was a great success. We kept track of who the biggest geek of the evening was with our chart giving points for different activities like Articulate, Geek Quiz and bomber man tournament. We gave our guests geeky alter ego names and had a prize for the best geeky costume.

The game of the night...bomberman. Do you remember how great this game is? And addictive?

Lord and Lady of the Geek Manor! Lovin' the plaster on the glasses.

Our table of geeky treats.

A geeky first kiss...

And last but not least (for the party pics) the hosts - Melly and Arnold.

And whilst I am in the middle of a mega post I thought I would include this Shimelle inspired layout I completed of our Christmas Krispy Kremes.

Lots of border stickers, ribbons and stamping.

So there you go...what did you all get up to this festive weekend?

A snowy quest for geekiness...

Well I am now on snow day number three and ashamed by my lack of scrapping. :0 Actually I have done some scrapping but it's for my DT so check back here on the 10th for our Ho ho hop there will be loads of chances to win prizes. I had forgotten all about my little photo printer and *thought* it was broken, but clearly not so I printed off one of the pics from this weekend and got going straight away. I was inspired by the dvd cover of Love Actually and wanted my title to be something like - my family actually love London...but it didn't work out that way and so I went for this instead. Using up some of the dregs of my AC kit. Off to Harrogate later but will have to restrain myself inm TKMaxx. The backing paper reminded me of the underground and I studded it with loads of mini brads. I used this weeks sketch from Twisted Sketches and the ribbon is my take on a frame. Wanted to snap it in the snow, so here you go... I don't know why I look so glum in the snow... Tonight is Arne's belated birthday and so I made these pacman and mario inspired cookies. I used lemon juice instead of water for the icing so they are a sweet and sour treat. The party theme is: geek!

Here is the pic and mix pot for the occassion...

Are these drinks geeky enough?

I am planning to play guess the celeb geek picture round, Articulate, table fusball tournament and a quiz to get what percentage of a geek you are. Any other ideas for geeky games??

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Our head made a bad call today and got us all in to only send everyone home an hour later. But instead of being able to snuggle back into bed or get my scrap on instead we had a three hour commute on a normally 15 minute route. Ridiculous. So if any of you fellow Brits are also snowed in here is a challenge to warm the cockles of your heart: I went with the line about toil and trouble and got to scrap this pic I have been wanting to scrap for a while. I was very pleased with the purple and orange colour scheme and the scalloped border. I then paper pieced a pumpkin and heat embossed black sparkles round the edge.

Last night I ran a scrapping class at my local youth club and the girls were very excited about brads and glimmer mist. I think it's a fab hobby to get into and I only got into it when I was 15 by one of my youth club leaders who spent six months of the year in America and brought us over lots of stash. Now it is more readily available and the techniques are more sophisticated - I die when I see my early attempts!

Holidays are coming...

So before I tell you all about my exciting, stressful and festive weekend I will share a page I completed last week for the Sarah's cards blog. It was quite an easy layout to put together and I got to use some of my new stash. The journalling is written in gel pen and is better irl. So this weekend saw me London bound for a festive jaunt with my mom and sister. If we gloss over the part when I was stranded at Kings Cross station for three hours and got home at 2am then it was a fab weekend. Here is my wish list from Urban Outfitters:

I have been lusting after these ear muffs for ages - but no-one has got the message yet! :(

We stopped for many hot choc breaks to warm us up.

Loving this pic of the elfs outside of M&S. All the shops on Oxford Street had outdone themselves and there were lots of promotions and freebies and displays and spectacles to behold. It was a merry lark! This pic will defo be scrapped soon...

As you can see lots of other shoppers had the same idea as us on this one...

I did really well for myself and did a lot of my Christmas shopping and even got myself a sexy black dress for my staff Christmas do. Spittlefields market was one of the highlights, when you are next in London check it out as it has loads of fab stalls with unique items and quirky little trinkets and things...It was great to catch up with my family and as for the delays..I met some cool people and chatted the evening away. Not bad. Not at all bad...