I have spent two days looking for this passage, because I want to use it for this week's SLYMI (scrap something old, new borrowed or blue). I want to scrap some photos of Venice, and these words sum up exactly how I feel about Venice:

'The heaven of it is ineffable. Never before had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting solence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas - I mix it all up together, and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, June 1851

These beautiful words have got me all fired up to read some lovely literature - don't you ever read words which just fill you with joy & serenity?

saw a really good film last night...

....Dan In Real Life, with Steve Carell. Had me hiding behind my fingers a few times squirming with embarrassment at the social disasters unfolding, but hey, that's one of my favourite emotions whilst watching a film. NOT to be horrified, terrified or sickened. As regular readers of my bloggie will vouch...

This week it is the turn of the Scrapgoddesses (of which I am one) to host the UKS team challenge. Here is my layout, based on these themes: journey, handwritten journalling, purple and ribbon:

I like it, actually, and it is one I hope Oliver can see a bit of value in when he is older. Or not, I suspect. Feeling a bit melancholic about Oliver lately. Don't you ever get moments as time is passing that you kind of feel you should stand back and review the path you are taking? His days are spinning by so fast, that already he is 7, and I keep thinking - is this the best we can do for him? Is this the ideal life I dreamed for him? Am I steering him along the 'right' path? I don't really want him growing up in the city, I imagined a more outdoorsy life in the country, and enriched with home-education. I don't know. I feel a bit lost about it all really. Mark would say I am putting my fears and ever-present anxiety over him onto his shoulders so I should just chill a bit. I know, however, from bitter experience that when children stop looking to you for their main influence/guidance they will be looking elsewhere and you will not be able to prevent the snowball from gathering pace and disappearing off down the mountain.... I just feel afraid that I don't have enough time to arm him with the necessary 'tools' to carve his own, confident path through life, or that I may not have the ability to place him in the best environment to bloom.

Does parental anxiety ever ease?

My Mum will be 60 next week, and my severe shortage of cashflow has prompted me to get-a-jewellery-making. She did make noises about a bracelet the last time I wore my own, so I hope she will like these:

who drank all the milk?

Woke up early this morning and realised I was short of milk again and needed to get out and get some before Mark left the house. It was like Groundhog Day. Pulled on some skanky old exercise kit lying around the bedroom and hauled my sorry carcass out for a puff round the block (again). Have to say it was easier than last week, but I was slightly pre-occupied with the fact that when I got to the top of the road I realised I'd put my bottoms on inside out and there was a big flappy white label no doubt reading 'size fat arse' in big bold writing. Therefore my focus for the entire experience was ensuring that this label did not make it past the bottom of my horrible dog-walking fleece jacket for all to see.

Finished this weeks SLYMI - 'scrap your independence'. I have chosen to scrap my loss of independence - my current financial state. I am pleased with the end result. Although this morning when I went to photograph it I realised I had forgotten to add a photo. What a div. A swift attack of the scalpel sorted it and here it is:

Better get on - got the dentist this morning and I am seriously kacking my pants at the thought. Trips to the dentist always have me sweating and clenching my buttocks for several hours. (no bad thing there I suppose ha ha).

Celeb Chefs

What is it with Celeb recipes? I flick through their books (yeah, you know who you are, Tana Ramsay, Nigella Lawson et al) and then, bouyed up with confidence head off to the supermarket to buy copious quantities of eggs, flour and 3 different types of sugar in order to create such lovlies as ginger cake and shortbread only to find that once ready for the oven, the meagre quantities look as if they will not rise (pardon the pun) to the occasion at all. Tana Ramsay's ginger cake recipe led me to believe that the mixture would make two cakes, so I lovingly prepared two tins. Once half the mixture was in one tin it became quite clear that I would end up with nothing thicker than a biscuit in depth, so I threw all caution to the wind and poured it all into one tin. Sure enough, one reasonable cake was the end result. I have checked back again, and whilst her recipe does state 'makes 10 slices', step 7 implores you to 'divide the mixture between two non-stick 2lb bread tins'! Bitch. No wonder people get pissed off with baking. And another thing - I made her shortbread last night, and she says to use a 20cm tin. Well, I measured my tin, as past mistakes are ever in my mind, and it was about a cm short. Now, I struggled to spread the dough out thin enough to cover the base of my too-small tin, and the resultant shortbread was like this:

Thin enough, I am sure you will agree. A 20cm tin would have resulted in even thinner shortbread! I am definitely going to take her recipes with a pinch of salt from now on lol. And I will never forget this cake...

Now, for more civilised activities: The Exeter Crop was a welcome break in the old routine - I love spending the day with like-minded individuals, shoving bits of paper around and snipping and sticking. Oh joy. I did this layout for the weekly UKS challenge:

The challenge was to scrap 1. Something you love, 2. Use something recycled and 3. Use 'pearls'. I have scrapped one of my favourite Disney photos - a lovely wintry, atmospheric morning in Paris which I recall with such pleasure, and I made a be-ribboned tag from an old clothes label and stitched on some pearly buttons. I am pleased with the end result. I finished this one before lunch and then spent the next 3-hours cutting out bits of paper.... no change there then.

seemed like a good idea at the time

I got up early yesterday morning and we were out of milk. It was pouring with rain, and in my brilliance of early morning thoughts, decided I would run (yes - that's run) around the block, collecting milk along the way.

So off I chugged down the road, full of enthusiasm and enjoying the unusual feeling of hard exercise. I used to be (in my late teens) a county runner & exercised hard all my life with league netball and badminton until a knee injury about 5 years ago which put paid to all road running. Now I have lost a stone, I thought I would 'treat' myself with a little run-ette. By the time I reached the bottom of the first street I remembered what it is I always hated about running. It hurts. Since I had reached the main road at rush hour, the traffic was queued up and motorists were peering through their misted-up windscreens to see what lardy lump had turned out of bed to jog laboriously through the rain, so I couldn't stop and give in to the sudden feeling I might vomit onto the paving slabs. You see, in my mind I was all confident strides and bouncy hair.....

Anyway, I made it to the shop without stopping and walked back from there lol. When Mark got up I was wheezing around the kitchen as if I'd had 20 Woodbines for breakfast. He took one look at my dishevelled state and asked if I had had a shower with my clothes on. How perfectly fatuous.

I am going to the Exeter Scrapaholix crop on Saturday and very much looking forward to it. Should be able to catch up on a couple of layouts then. Here is this week's SLYMI:

Scrap with 3. I have picked 3 photos from the pointless annual egg hunt. This year we went to Killerton and joined in with the world and his wife who all seemed to be at Killerton that day. I am starting to despise these 'occasions' since they have to be shared with so many other undesirables... We had told Oliver he could go into the kids craft centre at the end to make some Easter bollocks or other but it closed just after we got his egg and the end photo was him with a face that could curdle milk at 20 paces. Honestly, there is just no pleasing some people.

a bit in love with scallops...

My latest SLYMI effort: scrap with a needle & thread:

The photo is of Oliver with cousin Vanessa, and although both normally display beautiful smiles, this occasion clearly demanded a couple of hideous gurns instead.

Got a few layouts ahead - want to have a go at the Kaboodle challenge, as previously mentioned, this weeks SLYMI is up today, I have our UKS team challenge to do a layout for and next Monday Jill & Linda's UKS team challenge goes live and I said I would have a go at that one. I don't normally partake of those since they invariably demand that you add something to a perfectly good layout which is usually totally superfluous, in order to meet the challenge requirements and it just annoys me too much.

Check out this piece of altered art over on Scrapcat's blog - just saw it & think it's fab - I would so love to churn out pieces of art like this...

I'm considering doing a layout soon which doesn't involve scallops, what d'ya reckon tee hee...

money, money, money. or - no.

Well, just a quick update on a rollercoaster week: having 'fessed up to my gargantuan debt, Mark was understandably shocked and upset. His upset was far worse for me to take than his anger and disbelief that I did not pipe up sooner. Let me just make it quite clear that this debt has amounted due to 'simple' overspending on a week in week out basis for several years. I do not have a designer wardrobe or a collection of priceless artefacts to point at as a culprit for my current poverty - I have merely proved myself incapable of making a choice between having 'A' or 'B' and have always said sod it I'll take both, thanks. And boy, it is costing me dear. I have had to reliquish all financial control of my accounts to Mark and am existing on a meagre allowance. Entirely my own fault and I am looking to take on alot of extra shifts in order to make a massive inroad into it to clear within the year. Take heed, readers: If you have a fiver - don't spend a tenner. And then don't keep doing it for over 5 years.

Creatively..... am working on a couple of layouts, one for the weekly SLYMI, and one for the Kaboodle challenge #9, a new one for me but like these sorts of 'open challenges'. Watch this space.

And I leave you with a couple of birthday cards I received this year - from Oliver:

You have to know a bit about Pokemon here for this card to make any sense, but it is Turtwig, Grotle and Torterra and their attacks. (obviously). I particularly like the way that where he has run out of room at the edge of the page, he has simply carried on below as if perfectly acceptable....

and this from Daisy:

I imagine her sat there, unsure of how to spell my name, finding herself bored and buggering off halfway through. Nice effort, I thought.