Am also very excited as I have reserved a place on Kirstys photography and scrapping day in February - really looking forward to it!

The picture was taken at my brothers house when we all went round for lunch the other week. Speaking of which, here's another LO from that very occasion - haven't I been busy!

Grrr - blogger won't let me upload another picture, I'll have to try again later... done it now!

And Victoria, if you happen to read this, hope you are having a fantastic time! Try not to clear the scrapbook shops of Sydney out of all their stock, at least, not in the first week!

Just a quickie, cos frankly nothing exciting has happened to me today! Back at work after my week off - thankfully the shop is still standing, they don't seem to have broken anything and nobody has resigned, so it's all good!
Need to start recruitng some Christmas temps soon, I waded through about 150 various CV's and application forms trying to narrow them down today, and it astounds me how so many 16/17 year olds manage to fill up 3 or 4 sides of A4 paper for their CV when all they have done is 2 weeks work experience and a paper round. C'mon people, do you really think I have time to read all that? Thrilling though it may be to read about the fact they they were a prefect, a member of the chess club and they love Harry Potter books, I pretty much just want to make sure they have a basic grasp of English and Maths. I'm also quite fond of the ones that can't be bothered to actually use the spell checker on Microsoft Word - helloo!! Thats what its there for!
I know, I know, I'm horrible, but for goodness sake, my cv barely covers 2 sides of A4 and I have been working since I was 17!
Anyhoo, now I've got that off my chest I will go and read my new copy of Creative Scrapbooking (and yes, I realise I said I wasn't going to buy anymore scrapping magazines, but I am weak) and possibly do some scrapping, but very quietly cos hubby has gone to bed. Shhhhhh......

Now, I'm not a big fan of reality TV, up to the point where I made a conscious decision not to watch anymore of it (Big Brother was stealing FAR TOO MUCH of my time) but you so have to go and see the video of Dean Gaffney on I'm A Celebrity if you haven't already seen it. You can find the video here and don't worry, theres nothing too icky on it. According to Ste the funniest bit was actually Dec's reaction right at the end when he couldn't talk cos he was laughing too much!

My mum has finally ordered herself a Craft Robo - she couldn't decide between that and the Cricut but the promise of 24 hour technical support from me might have swung it! Although the Cricut looks great, I just think it will work out soooo much more expensive in the long run when you have to buy all the cartridges for fonts and shapes. At least with the Robo you can have any font. any size, dingbats, and so on, and it sounds like when they release the new software it will be a lot easier to make your own templates too. Long live the Craft Robo, thats what I say! And for those of you that might be wondering, I have one myself, and I don't really think there is any point waiting till the new version comes out in December because I don't think there is that much difference. Get yourself one now while they are reduced! (By the way, I DON'T WORK FOR GRAPHTEC!)

Did you go and look at my gallery on Banana Frog? In case you missed it, here's the link again. I've just finished another LO, so hopefully that will be up there soon too. Bev has put loads of new stuff on the site too in the last couple of days, there are some gorgoeus new papers and chipboard letters too.

I have purchased the first Christmas present today - but I can't tell you what it is! (Well, my 20 month old niece Georgina might read my blog, you never know!). I'll give you a clue, he's red and laughs a lot......

So, random picture for today, lets have another Florida one, just trying to remind myself that summer will come back eventually....

Well, I have just about recovered from my trip out to the craft shop in Blackpool with my Mum and sister. Things started out well when we got to the end of the road in my car (which admittedly is a very small, with very "sporty" suspension, Citroen C2) and my sister was going very green about the gills and pleading with us to go back and take Mums car instead as she was feeling car sick. Of course, this meant I couldn't drive as I wasn't insured, so poor Mum had to do it!

We arrived at the shop after a combination of using my Tom Tom sat nav and the excellent directions that Yvonne from UKS sent me, really easy to get to, literally 5 minutes from the end of the M55. Parked right outside and in we went.

The shop was crammed full of lovely scrapping goodies, and there was a lovely big classroom / crop room attached to the shop too. I won't tell you how much we spent but suffice it to say that we probably made it worth her while to open!

Of course, no trip out with my family is complete without me pretending I don't actually know them - and I was given plenty of opportunity to do that when

• My sister took a scrapbook down from the top shelf to have a look, replaced it, and managed to knock down EVERY OTHER SCRAPBOOK ON DISPLAY. Hereafter known as the "Domino Effect".


• My Mum was paying for her stuff at the till, but wanted to round it up to the next £10 to get a loyalty stamp, so went off to find more stuff to buy. So what? I hear you ask. Well, there were two other people waiting to be served behind her, just patiently waiting as my Mum went off to browse again......

I'm sure the lovely lady in the shop (Julie?) breathed a big sigh of relief when we left! Oh and in case you are wondering, the shop in question was Cucumber Cottage Studios in Blackpool. Well worth a trip if you live anywhere near it.

So, a bit more about my digital picture frame for Paula - here's a picture. It has a 7" widescreen display, remote control, and you can put a memory card directly into the side of the frame, or connect it to your camera via USB, or connect a USB pendrive directly to it (as shown in the pic on the top right). It runs off mains power and can either sit in a flat surface or be wall mounted. You can play pictures, short video's, music, or do a slideshow with music and pictures (all very clever!). Paula, I bet your Dad would love one for his holiday pics! Don't ask me how much it was though, it was a present so I don't know. Oh yeah, and the manual is hysterical for mine, obviously translated from chinese by someone who doesn't speak either chinese OR english. Quote - "Dont irradiation for long time under the fierceness sun" er, what? Keep out of direct sunlight, do you think? Or "All jack are mini, please aim at". Nope. No idea at all. And the ENTIRE MANUAL is like that.....

I think thats all for now. I finished a LO last night butI can't show you yet because it is for Banana Frog. Oh, did I mention I got a box full of the most fabby stuff from Beverley at Banana Frog on Tuesday? Luvverley stuff it is, stamps and papers (including the gorgeous, strokeable Dream Street Cafe Chic range. It's a bit wet now where I keep dribbling over it. Joking!).

Oh yes, and we have purchased most of what we needed for our mini bathroom refurbishment, just need some time to actually DO it now!

Thank goodness, today is the first day of my weeks holiday, it's just so nice not to have to be worrying about work!

So what have I been up to? Nothing much exciting during last week, just work. Got quite a bit of sickness at the moment so it's quite difficult to get anything done, specially as we are getting busier on the run up to Christmas. We had a power cut in the shop at about 10 to 5 on Saturday afternoon (just as I was geting ready to skive off a bit early to start my hols, grrrr). Turns out it wasn't just the shop but the whole town and quite a large part of the surrounding areas too. We had to evacuate the shopping centre, in the freezing cold and pouring rain, fortunately they allowed us retailers back in before too long! I ended up locking everything up and coming back later when the power came back on to lock up. Not the best start to my holidays, really.

Yesterday was my birthday, don't ask me how old I was. Alright, you twisted my arm, I was 33. I got some lovely presents, a digital picture frame, a tabletop easel that I wanted and some yummy Thorntons chocs from Ste, money from my parents and Ste's mum, and some scrapping stuff from my sis. Hmmm, now I wonder what I will use the money for? Stash, anybody?

And to that end we are taking a trip out to a scrapbooking shop in Blackpool tomorrow - hope it's good, the money will be burning a hole in my pocket! I'll let you know what it's like, and what stash I come home with!

I will leave you with a piccy of a LO I did this morning, Seuss Landing at Islands of Adventure with the Christmas decorations out.....

.....and I just can't hide it! Why, you ask? Well, today I became a member of the Design Team for the rather fabulous Banana Frog! Yay me!

I didn't mention it when I entered because I get teribly superstitious about these things and didn't really want to jinx myself, but I'm really happy to have been chosen, it's made my week! Thanks Beverley!

We had to make a LO about ourselves (eeek!), a card and an altered item. I was slightly worried about the card as it's not something I have ever really done, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out. Want to see? Here you go....

I was also really pleased with how my altered item turned out - I've been wanting to try something like that for ages and I'm glad it finally gave me the push to do it. Keep an eye on the Banana Frog website for some fab stuff from the new members of the design team!

So that was my exciting news for the day! In other news (!) we went to my brothers house for Sunday lunch, roast beef with all the trimmings followed by a delicious home made apple tart, in fact my mouth is watering at the thought of it. Yummy. The whole family was there, including my niece and nephew fresh off the flight from Florida (I don't know how they were still awake!) and gorgeous Georgina, looking like a proper little girly with her blonde hair and her sparkly shoes. They were such pretty shoes, in fact, that I had to take a piccy of them specially....

Oh yes, and can I say hello to the fellow members of the papparazi, Tracey and Mum; Steve says he is going to have to buy Georgina some shades before she gets blinded by all the camera flashes.....

I thought I would have a bit of a change - got rid of the black and gone for a nice white instead, what do you think? Might even go and design myself a new blog banner while I'm at it.....