Two more awards!!

I've received two lovely awards from another fab cardmaker and friend, Marion. Thank you so much Marion!! I shall have to have a think about who I'm forwarding them on to.

Get your school interested!

Matthew spent over 4 hours on the computer today since leaving school at 3.30pm. His school has signed up to use this fantastic website Mathletics. It encourages children to log in out of school hours and do maths challenges. You can see other children's names and where they're from, school etc, and it keeps a tally of your total. You work towards awards, and Matthew just earned a bronze certificate, so when the school log in tomorrow, they can print it off for him. It's amazing!

EDIT: When I say you see the childrens names... Matthew is just listed as Matthew C, so not his whole name. It's pretty safe.

And Matthew turned eight!

Matthew with his cake!

Saturday was Matthew's 8th birthday, and unfortunately I had to work, probably good really coz Justin was shattered by the evening, lol.
Matthew received some nice pressies - The Spiderwick Chronicles Book (from the film), The complete box set of all the series of Knight Rider! Various Indiana Jones things, and over £70!!
We had a birthday tea with Grandad here also, but no Darryl, he had to work until 8.30pm. Matthew had chosen his cake - A Terry's Chocolate Orange cake, it was yum!

Here are some more photos from the evening.

Daniel the gas man!

He is a genius! He came back again today after ringing me to see if the heating was ok... I told him that the rads had stopped working and the boiler was clanking again, so he said he'd be straight round. He spent 2 hours fiddling around trying to get it sorted out today. He changed the pump in the airing cupboard, cut off some more pipe and cleaned it, and various other things. Well he got it working, although 2 upstairs radiators still need bleeding but the nut things on them have worn slightly. He said he'd be back another day to have a fiddle with those. He even worked through his lunch break today.
It is SO nice to have heating again in the house.
Funny thing is... myself, along with 2 of my cousins, who incidently are sisters, have also not had heating either this week. One of them didn't lose their heating until last night, and that was when a radiator fell off the wall????? How on earth does that happen! Anyway, it covered the NEW flooring in black sludge ruining it... I suggest a powerflush is needed!!! I'm still saving for one of those myself.

So... the heating!!

.... is NOT working! It worked for about 2 hours today, and the gas man had to visit twice, but then it made such a clanking noise and the downstairs radiators decided they didn't want to go, so I ended up switching it all off coz of the noise.

Heating update!

Well I had quite a dishy looking gas man come round this morning, and the good news is he said he will get the heating working again... the bad news is, he didn't! But he will... tomorrow! He has sawn a bit of pipe in the airing cupboard and it is full of black sludge, so we definitely need a powerflush doing so we better get saving!! I've transferred my first fiver into our ISA account this evening, lol.
So he's coming back tomorrow, he needed a T shaped bit of pipe apparently... so watch this space!

We have HOT WATER!!

I forgot that the hot water tank in the airing cupboard could run on electric, d'uh! I phoned Justin from work today and told him to switch it on and hey presto, hot water! That is such a relief, coz at least if you've got hot water you can jump in the bath.
Dad has also lent us a fan heater that we've got on at the moment, just to warm up the lounge a little bit, and I've pulled the central curtains across to keep the heat in a bit more. It's not that bad in here really... I've got my thick cardi on and we have lots of crocheted blankets! LOL!

The Heating has packed up....

I have Gascare coming out on Monday!!!! Trouble is, they have already recommended a powerflush and won't fix heating problems because of that... So, other option... order a new boiler from British Gas (coz it is 21 years old), pay for that on finance with British Gas, and then they do a powerflush too... so a bit of a dilema, lol. I won't get a nice bubble bath tonight then!

Sally's Creative Corner: BLOG CANDY

Click here to see Sally's Blog Candy!

WOW! You MUST check out Sally's amazing blog candy. I've never seen so much stuff!!!
Take a look at her blog while you're there.

MY FAVOURITE FOR TODAY! 8th Jan 09

My favourite creation from today is a gorgeous card made by Sue! I love the owls stamp, it's just too cute!

Visit Sue here at her website.

Recycled ATC's

Tonight I've been making my Recycled Christmas card ATC's for my ATC group, and these above, are what I came up with. I think my favourite is the Father Christmas one. It's been ages since I made any ATC's and I must admit, I enjoyed making these. I used my background papers from a Dovecraft selection and some tiny stars, glitters etc, but all the other bits are from Christmas cards.
Matthew made the two below. He's happy enough so long as everything is ticketty boo.. but one of his stickers crumpled up a bit... disaster! He was ok after a few minutes. He's such a perfectionist.

MY FAVOURITE FOR TODAY! 7th Jan 09

My favourite for today is this gorgeous card made by Debby. I love it! I love the crisp look of it, and she's coloured beautifully... and I really must hunt out this punch for the lacy edge.

Check out Debby's website here!

What I'd intended to buy...

I needed to buy some paper stumps for my Prismacolor pencils, so I went and bought 4 of them. The trouble is, my local shop is having a bit of a sale because they're downsizing and selling the back end of the shop... so ALL art and craft materials are 25% off... so......................

I ended up bringing this home too!!

In this picture is 40 sheets of white card.

Monochromatic Papermania paper pack.

Forever Friends paper pack.

Forever Friends Decoupage pack.

Kanban Jewels.

...and a selection of lacy ribbons...

New Years Resolution.

STOP BUYING ON IMPULSE!!!!!!!

But it was such a good buy, lol.

MY FAVOURITE OF TODAY!

Ok, so here's my favourite card I've seen uploaded today.
It's made by a lady called Heather and she has entered it into for this weeks Spoonful of sugar challenge.

Click here to visit Heather's blog.
I LOVE the little fishes and all the gorgeous colours Heather has used.

A Spoon Full of Sugar challenge 33.

Here is my entry to a challenge over at A SpoonFull of Sugar challenge blog. 

It's the first birthday card I've made in ages! I used most stuff I'd got in my stash, but the papers were from a new pack I bought today from Dovecraft.

Sarah Kay coloured with Prismacolour pencils.

So as I sit here with my tea and toast...

...trying to decide what to do today. Yesterday I'd had a quick look at a couple of Scrapbook magazines in town - Scrapbook Inspirations, and The Scrapbook Magazine, and came home with neither, so today I might just get one of them... even though I don't think either gives me much inspiration anymore; I get most of that through looking at the great blogs which start from the great list I have over on the right hand side, one blog leads to a thousand others.

I've not long been back home from taking Matthew to school - first day back after Christmas! It's very quiet here, and I shall miss him today, but hopefully I shall get round to making at least one card. I need to get some birthday cards made for my CardScraps girls this year - I didn't send out any birthday cards last year, so I must change that this year. 

So, back to today. I'm going to go into town soon and pay in a cheque for Justin, get some money out for Sophie's pills from the vet, buy a mag maybe, and maybe another pot of Prima flowers!! 

Check back here later too as I might start doing a "Favourite Card of the Day" from all the blogs that I visit!! 

Been colouring...

... and I'm not to happy with the sky, but it's the best I can do till I've persevered a bit more with them, lol.

I hope everyone had a good New Year's Eve. It was just me and my kids that stayed up. Justin was a light weight and went to bed at 10.45pm. Us three just stayed up to watch the fireworks on the telly, then it was bed. 

Didn't get up to much yesterday, plenty of lazing around, telly, and laptop. Justin and Matthew built Matthew's new Indiana Jones Lego set that Darryl had got him for Christmas, and that took an hour or two. Matthew also had a go on his bike again, it was very cold, so we weren't out there for too long.