Blog @ starsandmoon.net

I’ve done about 5 double layouts for the album in just 2 nights, and have printed enough photos for a further 3 more layouts… Just 13 more to go! LOL! I think I may need a “Daily Grind part 2″ album! But it feels so good to get stuck in. I’m very much a follower of the “simple scrapbooking” philosophy now… well I think I’ve always followed it, as I never realised at how much a part of me did so much of the Design Course I’m doing without even realising it. In fact a fellow scrapper saw my UKS gallery and said that I didn’t need to do the course lol. The layouts in the DG album may appear to be boring and plain, but for me right now it’s about getting those photos and journalling from that moment down and into an album (I do plan on getting a page up on the site about the scrapping element of the DG and feature the above layout in sketch form featuring measurements etc as I have been getting for my class). And I’m seriously loving it. I’ve not been so inspired to get so much scrapping done in such a long time. In fact I think I’ve done more scrapping over these last 7 weeks than I have done in a couple of years! and I now have a system -even if it is a bit of a random one - for “must scrap” photos.

But as for this album, I’m so pleased to finally be getting into it and getting all those really old and distant memories down. As I have noted on my DG page:

“I really can’t say how much I’ve enjoyed this project. This project gave me such insight to other countries, traditions and ways of life, and I’ve been participating since 2002! It’s such a cool feeling to look back over all my past grinds that I joined in and see old work friends who I lost contact with, see my great nan who we sadly lost in January 2007 and to see a spread of food across the table at my nan’s house which since she had her operation for her cancer she is no longer able to do.
Can you remember step-by-step what you did Christmas Eve 5 years ago? I have been lucky enough to have Grinds on such days as my cousin’s wedding and I collected all the photos and put them into a scrapbook album to remember her special day. My first holiday without my parents to Egypt. And if all this hasn’t persuaded you to join in, then nothing will!”

:)

To be honest, when I was going to move everything over to kirstybase.com I was planning on cutting the photolog out, and not transfer it over but now I just can’t let it go.

Firstly, I’ve been featured on UKScrapper’s front page (wooo!) http://www.ukscrappers.co.uk/, scroll down to “blog bits”

and I have this clip on my mobile phone, and showed it to my dad yesterday lol: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5B6srQTTEAA, this is why I love Top Gear so much! There’s a channel over at you tube: http://uk.youtube.com/user/TopGear

Today I am catching up on Jessica’s class (read: Starting Jessica’s class). I wanted to see how everyone else got on with theirs and I have decided I’m making the album using my bind it all. Grabbed a printer cartridge and some card so I can get started.

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Got it finished and have started on the prompts too, using my old “ask Kirsty” notebook I made aaaaaaaaaaaaages ago.

I guess which started last week when he was on Radio One and I pretty much sat and listened to it on my phone at work with my headphones on lol. Richard mentioned book signings! I am soooo there! I want to meet Richard loads lol.

Then there’s the awesome Top Gear that’s back on the TV on a Sunday (and on Dave [a tv channel] every day! Yesssssssss) and there’s the new Morrisons advert:

Now I just need Richard-ify my phone….

I think I’ve been procrastinating my class today, and Jessica’s class starts tomorrow. Not a wise move lol, I’ll be trying my best to cram everything in!

On the plus side I finally sorted out the bookcase, tidied up the desk, vaccumed the whole flat and shampooed the bedroom and bathroom carpets, cleaned up the kitchen, organised my scrapbooking supplies so they’re not all in Hobby Craft plastic bags sat in my bedroom… All washing is done and dried (yet to be ironed though! Ended up at my parents house for a fair few hours playing on my mum’s new game lol)

Now I’m here ready to get my Design Your Life class done. I’m saving all the Real World Colours to do over Christmas - pop into Paperarts to get the co-ordinating cardstock as mentioned in class and do it over Xmas break. Then I’m not going back and forth to Brimscombe every few weeks.

Off we go!

http://www.mediafire.com/?h2m3z3qjcmi = Budget list
(table format with 2 columns: Person and amount)
http://www.mediafire.com/?zm2zd2zzjjd = Calendar pages
(november & dec with room for notes)
http://www.mediafire.com/?nz43midyymh = Card list
(Tick list)
http://www.mediafire.com/?zmwt2amynwd = Person budget
(Individual person. Includes name, present and amount spent)
http://www.mediafire.com/?tmqwdzz5ane = Present list
(Tick list)
http://www.mediafire.com/?wdioczfaqmd = To do list
(table format with deadline and tick list)

All downloads are for an A5 binder as seen here I whipped it up this morning, it was really good fun

(1) I got a letter from Little Princess Trust to say thank you for my hair donation It’s a lovely letter too!
(2) New video up at sims3.com — I can’t wait for the game, but poo, they’ve pushed the UK release date back from February to April. Still, it’ll be soooooo awesome and it’s so exciting to see what’s coming! Check it out.
(3) Pop Tarts… 2 boxes. *slurp* I’ve finished off the Baileys flavoured Hagen Daas tonight though lol. And I have Pretzels. My favourite snack food!
(4) Studio Calico kit shipped on Monday - yaaaaaaay! My free American Crafts bonus kit thingy isn’t coming until December though, but the way I see it - extra Xmas present!
(5) Xmas ideas. I’ve been sat going through my special mags for gift ideas for my budget Xmas Fabbo ideas and best of all there’s lots of cool ideas online at places like twopeasinabucket.com and creatingkeepsakes.com have online bonuses from the mags (paper crafts if you wanna look)

Just finished these 2 digi pages I bought some stuff from Holly Designs - her stuff is seriously awesome! And it was alllll on sale at the weekend. Wanted to kick myself today though as I saw she’s the one who does the lush metal alphas like my making Memories ones. Gutted.

and my pages from Cathy’s class:

Now I’m off cos I want to watch a programme about the Titanic that’s on at 9pm and I’m going to snuggle in bed and watch it after my shower

Even if you’re not a scrapbooker, I seriously urge you to check this out… after all it is free! It’s a class held by Jessica Sprague (who is a digi scrapper extrodinaire!) and if you head to her blog, linkage here, you can get the info to sign up for her free class “Stories In Hand”.
That’s right, if you’re a digi scrapper, regular scrapper, or not a scrapper at all, you can join in I have a naked Heidi Swapp album I have just remembered I have (but took out 10 page protectors, so I’ll put them back in lol) for class. My goodness I’ll have 2 classes going! So join in and if you do, let me know cos we can compare notes!

I’ve done my assignments for Cathy’s class (I will share I promise!) but at the moment I’m finding when it comes to my own layouts, I use Publisher to work out my layouts and jig things around instead of sitting on the living room floor with stuff everywhere. I’m finding this approach much better! I love working with Cathy’s sketches, so I suppose doing it the Publisher way is my way of preparing a “sketch” to work from. Now my page is figured out (using some yummy digi stuff I bought this morning - half price due to National Digi Scrapping Day, for full effect lol!) I just need to go into the bedroom, pick 2 sheets of cardstock and 3 scraps of co-ordinating paper… and my page will come together super quick

Oooooooooooooooo aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand my payment has gone through for my Studio Calico kit weeeeeeeee! I had the strangest dream last night… I dreamt Martha Stewart was trying to sell me an SC kit. Seriously. I was at Martha’s site browsing her crafts the other day, and I’m soooooo excited about SC so I suppose it sorta makes sense lol. Then I woke up and decided I was going to add the “more kraft” add on to my order if it hadn’t already gone through but it had.
Basically we pay 50p-60p per sheet of cardstock. At SC, I can buy 6 sheets for $3… That works out 50c a sheet - and about half of what I’d pay over here (30p ish).

Finally got in to see my consultant a bit later (an hr 45 mins after my original appointment) and what was rather interesting was looking at my CT Scan on the screen from when I was ill… Upon closer inspection when the consultant was talking me through it… I actually had DOUBLE pneumonia! There on the screen in front of us as my lungs inflated was a huge white cloud in my right lung. And there in my left lung was a small white cloud which wasn’t picked up on the X Ray but was clear enough on the CT Scan where the pneumonia had started on the other one.
Someone actually made an interesting point, that the pneumonia had taken hold of both lungs, had I have left it longer or I’d had been fobbed off as I had been that morning at the A & E… Would I have died?

Anywho, I got home to put in my sub for Studio Calico (which I drooled over at lunch time) and I was so gutted as the “Hobson Grove” add on kit I had my heart set on, had sold out. would have like the Ali Edwards stamps too, but that had already sold out when I looked at it anyway. At least I know next time - get up when the alarm goes off for work, check SC website for yummy add ons, and order if required. Still, Rach has put in for our free kits. I think we both deserve one and I looooooooooove American Crafts, so I at least have that to look forward to, even if I didn’t get the add on I wanted. I think it was the cute “home” stickers that did it for me… Will have to go in search for them.

And it’s snowing outside! LOL! I so hope it snows at Christmas.

Woo-hoo! Pumpkin!

Not too bad for my second ever attempt, and my first time with a template and carving kit. The kit cost £1 from Woolies (you can get tons of stuff in Woolworths lol!) Me and G were supposed to do one each, but sadly I’ve lost him to Fable 2 which he’s got and played constantly since he finished work at 11.30am on Friday. His is still waiting for him.

Now for Scrapping for this week’s part of my class:

This part, I thought was pure genious and such a funky cool idea! A mini book in our album!!


There are pages for: My mum, dad, Stewart, Claire, me and Gareth That’s just my page.

and here’s my funky attempts at some “artist shots” in Second life. I was dancing at Scoutlounge

And I got myself a cute little outfit together (hair and top from “Wrong“)
Jeans from Jarnia (they have cool freebie boxes with awesome stuff in. You can see me wearing a Jarnia shirt in this pic) and the shoes are on sale at Lassitude and Ennui - I loooooooove their shoes. In fact I have several pairs lol. They have some free sandals going at the moment and I picked up a pair of boots while I was at it.

It was awful weather to be running in

(you have to look super hard on this one to spot my dad crossing the line… the woman got in the way!)

But super proud of my dad and my Uncle Brian who got in at 1:40 and 1:46 ish, my dad was hoping to get in at 1 hour 45, but knocked 5 mins off. The last time he did it was 1994 (so 14 years ago!) and he managed it in about 1:30 back then. Bit disappointed that the muddy field we were all stood in had no hot food etc. Glad I took a thermos of hot choccy as it was COLD! Had to laugh though, the guy who crossed the line first (1 hour 5 mins) started to walk slowly and stretch after he had got across the line… only some flaming loonatic somehow got on to the course in his car (dispite the fact the roads were blocked off - go figure!) drove through the finishing line - and honked his horn at the winner to get him out the way!!! What cheek! He shouldn’t have been there anyway - surely the big inflatable “FINISH” line was a bit of a giveaway, along with the crowds of people lining the road! Luckily he was apprehended and given a stern ticking off.
I have some more scrapping material for my class now Speaking of class I do have some pages to share. The lighting is awful in here (after all it is grey and horrible and raining) so I will just take it in a bit with the flash.

As you can tell from lack of pretty scrapbooking pictures and entries full stop that I went back to work on Monday. It was sooooo HARD. I am shattered now, thankful it’s the end of the week I can tell you! Even with Lucozade I’ve been near enough asleep come the afternoon.

I do have some pretty pages that I did while I was off still to share but not right now. I’ve got my class assignments to do, another load of washing and I’ve got a cute idea for 6 identical scrapbook pages to do (one for each of the cousin’s kids albums and my own. That and I have some very specific photos to print for Morgan’s album too when and if I can find them!)

Awwwwwwwwwww, I just want to snuggle Marley while he’s spread out on the floor like that eating the dog food lol! I read the book and it’s FANTASTIC, so I really cannot wait for the movie - especially as my mum saw me peeing myself laughing during the book and when I cried at the end of it, so now she can watch the film

Have to wait until March though here in the UK, but it’s released at Xmas in the US, so after I read the book, I seriously recommend going to see the film if you can.

Thought this was appropriate at the moment:

Nan is still poorly, she’s got to go back to the hospital to have the fluid around her heart removed.

Yup, brownie points for me… getting both assignments done on the first day!
I managed to drive (barely) to the doctors this afternoon. Asked him questions about the coughing up and the pain which I still have. He said the pain is just the inflammation by my lungs and that’s what’s causing that and it will go eventually and that the main thing is as long as I can cough up when I have to as that’s the main thing right now to fully recover without too much pain. I just have to take some pain killers and it shouldn’t be too bad.

Also I asked if I was allowed back to work next week and he said as long as I was up to it I could, but he couldn’t stress enough that I had to take it STEADY, just take it slowly.

G bought me a £1 cyber pet from Woolworths yesterday to help with the boredom… I managed to kill in it less than 12 hours… whoops!

Layout #2 done. I think that’s me for this “week” (Next week starts on Thursday, so new handouts and stuff - yay!), I can’t do the 8×8 layout it doesn’t quite “fit”… It’s Real World Colour and it’s hot pink in the scheme with the theme “Different/Alike”. Maybe another time.

and a peek at the transparency album:

Apart from drying time, I think it’s taken me a total of 15 minutes to complete - I’m very much a fast scrapper… The longer it takes, the less likely I am to finish it off. I’d have to come back to it lol. I have such a short attention span. But having said that it’s not entirely finished - I still have some alpha stickers to add and to put something on the front.

Anyway, it’s nap time before I go eat, I’m running a little late today I have Ali Edwards “Life Artist book” (yeah I’m a little behind on that one, only got it Saturday) so I’m quite happily sat reading it in the evenings or if I’m having a little quiet time.

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So much for a freaking nap. Downstairs neighbour has made an appearance and is once again playing her music so loud I couldn’t sleep - or hear my TV, so I stomped around, slammed my washing basket lid down and when I came back in from taking out the rubbish bin, I slammed my damn front door like she did when her dad left.

Now I’m thankful that I never got rid of the huge subwoofer on my computer, as Miley’s Bass is drowning out the music downstairs. Phew. I just hope she’s going to go soon, she’s been here a good couple of hours already and after all this time she STILL hasn’t moved in, so she can’t be much longer surely?

*strokes and drools over the Studio Calico kit in hands* I think Taniwha is insane lol, I am so in love with Studio Calico! It probably also looked like rather dodgy dealings in the Paperarts carpark as myself and the local scrapper exchanged money for a big brown paper bag lol. But I’m in love with everything - bit OTT with the flowers in the kit, but the stamps… OH the STAMPS! You must check out the website.

I did this with the kit for Cathy’s class:

and here’s one un-SC related:

Seriously, if I didn’t have scrapping right now I’d be going insane from boredom. Well, scrapping and G to drive me around to random places so I’m not stuck in the flat lol. But I got back into Animal Crossing today - it’s the last day of the Acorn Festival and I had to pull tons of weeds out of the ground and kill the damn bugs in my little house, I haven’t played it in so long. I need to try and persuade my mum to get the game so I can visit her town and stuff lol.

A local scrapper, who as it appears I met some years ago but briefly as I was leaving the crop as she was coming lol, is wanting to sell her Studio Calico kit… Luckily for me I subscribed to the thread at UKS as I’ve been drooling over these kits for ages and I’m wanting to subscribe next year, and she mentioned that she didn’t like this months kit, so I was right in there lol. Even luckier she’s a Gloucestershire gal too and seeing as G said he would take me to Paperarts tomorrow, I’m meeting up with her there and I’m buying her kit from her cheap woo-hoo!

AWESOMENESS.

I’m lurking around at twopeas today (G is working late) as they’re doing classes and chats. I had to go to town so I jumped on the bus to go to the doctors this morning, and I said to the bus driver: “return from town please” and he suggested I get a day rider for £2.80 as it was £1.50 each way. Each way? But I was asking for a return, it made no sense, so i bought the day rider. Once I finished at the doctors and paid the bizarre 11p gas bill (why didn’t they carry it over to the next bill? Really?) I jumped back on the bus and as I had bought a day rider ticket I figured I was going to make use of it and my nan’s house is on the way home and she had got out of hospital herself on Wednesday, so I got off the bus and sat with her for about an hour, jumped back on the bus and went home.

But man, when I got home. My poor pain in my ribs… I had to lay down for ages until I was feeling a little better, and then had a nice hot shower and washed my hair (the shower is good for me because of the steam), and now I’m on the computer

I thought it was a bit of a pain if I didn’t include a photo on here, so here’s one of Emily during the summer, as I’m planning on doing a transparency album (I found some transparency as part of a kit I had to do an album for the UKS cyber crop ages ago, only the class really didn’t quite suit me, so I kept the kit to reuse how I felt like doing it haha) the mini book will be about Emily as she’s my Goddaughter after all.

I’ve not had a good couple of days. Yesterday I didn’t even bother putting on proper clothes, I just changed my PJs, my cough was pretty bad and I felt just over all blah. Today I’ve just printed photos for Cathy’s class so I can do that when I am able, as well as photos of emily for the said transparency album that I’ve already cut and bound using my new Bind It All that I got a couple of days ago. I’m going for a sort of Ali Edwards sort of book. The cardstock is cut simliarly for the front & everything, only I have spiral binding

I’ve uploaded this one and not the rest, because Shimelle is offering up a prize package for those who comment with a link to their page at her blog… Too good to pass up I thought. Although I’m not behind on my other pages, just never got around to taking a pic and uploading them. I’ve also done the Real World Colour assignment for Cathy’s class, I just got to do my journalling for it.

I can’t remember the last time I got so much scrapping done.

My layouts from Cathy’s class for this week - just one more layout, the “Real World Colour” layout to go. This week, the class syllabus is SYMMETRY… We get slideshow presentations, handouts and stuff, so funny and cool

Have also just found out my nan is in hospital having tests done