Brummie Blogger

A busy week

I swear I seem to have been going non-stop this past week. Compared to a normal week I've had a whirlwind of social activity going on. Tuesday afternoon, Ang arrived in Solihull so I zoomed over as soon as she landed for a cuppa and had a couple of hours catching up and refining our plots and plans for the coming week. I got home just in time for my bedtime.

On Wednesday, as soon as I got in from work, I ran round the house like a loony getting ready to go back out and met Ang at her flat so we could go up Solihull to meet Chris for coffee. We ended up sitting in Costa for about three hours chatting. Bostin!

Thursday after work, I managed to get ahead with some housework as I knew I'd have no chance on Friday, as I had the dentist followed by a day of fun with Ang.

Friday is my day off so after an uneventful dentist's appointment I caught the bus up to Birmingham and met Ang by the Bull. She was late - and I have to say that as I spent most of the day ribbing her about it ;)

We headed for Urban Coffee - quite possibly the best coffee shop in Birmingham, or even the universe, and had Flat whites with our butties. Now Ang tends towards the traditional and goes for the BLTs but I do like their range of slightly different butties. Last time I had something with avocado in which was very nice but this time I was tempted by the Felafel with mint yoghurt. Delicious!

Then, as it was Cupcake Friday, we decided it would be extremely rude not to indulge.

That was the display after we'd attacked it. I had a pink one and Ang a brown one. To match our t-shirts for the photos, of course. *grin*
They were very, very nice. Lots of fluffy, light icing stuff but not sickly at all. Yum. Shame I have to work tomorrow as it's Muffin Monday apparently.

Oh, and we had our cupcakes with a second Flat white

We attempted to walk off our lunch by strolling round Brum in the lovely sunshine but we had eaten rather a lot. We went and said goodbye to Created in Birmingham as it closes this weekend, and spotted some rather gorgeous handmade jewellery in there. I resisted. I did think of a certain friend when I saw some earrings and a pendant in the shape of cherries though...

Yesterday, Ang came over in the late afternoon for a spot of scrapping and dinner. We both managed to produce a whole layout and Stephen produced a very fine chicken dinner with yorkshires and roasties. Yum.

Today I've just been recovering mostly. I finished off one book at 4.30am just after Stephen brought me a cuppa on his way out to work and then started another which I finished about 10am. I've done a bit of housework, watched Doctor Who and have started another layout. I might do some cross stitching in a bit. Or maybe I'll start another book. 

It's been a bostin week Ang, but I think you've worn me out ;)

 

Stuff to look forward to

I have a couple of things coming up this month that I'm rather looking forward to. Firstly my Brummie mate Ang is on her way down again so we can cause mischief all over Birmingham and quite possibly in Earlswood too this time. Coffee shops, bookshops and craftstores beware.

The other thing is that my friend Chris is organising a wee crop down at PaperArts which'll be wonderful as I haven't seen her for ages. I predict lots of chatting, drinking of coffee and eating of cake but very little scrapping on my part. Great fun.

Which reminds me of my last jaunt down to PaperArts which was when Ang was last down. We went to chat rather than to scrap as we hadn't seen Fiona in ages and it was a good excuse to visit the best scrapbook shop around. I bought some of the new Basic Grey that had just come in. It was so new that it was still in the boxes and Fiona was good enough to let us rummage.

A couple of days later I managed to justify the entire purchase by using one whole sheet of it. Plus one of the delicious embroidered brads, no less. Apart from some matting on the photo and the journalling that's pretty much all there is to the layout but the colours in the paper match the photo so perfectly that I'm quite happy with it as it is. The BG range is Kioshi and the font used for the journalling is one of my favourites - Chicken Basket.

The journalling waffles on about how we were in the China pavillion in Epcot at Walt Disney World. (where else?) There was a photographer waiting for Mulan to come out for photo ops and she very kindly took us on a walk round the gardens for some photos while she was waiting.
Thanks for looking.

Coffee and books but no marmite t-shirt

I have had terrific fun today, which is pretty much what you'd expect considering I've spent the best part of the day in the company of Ang. We do seem to have laughed an awful lot!

We started the day when I picked her up this morning so we could have a potter round Homebase to look at paint. Once the boring bit was out of the way we headed back towards mine with a we detour to Hobbycraft, the library and The Cotton Patch. Hobbycraft was so I could pick up a couple of those clip together frames as I needed some 6" ones for one of my cross stitch kits. The library was so I could return the Stephanie Plum book and collect a Charles Dickens. Not much difference there then. And The Cotton Patch was so Ang could have a nosey round. She was most restrained and came out with very little. It's not the friendliest of shops really.

They did have the magnifier/light that I'd ordered from Sew and So in stock though so I had a wee look at that. And when we got back to mine there was my order - one package of fabric and embroidery silks, ready for the My little heart project and another with my wee purple magnifier in. It looks a bit like an alien but it should make sewing an awful lot easier.

We left the car at the house and caught the bus into Birmingham. I prefer not to drive in since they moved all the roads. It was bad enough before but now I'd just get completely lost so I take advantage of our fine public transport system.

First port of call was this new coffee shop I'd heard about. Two reasons for going there. One was that I'd heard the coffee was excellent and that's a good enough reason all by itself, but the main reason is that it's a BookCrossing zone and I wanted to leave some books there.

I managed to find a book I wanted in the pile there, and Ang found three books that she fancied too so that was a successful visit. The coffee was very good indeed and the sandwiches were absolutely delicious. If anyone is in Birmingham, it's in Church Street, just off Colmore Row. Go there - it's well worth the visit.

The coffee was so good, we indulged in a second cup each and once we were both on a caffeine high we buzzed our way to the Bullring and found our way to a new shop which is showcasing items to do with Birmingham. I knew they had some stock from Bostin so hoped to be able to get a certain Brummie/Marmite t-shirt there but they only had men's sizes. Shocking! Still, the other reason for going, the BookCrossing box tucked under the table, was a sucess. I left a few books there and not only did Ang find a book she fancied in there, but I found the first Dresden files book. I've been wanting to start reading that series for ages so I had to take that one. And of course, the obligatory photo...

 We wandered in and out of a few bookstores, mostly to stroke the books as we did have a small stash from the BookCrossing zones but we did make a small purchase in The Works. Three for a fiver which we split. I got Middlesex which is on my wishlist plus an Erica James and Ang finally caved and bought one that I've been egging her on to buy.

Must slow down on the book buying for a while though. I might have accidentally bought four in Asda yesterday. Well they were quite cheap, and I couldn't decide which two out of the four to have so I just got all of them. Mmmm, books. Love 'em.

Interesting times

Last week made me think of that old Chinese proverb or curse, whichever it's supposed to be. You know the one. "May you live in interesting times". 'Cause last week sure was interesting. Ang was down for a few days and 'We Had Plans'. Oh yes we did, and like all good plans, they went slightly off kilter.

Tuesday: Ang came down on the train. The plan was that after I'd had my dinner, which is on the early side as I have to get up for work at the crack of sparrowfart, I'd go up and whizz us both up to Big Tesco for a spot of shopping, and quite a lot of talking, with perhaps a Krispy Kreme back at Ang's thrown in for good measure. Didn't happen. I shan't go into details but although we did have a very long chat, it wasn't at the planned time or place. Still, a good old natter is not to be sneezed at, although talking of sneezing I may or may not have picked up Ang's cold at the time, depending which of us you listen to...

Wednesday: I went straight to Ang's from work, and was fed with a very scrumptious bacon butty. That girl knows how to look after her mates! We then sped up to Solihull where we met Chris and we all went to Costa for coffee and lots more chat. A splendid afternoon. Then Ang and I thought we'd make a second attempt at Big Tesco. We got there ok, got what we wanted, including some books and some Krispy Kremes but then the 'interesting' bit of the day started.

As we left the store and drove round the huge island, I went up through the gears, as you do. First, second, third..... third...... where's third gear gone? <slight panic> No third gear. I slowed, into second and got round the island in one piece, speeded up and into third. <huh?> So, my first thought was what on earth had I been playing at? Until I went into fourth with this Kerthunk sort of noise. A very loud Kerthunk. Not good. Then I mislaid third gear again.

All the way back to Ang's third came and went and fourth got noisier. There was a rolling/thudding noise from under the floor and then I lost first gear too. I ended up leaving the car in Ang's garage (thank you Ang) and Stephen fetched me home. Another late night, and I was rather worried that I'd be facing a bill in the region of £1000 for a new gearbox although Stephen was doing his best to convince me that they'd just scrap my car. He's so reassuring.

Thursday: I had to fork out a tenner to get a taxi to work as there aren't many buses at that time of the morning and then Stephen picked me up after work and took me to fetch the car. I followed him to the garage in second gear as not only did I lose first and third gear but it got stuck in second gear so it wouldn't have made much difference anyway. I had a marvellous time driving along at a snail's pace with my hazards on and my arm out of my window waving people past. Gah! Was I pleased to reach that garage, oh yes indeedy.

And, after all that worry, it turned out to be a bearing that had gone that cost the enormous sum of £3.50. With labour and VAT it came to £60 which was a huge relief. And, the nice man had it fixed by the end of Thursday afternoon.

PROSPECT SOLIHULL SERVICE CENTRE - INDEPENDENT MERCEDES-BENZ SPECIALIST - 0121 711 7887 - Absolutely brilliant - highly recommended. Very, very nice men.

Friday: The plan was to meet Ang nice and early, and go up Brum to several places taking in bookshops, coffee houses etc. We made it to our first stop with no problems. This was The Birmingham Bead Shop, which was like a little Aladin's cave. See photo of Ang below getting excited about all the pretty beads.

I got loads of beads for not very much dosh and can't wait to have a play with them. By this point, however, I was very aware that I had a migraine and it wasn't going away. I really didn't want a migraine - I wanted to play so I did my best to ignore it. You'd think I'd know by now that
a) migraines don't go away
b) migraines don't like being ignored and
c) Ang has eyes like a flamin' hawk and you can't fool her for long.

From the bead shop, which is in the Custard Factory, we walked up to town and straight into Borders which conveniently has a Starbucks inside. There we got coffee and butties and settled down for lunch. And, there Ang sussed that I wasn't all that well and ordered me home again. She did let me finish my butty first though. Plus on the way out I accidentally fell into Hotel Chocolat and when I came out found that I'd purchased some chocolates. I've no idea how that happened. Complete mystery...

So, back on the bus, back to bed and there I stayed until Tuesday morning. I completely missed our planned Saturday afternoon crochet workshop and dinner, not to mention two days work for which I am now in deep doodoo again.

So, it was bostin' to see Ang again, but I really hope that next time you're down Chuck, that we have a slightly less eventful time.

Too busy to blog - apparently

I have no idea where the time has gone. I've just checked the date of my last post and it was almost two weeks ago. Crikey!

So, what's been happening? Well, the bedroom renovation is still coming on very nicely. Not only is the floor finished, but we now have some furniture in there. And, it's partly assembled. The shells of the wardrobes are up, but they need to be fastened to the walls and each other before we can put doors on. The doors need to go on before we put the drawers and other fittings inside as we need to know where the hinges are going to go first. And, we can't quite fasten the end wardrobe to the other two until the electrican has been back to put the wiring through for the light switch as that has to be fastened onto the side of the wardrobe. And of course, we can't get the electrician in until the wardrobe is almost ready to be fastened to the others so we know exactly where it'll be sitting. Phew.

The two chests of drawers are done though, and are looking very lovely. One is a small two drawer to use as a bedside table and the other is a slim but tall unit with a lift up mirror on the top with a felt insert where I can keep my jewellery and whatnots. I've been lusting after this particular unit ever since I laid eyes on it at Ikea last year. See, some females lust after shoes and handbags. Me, it's sinks and drawer units. I'm odd that way.

We got quite a bit done on the renovation when we had that week off work but mostly we've been putting in a couple of hours after work each day so it's been taking some time to get stuff done. We're getting there though, and it's looking very nice indeedy. You'd hardly know it was the same room.

Ang was down from the Northern wastes last week and we had great fun on Friday and Saturday with coffee and shopping on one day and a trip to PaperArts on another. The PaperArts trip was allegedly for scrapping but Ang didn't actually stick one thing down all day. I didn't do a lot more. We did do a lot of chatting, shopping, and generally enjoying ourselves though. T'were bostin'.

At some point I'll take more photos of the bedroom but having just whacked my thumb with the hammer I'm not feeling inclined to go play photographer so it'll have to wait. Think I'll go find a good book and some chocolate to console myself.

With a little help from my friends

I'm feeling an awful lot better today. I've had lots of cheery messages of support from friends, including a few sneaky hugs. I've been reading some teen vampire novels, (comfort reading) and listening to The Killers practically non-stop. Yup, feeling better.

It also helped a huge amount when this arrived today.

 

A pizza box with some seriously gorgeous stash in it. Ink, paper, card, bling, flowers and three beautiful handmade cards. The stash is just very, very lovely and very, very me. The cards were perfect, and the messages inside two of them almost had me choking with laughter. I have some very good friends - Thank you.

And, I was so chuffed with my new stash, it actually inspired me to go and do some scrapping and I was beginning to think I'd forgotten how. To start with I was in a bit of a quandary. That lovely sheet of paper on the top is double-sided. Double-sided paper/card, I'm convinced is designed specifically to drive scrapbookers insane. I mean, which side do you use when they're both stonking? So, I solved the problem by scrapping straight onto the sheet then turning it over and scrapping onto the other side. Both sides used and amazingly I've produced two layouts in one afternoon. And - I still feel like doing more!

But, before I get carried away, here's the two I did today, using my shiny new stash. You might know I'd have giraffe photos ready to scrap.

 

And on the back of that is;

 

Right, loads of lovely stash left to play with, what shall I do next...

Layout - Colorado

In honour of the fact that I actually did some scrapping over the weekend, I thought I'd get the rest of the Vegas layouts uploaded. Today we have one using photos from our adventure at The Grand Canyon. We took a short boat ride up and down the Colorado and as we had many, many photos I did a layout of just that bit.

 

Paper is SEI and I used a QK alpha - Marisa and a Cuttlebug alpha - Olivia. That's pretty much it really. Like a lot of the Vegas layouts, it does actually have journalling on it.

In other news, Ang went back ooop North this morning. I went to the station with her to wave her off, but resisted the temptation to do the running down the platform thing.

It seems awfully quiet round here now though...

Kidnapped

This morning started out quietly enough. Stephen was off work so we popped up to Comet for a look at some tvs, with the plan being to return home afterwards to put up some shelves in the living room. As we left the shops, we went past the road that leads up to Ang's and we thought we'd go and bother her for a cuppa.

She wasn't in, but we spoke on the phone and found out that she had only just left to walk up to town. We drove up to meet her, where she greeted us by taking a photo of the car, and then we persuaded her inside. Then we kidnapped her and drove up to Catherine-de-Barnes for a nice pub lunch.

All very spur of the moment and great fun. The food was good, and we had a nice leisurely meal followed by a delicious warm chocolate fudge cake with clotted cream. Yumm.

After that Ang very kindly agreed to come home with us so she could take a look at my sewing machine before I threw it through the window. She did manage to sort it out, mainly by having a very stern word with it and showing it who was the boss. She did also give me many useful tips on taming the beast.

We've had a very pleasant afternoon and evening and have laughed ourselves silly. Thankfully no one was around to see us doing a version of the hand jive to FBI by The Shadows as we were very silly indeed. Bostin'!

Thanks for allowing yourself to be kidnapped Ang. It's been a smashing day!

As for last night? Cirque was absolutely brilliant, but then we expected nothing less.

Good friends, coffee and books

What could be better, eh? I met Ang and Chris for coffee yesterday afternoon. We went to Costa and spent ages drinking coffee, (two rounds) and having a jolly good chat. It was smashing. After that we went into John Lewis to admire and stroke the Amy Butler fabric there. It was very pretty and made me feel as if I'd like to sew something, which is worrying as I can barely operate my sewing machine on cardstock. Fabric is a bit of a mystery to me.

Ang and I went for a wee look in Borders afterwards as I had a coupon that they'd very kindly emailed me. They didn't have the book that I wanted, but I did come out, after much encouragement by Ang, with two books. One on basic sewing skills and the other on making cushions. Watch this space LOL

As I was still after a specific book, Ripley's game by Patricia Highsmith, we went for a nose in Waterstones. Hooray - they had the book. I was going to get just that but then I spotted a book that I'd looked for a few months ago but couldn't get new, as it was out of print. It's now been reprinted and is mine! Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates is the book. It's huge at almost 1000 pages but it's by the same author as the divine Black Water and is a 1001 book. I had to have it.

The problem was that it was in the 3 for 2 promo and I hate to pass up on a special offer. The new book by the author of The end of Mr. Y caught my eye so that was added to my pile and then the new Donna Leon completed the three books needed for the promo.

I have a couple of bookrings to read, one a 600+ pager called The wind-up bird chronicles by Haruki Murakami plus Rabbit, Run by John Updike. The last nine books I've read have all been bookrings, though so I'm considering squeezing a couple of my own books in before starting them. I won't be holding the rings up too long as I have all next week off work so will have plenty of reading time.

Ang and Chris are off to the PaperArts Friday night crop today. I won't be going to this one as I have a prior engagement. Back in September I booked tickets to see Cirque de Soleil's Quidam and tonight is the night. I can't wait, but it is a shame that it falls on a crop night.

The craft show

On Friday, Ang and I went to the NEC to the Hobbycrafts show. We made one or two purchases, mostly dies to go through the Cuttlebug. There were some very nice Spellbinders dies there as well as some nice Cuttlebug embossing dies that I 'needed'. There seemed to be more cardmaking stands than scrapbooking ones, and rather a lot of rather dire peel-offs and holographic card. Still, each to their own...

We also popped into the sewing for pleasure show as it was included in the entry price of the craft show.

 

Like the pink trolley? I'd bought some packs of card which were a bit heavier than I'd anticipated when we went back to collect them. Just after picking them up, we passed a stall with the pink things. We were impressed and bought one each. The cardstock was a lot easier to carry once it was deposited in there. We'd also bought some Artbin bags for the bargain price of £9.95. They are huge and will take loads of stash and more importantly, I think I've finally found the bag that will take my MM trimmer. Yay!

On Saturday, Ang came round to play with our new dies and do a bit of scrapping. We put all the dies through their paces but not a lot of scrapping got done. Ang did show me how to use Facebook, though, which I hadn't really ventured onto before. Lots of people have added me as a friend today, so that's nice, eh? I have friends :-)