Sunday 20 June 2010

It's Not Often ...

... that you get to say you've sung on the stage of the Hammersmith Apollo. This afternoon me and thousands of fellow Rock Choir members did just that.

Thanks to Caroline's hard work which enabled us all to get together to celebrate and sing our socks off, we were able to launch Rock Choir's first album ( Volume 1 of many more to come I'm sure) due to be released on the 5th July. And if you want to share the feelgood album of the year and get happy then pop along to

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Rock+CHoir&x=0&y=0

where you can pre-order your copy.

A fabulous day - yet another to look back on with happy memories. Thanks Caroline and the Rock Choir team for making it all possible !


















Captain Rock Choir and the newest recruit to the singing ranks - way to go Stuart , you've been hiding your singing skills all this time !


Tuesday 8 June 2010

Thanks Karen...




... for a lovely day's cropping. Spent Sunday with Karen at her famous Power Scrapping crop in Meopham, Kent. It's good to be back in the old scrapbooking saddle. Too many other things have been getting in the way lately, like life.

I designed a couple of classes for her using 2 sumptuous ranges of papers - Paper Girl from The Girls' Paperie range and Life's Portrait from Webster's Pages. I swear you could just throw those papers down onto a table and they'd make a gorgeous layout whichever way they fell.

Spent way too long fiddling around with the Paper Girl papers trying to do them justice and finally came up with this. The photo part is a minibook with 3 pages lurking underneath.




And then this .....




...which shows me in my wedding dress now and 21 years ago . Can't believe I can still get into it ... as the titles suggests ... " Who would have thought ... ". The black rectangular frame with the heart contains some hidden journalling underneath.

My eldest son was babysitting my youngest for me that day as DH had to work also. Quite  a relief therefore to find no ambulances parked on the drive when I returned that evening . Better still , they'd both missed me madly, told me that they been totally bored all day .... even with the X Box and hadn't discovered my secret stash of chocolate. There were no deep fried Mars Bars to be seen ( my eldest son's signature dish ) , no broken widows or any evidence of bruising on either of therm ( most sorties onto the trampoline generally end in some sort of fist fight ). Must spend more time away from home in future ... so nice to be missed.

Friday 4 June 2010

Visuallyod

No, that's not a spelling error but apparently the term used to describe cutting edge design that aims to spot new forthcoming trends . Lost me yet ? Yeah, me too. Why don't they just call it , 'new ways to sucker money out of debt laden design junkies who have more money than sense' ? Now that would be far more honest and cutting edge.

So what's included in this new Visuallyod concept ? According to Pulse, the retail marketing people, a cushion that looks like you've stood your coffee cup on it and left a ring stain or a canvas that has various circles printed on it ... re-inventing the wheel ? I think so.

I suppose design students have to keep coming up with something new all the time so I shouldn't appear like a grumpy old woman and moan but what I'd like to see them come up with is a nice sideboard ... now I really am showing my age.

Thursday 3 June 2010

Cookie Dough Pizza

My youngest son loves cooking. Well, when I say cooking, what I really mean is combining ingredients .... well when I say ingredients, what I really meaning is cramming as many things containing chocolate into one recipe. A young man after my own heart.

Tonight's concoction is called Cookie Dough Pizza and contains ... er cookie dough and looks like a pizza. Take one pack of chocolate chip cookie dough, smoosh it into a pie dish, bake, add chocolate spread, sprinkle with dark chocolate chips , smarties and maltesers and inject with lard. No, I made that last bit up .

The boys will be tucking into it any minute now and I expect it to last about ... 5 minutes. There are about 2 dried cranberries lurking in amongst the chocolateyness. These apparently are his 2 portions of fruit for today !