November's Number News

Eek - what happened there?  November's End crept up on me very suddenly!  Part of the reason was a scare with my Mum which has distracted me all week.  My CKCB projects didn't get any attention and there was no question of blogging creatively.  Hopefully things will be calmer for a day or two before the Christmas panic ramps up!

So here are my Numbers for November (joining in with Julie's Month In Numbers as a way of recording the year's activities):

4 = books read, bringing my total so far this year to 44, which neatly means that my monthly average is also 4

"Star Of The Sea" by Joseph O'Connor was October's book club choice and proved to be a very interesting and educational novel set in the time of the Irish famine.  Quite an eye-opener about conditions on the ships taking people from Ireland across the Atlantic, the awful straits that Irish tenants struggled under and the disgusting racism that many Irish endured.  Based around a murder on the ship, the book was written from several people's points of view, with songs, newspaper articles, letters and diary entries interspersed with narrative passages.
Jeffery Deaver's "Death Of a Blue Movie Star" and James Patterson's "Toys" were random picks from the library shelves and both were readable, but ultimately I learnt too much about bomb disposal from the former and too little about character development from the latter!

Jo Nesbø's "The Leopard" was November's book club choice, but I haven't got hold of it yet.  Instead I thought I'd compromise by reading "The Redbreast" which seems to be the first translation for the UK market.  I found this quite heavy going but considerably less gory than Nesbø's "The Snowman" and "Headhunters" which I read earlier in the year.  Lots of flashbacks, different voices and Norwegian names added to my confusion, but by the end I had learnt quite a lot about Norway's experiences in WWII and was keen enough to grab the sequel "Nemesis" from the library straight away!  This was pacier (perhaps I was also more familiar with the main characters in Inspector Harry Hole's police department) and I was desperate to read more, yet also sad to reach the end of the book; while the case might be closed, there are enough threads running from book to book to make me want to grab the next in the series a.s.a.p.

5 = days course on "Advanced Employability" attended by No.2 Son at the Job Centre {I don't think there's actually a "Basic Employability" course}.  He has given up on university and now needs to find his first job.  I'm hoping that he's now motivated enough to send out his new CV, that his role-played interview skills are effective and that satisfying employment is quickly found.

½ = size of our family Christmas fund compared to last year!  Hubby's family is HUGE and, rather than each family unit buy 40+ small gifts for various siblings, their partners and offspring, each one contributes to a central fund which pays for one larger gift each. Belts have been tightened this year and the whole thing was under threat, but we have managed to prune it back a little and cope.

2 = friends I met for a belated {August} birthday lunch; my turn for a belated {October}birthday lunch will have to wait until after Christmas now!

3 = alternate destinations that Child No.3 was given when her forthcoming 2013 expedition to Madagascar was withdrawn due to potential political unrest next summer.  We now have to start researching inoculations for Costa Rica/Nicaragua!

5 = shifts at work for Child No.3 - she was successful in getting an out-of-school job as usherette in our local theatre back in August, but the wheels of local government (who own the theatre) run very slowly it took ages to get the paperwork and forms done!  She's discovered that Ken Dodd certainly does carry on and on and on telling jokes (well past midnight), but that she doesn't mind when she's being paid time and a half for working on a Saturday!  Potentially plenty of money to pay for her share of the expedition costs!

4 = free tickets to see the preview performance of "Cinderella" at the theatre: great fun, lots of cheesy laughs, brilliant costumes for the Ugly Sisters and a wonderful start to the festive season.

125 = cubic centimetres of engine capacity of the motorbike just bought by No.1 Son who is determined to turn his mother's hair grey!

If you want to see what else has been happening in November then pop over to see Julie at Notes On Paper here.

Calendar Catch-up #2

I promised myself that I would get a move on with transferring my Month In Numbers posts (read all about MiN here) onto paper while I was away at The Second Green Buttons' Retreat (the Remix) earlier this month.  Armed with print-outs from my blog and some extra notes from the calendar and my diary, I am proud to report that I completed seven missing months' journalling!!!  The pages themselves were ready, it was just a question of adding the words and numbers.  I won't bore you with them all, but I do have a previously unseen pair of pages made with my September Counterfeit Kit, featuring the stitched lettering that I have been using recently along with some counterfeit tags and fake felt flowers too.

My contribution to the retreat was sharing some hand-stitching ideas including a template for the stitched letters.  I have sized the letters to match my diminishing supply of Scenic Route chipboard alphas.  Printed out onto a transparency, they can be positioned exactly where you want them to be before you prick through to create your stitching holes.  And because the transparency is reasonably durable you can use it again and again.

Do you fancy having a go with my template?  I've uploaded it to share here (for some reason it looks like a blank sheet on Google Drive's preview, but it does download properly). Do please leave me a comment and let me know what you make of it.

August's Activities - a little late!

Welcome to my August Month in Numbers - in October!  Oops!
Check out Julie's blog here if you have no idea what I'm talking about :o)

4321 (approximately) = minutes spent watching the London 2012 Olympics  Having been hooked by the opening ceremony, we were captivated by cycling, beach volleyball, swimming, horse-riding, tae-kwon-do, diving, and all manner of athletics.   Olympic fever was not even interrupted by a visit to my Step-mother's, where we introduced her to the delights of rhythmic gymnastics (the arm-chair variety) and mountain biking (the sofa strain)

2 = number of afternoons spent (unsuccessfully) trying to teach
Step-mother's puppy to hand the ball back in a game of fetch

Books read = 7 (but a shorter and more varied set than last month): "Twisted Wing" by Ruth Newman was a thriller set in Cambridge with a confusing start because two murders have already been committed and it takes a while to sort out what has been going on.  Gradually things fall into place only to fall out again as you realise that the murderer is far cleverer than their pursuers.  Cambridge was also the setting for "Lasting Damage" by Sophie Hannah and, like her other psychological thrillers, had me guessing almost to the (slightly disappointing) ending.
"Full Dark, No Stars" was next - by Stephen King, the US master of spooky short stories.  Having seen the film I picked up "Water For Elephants" by Sara Gruen and was amazed how close it had kept to the book.
My reading group's choice was "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett which was an eye-opener because I hadn't realised how much discrimination and segregation had persisted in America in the 60s - I had thought that Rosa Parks had put a stop to it all in the 50s.  At the group, my friend lent me two books to read "The Evil Seed", the first novel by Joanne Harris and "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro.  The former is an atmospheric gothic horror about vampires in Cambridge (again) and the latter a beautiful study of life in service in the 30s - I must get around to catching the film on TV soon.

11 = the number of people we squeezed around our dining table during the weekend No.1 Son brought his friends to stay for the weekend.  They were visiting Chester Zoo - the weather was really kind and they enjoyed the picnic we provided.

There should be a PHOTO here of the happy hordes, but despite weeks of promises No.1 Son has failed to come up with the goods.  So I'll add a picture Child No.3 drew for him that weekend instead:

20 = minutes of interview which proved to be successful for No.3 Child in obtaining a pocket-money job so she is happily looking forward to some spending money after July's disappointment in her previous interviews.

0 = the number of A-grade GCSEs that she achieved - because the majority were A* and the rest were B; it seems there is no middle ground between the subjects she likes and those that she doesn't! 

6 = days spent away by No.2 Son attending a 3 day music festival ... maths never was his strong point!

Part of the reason why I have finally published my belated numbers is that I have a weekend scrappy retreat coming up and I'm hoping to get the scrapping of my months up-to-date!  I have February, April, May and June, August still to complete ... all I need to do is add the words to the pages from my MIN blog posts.  Oh and of course there's still September - eek!!

If you a) want to join in with your Month in Numbers and b) are as late as I am, then other Augusts can be found here.

Calendar Catch-Up

Do you blog your days?
Do you scrap your months?
I'm not great with committing to year-long projects, but I had a whale of a time with Scrapbook & Cards Today's Project 12 in 2010, producing a whole album of double page layouts (some of which I've blogged about) documenting the family activities with photos and words.

2011 however, was an utter failure and I gave up half-way through March ending up with a double-page summary for the whole year instead.

This year I've been playing along with Julie's Month In Numbers and using the blog posts to get my months onto paper.  I'm still behind (I've only just published June's MiN post, and not all the numbers have made it onto paper) so I took advantage of the third challenge from the CKCB to take inspiration from a summer garden and get July's numbers scrapped and August's page ready to go.

I combined this with the weekly challenge on UKScrappers which called for
stitching, tearing, recent journalling and non-flat ribbon!

My August Counterfeit Kit was perfect for a summer garden theme with lots of warm, sunny colours, some honeycomb and stem patterns and I adapted the die-cut rosettes to look like the sun (at least I think it does) and flowers by snipping the straight edges at an angle.

These pages cheer me up - they are so sunny - unlike our current weather - torrential rain, strong winds and no sign of the sun at all!
Hopefully your garden inspired crafting will also bring you joy - link up here and I'll come and look

June In Numbers

Yes, I know it's August and July's numbers are already out there, but I've just discovered that this post was still half-written in draft!  I've been working on the scrapbook page for it so I thought I'd better hit publish!

Welcome to my June in Numbers - check out Julie's blog here if you have no idea what I'm talking about or if you do and you want to join in with your Month in Numbers then other Junes can be found here.

June has been a bit of a wash-out - both literally and in terms of activities.  There have been sunny days in between, but torrential rain, flash floods and lightening strikes are a bit extreme even for a British summer.

1 = Birthday celebrated very quietly by Hubby as it was a working day, Child No.3 was out gallivanting, I was recuperating from my surgery and the boys were still away at university.  We'll have to have a proper family meal out together once we are reunited next month.

25 = pounds spent on his birthday present - a Raspberry Pi credit-card-sized computer, developed to encourage school children to learn about computer programming proper (as opposed to using Microsoft packages or writing html).  Of course, Hubby isn't a school child but he is an old-school programmer.

60 = years on the throne for Queen Elizabeth, resulting in a 4 day weekend for much of the UK.  Rain didn't stop play (we Brits will party on through anything).  It was not much better 10 years ago - I wonder if there will be a Platinum Jubilee and whether our weather will be better?

Books read = 14 (5 reviewed here and 5 more here) and 4 more:

"The Elephant Whisperer" by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence is not the kind of book I normally read.  It's non fiction and it's about animals!  However after some very positive reviews I thought I'd give it a go. I'm so glad I did - it was full of accessible, humorous and touching stories about life in and around a nature reserve in South Africa.  Anthony's struggles with local politics, regulations, poachers, wild animals, domestic animals and the weather were all there along with his triumphs containing a troubled herd of elephants, rescuing rhinos and connecting with the beautiful flora and fauna on the reserve.

C J Sansom's "Winter in Madrid" was my Reading Group choice - a fascinating account of a part of
aspects of the Spanish Civil War about which I knew very little.  There were glimpses of British boarding school life, diplomatic machinations and covert operations. Beautifully written, it left me wanting to know more about the period.

"The Pilot's Wife" by Anita Shreve was one of the books I took to and from Las Vegas without opening.  Possibly just as well as it described the aftermath of a mid-air explosion that killed the pilot!  The grief and confusion of his wife was beautifully described as doubts arose about just how the bomb had got aboard.

Jo Nesbø's thrilling "Headhunters" was full of as many twists and turns as it had unlikeable characters.  Was anybody what they seemed to be? Would anyone get away with their ill deeds?  Would you want them to?

20 = CVs handed out by Child No.3 in her search for a holiday/weekend job.  Despite several positive responses during the day, not one has followed up (yet).  1 on-line application with a local supermarket has resulted in a telephone interview and the group interview is set for next month.  Fingers crossed!

10 = types of vegetables growing in our veg patch - they are all rather behind in their growing due to the lack of sun.

4 = years of study for No.1 Son resulting in a Masters of Chemistry qualification - we are so proud - the graduation ceremony is in a fortnight - watch this space to see how well a mortar board fits on top of his dreadlocks!

Well, we never did get to see him in a mortar board as he wouldn't (let us) pay the extra for an official photograph.  You can see how smart he looked in his suit and gown on my layout here though!

This 'n' That - A Month Misspent

Has it really been 20 days since I last blogged?????

Life does that to you sometimes doesn't it?  Either getting busily in the way or sucking the motivation out of you ... or in my case both!

First there was a visit up north (should that have a capital letter?) where I managed to get photo #2 and item #8 in Rinda's Scavenger Hunt:  the lovely Angel of the North, with No.1 Son to give it some scale.  He's the one on the right!

I'll tell you why we were in the neighbourhood on Sunday when I'll be joining in with Siân's Storytelling.

Disappointingly, my recently-operated-upon elbow flared up which meant that I had to limit my activities again.  It's hard to scrap or blog (or chop vegetables or even clean surfaces) when your write right arm needs elevating and ice-packs!  This did however give me LOTS of time to read books ... and I have just finished wading through the entire series so far of "A Song Of Ice And Fire" by George R.R. Martin - a mind boggling 12½ inches of paperbacks.  At first I was bewildered by the enormous cast of characters in the first book, "A Game Of Thrones", and the switching of viewpoints between them.  Apparently there are 31 different viewpoints and over 1000 different named characters - not that I've checked!  However, I was soon completely hooked and wanting to read more - to the extent that I couldn't wait for Hubby to finish the 4th book of the series, so we shared for while, before I sneakily overtook him while he was out at work!!!
If only reading were an Olympic sport :o)

We finally had some summer sun too which meant I could tackle some garden jobs and tend to the vegetables that we planted this year.  We've even harvested a young lettuce or two.

{ These are not the lettuces - can you guess what they are? }

Thanks to this 'n' that (and some other stuff) I have been very neglectful of my July Counterfeit Kit and managed just 2 pages with it - neither of which I can share yet.  They did involve a lot of machine stitching though.
I'm hoping to be inspired to use other forms of stitchery soon by hanging out over at Obstinate Pursuit: Clair is about to host a FREE class about stitching on paper - it starts on Saturday (August 4th) and runs each weekend throughout August (sneaky peeks here).

I guess there are enough numbers in this post to qualify me to play along with Julie's Month In Numbers - providing I also include that No.1 Son spent only 10 days at home messing up our house before departing and thankfully leaving the mess marginally more contained.  Oh and that Child No.3 had to endure 3 interviews (phone, group and individual) before being turned down for a weekend job in a local supermarket.  As for No.2 Son ... he did help by mowing the our 3 lawns 4 times this month which is something I suppose.
Ooops!  I haven't actually shared June's Month In Numbers yet ... hopefully I'll do that when I scrap it - possibly with next month's kit from the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog!

How has your month been?

May's Month In Numbers

May's end has arrived all too quickly.  It's been a mixed up month with hail and heatwaves, fun and frustration, celebrations and sympathy.  And being the last day of the month, it's time to join in with Julie's Month In Numbers where a bunch of us use numbers to document the things that are important to us.

30 = the minutes Niece No.1 was allowed to transform Child No.3 from a schoolgirl into the personification of the Olympic torch as part of a make-up competition at her college.

3½ = books read this month (all World Book Night Editions) and all great reads (so far).  First there was my own choice, "The Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, which was no less thought provoking, uplifting, engaging, upsetting or brilliant upon its second reading than the first time.  I do hope the people I handed it out to on World Book Night 2012 enjoy it as much as I have.

Next up was the WBN choice of a friend from my reading group - "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy which was depressing to say the least.  At times the writing style annoyed me (no punctuation, sparse repetition interspersed with excessive flowery abundance). Perhaps that was meant to mimic the way of life of the father and son protagonists but I prefer authors not to use such obvious methods.  That's not to say I wouldn't recommend the book though - quite a worryingly believable post-apocalyptic tale which left me thinking - and that's a good story in my opinion!

Jo sent me a copy of "How I live Now" by Meg Rosoff for my daughter and I to read.  Telling the story of Daisy, an American teenager in a near-future occupied England, it was another book that didn't use punctuation but it was somehow far less of an irritation this time around.  Read in one sitting, I enjoyed the contrasts between the strangely idyllic Swallows & Amazons beginning with the horrifying realities of powerless children being buffeted about by the actions of adults.  The final part of the book felt a little rushed and unsatisfying; I'm looking forward to discussing it with Child No.3 soon.

The half-book is Ian Banks' "Player Of Games" sent to me by a friend on the Isle Of Man. Come back next month to find out how I got on with it!

130 = the height in feet of Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, which we visited, along with Avebury and West Kennet Long Barrow while staying with friends in Wiltshire.

Us (& Alfie) in top of West Kennet Long Barrow

46 = the number of pounds I spent replacing the hard drive of my laptop which failed 7 months after my last back-up.  Not to be confused with the 46000 seconds (approximately) that I spent laboriously retrieving all the un-backed-up files from the failed hard drive to put onto the new one; which has now been backed up!

26 = years of marriage celebrated this month

5 = hours spent at home by No.2 Son while fetching a suit to wear to his university summer ball - more fun for us than posting it to him as originally requested!

3 = children who have all been sitting exams this month (last but 3 GCSEs for Child No.3, first year Sociology exams for No.2 Son and the final Masters exam in Chemistry for No.1 Son).  Now the wait for various nerve-racking results days begins!

P.S. This post was pre-scheduled so there will be some extra numbers to add when I scrap them ... such as how many people took part in my {Inter-}National Scrapbooking Day Challenge (final deadline at midnight GMT tonight), how many stitches I have in my arm and how many seconds it took for the Olympic torch-bearer to run past me today!

Accounting For April

I will keep up.  I will keep up.  I will keep up!   Following hard on the heels of March's Month In Numbers which was very, very late, here are my only slightly late figures for April!

27 = the number of plastic eggs I hid in the back garden for my 3 not-so-little kids to find.  The eggs contained clues towards some giant luxury chocolate slabs along with tons of brightly coloured jelly eggs I brought back from Las Vegas.

6 = people at home for an Easter roast dinner which was all eaten up despite the copious quantities of sweets and chocolate that had been scoffed!

24 = World Book Night Books I gave away, including a few to readers of this blog

3 = books read this month: "The Last Testament" by Sam Bourne, a tale of intrigue in Jerusalem which left me cold.  I much preferred my Reading Group's book: "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, a very interesting account of early fossil hunting in Lyme Bay, highlighting the inequalities that the fairer sex suffered, especially if they were from the working class.  It was also educational to read about the struggle to reconcile religious beliefs regarding creation in relation to the newly discovered fossils from unknown creatures.  I was also almost unable to put down the first book in "The Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins as the story was gripping from start to finish.  I wonder if the film will be as good?

2 = how many kilograms I lost a week after re-starting healthy eating - 7 more to go to reach my initial target

1 = a weekend visitor from Lithuania who was fascinated by the local dry stone walls, our friends' sheep, geocaching and a 1000 year old hollow yew tree in a nearby churchyard

9 = pages made from my April Counterfeit Kit - my all-time record.

Are you joining in with Julie Kirk's "My Month In Numbers"?  It's a fun way of documenting your year - check it out why don't you?!  Go here for other Aprils in numbers.

Oh and while I'm at it, I guess this post will be just the ticket for Shimelle's Ten on the Tenth, being as it contains ten numbers!

March's Numbers On Paper

I'm not quite sure where the month of April has gone, but I suddenly realised that the end was nigh and I still hadn't blogged my March Month In Numbers!!!  Not wanting a repeat of last year's Project 12 (which also stalled during March) I have set to work to remedy the situation, putting these numbers straight down on paper - using scraps from my April Counterfeit Kit - and also prepared the opposite page ready for April's numbers too.

The titles were cut with Man, Oh, Man! Sizzlit dies 
from the film-strip frame waste from my Bellagio Fountains page

5 = blue toes for Mum who fell awkwardly after helping with the Talking Newspaper recording.  Luckily nothing is broken, just badly bent. {She's still limping but on the mend after six or seven weeks}

3,  2 and 1 are for the physio appointments, consultant appointments and steroid injection I had for my various ailments ... getting old is no fun at all!

1 = an unexpected overnight guest, delayed on her way home to the Isle of Man when the ferry company texted her to say that the ferry had broken down ... and was returning to Douglas without any passengers!  Luckily she was able to reverse her journey slightly and stay with us.  We put the world to rights over a couple of glasses bottles of wine!

2 = free tickets for the Moscow State Circus at the theatre where I work occasionally. It was a brilliant show on our tiny stage with laughter at the various clowns, wincing at the contortionist's impossible angles and wonder at the strength, grace and skill of the various acrobatic acts. 

24/7 = Hubby's cover at work ... much too restricting even though he wasn't called out!

7 = nights I spent in Vegas with 5 friends.  I dared to do my 1st helicopter flight and notched up my 100th geocache while I was there too.

4 = days spent in Krakow by Child No.3 who "enjoyed" her visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau and now wants to get married in the Salt Mines!

There wasn't quite room on my page for some of my other numbered notes so I'll add them here:

4 = books taken to Las Vegas, where, apart from the travel guides, I didn't read a thing!  Once I was back in the UK, I did manage to read 1 story about harvesting people for organs to order - yuk - "The Fifth Vial" by Michael Palmer.
45 = minutes spent on the phone to No.2 Son trying to determine what he thinks he's doing at university!
200 = blog posts celebrated with a Tagxedo tutorial.

I used a border punch to add interest
to some more counterfeit washi tape

If you pop over to Notes on Paper I'm sure you will find that other people joining in with Julie's "My Month In Numbers" will be a lot less tardy than me ... they've probably done April's already (I know Julie has)!

29 Days Later

During January I went public with my goals for 2012 and it's only fair that I come clean with how well (or badly) I am doing:

Click here to read more
Februaries (!) in numbers

I've managed more pages for my BOM, all of which are in the album (although not organised in chronological order - that's something for 2013 perhaps?)!  I've de-cluttered our under stairs pantry after tipping over a bottle of wine, which smashed on the tiled floor, emptying its 70cl all over the floor and under quite a lot of "stuff" that shouldn't have been there.  The bedroom, started last month is, unfortunately, still ongoing!  I've forgotten three birthdays and remembered two (with home-made cards).  I've been busy with some Guest DT work and plenty of other scrapping, including my page for my January in numbers and, without further ado here are February's numbers:

12 = marbled cup cakes made on the 2nd attempt - it would seem that I have been remiss in teaching Child No.3 (and her friend) how to cream butter, sugar and eggs together without curdling the mixture!

50 = key words in the programming language that Hubby studied during much of his 5 days off - he tries to share with me when he finds something interesting or annoying, but that's all I have remembered!

2 = the number of decades celebrated by No.2 Son with a trip to visit No.1 Son for a Skrillex concert.  Hours he spent in cars, coaches and trains to get there and back: 12


4 = books read this month - "Ours are the Streets" by Sunjeev Sahoter - a very interesting tale of life for a Sheffield Muslim lad as he before and after he becomes radicalised, counting down the days until his suicide mission.  Not an easy read at times, but thought provoking to the end.  "The Passage" by Justin Cronin was bought for Hubby as an emergency birthday present last year, but he loved it and insisted I read it too.  Set in the (not too distant) future it tells an apocalyptic tale of the human struggle against vampire-like zombies!  Lots of excitement and adventure with believable and all to frail and frightened characters, it's the first in a trilogy and I'd like to read more.  My friend from Book Club recommended "The Prison of Perspective" by Rudolf Bader but I can't say I enjoyed this one. It describes the lives of each main character entirely from their own perspective and perhaps because of this, I found them equally selfish and self-centred and ultimately unsympathetic.  Thankfully this month's official choice was great: "The Long Song" by Andrea Levy which was a witty, rollicking tale of the trials and tribulations of slaves (and their white owners) in Jamaica during and after the abolition.

1 = an exercise bike exchanged, 2 months after the on-board computer broke, just 3 months after No.3 child chose it instead of a rabbit!

1 = also how many new recipes I tried - roast duck - and it worked pretty well: juicy, tender, perhaps not quite crispy skinned nor pink enough; there's room for improvement when I try again soon!

10 = days turn-around for 2 new passports which was a relief as there are now just 19 and 27 days to go before they will be needed.

73,392 = worldwide target for geocaches to be logged on February 29th - I did my bit and found 1 :o}

Hello Doily

The latest challenge over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog is to use doilies ... not my favourite scrapping resource, but having dipped out of the first challenge this month, I felt obliged to have a go.  Actually it was easier than I thought after spotting this page by Kirsty where she'd made a real statement with her doily by painting it black!  (The page I made with a black doily is here)
For today's page I used Child No.3's Promarkers to add colour to a small doily, picking out the blue in the striped border I used to make chevrons for my page.

I blogged my first Month in Numbers at the end of January and here it is, down on (Scenic Route's double-sided Sonoma patterned) paper:

My doily had 12 sections to it, so after colouring,  I removed 6 of them to see if there was a snowflake vibe to it ... that would be a "No!" ... so I cut it into two sections and layered them to make a dimensional semi-circle.  The chevrons are cut from a striped border from Cosmo Cricket's The Boyfriend Collection.  My numbers were cut with Sizzlit Ducky Wucky dies from my Kraftcore cardstock, sanded and inked to help the numbers stand out.  I added some buttons and a title made from all sorts of random chipboard alphabets pulled from my stash, coloured with black ink to match each other.

In an effort to be ready for February's numbers (and create a facing page for my album), I have half-prepared a page with the same supplies and another border strip from my February Kit along with another Promarker coloured doily - a heart of course!

I'm doubt I will continue with this page design (and doily use LOL) for the rest of the year as I'll get bored, but I'll definitely use matching designs and base colours for each pair of pages - that will work well and save effort!

January's Numbers

Earlier in the month I bit the bullet and made a page about my goals for 2012 - craftily mostly crafty, as I know full well that major life-style changes are more difficult and less pleasurable to effect!

Click here to read more
Januaries (!) in numbers

I've managed 2 pages for my BOM, 1 of which is put away already; I've de-cluttered the dining room, the utility and made a start on my bedroom;  I've not only remembered two birthdays in good time, but sent  home-made cards and made some in readiness for next month too!  I've joined in with several on-line challenges and now I'm joining in with Julie Kirk's "My Month In Numbers".  Julie doesn't scrap her month, though some of her friends do.  I fully intend to make a page a month, but will blog the numbers first and see what happens!

So here goes:

84 = £ spent on a new tyre after a midnight mounting of the kerb outside our friends' house caused a flat!  None of us were dressed to change tyres by moonlight, but luckily our friends had a torch I could hold while the men-folk got down & dirty putting the spare into place!

75 = the approximate number of Black Dice watches that No.1 Son didn't want for his 22nd birthday - we eventually found just 1 that had the right combination of colours of strap, fascia and hands (at a price we were prepared to pay).  Sometimes I wish that on-line shopping didn't give us quite so much choice - there is something to be said for going to a real shop and selecting something from the things they have in stock that we can actually see, touch and try on for size!

13 = the number of people attending our 10th crop.  Though as usual I only managed 1½ pages and even they weren't 100% finished!

2 = new recipes tried: Harvest Pork Casserole with Apple & Parsnip was not an unmitigated success thanks to our dinner guests turning up about an hour later than anticipated.  The Grilled Pears with Stilton we had as a starter was much better, partly because I didn't start cooking that until after they'd arrived.  Simple too - toasted baguette, covered in watercress, peeled, sliced pear and slices of Stilton which is all grilled until attractively browned.  The watercress was not very obedient and kept poking out from under the pear, even tipping it off the bread, and the bits that were exposed to the grill were ash by the time the Stilton was melted.  It all got eaten though - but another time I think I'll try spinach leaves instead. 

2 = also the number of Book Club books I have read this month - "Room" by Emma Donoghue was my recommendation for December and was just as thought provoking a second time around.  Thankfully the rest of my group also found it a good read - always a worry when I've chosen the book!  This month's book was "The Crying Tree" by Naseem Rakha; quite a slow starter with two, rather confusing, time strands at the beginning, it explores the effects of the murder of a teenage boy on his family & friends, his killer and the prison governor.  There are many, many secrets to uncover and while I suspected some of them, the final chapters had plenty of surprises.  Tissues required though!

228 = £ saved on buildings & contents insurance in just 5 minutes!  To say that I was surprised when the renewal quote came over 50% higher than last year would be an understatement - shocked, but certainly not speechless!   I immediately phoned to complain and the insurance company immediately found me a better deal which came out £7 cheaper than last year's policy!  Good news, but why couldn't they have done that in the first place?

4 = the number of hours driving to & from Bangor to spend 3 hours with No.2 Son.  Well it was one way to spend a day off work and did allow us to treat him to some supply shopping and a lunch in Weatherspoon's.  Shame about the atrocious weather - alternately windy, rainy and haily (is that a word?)  We also got to see inside his house (he didn't have a key to the front door when I dropped him off in August last year), but still haven't seen inside his room as he'd apparently left that key at a friend's house - Yeah right!