12 days of Christmas Chicken Soup

On the first day........ A pretty white and red advent inspired image.

As there is one a day for the next 12 days, I don't count this as cheating ;)

I wrapped Hubby's advent calendar (a bit late like everything this week ) in pretty white paper and wrapped it in a red bow, ready for him tonight when he battles his way home through the travel chaos. Cheers!

On the second day of Christmas a Christmas card inspiration.
A T!m snowman stamp, a Christmas sheet music stamp, a spot of therapy while tearing and rolling and a very amatuerish attempt at blending inks with cut 'n dry-perhaps I'll have the knack by the end of the season!

On the third day of Chicken Soup Christmas..... a tree inspired card- I'm seeing a theme here (hehehe)
A very simple card with an embossed tree paper from DCWV, topped with a Tree and more stickles, got to love those stickles!

On the fourth day of Christmas a holly inspired Christmas card. Simply T!m's holly stamp, stamped in a border, cut out and mounted on the card, some pretty baubles on foam pop up squares, finished with some ribbons-oh and some stickles for sparkle :)

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

It's absolutely freezing! -6C an hour ago and more snow forecast for tomorrow.
The hens are hating it, yesterday only Mathilda ventured out of the coop. It's great fun (not) running in and out every hour to refresh the solidly frozen drinking water. Poor birdies!

2 snow days so far, nobody showed up for school, I wonder what today will bring?

The last little frigid apples on the tree

Chicken Soup Recipe #22

Again, better late than never! ;)
A larder full of fresh produce all lined up like this reminded me of the photo of all the delicious sweeties Chicken soup used as this weeks inspiration. I used a bit of fabric on the layout that I used to make hats for the jam and chutney. Thanks for looking!

Very late... Recipe #19!

Errmmmm, it's been busy and the photo is a bit rubbish but here it is :)
I've blocked the kids faces to protect their identity!

Thanks Chicken soup! :)

Chicken Soup Recipe #18

Oooh! What a rotten, wet week it's been. Loads of time for cooking and cleaning, oh...and a spot of crafting. I finally got around to doing recipe 18 for the Chicken Soup blog and here it is :) Thanks for looking :)

Just goes to show how dark it is too, the poor ass has a flash on his ass ;)

Now to get onto No 19!

Re Dara O'Briain

Cream soda cleaning out the sinuses is a special thing.
 on Gillian McKeith.....'you might as well eat broccoli because the imps will come and mine the fat off your arse in the night'


On the three states of Irish legality.... Do something a bit naughty, 'That's grand'
                                                        Something a bit worse, 'Ah now don't push it'
                                                        Something quite bad, 'Right you're taking the piss'

I know I'm a very bad Blogger!

Due to the fact that I abandoned all attempts yesterday due to a timely phonecall :)
I feel quite happy wittering away to myself anyway- so here comes Octobers bits.

Firstly, Brian phoned me from work on a Thursday evening (after 6pm and this is important) to let me know we were going to the 'Stand up to Cancer' Ball the following night. OMG! Hair, nails, dress? Later it transpired it was on the Saturday, so that gave me a full 30 hours, very generous I'm sure you'd agree ;)
Loads of flapping about but got there in the end.

The dress needs to be taken up an inch now where I kept tripping over it and put a few little holes in the bottom Doh! We had a brilliant night and it was worth all the effort to get things organised in time.

By the way, can anyone tell me how to put the photos beside eachother instead of underneath in a row? Ta :)

From the 16th to the 19th of October, My gorgeous, crazy husband took part in a charity cycle from Belfast to Cork in aid of the Marie Keating Foundation. You can see more Here !

I only have a couple of photos as I forgot to bring my camera and the I-phone pics weren't the best.

Well done to my sweetie and to all the other guys and gals who started and finished this great endeavour. 

Back to the garden!
The garden yielded four beautiful pumpkins, which the children monitored carefully since coming back to school in September. Last week, we harvested two of them using one to make Pumpkin Soup and carve, the other is on the nature table for inspection. I have a couple of piccies buy have given the kids special adobe treatment to respect their privacy

( Two proud kiddies with their produce)

 Hmmm, what to do with a green pumpkin?

 Ok, so the carving is totally rubbish, sorry Liz ;) but the kids loved it to bits and that's the main thing!


Otherwise, Things have been mental harvesting the apples and trying to eat and preserve as many as possible. I feel a mega freezing session coming on as I'm running out of jars.

Some have pretty labels and covers, some still have to be done, I'm getting there! I hope the chutney tastes good though, you never know until you let it sit for a couple of months. Fingers crossed!

Sigh! Time to go and relax now...See you later :)

I think I'm a very bad Blogger!

Well, there is so much else to do and so little time!
Here we are staring Halloween in the face, only a few weeks to go until Christmas and I couldn't tell you where the time has gone.

And in many ways, this is why I'm such a bad blogger, phone call from bestest friend... many minutes later, the will to blog has left me! So...... will post piccies up next time the urge hits  *grins*

Chicken Soup Recipe #16

Very busy times, trying to keep up with preserving the glut of fruit on the trees (photos and a layout soon to follow :) ) But as it will be my nephew's birthday on Thursday, I had to sneak in a very quick card.
 I tried to fit it in with the theme of this weeks recipe on Chicken soup. A rush job on the photo Sorry!

Thanks for the inspiration ladies :)

Really???

Oh ye Gods.... My Sis took these photos this morning at the bottom of the garden (thanks Nat!)
Please spiderlings.....stay there and don't migrate to my bedroom!

Chicken Soup Recipe # 13

Hi again :)

I didn't think I would attempt this one, but then thought what the hey!

I chose this photo of my Gran, my Mum and her 2 sisters. This photo was taken in Scheveningen in 1947/48 I think. Scheveningen is a seaside district in The Hague, Holland. I love this photo and have been meaning to scrap it for years and years. The inspiration I took from recipe 13 was the fabrics and trimmings. I printed the photo on canvas and used various other bits to give it that vintage nostalgia feeling. Thanks for visiting :) xxx

A couple of old layouts

I wanted to upload a few more layouts from before blogland. Some are digi, some just old-fashioned paper and glue :)

 

Chicken Soup Recipe #12

Ok, so I had way too much time on my hands the last few days, but only managed to produce one card. Not good!

I was asked to make a wedding card for a friend and the remit was loose. She told me a bit about the Bride and Groom though and that's why this is such a personal card that will never be reproduced for any other wedding.
The groom is a bit of a hippie by all accounts and loves restoring  old VW vans, the Bride is hugely into animal rights and rescuing woofers, so I went with the converted mystery machine and left Scooby in the front. Photoshop was the order of the day on Saturday, as the silhouette couple took me a loooooong time to complete.
I tried to make it a bit more romantic with a few glitters, pearls and a bit of Bazzil edge strips.

I hope that the elements from recipe #12 have come through :)
Thanks for looking and I hope you like!

You'd think I'd learn.........

After the Strawberry fiasco earlier this year.
Only now the hens are bigger, bolder and will go where no hen has previously gone before.
Let me explain..... While trying to dig the last of the spuddlies for dinner tomorrow night (Justin and Aydee are coming over!) {Yay} the darn hens got in and snatched up what they could and pecked holes in everything that wasn't 3 foot off the ground, including pecking off the plaster on my finger, but that's another story.
I plucked some Curly Kale for dinner tonight, placing it cunningly on top of the nets and out of reach, only for the blimmin wind to blow it onto the ground  behind the nets. Unfortunate for me, fortunate for the hens as they were able to get into the small space between the nets and the very thorny rose bushes and have a lovely feast. The eggs will have a faint cabbagey flavour tomorrow methinks!
Ah well, I suppose I can live with the loss of the cabbage and the plaster, a few spuds were saved for tomorrow and I managed to get in before the next tropical storm hit *Rolls Eyes*

Chicken Soup Recipe #11

Well, here we are again, I really enjoyed this one and had a bit of fun with the theme.
My hens create a big mess wherever they go and I feel it's only fair to warn unsuspecting visitors! ;)
This sign isn't suitable to hang outside all the time, as it's sure to rain sooner or later (heavy dose of sarcasm there) but I love it and will print some more up and experiment with weather proofing.
Thanks for the inspiration girls!

Chicken Soup Recipe #10

Soooooooooo, finally got the blog working again, the Summer has well and truly gone for another year and now that I'm back into a routine with school, it's time to get creative again.

I chose to do a montage of Summer photos for this challenge, as this Summer saw the arrival of our four sweet hens, a brand new veggie patch and for a change, a goodly amount of sunshine. All of which means tons of photos to get through.

I'm not over the moon with the way this layout progressed, it's still not right, but I've messed with it too long and it wasn't improving for the length of cooking time.
Let's see what #11 brings :)

In the meantime, here is number 10. I hope you like it better than I do.

Chicken Soup Recipe # 6

I have done a card for this week's challenge as there are a few anniversaries coming up, two birds with one stone ;)
It was a hard one to photograph, so excuse the quality.

Friday morning surprise :)

Oh lovely! The Chickensoup random generator picked me out as the winner of the July recipe challenge. Hurrah!
A lovely way to start a lovely weekend, thanks girls!
I think there will be a few goodies for me from 'A trip down memory lane' Thanks Mel and Jill, I love parcels :)

Brian and I are celebrating our first wedding anniversary tomorrow, and we're heading off to a secret location for a bit of R&R, camera is locked and loaded, bag is packed and I just need to get away from the computer now and get purtied up.

Hopefully the weather will co-operate and there will be some good shots for the next recipes that the chefs conjoure up!

Have a lovely weekend all :)

Chicken Soup Recipe #5

Recipe #5 is a gift for me as it's always hard to know with those dozens of photos from birthday parties, gatherings etc. Thanks for the inspiration and I'll be using this layout again for sure :)

Chicken Soup Recipe #4

And then there is my favourite from today, following recipe #4. I love the way this turned out!
I used Bo-Bunny, perfect pearls, alcohol inks to change the colour of the metal border strip, Tim Holtz alphas and inks.
Thanks for the inspiration Chicken Soup girlies :)

Chicken Soup Recipe #3

Here is my effort for recipe #3. It's very simple, just some embossed cardstock and ribbon from Pickleberry,thickers and lil Davis alphas. The photos are from the spice souq we visited in Istanbul. I will be turning this into a double LO as there wasn't enough room for the colourful spices on this page, just the fabulous glasswork and footwear :)

I did it!

I pimped my blog!
It took me a day, mainly because I'm a bit thick when it comes to these things, but thank you Zoe Pearn for the excellent instruction that came with blog in a box! Love it! :)

Chicken Soup Recipe #1

Ok, way behind-must use the cold, cloudy weather to catch up!

I couldn't resist doing the first recipe using this cheeky photo of my hen Dora :)

I've used mainly Tim Holtz and K&CO in this one and other nice bits from Pickleberry.

Here I am!

Finally succumbed and opened a blog.