Digital scrapbooking

Wow!! I have just discovered the wonders of the digital scrap book, what do you think....

Please please leave a message if you visit my blog, I haven't had one yet!

Anniversary

Hi everyone,

Had a lovely weekend, which somewhat made up for the pretty depressing week I had. On Friday night Paul and I went to see Avatar and it was as everyone told us...Amazing!! I actually nearly cried in it! It reminded me a lot of the film Fern Gully, what with all the trees being chopped down. It also really made me think about the awful things humans have done to other humans, especially when people drove the native Indians out of America. It was so sad, and made me really angry at the army, and evil men and greed. It was really a great film.

On Saturday I went into town to get some bits and pieces and also went to Hobbycraft. I at least gave myself a budget of £30.00 and only went over by a few pounds. (When I got home I found out I could have saved a lot of money by buying stuff on the internet. But oh well, I had to have t there and then!!) Anyway, here is a photo of the stuff I got:












On Monday is our six month anniversary. A bit sad I know, but we went out for a meal last night to celebrate, we had a voucher for a restaurant that is in the hotel where we stayed on our wedding night, and it ran out this week so we had to use it. So in a way it's not so sad!! (or at least that's what I am going to tell myself!)

Today we had another lovely day, we went for a walk to Silchester Roman ruins, then went out for a pub lunch. All in all a really good weekend. Haven't had time for any crafting at all though but I am trying to do some tonight because a lady at my work has asked me to do some designs for her wedding invitations so I have to get on with those. Back to work tomorrow *sigh* oh well I suppose I have to pay for all the money I have/am about to buy on this internet!! *tee hee*

New collage piece

Had a pretty terrible day at work today, including being sworn at by at least two pupils, losing my lunch and traveling to a meeting which had been cancelled.  However yesterday I made this lovely collage page in my journal which now seems quite poigniant considering my current emotional state. 
Well here it is, hope you like it.

A wonderful weekend

Hi Guys,

Haven't blogged for a while so thought I would say what I have been up to.  I have just had the most wonderful weeked with family and friends in the Gower in South Wales.  My mum works in a Christian retreat there so we hired the whole place out for the weekend with some families we have know since we were babies!  My siblings and I are friends with their children and our parents are friends with their parents.  It was really great to see them all, and be surrounded by friends for a whole weekend.  I felt like we were all living together at one point, in a commune, and I was fantasising about what it would be like if it was real!  I quite enjoyed the idea at the time, but I am sure we would start to get on each others nervs if we really did live together.
Also on the Sunday the weather was beautiful and so we went for a walk to a beautiful bay called Oxwich, it was so amazingly beautiful it made me want to cry! The contrast between the beautiful greens the bright blue sky and the glistening sea, and the suburbs that I live in were shocking.  I felt like I could stay there forever.  What a shame we had to go home!
Thought I would include some photos of the weekend to give you a feel for it.

Make a Smilebox collage

Back to normal life (more or less)

More snow last night but somehow made it into school for a rather manic day (kids always crazy when snow is about)

Went to Tate Modern At Gallery in London Yesterday on a school trip, was good to see the art work but I was mostly looking forward to going to the book shop. Tate Modern has the most amazing bookshop, I could spend literally hours in there perusing the piles and shelves of art craft design and fashion books, its amazing. Sadly I only had about 10 minutes before a quick dash back to the coach and back to school by 3.00pm. I did manage to bag a bargain note book though (to satisfy my notebook fetish!) here it is:

I love how it says "Manifesto" just think of the possibilities, the potential!! Oooh I am practically drooling. (Although it will probably end up on the top of my pile of other hugely potential note books!) The note book was a bargain reduced to £2.00 from £10.00 so I thus felt justified in spending a further £10.99 on this book: "How to be an artist". Oh of course I already know this ;) *smug* but it has some lovely was of generating ideas which I would like to use to inspire my creative journaling.

Well I guess thats all for now. byeee.

Wedding scrap book

Gosh two posts in one day!!

I got married in July 2009, it was the happiest day of my life so far. I had been with my husband for 9 years and was desperate to get married, it was something I really really wanted and so recorded absolutely everything in a scrap book. I was pretty new to scrap booking when I started it so its not the best, but I have decided to put some pictures up here on the recommendation of http://scrapsthecityandme.typepad.com/ (I am so inspired by her scrap book pages, they are amazing). I hope you like them, I am still working on it (6 months on!)

hopefully it will be finished before our first wedding anniversary!

Oops you can see some of the contents of my coffee table in these ones!

Snow days

Has three blissful days off work because of the snow, its been wonderful, just relaxing, journaling, going on the dance mat and generally having a happy time. Imagine our surprise when we saw this outside our bedroom window:

Here are a couple of pics from my new journal:

It's inspired by the work of Kelly Rae Roberts in her book which I recently purchased (tried to add link but no luck).

I am really enjoying the journaling but still finding it hard to get motivated, watching TV is still the easiest thing to do. Also recently been inspired by some lovely scrapbooking on other people's blogs which has made me what to improve on and finish my wedding scrapbook. May add some pictures if I can get it half decent!

Having my husband at home has been lovely though, its been nice just sitting with him while he is working and I am googling or looking at face book or whatever and chatting with him.

No plans for the weekend, just relaxing, I have bought some new seeds, and some of them can be planted now so may thinking about doing that if I can plant them in trays (ground is still frozen so no hope of planting them out!)

2010

Happy New Year Everyone, (although a little late)
Had a really good new year actually, had one of my oldest friends over and her husband, and we drank, had a lovely dinner with a home made banoffee pie for desert, party poppers, a conga in the green opposite my house and we even cracked open the bottle of sloe gin we have been lovingly nurturing over the past four months! (Sadly it tasted of rubber, but hey, you win some, you lose some)
On Sunday my Husband and I went for a walk at a nature reserve near us called Dinton Pastures. It is a series of lakes with footpaths to walk round them. It was really lovely, a sunny day and we really enjoyed walking in lots of ice. In the fields next to the footpath there must have been a small amount of flooding. The water on the surface had frozen, then the water beneath the layer of ices had drained away so we were left with a sort of floating layer of ice that cracked and scrunched beautifully under our feel, it was extremely pleasurable, and I really wish I had my camera. It was a lovely walk.
Back to school today though and not very enjoyable, you can read more on my other blog which reveals the truth about state schools. Trying to remain positive though, and am keeping to my resolution of watching less TV. Normally I would have it on right now, but don't and I am not going to put it on till celebrity BB is on (sad I know) and even then I am going to do some of my wedding scrap book which I started back in May 08 and really need to get finished. Will post some pics of it up here at some point.

Photos from 2009

Here are a few of the photos that I have taken in 2009, it reminds me that actually I did have a really lovely year when I think of all the happy times.

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Make a Smilebox slideshow

First post

Hi everyone,

I have created blogs in the past about different things, but this is just going to be a blog about me and my life and I will see where it goes. I want to incorporate all my interests and hobbies and have a positive attitude to my life, (in contrast to other blogs which have been somewhat negative). Perhaps this blog will help me to realise what I really want from life, help me to focus on what is important. I have recently bought and read a book by Kelly Rae Roberts called "Taking flight" which talks about listening to a whisper inside that is calling you in a direction, but which you can't quite verbalise or form yet, but by collecting together these whispers you can realise what you really want in life. I will try and include whispers and perhaps this will help me discover what I want.

Here are some of my hobbies, activities and interests which might help give an idea of the kind of person that I am and what my life is currently like (in no particular order):

I am an Art and Design teacher in mixed secondary comprehensive in Reading which has a large number of ethnic minority children and children with English as an additional language, and has a large number of children from deprived backgrounds. I am not very happy at work at the moment, I find it stressful and quite unrewarding, but need to pay the mortgage and don't really feel like I have another choice. You can read about some of my experiences in my other blog "The Truth About State Schools"

I love creating art, crafts and photography. You can see some of them on http://serendipity-child.deviantart.com/ Sadly I don't get enough time to do the kind of creating that I would like to do but one of my new years resolutions is to do more so perhaps I might keep to this. Here is a picture of my most recent painting:

I am married to a lovely man who I would love to look after really well and have his dinner on the table when I get home from work (I do manage this sometimes!). I would like to be a house wife, but the mortgage needs paying, however I do really enjoy cooking, baking, preserving and all sorts of other food related things. My wonderful husband bought me a smoker for Christmas so smoked food is currently appearing quite often on the menu!

I am really interested in self sufficiency and almost everything this involves, would love to one day own my own small holding and be totally self reliant, you can find a bit more out about me and self sufficiency at http://www.selfsufficientish.com/ my user name is Helsbells and I post there most days.

I have two guinea pigs called Florance and Matilda.

I am a Christian and try to lead a good life, its hard sometimes because I spend so much time at work being angry and that's not very Christian. I think that I try my best though.

I feel that I am a very creative and multi-faceted person, but am frustrated because I don't have time to express this creativity. Well perhaps in the new year I will be more of the person I want to be, my new years resolutions include:

Watch TV less. Shockingly I probably watch about 5 hours of TV per day, I just get back from work and collapse in front of it, its a total time stealer and it very un-beneficial, so will try much harder to watch less so I can do more craft stuff.

Throw less away. We consume way to much in this country and throw away far too much. So I would like to reduce the amount of rubbish that I throw away to one bag every two weeks. (or make that half a bag a week) for our whole house.

Pay off my overdraft, currently I am about £1800 overdrawn and must pay this off because I am paying interest on it. Once I have paid it off I want to get an ethical bank account with the co-op or the like.

Get back to the weight I was on my wedding day. Have gained a considerable amount since August and want to lose it by my birthday which is in May. I am having a photo shoot on the beach in Wales then, a friend of my sisters is an amature photographer and wants to take some images, also, my sister made my dress and she wants some really professional images on if, so that's my motivation.

So hopefully 2010 is going to be a really great year. Wish me luck!!