BookClub 8/52 - The Rumour

Next read from me is a Sunday Times best selling Thriller with a twist which several people on my Goodreads up have read and it kept coming up as a recommendation as well so here  are some of the reviews. I will let you know what I think

"In this chilling tale of paranoia, suspicion and accusation, Lesley Kara keeps you guessing until the final page." (Paula Hawkins, No.1 bestselling author of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and INTO THE WATER)

"A great debut with a slyly clever premise and a rollercoaster ride to the very last sentence." (Fiona Barton, bestselling author of THE WIDOW and THE CHILD)

12th Birthday party at Zorb Football

Well I think he had a good time at his joint party with one of his rugby friends. I spent most of the time laughing every time they tried to kick a football in these giant zorb balls!!

I have a great scrapbook page idea to make with my photos too featuring lots of circles!

ATDML Alphabetical Challenge D

We are on to our fourth challenge already in the Created by ATDML Alphabetical challenge and the letter D.

Plenty of options to inspire your next page.... and even I will be joining this one as we go along as I haven't had time just yet to illustrate it.

February ScrapMates pages

Bargain hunting in the January Hobbycraft sale afforded us a crop kit with lots of variety this month and we sold out of kits and even had the lovely Teresa visiting with us all the way from Wales.



We used the Hexagon Thickers alignment tool as a template for this second page where I still need to add my title but I could not find my alphabet stamps for love nor money in my craft room. Perhaps time for a tidy up again!!  I do get great pleasure out of using something designed for one purpose for another entirely and my Thickers alignment tools come in very hand as templates and don't take up much toom. Link here if you want to see what these are - available on Amazon, Hobbycraft and other online craft stores.

February ATDML Virtual Crop Day

Triangle madness from me this month where I created two pages and a card from Kaisercraft Golden Grove papers - nice and fresh and sunny to lift a chilly wintery day!

Plenty of texture on this page with lots of fringing, and whilst it took a while to create this page I am really pleased with the effect. As long as this page took the second page was much, much quicker, a simple combination of triangles, a mounted photo and title used this very heavily patterned paper range to create a simple more graphic look.

And there was enough left over for a quick card too.

Learning to Crochet

So I have started to learn to crochet thanks to my lovely friend Antonia who has the patience of a saint in teaching me! First job was to wind the wool into a ball which then made it easier to crochet with. I was the taught a chain stitch and a treble crochet stitch and whilst I am VERY slow and hold the hook like a lunatic I am sure it will get more familiar eventually!!

Watch this space for my super colourful scarf coming soon!!

Book Club 7/52 - Steel Brothers Saga

So technically this is books 7, 8 and 9 but as they were very quick reads ( i read all 3 of them in 8 days) I am just counting them as one. These books are of an adult nature and perfect if you just want to forget work stress and lose yourself in a simple but quite capitulating story line of Talon and his discovery into his dark and twisted past which he has tried to block out. Not the most comfortable of subject matter as the covers (quite 50 shades) would suggest but contains a child abduction and description of torture scenes so may not be for everyone.

The series continues with the other Steel Brothers stories which I might pick up later in the year.

Book Club 6/52 - Eleanor Oliphant

Another recommendation and as always I am behind the trend as I am aware many of my friends have already devoured this novel. I am about a third of the way though so far and find it so very well written and am chuckling away to myself one moment and holding my hand on my chest the next.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is the 2017 debut novel of Gail Honeyman, and the winner of the 2017 Costa Debut Novel Award. What a debut!

Here's the book blurb

Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live

She leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.


One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself.

ATDML Alphabetical Challenge C

Another alphabet challenge over on Created by ATDML today and we are on to letter C. Hop over to the blog to see your options and join in the challenge.

Book Club 5/52 - change of book - The Cows

I have had to abandon reading the Robin Williams book as I didn't find it well written, just seemed more like as assortment of other peoples work pulled into one book and I just wasn't in to it.  So rather than be miserable for a week I moved on to this gem.

By Dawn O'Porter, the first book I have read by her this was utterly fabulous and I would urge all my friends and blog readers to try this.  Here is the book blurb...

Tara, Cam and Stella are very different women. Yet in a society that sets the agenda, there’s something about being a woman that ties invisible bonds between us.

When one extraordinary event rockets Tara to online infamy, their three worlds collide in ways they could never imagine – and they discover that one woman’s catastrophe might just be another’s inspiration.

Through friendship and conflict, difference and likeness, they’ll learn to find their own voices.

Because sometimes it’s OK not to follow the herd.

Filming 1 second every day

A couple of years ago my daughter Ellie filmed one second every day which ended up with a short 6 minute ish synopsis of her year and it was fabulous!  I meant to do it the year after but life was too manic with a new job and a commute on the cards to contend with at the start of the year and I didn't want to set myself up to fail.

But having chatted through with Ellie over the Christmas holidays just gone she was suggesting she had missed doing in for 2018 and would perhaps do another in 2019. I looked in the Android App store and found the App "1 second everyday" and downloaded it and committed to joining her (as I had some technology that would simplify the editing for me and could even set reminders on should I need to!)

I am too impatient to wait a whole year however to see how it looks so whilst I will do that at the end of 2019 - I want to do a month in review as well - so here is my January 2019 in just over 30 seconds....Enjoy! (and yes Sundays = rugby!)

FTLOPP February Sketch Challenge

I was thrilled to be contacted by one of the FTLOPP team over on Facebook and asked if I would guest design for them for one of the 2019 sketch challenges. I have always loved a sketch as a starting point for a layout - almost always going off at a tangent soon enough but they do help start those creative juices flowing.

I also love to see how one sketch gets interpreted so differently when approached by different people so as the illustrated of this one I am especially intrigued to see where people take it - especially the stitching part!!

So here is the sketch designed by the lovely Laura Rumble

And here is my interpretation using a January sale pack of Maggie Holmes vinyl stickers on my page hence the small amount of camera glare as they are shiny (but being vinyl they are flat enough to use on a page as you would paper or card so why not when at a bargain price!)

If you do join in do share your page over on FTLOPP - if you aren't a member yet and love a scrapbook challenge and a like-minded community ask to join.

Here are a few close ups which hopefully show the white stitching better

2019 Reading Challenge - Book Club 5/52

This week see's book 5 for January so far and I am pleased to say a couple of friends are joining in with this reading challenge, either via their Instagram accounts or the Goodreads App.

My choice for this week was something completely different after the intense crime thriller of last week (which I loved and strongly recommend Joy Ellis books if you have not yet read any). 

I haven't read too far in to the book but I'm not particularly impressed so far. Doesn't really flow and is a little repetitive so I am hoping it improve...