.Keeping calm...

It 's a gift; thanks so much Luckett....all I know is it that it came from the internet!

Whatever you do this weekend, please keep your head.  If you live in the UK, you'll know what I mean.  Petrol.  Ouch.  Well, I need some but am lucky enough to not be so reliant that I'm prepared to queue. What with that and the threat of Spring turning back to something resembling a white Easter week, I'm going to hunker down and do stuff.  Yea verily, it will include crafting.  It will certainly include preparations for Ludgershall Crop next weekend - y'all just know how hateful that is if I leave it till the last minute! You'll ending up clocking in to read another whiney post about how unlucky I am to have to sit on the floor and sort through an accumulation of ten years worth of stash.  This potential enforced 'at home' time will  include reluctant window cleaning.  Oh my, this beautiful spring herald of a low sun really shows up your winter sluttiness.  OK, MY winter sluttiness.  And there's a freezer to defrost too.  I think it's probably time to discard the winter's escaped peas and consider all the fresh bounty that I hope we'll be the beneficiaries of when Grandpa's garden starts to fruit.  (And veg, so to speak).  I've got things to do at my desk, and....and...I'm in the mood to tidy it. Standby. Be prepared.  Keep calm.
Have a great weekend.

Whats On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 147

See, you turn your back for a teeny tiny week; I get the old act together a bit and this happens to my desk.  This photo taken Tuesday morning.  And apart form completion of the card, it's utterly the same. Shameful? Probably.  Interesting? Possibly.  I know a lot of you will be tempted to explain the puddle of buttons can be avoided if I would just colour seperate them into little jars. But I can't.  Can you see the P?  It's gessoed.  And dry.  In the tray of little glitters upon which it reclines, there's an A, too.  They are my sweet mother's initials and the nick-name that I use to address her.  They are a late birthday gift.  I know they are going to be late because her birthday was yesterday.  But other, more reliable gifts were involved, honest!

Show us your desk then - upload to your blog, keep your post brief if you possibly can, put WOYWW in the title and link here. We'll visit.  The term 'desk' is used in the loosest of meanings..you'll see as you meander through the list.  If you're wondering about the availability of the WOYWW badge, just email me your address - juliadunnit@me.com, and after I've applied some stringent criteria to your application, I'll post one to you. One other thing....I'm not going to make it around every desk this week,  already now this because I'm not here. I'm elsewhere!

Gettin' on...

I thought I had all day to finish stuff, get some Tuesday chores done and generally be sorted.  Turns out Mr D wants help this afternoon in his workshop.  And as you can imagine, this has caused some dashing about and real 'doing' to be done then.  Yep.  On top of which, I have to make time to 'get ready' to go out this evening...it doesn't just happen by magic at my age you know!  ESPECIALLY if he's going to give me dusty packing and protecting for transport type work to do! 


A couple of people asked about this card -stamps are from a set by Stampin' Up! and I stamped it onto good gloss card stock, using second generation of the purple ink to get the offset image....and used a stamp positioning tool to do that, and get the word in the right place.  Occasionally, I think these things through! 




I don't think there's much mystery about the bulldog card..except that fab tag is actually by a clothing company called Mantaray. I wonder how many of their workers see the potential in their product tags!  I must stress that I didn't buy the item of clothing because of the tag.  But it helped. 
I'm off then.  Wonder if there's any chance of working outside lying on the grass under this amazing sunshine?

Coming live...

So I'm in the Apple store in Basingstoke...live as it were. And wearing a WOYWW badge! But the point is I'm here because I've had a whine about not being able to use the keyboard on the iPad when commenting, and about Blogpress saying it won't publish my photos from the 'Media Library'. So the young (and I mean young) man has suggested I take a seat int he personal set up area and try posting from here. So for the next hour or so, if you see a defeated looking fat woman walking around Basingstoke with her gorgeous looking, newly coiffed red headed Daughter, you'll know the geeks have got the better of me.  I already think all the problems I've had an embarrassed but gentle whine about are created by a weaker wi-fi signal at home than there must be in the shop. The signal is almost palpable.  Oh wait, that might be the heady mix of blue t shirted youngsters and technology I don't understand.  What's palpable? My fear. 

Call it a 'Doing Day'

When I woke up yesterday, my mind was full of Friday and what I wanted to do.  It's definitely something to do with the lighter mornings, getting up isn't such a chore in the light, and in yesterday's sunlight it was really quite lovely.  I noticed that even the spray of water from the shower that soaked the bathroom floor by mistake was all sparkly and lovely.  Poetic, non? So before I even got as far as fully dressed and breakfasting, I had coloured my hair (if you think I leave my desk for too long before dealing with it...), unintentionally washed the floor in the bathroom and sorted out another load of laundry. After I cleaned up in the kitchen (can't do anything else till that's done...a teeny OCD that could do with a bit of growth), I resolved to catch up at my desk.  Which meant ignoring anything else.  I think when you get to the stage of just needing to do it, it's easier to get tunnel vision, and get on I did.  Another batch of badges ready to go, overdue and upcoming cards made - a lovely chance to play with some new stuff, so well worth it.  Lunch with my man, in the sun on deckchairs under my workroom window.  Dangerous to go any fruther onto the garden.  The sunshine was making the need to cut the grass and tidy up a bit more than a post-winter requirement. So when Mr D went back to work, Miss D came home from college.  I gave her enough time to eat and then bribed her into the garden to help.  It was lovely. I broke 2 panes of glass getting the lawnmower out of the shed.  Fortunately unwanted, previously used....another of Mr D's 'I'll put that away sometime' things.  Well, they're away now.  In a box.  Luckily it was toughened glass so it broke like a windscreen.  Scared the beegees out of us though!  We gave up when it got chilly.  Brought in the washing and Mr D rang to say he'd be late.  I slammed a chicken in to roast.  And she and I stayed in each others company - I at my desk and she at this very computer, listening to comedy on iplayer and looking forward to supper.  It was almost a perfect day.  I say almost because of course, now there's a huge pile of ironing to do, and my desk looks as if I used every ink pad stamp and piece of paper in my collection.  But I don't mind.  Totally worth it.  And now, please excuse me, I'm so exhausted that I have to go and lie in a darkened room and contemplate the things I didn't get around to.  And there were a few....million.

what's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 146

Well it's relatively tidy, it shows some new goodies that just arrived from Jennie at The Artistic Stamper (24 hours after I ordered 'em, how cool is that!).  The bubble wrap at left is becasue I just finished a small session of packing up some more badges to send. 
 (If you want a WOYWW pin/badge, please ask me. Email at left.) 
The clear drawers Kezzy, do indeed contain a few leftover die cut flower curls, but mostly foam pads and a handful of large buttons that I'm apparently never going to use.  I should have been finishing samples to take over to Shopkeeper Gal..but catching up seemed more important...genuinely 'clearing the desk'.  And now, a couple of hours later, it looks like a desk with some creativity going on, because I'm in a panic over not finishing the samples!
We'd love to see what's on your workdesk today.  Upload a pic to your blog....please keep your post relatively brief and then come back here and link - we can visit more desks that way, believe me, not everyone reads your post...gawping at the picture is too irresistible!  Oh,  and please put WOYWW in your post title.  
If you visit a desk, leave a comment and you'll get a reciprocal visit.  With the list standing at nearly 200 desks, not everyone can visit everyone.  I did last week - took me till yesterday;  I can't do it each week but I do try! 
Last thing - as you comment, leave your Link list number, it helps hugely.  AND...yes, your number may change, but only by a couple digits at most, at least finding your link is easier if there's a head start on where to look!


I know I've asked you to keep it brief and I'm doing the opposite, but you may also want to know that I'm the only one that can remove or alter links, so if you encounter a problem, email me and I'll try to sort it...be patient though, I'm not home all day on Wednesdays!  

Warning - Grumpy!

Completely unrelated...but better than a picture-less post!

So I take a phone call from a Company who claim to have helped us arrange our mortgage with Santander. If they did, I say, it was a while ago, because we've since changed our lender, oooh, say 4 years ago.  Well, she got a bit stroppy about my vague disbelief. See, I can't imagine that we'd have used a broker once when every other time we've managed it on our own.  Being as we're both big ugly grown ups and all.  But hey, I don't want her to be stroppy, it's no biggie. So I move it on a bit and ask why she's calling.  And she launches into an attack on how we haven't used their services since and on that basis she's ringing to give me the chance to either stay on their customer list or be removed.  Well, not a little taken aback by the erm, haranguing, I express more disbelief.  You are, I say (to be clear) asking me if I want you to contact me anymore.  Yes.  (She said, and not a word more!) So I said that having been given the choice, my answer is no, thank you. She explained of course, that it would be my loss; they have pensions and mortgages and loans and advice for everyone.  I explained that she had empowered me and that I'd made my decision.  (Honestly, it was all frightfully serious). That was about a week ago.  In today's post is a letter from them.  It says that they understand that I've chosen not to be contacted by them and they respect my decision, but would I please just telephone to confirm....and oh boy, they give me a dedicated phone number.  Premium rate of course. So I did what any self respecting grumpy would do.  I wrote across it in red felt tip (Copic, actually). Letters about 1" high.  I wrote of my incredulity at the way they've alienated me by wasting my time, their resources and my resources.  And I don't mind the second class stamp it will cost. And so fired up was I, that I also wrote an overdue note to the Secretary at Exmouth Rugby Club about his rude note threatening to clamp my car because I'd parked there.  When I was a guest of someone who had hired the place for the day.  My letter gives the benefit of my advice regarding veiled threats.  It's only fair. We'd had a good day at that Club, and I suspect that some customers would have been a bit rattled by finding such a note on their cars.  Harumph!!!
Now, given that LLJ and I were discussing advancing years and grumpiness only this morning, does this qualify?  On the bright side - it's the first time I've dragged out my set of Copics for ages!