Kitchen disaster

My kitchen has fallen apart!

It has been bad for years & years - then last night as I was pouring out the water from the potatoes into the sink - BANG & CRACK and the bottom fell out of the sink!

So now I am sinkless!

I have put up with this rubbish kitchen for years. Each year more and more things break.

The cupboard doors are either broken or peeling.

Drawers have fallen out so there are big gaps - this drawer fell out last year so I have to keep all my utensils just in it on the worktop.


Note the candles and matches next to it because the ignition does not work on the cooker any more and I only have 2 functioning rings.Then last year the oven door handle fell off - so we cannot shut the oven door properly now - which for me as a baker has been a nightmare as cakes do not rise or bake evenly.


There are areas without worktops - just random spaces awaiting them - my husband never got round to putting them in! Carousels that don't move round - are just stuck!

Because the kitchen is hated by everyone - these shelves have just become a dumping ground for junk.

I have lived with this crappy kitchen for about 10 years now, as we could not afford to do anything about it, but trying to hopelessly wash up in a tiny little washing up bowl last night -bought home reality -we really do have to do something about it now and find some money to have a new kitchen installed.

I think it will have to be a compromise between my dream kitchen and what we can afford. The trouble is that it is a large kitchen - so it will need lots of units, a new cooker and new sink. I really want to keep my fridge and freezer as they are huge and hold tons. I would love to have it professionally designed but I think that is going to be way out of our price range.

So today I am off to Magnet and MFI to look at their showrooms and to buy some kitchen magazines to get some ideas. I see a few stressful weeks ahead!

Happy Birthday Eleanor

Today is my eldests 24th birthday - a very happy birthday to you darling. She will not be home to celebrate with us - instead has decided to have an offical birthday - like the queen ! - next week with Jessica & Liam. Their birthday is 20th August and they all like to have a triple celebration on that date - so she is coming home on Friday for a few days and will have all her pressies etc with them.

This is a layout I did for last years birthday - I really like this one - hope we can get some lovely photos again next week.

Same sketch - different layout.

I liked the Page Map sketch that I used yesterday so I have used it again today for this layout. It shows Liam & Isabelle looking so beautiful in their prom outfits. It is funny to think that just a few hours later they were in their jeans & wellies at Glastonbury.

The challenge on UKS was 2 fold. First to use this sketch and secondly to use lots of bling - well as it is a prom layout I thought I had licence to go bling crazy. So the papers are all glittered and Jewelle's have been added everywhere, even black Jewelle's on the red paper.

All 3 papers are from DCWV All Dressed Up Stack. The title cut from black foam with my Big Shot using Sunset Font and then stuck onto DCWV metallic cardstock. Journalling block is by Niklin designs from Etsy and the hanging charm came in a scrapagogo kit - I think - but was gold so I inked it with some silver pigment ink by Color Box.

Layout 79 in my 104 target.

Another scraplift!

UKS is holding a summer bash to encourage us to use up our stash, so everyday this last week they have been putting up Page Maps for us to use.

This Page Map was from Wednesday this week and I loved the idea to use a tall thin photo, with plenty of room for journalling - so this photo of Jess outside the sports park at UEA and the story of how important this place is to her made the sketch ideal for me to use.

I did not have the right match of patterned & plain paper to follow the Page Map exactly - but as the aim was to use up what we already have - I made it fit!

Patterned paper is Doodlebug Design Inc. 1418 birthday boy: Ring Toss, Scenic Route White Lined paper, generic blue cardstock. Title & embellishment - Rusty Pickle coloured with water colour pencils. Photo corner - We R memory keepers. Jewell's - Papermania. There may or may not be a Buzz & Bloom chipboard scroll on the layout! Embossing it with blue embossing powder turned it green - so I have just painted it - but it looks really messy so I may abandon it!

Scroll abandoned - it looked silly! I even bought some Twinkling H2o's to see if they could help - No! - but they did make the 100% in the title look nice & shimmery. Just trying to decide whether to paint the rest of the title with them now.

This is 78 in my 104 target for the year.

I really like this sketch so I am just about to start another layout using the same design - its for Liam's album so it won't matter.

At last a layout to show - but....

It's a scraplift! After this really hectic week I was not able to come up with any original thoughts and when I saw this layout in this month's Scrapbooks Etc. magazine - I just knew it would be ideal to scraplift to show off the photos that I had already printed out small in preparation for a layout to record the trashy food the girls ate on holiday!

Again no patterned paper! Even though its a scraplift - I did put a bit of effort into it by drawing a freehand wobbly black border around the photos - easy to draw but a pain to cut out. The circles were cut using the Mini Monograms cart on my Cricut - first time it has been used in ages. Journalling was actually done in Photoshop Elements and printed onto photo paper. I like the white writing on black. I managed to use an American Crafts Journalling sticker again - around the middle photo - it was not quite the right size - but too late once I had stuck it down.

Here is the original layout. It is by Abbie Selander and is on page 64 of August / September issue of Scrapbooks etc. I was quite happy to scraplift it as it was in the Inspiration ~ make it yours section!

New punch

After seeing this fab punch at the crop on Saturday, I have been able to pick one up at Percy Throwers this morning. It cost me £14.99!! So I hope I can work it as it looks very complicated.

This is the base plate where you line up your paper to make which ever shape you want - apparently! And these are the different shapes you can make.I have got the fireworks shape. They do 4 all together. The only other one in stock this morning was Lace, but as they were so expensive thought I would see how I got on with this one first.

I had hoped to pick up a copy of issue 2 of the Creativity Life magazine when I went today but they did not have one - does anyone know when it is due out?

Ali - we still have not decided whether to keep the camcorder or not yet - as 3 of the children have their birthdays next week thought I would keep it till after then and if we have not used it sufficiently over the birthdays then I will send it back. - Which is a shame because it is a fab machine but a bit pointless if we are not going to use it.