...All fixed

Well it looks as though the store is all fixed, but I will be keeping a beady eye on it... if you have had any difficulty at the store today please do let me know, many of our functions at the store are automated and we just might not know about it unless you tell us!

...Store issues

Folks this is a heads up about the store - it seems there is an issue with the server and so I am expecting what you might call turbulence until it is sorted out - I have already heard from one customer whose visit was completely disrupted. I will post an update here when it is fixed. My apologies for the nuisance.

...Always

A little CAS fun this evening - Sometimes simple is best, especially if you have three dozen other things all requiring your attention. this one was so easy I should be ashamed that I never thought of it before. All you need is a few different wash tapes, Stick a few bits at random across a piece of spare card and lie a die on top.

I used one of the dies from the new My Heart Die sets, It gave me two die cuts, one I used on this card and one for later.

I just thought it was best to keep it super simple, so I stamped the always onto the card base and mounted the heart frame over it on foam tape. Easy peasy!

Hope it tickles!

...Mini Mail - new dies

"Absolutely - yep go ahead, stuff as much stuff onto the one card as you can" - this is what was going through my mind making this card - it feels like an age since I got crafty and so I just wanted to have a little fun today! In real life this card is less lime and more mossy.....

I'm slowly getting back into the swing after Christmas and we will be having a February release, we will announce that soon, but I had a couple of items become available that I thought might be useful for last moment Valentines and so I am showing them to you now rather than hold them back for Feb.

What set me off this morning was the delivery of this super dinky little die set. it's called Mini Mail and it makes - guess what? teeny tiny little envelopes!

The finished envelopes, when folded, finish up a dinky 2.45inches wide by 1.74 inches tall. Perfect size for popping onto the front of a card. I stuffed 3 of them on my 5x5 card this afternoon, I just couldn't chose one!

What's really neat is that this is a 4 part die - one of the dies in the set makes a little perfectly sized insert card. You can see the little green insert card in the pic below nestling into the pink envelope. There are two eeny weeny postage stamp shaped dies also, hopefully we will have fun with those next card.

The envelopes are super simple as the die includes 4 embossed lines which automatically score the folds for you as you cut. You can see the 4 embossed fold lines shown in green in the graphic below. Once you remove the die cut envelope from the die, you just fold along the ready marked creases to get your perfectly folded envelope - a little glue to secure and you're done.

Made oodles of these earlier today - double sided patterned paper makes it so easy to create little envies that look as though they are lined!

I matched the little envelopes with some little hearts cut with some new My Heart Dies - also new this evening.

The My Heart stamp set was released in December 2012 and is still a firm favourite.

My Heart die set released this evening - contains dies for the two solid heats and the arrow heart.

Hope it tickles.

...not a sausage

I could have sworn that I would have something to put on the old blog by now, but nope, I have nothing I can show you yet. I have raided the WMS archives for this pic, it's from quite a while ago and it, and more like it can be found in the WMS  gallery - have you been over lately?

I used Sweethearts and Faux Fun on this little altered box.

Click here to see some Valentine Inspiration. There are over 188 pics to ogle!

Waffle.

Truth be told, I have not been feeling very crafty - drawy yes, but crafty....nope! Fingers crossed for tomorrow - there's nothing quite like a messy craft room to suck the mojo right out of a bod...

Did manage to get back to gym tho, the second time I went passed off very well, I was even ok with the other guy being there. The fact that he spent the entire time on the excercise bike, reading a novel puts him firmly within my sphere. Not a stitch of lycra did he wear and not one word of conversation beyond a brief nod did he offer - that's my kind of gym companion right there.

Today. Hmmm, not so wonderful. It wasn't the excercise, goodness knows I don't push myself too far, but when 15 teenage boys trooped into view between my wobbly thighs it was time to fold up that damned abs cradle and get the heck out of there.... Aparently their school has a regular booking for Wednesday mornings. Flashback to the receptionists crooked smile as I signed in this morning...

...New Year waffle

At 7:00am exactly this morning, an idea somehow slid out of the part of my brain where I keep my wildest fantasies and landed in the area where I do most of my rational thinking. Disguising itself as an actual possibility, it passed harmlessly on to the lobe responsible for speech and I found myself saying "I know - I will go to the gym today!"

If this had happened even a half hour later I would have been fine, the wee folks would all have been at school and I could have talked myself out of it, no harm done. Critically, the idea announced itself just as I was dishing out breakfast to my wee folks, they all heard it. I took a split second to try to work out whether I could just pass it all off with a huge belly laugh as one of 'mummies little jokes', but an expression of pure admiration and a slowly exhaled "a..w..e..s..o..m..e.." from the face of my middle child cut the legs right out from under that idea.

I'm here to tell you that I know for a fact that Darwin had the whole thing all wrong. I am descended from bears, I know this. The closer it gets to winter the more I want to hibernate. Eat and hibernate. This year for some reason I have been feeling especially 'hibernaty'. It felt like I hadn't stood still in so long that needed to stop. I took a complete break from work and spent time with the wee folks and I ate. I ate like a bear. Pretty soon I began to look a little bit bear-like... a little more rounded, in all the wrong areas... we've already discussed my lack of frontal upholstery on this blog, but I have no trouble adding protective packaging to the posterior...

So I went to gym. I'm a pushover for a wide-eyed 10 yr old. lets face it, I'm a push over for a wide- eyed any-year old.... this is what happens when you grow up with a mother who encourages you at every turn, you learn to do stupid things, just because it causes somebody you love to smile.

I don't actually possess gym garb, but I figured folks only go the gym to get all sweaty. Nobody cares what you wear. I liberated some tracksuit bottoms from DH's half of the cardboard box we are currently using to 'feel out' wardrobe space in the new house and paired those suckers up with a baggy T. Brand new white trainers, sale bargains from 7 years ago last November, I remember this as I was heavily pregnant at the time and I knew that some day those swollen feet would go down. Ha!

Thankfully the gym was empty, and I worked my way through memorising every detail so I can bask in the admirational glow of my offspring later that evening, I conquer each machine easily. Ok so I'm working on weights that are 10k below where I'm supposed to start, but you can't rush these things y'know, and I still have a slight temperature....

At 'half time' or whatever you call it, I popped down to the tuck shop for a bottle of water, and a quick chat with the manager and a few folks in the foyer. Chuffed with how encouraging everyone is, I pop back upstairs for the second round half.

Totally befuddled by the running machine, I just couldn't get that beast turned on and while I'm standing there, feet wide apart on the sideboards, poking every button I can find, twice, trying to get the thing to waken up, I hear a dull thud. Brain interprets this through the noise of the specially purchased 'running tracks' pounding through my ipod as the sound of the the heavy door at the foot of the stairs clanging shut. Out of the pink and purple nowhere, I have this sudden urge not to look a fool, nor to ask the dumb question "How do you tun this thing on?" and so I leap off the sideboards, completely forgetting that I clipped my T to the handlebars just like it told me to.

I'm pretty sure that 'Miss Gymtastic 2014's' first eyeful of yours truly included actual square yardage of paisley patterned undergarment and square inch-age of armpit shadow that made fatal the decision not to depilate this morning. Her second eyeful was most likely the gracefully synchronised arcing of a pair of headphone earbuds simultaneously disengaging the ears with a discernible 'pop' when they broke seal with my ear drums as the back of my head followed my body instinctively diving for the corner where they keep the rowing machines. I am safe in that corner.

I have the shoulders of a swimmer, hugely ironic, given that I can't actually swim but I settled down anyhow for a spell on the rower. I can row. I switch the resistance to about half way, I cast off and picture myself sailing down the river, I'll have a few km's under my belt in no time. Nice steady pace. I'm breathing, I'm vizualising, a little trick I picked up from Jessica Ennis. Eyes closed. It's a warm summer day, sunlight glinting near the reed beds, bees buzzing, butterflies butterflying, birdies tweeting along the tow path -  ooh look there's Ratty and Mole on the river bank, Mr Toad is dropping a line in, bliss, only the sound of the chain wheel spinning as I stretch and pull in beautiful rhythm.

Miss Gymtastic 2014 has a motor boat. She flipped the resistance up to maximum before she even landed in the seat. She wears shorts. Short lycra shorts. Short lycra shorts with neon speed stripes. She has NO hair on her legs. When she pulled back on the grips, the chain came out of the housing so fast it could have sawn a log in half. The scream of that chain, back forward back forward, waves were crashing on the shore, reed beds flattened, all my little butterflies and birdies exploded like bubbles. I sat beside her for 4 minutes rowing like an elderly wildebeest. I figured 4 minutes was the least time it would take me to establish the fact that I wasn't really running away, but was actually just finishing my prescribed session.

On the upside I had a half hour extra to figure out what version of the story to tell the 10 yr old when she comes home from school.