Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year, that is. It is now the Year of the Rat, so hopefully that bodes well for Pan's recovery.

Yesterday we went to Southampton for the new year celebrations, with Ian and his youngest and oldest girls (Flo, yes Flo, really, small world, and Rebecca), and Reb's beau Rob. It was a gorgeous sunny day, perfect weather in which to photograph all the colour and movement of the dragon dance and other festivities.

Most of the display was quite traditional, but there was also a lion dance to Soulja Boy's Crank That, which was very cool :)

After the dancing and ninjitsuing and singing was all done, we walked down to the Bargate bit of town where they had a Chinese market with bonsai trees, and calligraphy, nodding head Chinese lions, yummy food, and a great little dragon rollercoaster for the kiddies (big and small :))


It's kind of embarrassing going to something like this with the boss man, it's like being the consort of a mafia mobster :) In fact, I'm sure he's running some kind of protection racket. Huge queue for the noodle stall? Not a problem, we get whisked round the back and served 4 tubs (delicious they were) with no waiting, and, as far as I could see, no money changing hands. The balloon seller slipped young Flo a free balloon with a wink. Straight on the roller coaster, again free of charge, and when Ian was on it it went round 8 times, the normal paying punters only got 4 or 5. Personally I think it's a terrible abuse of privelege and I told him so! :)

There are some more piccies here.

Fab day all round....more to tell later, as there was a memorable Wildcats game to blog also (the 99% of you who aren't into the beautiful game needn't read that post :D)

Happy Birthday Bessie Wessie Woo!

It's my best mate's birthday today, but to be honest she's not having the best time of it as she's very poorly.

We will celebrate enthusiastically, if a little late, once she is all better.

In the meantime here's her card. I had fun making this with lots of nice bright inks and paints, and pretty stamps, and my trusty Bind It All.

I hope you had as good a birthday as possible, Alison hun, under the circumstances, and we will partay partay partay at a later date (not too far off) xxx

Friday Fiver - 9th February

1. Do you like the thrill of a chase?
Yes, of course. Doesn't everyone? But not more than the contentment that comes after you've caught who you were chasing :)

2. What winds you up?
Customs charges! I have a parcel stuck at the sorting office as we speak with £12 to pay - booo.

3. Are you a loud talker?
Yes, especially if I'm excited - my poor best mate has burst eardrums because of me

4. What comes easy to you?
Ummmm, maths?

5. What did you dream about recently?
I hardly ever remember my dreams. I wish I did. I know I remembered one recently because I told Alison about it. But now I've forgotten it again.

Edited to add, this was what was at the sorting office, my valentine gift to myself, is it or is it not beautiful????? I love Etsy!!!

For those of us who had heard of the Butterfly Effect before the Ashton Kutcher movie

I nearly got myself in bother with this CJ entry. You know how the basic premise is that the book travels around with an unmounted stamp, and each participant creates an entry for the book using the stamp?

This time I got so carried away making my entry, that I completely forgot that it was the butterfly wings stamp that had sent me off on a chaos theory tangent in the first place, and very nearly forgot to use the stamp at all :D

I kept looking at it, thinking, I'm sure there is something missing. lol I'm a twazzock :)

I put my Cricut Design Studio software hard to work on this one, creating and cutting both the chaos star (like all good Hawkwind fans, I have a soft spot for Michael Moorcock), and the title.

The title was cut twice, on deep purple vellum for the shadow, and metallic pale purple textured card for the bit at the front.

The background - which was kind of supposed to represent a hurricane /typhoon type weather thingy, but ended up just looking like pretty swirlies, was painted with Daler Rowney pearlescent liquid acrylics, my favourite paints at the moment.

The butterfly was stamped onto clear shrink plastic with royal purple stazon, and painted on the back after shrinking with more of the D-R pearlescents. It was then attached to the chaos star with wire.

The text was stamped using the Hero Arts 'playful' alpha.

I had a lot of fun with this one (I always say that don't I :) )

Poor Pan

I had a real shock on Saturday when I found a big, nasty lump on my lovely ratty Pan. It definitely hadn't been there in any noticeable form the day before, so it had grown pretty fast.

I called the vet straight away and made an appointment for Monday morning, and by Sunday it had doubled in size again..

The vet had a look yesterday, determined that it needed to come off ASAP, and booked her in for an op straight away.

I was worried sick all day yesterday staring at the phone, I booked her in at 9:30am and didn't get the all clear call till almost 5pm.

Touch wood so far she seems fine, recuperating well from her op. Just a little put out that she has been banished to the post operative recovery annexe, which as you can see is a little smaller than her usual quarters.

She keeps peering through the bars at her sister lording it in the mansion next door, and going "squeak....why am I in prison mummy....what did I do?....squeak"

Poor little thing.

In the last pic you can see where they have shaved her and a couple of her stitches.

My mate Julie has finally succumbed to blogdom....

What took you so long?? :)

And she's tagged me

I don't usually do the tag thang, but just this once....

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MY MIDDLE NAME?
Here are the rules:

1. You have to post the rules before you give your answers.

2. You must list one fact about yourself beginning with each letter of your middle name. (If you don't have a middle name, use your maiden name).

3. After you are tagged, you need to update your blog with your middle name and your answers.

4. At the end of your blog post, you need to tag one person for each letter of your middle name. (Be sure to leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged and that they need to read your blog for details.)

I don't have a middle name so maiden name it is:

M - moving jobs again after all of two months, oops, not looking forward to telling my boss tomorrow, hope he doesn't read my blog!

A - according to Darby, I am anorectal :)

S - statistician by trade (I can do it, I can spell it, but don't ask me to say it out loud after a few ciders. Or 'econometric modelling')

O - lovin' Orlando....have been there 10 times and counting, and will be back there next year with any luck

N - new year, new boyfriend :) I'm seeing a fab, funny and utterly lovely chap called Ian and couldn't be happier

I want an H in my maiden name so I can talk about hockey!!!! no fair....

Not going to tag anyone else, but if anyone is reading this who wants to play, consider it done :)

Happy Birthday to the Big Guy, and a bit of Kes....

Happy Birthday Bert!















As for Kes...he's been a scrappin'

First time this season.

Not the most exciting hockey fight I've ever seen, but quite amusing.

Look at Olli - I think he's doing an impression of the Panthers logo :) That's taking branding to a whole new level :)

For all the growling, it didn't take long for Ryan to tame him lol





Sorry I've gotten so behind with the Kespics and Kespress recently, by the way. I need to do a big update sometime soon.... there have been some fab piccies and nice interviews and articles recently...it's just finding the time... :( I'm a rubbish obsessive fan, they'll revoke my stalker club membership soon.

Friday Fiver - 1st February 2008

1. What are you set on?
I don't know. I'm a bit of a 'que sera sera' kind of gal, tend to let life unfold as it sees fit. So I don't make much in the way of forward plans, hence nothing really to get 'set on'. How about....I am set on making my 40s my best decade yet?

2. What do you have to do right?
I hate to make mistakes, I hate to be wrong. So, I think the answer to this one is "everything". But on the other hand, I'm not a total perfectionist, if I get bored with a task (which I often do) then I'm happy to leave it with some rough edges.

3. Have any kids?
Yup, three fab sons aged 5, 16 and 17. (the troll isn't one of them)

4. Are you patient?
Depends. Sometimes I can be hugely patient, in relation to things that the majority of people I know seem to be much less patient about. Other times I can be as much of a "I want it and I want it NOW!" person as the best of them :)

5. Friday fill-in:
I know if I put my mind to it ______.
I can achieve almost anything. But getting that scatty old mind focussed on anything is a mammoth task :D

A-Z starts here

The girls over at the It's a Creative World blog have an A-Z Art Journal challenge a goin' on....and I thought it might be fun to join in.

It's one page every 2 weeks, prompted by a different letter of the alphabet - so in theory by the end of the year I should have reached the letter Z.

Most of the other participants seem to be very organised, with themes, and book covers already done, and each page completed minutes after the fortnightly letter prompt comes out.

Not me :) I have no theme, and no book, and I've only just got around to doing my page for the letter A, 3 weeks late :) But I'll get there...

Here is my 'A' page - A for Alive:

The silhouette is me, in my jamas :) I'm supposed to be kind of paddling in the sea, and flinging my arms out in a joyful fashion - not walking on water lol. I don't really have a god complex, honest :D

The lyrics are Pearl Jam, and sum up a lot of how I was feeling last year, and still do up to a point, survivor guilt gets me at different levels.

But this page is mainly positive. It is fitting that this is the first page in a journal that will span the whole of 2008, as the first day of this year was a real turning point for me, left a lot of my demons behind, and stepped out of the fog.

I feel healthily alive for the first time in as long as I can remember.

That is brain healthy, not body healthy, I'm still overweight, unfit, and lacking in many vital nutrients :D

This was quick and easy to make. Selphy pic of me in my joy-to-the-world pose taken with camera on self timer balanced on a table. Background is painted with Daler Rowney pearlescent fluid acrylics and watercolour pencils. [ALIVE] is stamped and the rest is handwritten.

Next up, the letter B. for Brother.

Behind the scenes at the All Star Weekend....

This made me spit out my chocolate chip muffin :)

"Alex Ovechkin: Yes, comrades is good All-Star Games. Atlanta is full of beautiful womans who love long-terms contract. Is this true, Cosmo Kramer?"

Margee over at Sportsquee is a comic genius :)

http://sportsquee.blogspot.com/2008/01/fly-on-wall-all-star-game.html

I'm a little worried that Pronger, unhandled, might eat these children:

Andrius Kaminskas, you are on the list!

Wipe that smile off your face, mate, you're going daaaahhhnn.

Derek Boogaard, Chris Pronger and Jesse Boulerice have a new pal....

All 4 of you will be up against the wall in front of a firing squad when I start my revolution!!

This Romford thug took out both Tomas Janak and Cons' hero Lee Richardson last night in a dirty, chippy, badly officiated shambles of a game down in Essex.

Neither returned to the game.

As if we weren't operating on a short enough bench already!!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Get well soon lads!

Where's Waldo?

This is my entry in Jean's stamping CJ in the UKS circle.

The stamps we had to use in this book were three cute little faces from the Zettiology "quirkies" line:

I thought it would be fun to make a kind of crowd scene from the faces, and do a "Where's Wally" kind of thing. So that's how this entry came to be.

I love using masks with stamps to overlap them and create depth, so that's how I produced the crowd, on plain white card using black waterproof ink. Once finished and all dry, I sprayed the crowd with a suspension of perfect pearls in water, and then droppered Ecoline liquid watercolours onto the card while it was still wet.

Once this had dried I coloured in all their eyes with a white gel pen.

The backdrop (which I thought was the London skyline but apparently is Venice and I am ignorant and uncultured :)) is a GPP stamp designed by my buddy Michelle across the water, and the sky is just a scribble of watercolour pencils.

The main face, embossed and covered in crackle glaze, is surrounded by a metal frame with the page title ('face in the crowd') applied with rub ons.

I think that's everything. This was fun to do.

Oh....My......God....... (please read in best Janice from Friends voice)

Well....Friday night was the Swindon Wildcats quiz night. We aren't the best funded team in the league, so events like this, where the fans get together to have some fun (and the poor players are pressganged into turning up too lol) are vitally important fund raisers.

It was a brilliant night out. We had team captain Wayne Fiddes on our table. I am being generous and attributing his complete lack of either general or hockey knowledge onto his recent concussion :) Bless him. Nice bloke though.

We managed to end up 3rd out of about 15 teams, so we didn't do too bad. And no we didn't cheat at ALL, honest to goodness guvnor, but Wayne's mate Chris, and my bessie Alison and other half Ian all chipped in with a few answers despite not being there. Isn't telepathy clever?

Cons got to have his piccie taken with his hero, Lee Richardson, our young #16.

Tracey got yet another photo of her with Wayne for her shrine (her nephew told me she has a basement room full of candles and there is a little altar surrounded by photos of Wayne...I'm not sure how much truth there is in that ;) OK, I'm lying, but he did embarrass her soundly in front of our dear Captain, and his wife and mother lol

And Nelly called poor Tomas Janak to heel to have his piccie taken with me :) The pic is still on Tracey's camera at the moment, but I will add it to this post as soon as I have it. From what I could see on her camera, I was the colour of beetroot and was cringing with embarrassment :D

Edited to add, here it is. I am not constipated, I am embarrassed!!! :D

---

Fast forward to last night. A brilliant game against the Milton Keynes Lightning, who are a long way higher up the table than us, so certainly no pushovers. In the 2nd period we were sitting at 3-1 down, but we managed to pull it back to 3-3. We would have all been happy with a point, but then with virtually no time left on the clock, we got another one in and took the game 3-4. The place ERUPTED!

On a side note, at each home game, there is a "shirt off the player's back" raffle. I buy a couple of tickets each week. This week it was the turn of - you guessed it - #41, Swindon Wildcats Player of the Month for January, our highest scoring D-man (he shows up half the forwards), Janak :)

Well,I might have bought a few more tickets than I usually do :) (no, not 100s!! I bought 6, rather than the usual 2). But I was still in complete and utter shock when I WON!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was so embarrassed though, after mobbing him for autographs last week, having him accosted on my behalf Friday night, and now this :) I couldn't meet his eye as I walked onto the ice for our shirt presentation, in case he starts to think I'm a dangerous stalker :)

Luckily Connor was there to distract attention, so he got the shirt handed to him. God it SMELT. And it was dripping with sweat. Yuk :) I thought Tomas sweat might be sexy....but, nah!

:D

Thanks to Michelle for filming the momentous occasion on my phone:



All in all, what a great couple of days :)

And if any solicitors are reading, I know a tall Slovakian hockey player who might be in the market for a restraining order :)

A quick photo catch up....

1. The beautiful bracelet my fantabulous best pal made just for meeeee:

2. Me freezing to DEATH watching Connor play hockey (field not ice) in sub zero temperatures:


and 3. and 4. Connor and Scorch the Dragon (Coventry Blaze mascot. He's cheating on Willie Wildcat, such a floozie my son)

Why I love Cricut Design Studio....

This card took 10 minutes from start to finish, and that included the software crashing twice (I'll love it even more when they fix the bugs!)

Friday Fiver - 25th January

(well, it's the 26th today, but I didn't have time to do it yesterday...)

1. What are you missing?
4 way intra dimensional chats. And the Fru.

2. How do you feel?
Right now? apart from the above, pretty damn content. Just wish my graces were fighting fit.

3. What have you let go?
The ranch

4. Who have you hurt?
Loads of people, I almost always don't mean to, but I can be pretty thoughtless

5. What do you deserve?
To be happy

Happy birthday Malcy (yesterday)

And a fab time was had by all, not least the Blaze (who flattened the Cardiff Devils 8-1, wooohoooooooooooo)

I think Malc's entire family are now firmly converted hockey fanatics :)

And - nobody tell Willie Wildcat - but Connor has a new love-of-his-life, Scorch the dragon.

More pics to come when I can find my phone cable :)

Also I was given the fabbest pressie, pic of that to follow also.....

What a game, what a game, what a game, what a mighty good game

A note for anyone who has made the effort to plough right back to the start of my blog....I know my blog seems to start a little suddenly - this is because I had a pretty rotten year in 2007, and kind of wanted to start afresh in 2008, so I deleted all posts from 2007 and back.

So I'm sorry for the lack of a gentle introduction....



And yes, I'm talking about the Wildcats!!!

Fantastically entertaining game tonight at the Link. Worth the price of my season ticket all on its own :)

This game had everything, goals galore (final score was 9-6, in our favour) including a hat trick from Joel the Goal and a deuce from MVP (and all round hottie) Tomas Janak, a very contentious disallowed goal (we scored 10 really), a few fights and general high levels of physicality throughout, including the visiting netminder roughing up the ref and one of the linesmen, which was entertaining.

What else? Darby's mate Katie had her birthday do up at the game, and was surprised at the end of the 60 minutes when they called her onto the ice for a photo with the team and then presented her with Nathan Craze's stick, signed by the whole roster. HOW cool is THAT?

Oh and then to cap off a perfect evening, it was #41's turn to do autographs after the game (and Addie Brittle too, but I was slightly less excited about him, bit young for me :)) - he signed Connor's jersey and talked to him for ages (and Cons said to him "my mum is your biggest fan" lol), and then posed for pics. I look like a lunatic (and a FAT one!!!) in this photo, but chuffed to pieces :)

Oh, and tomorrow? MORE HOCKEY!!!! YAY!!!! Off up to Cov for the Blaze vs the Devils. Woohoo!!!!