messing about in boats

It's been a while since my last post and lots of things have happened. And I've been learning :)

I've had the last week off work with Hubby before his new university term starts. We hitched  up Bella (the caravan) and, with Lucy in tow,  headed to Skipton where we stayed in the lovely quiet Riverside caravan site. It's actually in Cononley which is a lovely little village right on the main train line. It has one of the busiest train stations I've ever seen so I confess we were disturbed by the trains going past every 15 minutes (plus the additional freight trains) and we were held up nearly EVERY time we tried to leave the village. And yet I still loved it and would go back.
While we were there Hubby's mum and dad came down for the day and we hired a canal boat from-http://www.penninecruisers.com/. We'd actually booked Jim (the boats are in pairs- Rosie and Jim, Jack and Jill, Bill and Ben) as Jim was a 4 berth boat but we were upgraded to Jill, who is a 10 person boat for free. Mr Jelly was soo excited to drive the boat I can't even tell you!
Lucy loved the trip and I'm sure you'll agree that she looked spiffing in her life jacket. She was so tired that by the time we got back to Bella she slept solidly for 10 hours.
I would really recomend this for anyone- as one of the MIL's friends pointed out it's cheaper than taking 2 kids to a theme park for the day (it was £80 for 9am until 4.30).

Hubby took me to the big garden center in Carlisle (it's part of the Strikes group) as it has a big craft shop as well as a gift section. While we were there a lady was demonstraing the distress inks. I've owned "old paper" for over 12 months and I had no idea what to do with it. I now own "fired brick" "mustard seed" and "sea glass" as well as a couple of blenders. I love it. I also bought a tub of glue and seal. Once you've stamped and coloured your image you run it over with a thin coat of glue and seal (trying to keep in the lines which you can see I failed to do) and once it's dry it resists anything you put over it- including the distress inks!

I also dug out my craft room and sorted out all of the old and out of fashion stuff. I have been making cards on and off since I was 12 so a lot of stuff was out of date.

While digging it out I unearthed my Cricut. I also had an old version of make the cut which thankfully I hadn't updated (as they're not allowed to talk to the Cricuts anymore) and I started using some downloaded svg files to put behind my magnolia stamps. I love it!

Last night I discovered I'd won the birthday candy from Becky over at http://attic-crafter.blogspot.co.uk/ Poor Hubby thought I was going to wet myself. I couldn't believe it! Thanks Becky!

Then this morning we had some bad news- I've had a pair of tortoise for the last 5 years and sometime in the last 24 hours the female has died. I have no idea what happened. I had complained about a month ago that I had the most backward torotises ever as they seem to have had their hibernation patterns backward for the last 3 years. But this morning George (my little boy) came hunting for food so I tried to wake Popcorn up. I'm very upset that we've lost her and Mr Jelly has burried her in the front garden so that I can plant a nice bush over her to remember her by. In the mean time George is currently living in a box in the front room so that he's in the warmth and away from their old sleeping place. I'm taking no risks and he will bet at the vets tomorrow when the reptile specialist is in. In the mean time Lucy and I are checking him every so often and the poor thing will probably die from exhaustion were we've been disturbing him. But rather safe than sorry!





Well sorry for the long rant but so much has happened to me!