You're My Hero!

Morning all,
No, you're not imagining things, I really AM posting a card!!!!
I am so sorry for being such a bad, bad blogger recently (I haven't posted since June1st and even then it wasn't crafting related) I don't really have any excuses other than a lost mojo and feeling very 'down in the dumps'.
Anyway, it was my birthday recently and my lovely hubby bought me a couple of adult colouring books as part of my present, after deciding to colour a couple of images it made me realise how much I'd missed it so here I am...

This card is for my youngest son Gareth, whose birthday is today. Hopefully he'll like it as he's very into super heroes (films and books) and he's also been training very hard recently and developed one heck of a six pack so I thought this would be quite appropriate for him, ha ha!

I'd love to give credit for this brilliant image but (despite scrolling through over 10,000 Spidey images on DeviantArt) I could no longer find the drawing or artist.





This is the original image so if anyone knows who it is by please leave a comment and I'll happily add the artist's name to this post.







Love and hugs to all those in need of them,

Not Crafting

Morning all, I'm still not doing much crafting, real life seems to have intruded a lot lately.
My eldest son, his partner and her 2 youngest children (aged 7 and 9) went home yesterday after spending a few days with us. Alan and I are exhausted, we're not used to children anymore, ours are now 39 and 37 so we're out of the habit of little ones.

We decided last year that we would redo our kitchen this spring, we'd been putting it off since moving in about 4 years ago and it was the final 'big' job to do in our new home. Alan then had the bright idea of starting it just before Christmas instead of waiting, I'm sure you can imagine how lovely our house looked over the holidays!!
I thought I'd share some photos of it now (and one of how it looked when we bought the house) in case any of you were interested in seeing it.

This was the original kitchen before we bought the house (courtesy of the estate agent's brochure)
Do you like the brass wall sockets? and I can't begin to tell you how inconvenient that island was!



 

This is the new kitchen from a similar angle. You can't see it very well but I've now gone back to my ceramic sink again (I hate stainless steel ones!) and my beautiful new cooker.






 

Moving around slightly to the right of the last picture and showing my only wall unit over my drink making area and fridge.
The doors house the larder and airing cupboard.






 

 Moving a bit further around (this is the front of the house)
The large cupboard houses my boiler at the top, the other shelves hold all the big rarely used things like bread makers, toasters, vases, glass bowls etc. so convenient! My freezer is under the work unit.

Finally coming full circle (the glass door on the right leads through to the conservatory) Not a brass socket in sight!







To say I'm pleased with the end result is the understatement of the century, I absolutely LOVE it!
We moved the washing machine and tumble dryer into the conservatory and made a small utility area out there with matching units. We now have masses of cupboard space (I even have a whole empty one at the moment)
Alan did the majority of the work himself we just had a plasterer, plumber and electrician in for the skilled jobs. I'm so proud of him as I think he's made a wonderful job of it.

Mo's Challenge

Morning all, long time no see!
I've been away for ages, purely due to having no mojo at all, I can't remember when I last spent time in my craft room playing.
I've been feeling very low so far this year and have really just wanted to escape into books, although there isn't any reason why I should be blue. I'm back today because I wanted to enter Mo's DP2 challenge with this card.
It was commissioned by one of my friends for a 17th birthday and I thought it would fit the bill for the optional challenge of 'For Teenz Only'  My friend's gift to her great niece was a set of driving lessons, hence the design.

I do hope that my missing mojo will soon return and that I'll be back with loads of ideas and enthusiasm for crafting again. I am still visiting my favourite blogs (although naughtily I haven't always left comments)
Love and hugs to all who are in need of them.

Glasses!

Evening all, just a quick post from me as I wanted to enter a card into the current Outlaw A La Mode challenge of 'Summer'

I just love these 'girls' from Art Impressions and have quite a few of their stamp sets, so perfect for my friends' cards these days as we are all now quite 'mature' Ahem!!
I thought that this colour palette and image fitted the summer theme quite well.

I haven't been about too much as we are still in the depths of having (lots of) electrical and plumbing jobs done, plastering walls, painting and fitting flooring in the kitchen prior to putting in the new units and cooker etc. All this plus going down with colds and hacking coughs, don't you just love winter (NOT!)

I've actually made a start on some cards for next christmas too -I know, don't faint! Every year I say that I'll start early on making xmas cards and I never do, so I'm trying really hard this year, 8 made so far, hopefully more to come.
Now I just need to enter them into some xmas challenges and that will be 2 birds with the proverbial one stone.

Now that I've made a start with this challenge I'm hoping I'll be able to get back into the swing again and revisit my blogging and crafting pals very soon.