I don't seem to be doing very well in June.... very patchy blogging! BUT I do have an excuse... I have been totally snowed under... orders, housework, hubs getting home really early... there is just not enough hours in the day! Plus on top of that, my mum & dad are down - staying at Elizabeths, coming out to me today and going back to Elizabeths on sunday, then going home on Wednesday... My dad even shut his ebay shop for the week... wow! So i've had to add housework onto the workload... which hasnt made any difference may i add, the fairies have been out in force!
I'm nearly ready to add products to the websites.. have been updating pics, checking prices etc and doing a stocktake... very tedious stuff!
The bonus is that the templates on this blog are written in the same format that I have been learning, so when i have some spare time I can change the template :)
I bought some gorgeous Antique Copper findings to make jewellery with, BUT cant get any antique copper wire to match! I've tried everywhere.... what a joke! I've got headpins, eyepins, earwires, chain, jump rings etc all in the antiqued colour but only bright copper wire..... so I cant acutally do what i want to do but will have to find another design.
Ok, better go hoover, cos i dont know what time they are getting here at!
to div or not to div....
Well, after lots of self teaching, experimentation and screwing up i have learned the rudiments of .css, .tpl, .php & xhtml files - now i just have to touch up the graphics, cos i've moved things around so much the orignal graphics arent right now... get the main html pages to match and then i can add content/products... whooo hooo the end is in sight or site (to make a bad pun!)
Its been really hard, due to the fact that you CANNOT preview what you are doing, you have to upload it to your server in order to see what your modifications have done... thats great fun... i can tell you!
The site is
www.unique-creations.co.uk and the shop is
www.unique-creations.co.uk/shop - remember there are no products in there yet, so if you take a peek and want to comment please remember its still in progress!
I do think that Unique Creations gives me much more scope than Unique Invites though.... now I wont feel silly selling toppers or greetings cards with a Unique Invites logo on it!
pant pant
ok.. getting there... here is a challenge from Lythan...
What are your earliest memories?
My very earliest memory is going to visit our new house in the south side of Glasgow... My Gran babysat Catherine and my great-granda drove the rest of us over to see the house... This was in feb/march 1972, so i was 2yrs 8 months... i can remember seeing the garden and thinking.. ohhh grass! (we were moving from a tenement close to the city centre) and the kitchen had a big yellow old fashioned deep sink.... the strange thing about this memory is that it finishes when we got back to our flat.. i can remember going up the stairs but thats it, which means i have no actual memory of Catherine... she died (aged 9 months) in the august of that year!
Another early memory is after we had moved... there were 2 girls who lived a couple of doors away the same age as me and Elizabeth and we played together... well I was at Gayles house and needed to pee but I wouldnt use her toilet and ran home - my mum was really annoyed that i came home by myself (3 houses down) as i was only 3....
puff puff....
Well, time to catch up, i have done a few posts but they are saved as drafts as i've not gotten round to finishing them yet... but to be going on with, here is a challenge from Lythans Blog, which she got from Kathy's blog....1 What was your first pet and what was it's name? A canary called 'Cheeky'... I loved him to bits and was devastated when he died (I was about 7)!
2 which WtP character are you? Pooh, Piglet? Eyeore? Or one of the others?Tigger
3 Aston Martin or Ferrari? Chocolate Chip with Mint.... ;)
4 Favourite crisps (potato chips) flavour?Chicken
5 Money no object sailing trip - where would you go? Outer Hebrides
6 Tea? coffee? or juice? Coffee, very strong!
7 What's your favourite season? Autumn, I love the colours....
8 Have you ever seen an eclipse? Yes, but I cant remember when or where.... i've slept lots of times since then....
9.Would you rather hold a snake or a spider? Spider as I prefer them... but snakes are good too.
10.Which do you play? And which is your favourite? Chess, Monopoly, Backgammon, Scrabble. I play all of them.. favourite?.. hmm thats hard, i'd have to say scrabble, i take my scrable very seriously and have read the official scrabble dictionaries (twice)
11. Do you do Sudoku? Frequently... the harder the better, I hate the fact that they are pushed under number puzzles though, they would work just the same with 9 coloured squares - maths doenst come into it at all!
12. 3 favourite flowers? The pink funky one in Susan's garden... Orchids... and those those dangling pink ones that look like ballerinas...
13. What's your favourite in a box of chocs? Caramel or fudge
14. How many handbags? none, 1-5, 5-10, 10-15 or more than that? 5-10 but i dont use any as I keep leaving them in shops etc... they are just not safe when out with me....
15. How many different countries have you visited? 3 - Scotland, England & Wales :D
20 things about me....
I've been meaning to do this for a while, so might as well do it now as its the perfect avoidance of doing the washing up!
1. From the ages of 10 to 18 I was going to be - a dog trainer, a writer, a research scientist, a computer programmer (this was when computers used BASIC as a language) , a horitculturist, a botanist (found out they got paid more), a journalist, the first female physicist to achieve worldwide fame, an archeologist and a psychologist - when i left school at 18 with 8 o'levels and 5 A'levels I went to college and did Nursery Nursing to prove that it wasnt only 'low achievers" who did this course. From this I went on to do a Nursing course for learning difficulties (which i never completed)
2. I met my husband 3 days after moving to England to do the above mentioned nursing course and despite having not one thing in common, we've been together ever since - 17 years this september.
3. I used to be confident to the point of arrogance until I had a breakdown which stripped the confidence from me, leaving me just arrogant!
4. I live my life by a long series of principles (which i will write a blog entry on one of these days) which I try very hard not to break!
5. I found out what heresy was when I was 9 years old! Asking questions in school shows you are bright and attentive, asking questions in sunday school shows you are a heretic! This is also the time i found out what Hypocrsy was!
6. I am a very sad, weird type of person who reads acts of parliment, small print on documents and dictionarys! Even sadder is the fact that I then use this knowledge/these words in conversation!
7. I have written hundreds of short stories in my life and started a few novels and got rid of the lot... no-one has ever read any of my fiction! My greatest ambition in life is to write a novel and get it published but I was born 30 years too late - it is harder to get a novel published nowadays than it is to get voted into parliament!
8. I woke up one morning and found I had 3 children, 2 of whom are teenagers!
9. I have an insatiable curiosity about everything... the most begging questions at the moment are: how do the hairs in your eyebrows know what length to grow to and what kind of dog would you get if you crossed a lilac merle border collie with a fawn boxer?
10. I once told a boy in school i had leprosy and threatened to infect him if he didnt stop bullying me and my friends.
11. The thing i hate most about society is injustice.
12. The second thing i hate most about society is discrimination.
13. I have never broken a bone in
my body in my life.
14. I did however break my youngest sons leg when he was 18 months ( i was carrying him downstairs and I fell - i was fine, he had a broken shin bone)
15. I can remember nearly every word of conversations and nearly every word i have read but couldnt tell you what i did yesterday
16. I love words! They fascinate me!
17. I have a hair in my eyebrow that is over an inch in length (trying to answer the question above i managed to fool it into not knowing how long it was)
18. I find it very difficult to eat without reading!
19. I love reading, I am totally addicted to it!
20. I played truant in school for my entire o'level year and still managed to pass 8 o'levels.
Phew.. that wasnt easy!
perching perching
Thats the noise it makes when someone makes another hole in the emotional armour -
you know who you are! I spent years building up a solid 3' balwark between me and the world
and I armour-plated it and now it looks more like a collander as a result of the guerilla warfare that has been carried out on me by certain people... the strangest thing is that I dont think it is a concerted attack, they are all independent but coincidently have all happened over the same period of time! Very weird!
I've had a very nice day today.... Lythan very kindly gave me a lift to Susans and we spent the whole day playing and chatting... (with a very nice lunch thrown in - Susan is a great hostess!) Lythans photograph stamps are amazing, I need to figure out how they work, there is very little indentation in the rubber - its more scraped away so i dont think the ink adheres to it as well - they look wonderful though. And I made the discovery that the different effects you get with alcohol inks are dependent on the paper used - expensive photo paper works differently to the cheap photo paper and gives a completely different effect - will have to experiment with this!
We had a couple of great conversations in the car on the way there and back - "the basic instability of the infrastructure of society today" on the way there and "the pro's and cons of being a bitch" and "what would the world look like if the steam engine had never been invented" on the way back.... great stuff!
I've been working on the website, which is coming along nicely and I also updated the shop to the newest verion which isnt coming along nicely - this version works on a template system which sounds very cool and is great in theory, but it means that in order to change the colour/look of the shop you have to edit the .css & .tml files directly and there are no wysiwyg editors for these types of files, so basically you have to manipulate the code, upload it, see what has changed, go back and manipulate more code... very time consuming and very frustrating - i know a bit of html but nothing of .php, .css & .tml files so I'm learning by trial and error which is great fun but I
dont have the time! Never mind, it gives me an excuse to sit at the pc for hours on end :) and I'm learning the hex codes for colours, which is fascinating.
Fate strikes again.....
What a week... the amount I have achieved is inversely proportional to the amount I had to do!
I have to find a job - I've run out of time and even though I'm on target for my 2 year plan... I now no longer have the 8 months left that I should have left... We need a certain amount of money coming in every week and it's
not coming in and I can't find a way to up my income really quickly so the craft stuff is going to have to go part time and I have to get a job!
This is going to be really hard for a number of reasons....
1. I'm not ready to go out into the world and deal with people...
2. It's going to be really hard working for someone else after being my own boss for over a year!
3. I feel like my business has failed through circumstances rather than any shortcomings of myself... so what was the point of trying???
4. I know it will start off part time but within 6 months whats the betting I'm back to full-time, overtime and stressing over childcare and dogcare!
5. Whats the chances of me getting a job that pays well, frees me up for school holidays and has hours that fits in with the school day?? yes i know i could work in a school but they are not going to be recruiting in June now, are they?? I cant afford to wait until september to start!
6. I had just started a re-vamp of the business when this bombshell fell.... The new domain name is registered and i'm building the new site (unique invites was just too limiting, I do way more than just invitations now) I should have finished by now but I cant get enthusiastic about it.... again, whats the point?
7. I'm not ready to go out into the world and deal with people!
I'm going to set myself a target of getting the new site up and running before I start work... which means i will have to build it as i'm looking.... odds are probably 500-1 of me achieving this!
So I'm a cynical egotist???
What Spiritual Realm Do You Belong To ???( GORGEOUS ANIME PICS+Detailed Results!)
Your Spiritual Realm is Thought!You possess great intellectual power. You think with your brain, not your emotions. You see with the world with an eagles eye, always full of criticism. The problem with this is that sometimes you are too cynical and egotistic, and forget that you, too, are still discovering, just like everybody else! Your brain is a muscle, keep using it! Your the kind of person who could be the next Sigmund Freud or Mark Twain, or Albert Einstein.
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Well I'm feeling better today, thank goodness, yesterday was awful! BUT stewart was sick all last night so he's off work today... we cant decide if it was a bug, something we ate or just the heat... could be a mixture of them all.... bit too spread out to be something we ate though!
I've made a lovely new friend on a boxer forum, she makes jewellery (stunning jewellery) and lives in America, so shes sending me some bits that she can get locally, how nice is that? With all the horror internet stories around, I had always thought that the ladies at Carolyns were an exception but looks like they are not the only ones! I will post a pic of them when they arrive, cant wait!
I have so much to do today i dont know where to start... house is a tip (as usual), ongoing party invitation order which is quickly heading towards urgent, website needs updating badly and I need to make up a spreadsheet to cost out jewellery to see if its viable to sell... I have been looking through ebay to see what kind of handcrafted jewellery sells best and scarily its the ones in the occult section - 'power' beads and stones are very popular - I'm a great believer in natural properties of gems etc but I dont know if i would feel comfortable selling under an occult heading... maybe a case of 'a rose by any other name...' etc..
I need to find a varnish that sets really really hard and rigid when used on plastic... modge podge gives a fantastic finish but isnt really rigid!
Better go get started!
I'm sick, she's sick, he's sick, everyones sick...
Connor started throwing up 6am saturday morning, lauren 4pm sunday afternoon, me at 2am this morning and daryll at 6.30am this morning...... I feel bleaurgh...
then to top it off, stewart leaves for work this morning (the only one not sick) and a car (in a side road at the end of the street....) runs into the side of his car..... must have got fed up waiting for me!
I'm a good looking dog....
Hmm, not quite what I expected.....
What Common Breed of Dog Are You?
3 in 1
I've managed to combine my 3 favourite things :) recyclying, alcohol inks and jewellery making... ohhhh the possibilities! Can anyone guess where the recycling comes in?
Soap Box Alert!
After a great deal of thought, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an Expert! Instead, there is only people who have a firm belief in their own opinions and can articulate that belief in a way that makes it plausible to other people.
This may seem like a strange statement to make, but it's very logical really... Art experts tell us that a painting has to have certain aspects in it to be a 'masterpiece'... Says who?? why, those same experts. Dog experts tell us that each breed has to be a certain size, weight and ears a certain shape.... Says who? why, those same experts... again! Dieticians tell us what food is good for us and bad for us.... Doctors tell us what situations are good for us and bad for us... Politicians tell us what the country should be run like.... but the FACT is that all of these are just opinions... the opinions of these so-called experts that are imposed on the rest of us. The only thing that can be sure is that there is such a thing as paintings, dogs, food etc etc everything else is just a preference and we are told by experts what our preferences should be... it's ludicrous!
Take house prices.... 2 3-bedroom semi's about 200 yards apart - one is worth £230,000 and the other is worth £160,000... why? because one is in Harold Wood and the other is in Harold Hill, they face each other across the A12... who decides these prices??... Property Experts! We are not told the criteria for these valuations, what makes one area more desirable than another?? Demand? That only means that people are gullible enough to pay more to buy a higher-priced property because they have been told its the better house and thats why it costs more!
I think more of us have to remember that none of the above exists in nature, none of the above has a value more than what we place on it... society decides itself what is good, bad & indifferent but at the end of the day, its just opinion!
On a different note: Kia was on bird patrol yesterday -
and then had a nice sunbathe in the garden, I can't believe how big she is getting! She looks so ladylike lying there! And yes, that's my opinion... :)
What a Day!
and its only lunchtime! So far, I've managed to lock myself out of the house for an hour.... and of course because i've trained the dog
not to open the front door, I had to faff around with sticks etc through the letterbox to get back in...
Yesterday afternoon, while out with the dog I fell and cracked my knee.. doesnt seem to be any damage but its badly bruised and hurting really bad! and now after the door incident my wrists and hands are killing me too.....
This afternoon
has to get better!
Haven't updated in ages.... seems to be much harder getting online when Stewart isnt working away, I can't leave stuff to do in the evenings any more which gives me less time through the day both for writing my own blog and reading other peoples....
I have joined a Boxer forum as well... (like i have time!) so I can speak to other boxer owners and get some reassurance about Kia, she is much better than she was but is still quite anxious if she sees other people or other dogs - when no-one is around though she is pretty much back to her ordinary self, which is great - she doesnt even notice cars going by now unless they are especially noisy!
Jewellery wise, I'm at an impasse... I have a design in my head for earrings, I have made these earrings 3 times now and I'm still not happy with it... basically I end up with 5 strands of wire which all need to be attached together and I cant get it tidy enough - I've tried looping, twisting & doubling back and i'm still not happy - might be that my design is too ambitous for my skill at the moment - we shall see!
I've been looking at supplies as well, funnily enough even though I have a drawer full of beads, none of them match the designs in my head - what can you do? Not letting these creative ideas out could do me some mental and emotional damage so in the interests of good health I
have to buy some more supplies :D
Claim to fame....
I never realised before how thrilling it is to get a mention on someone elses blog... but I'm on lythans (even in the title!) and it is thrilling (even though its a response to a cheeky comment I made).. especially since more people read hers than read mine so lots of people are reading my name (sad eh?) I probably need a life!
I've been up since 7am this morning.. daft dog woke me up by barking as the frog she was playing with in the back garden last night had gone (smart frog that!) and she was really upset... I think the dog needs a life too!
I've made 2 pairs of earrings but I may put them in for a challenge at Carolyns so I wont post pics yet, besides I'm not really happy with them... the idea is there, the basic structure is there but they are not very 'tidy' looking.... will work on them today! Why oh why have I been bitten by the jewellery bug?? I cant even wear the darned things!
Watched the last ever episode of Charmed last night... for the first time ever, I'm actually quite pleased with a series finale, tied up lots of loose ends (except for a couple which are only little) and was a nice happy ending - much better than the last ever Buffy or Angel - I was sooo disappointed with those! But thats it, no more charmed... ever.... except for repeats of course (i'm watching the re-runs on living tv during the day as I only started watching it in season 6) it seems as if all the tv shows i like are getting cancelled but they arent replacing them with anything good :(
Brrr Brrr Brrr Brrr Brrr
Its thursday morning, first day of June and I have my
heating on! It's absolutely freezing... there is something seriously wrong somewhere with this climate, My SIL in australia - where it's
winter -
doesnt have her heating on yet..... maybe we should emigrate after all!
I have a few jewellery projects on the go today, hopefully they will be finished later and I can post pics... If i can get the hang of this, I may have a new product to offer when the postal changes come in - will have to sit down one afternoon and work out prices and whether its viable or not - I'm sure there are a fair few around who make hand crafted jewellery, so dont know whether there is a niche for me or not, will have to do some research!
Off to put a cardi on!
