Meet the tenants!

I haven't had a lot to blog about recently because most of my precious time was wasted at work.

In a team of four gals, 2 were off sick for almost a month (at the same time), and the last men women standing did it all. Yay to us. Err.

And did I tell you that my Mum was here for a week as well? She comes over from Germany once or  twice a year to see us, and it's always a special time, work or not.

I didn't get a right lot of crafting done (well, none. Nada. Zero. Nowt. Nichts. Rien.), but in- between having some quality time with Mama and wasting away my life in the bookies (wrong side of the counter!), I managed to have a few pictures taken of the occupants of Three Bed Semi.

Do not call the police, refrain from cleaning your glasses and try not to call your psychiatrist- everything is perfectly fine. This is not a drill.Remain calm and meet the gang.

Me. With a spider catcher my Mom got me. Bless her, I thought it was a tad daft, but a day after she had left, it was put to real good use. Urgh.

Mom and me. Unedited.

The Man, Erin (NingThing) and yours truly. His facial expression is not out of the ordinary, why?

Sleep is genuinely overrated.

You can trust us. With your money, your children and even your pets. Yes, your pets.

So, now you know who you are dealing with.
I'll keep a close eye on my blog stats- if you decide to leg it, don't blame ya! If you decide to stay with us just a little bit longer, bless you, guys.

I'm off to slap some hair dye on now.

Luv ya!

SOS!!!

Remember what I said in my las post about eating potatoes all week?
Isn't gonna happen.
They teamed- or should I say banded?- up against me.

When I came home from work last night, I walked into a protest gig by SOS- Save Our Spuds!

Have a look, guys, and come to understand why I daren't even go to the chippie...

This used bto be my fireplace, now it's a venue.

Meet the band.

According to The Man, who signed them for the gig, they are a Punk Rock Gothic Heavy Metal Viking band. Versatile, aren't they? Like a good potato should be.

Unfortunately, the Broccoli Sisters who use to do the background singing are currently in rehab, I have been informed.

I haven't laughed that hard for ages... love that man.

Chime time!

Guys, yours truly is an idiot. And I mean the headless chicken- under- stress kind.
I lost my company £300 yesterday, because I processed a card payment that had been declined.
Imagine the situation: the shop is packed with customers, pretty much all of whom demand my immediate attention for this, that or the other. I am on my own, trying to take bets, pay out, manage the gaming machines and promote a tournament all at the same time. A lad gives me his card to process £300, loaded directly onto a gaming machine. I do it, give him his receipt, all is good.
10 minutes later, he comes up with a ticket for £900, lucky bugger. I put £800 back onto his card and £100 cash into his pocket.
Only later did it dawn on me that his debit card had been declined and he had played money that wasn't there.
After my shift, I left without even telling my manager, knowing that her superior would be in the shop later and I might as well confess directly to the big gun.
Which I did.
It wasn't nice, but bless her, she didn't rip my head straight off, either.

After a pretty restless night, I woke up to a text message from my dearest colleague Barbara, a wonderful lady of 60 who has been with the company for 30 years- imagine that! Anyway, I thought she'd let me know there would be a disciplinary next week or worse, so I didn't quite feel too good opening it.

Shouldn't have worried. It read "I got your 300 quid back!"

This angel in disguise persuaded the customer (who was daft enough to come back to the shop to ask how long the refund onto his card would take!) to pay back the dough!! She tricked him into believing the refund would only go through if he made the payment, bless her cotton socks.

I always loved Barbara to bits, but right now, I would think nothing of having her name tattooed across a big, fat red love heart on my forearm. So to express my gratitude, I made her a wind chime.

I felt so light- hearted after receiving the good news this morning that I spent our last bucks on a Dremel- like rotary tool. Hey, the Man has irish ancestors, so he will be fine with eating potatoes for a while! :D And to make the little gift for Barbara, I put it to good use straight away.

I used some more of that fancy potpourri I built into the bat- and- owl- frames, a bracelet for £1 (!) from the charity shop and copper tone headpins. Have a look.

I drilled holes through the disc- thingy, the bamboo and the shell- type thingies

Then I took bits and pieces from the bracelet and drilled holes in the appropriate places:

Assembly with long headpins

Build a hedgehog. com- the next step was to give each headpin a loop

The three middle pins got twisted around each other to form a loop for hanging the whole thing from

After all pieces were assembled, I put a dab of hot glue onto every headpin's... err, head to stop it from moving about and put a bead into the dab.

The whole wind chime:

I loved making it, especially since I had Barbara and her rescue mission on my mind. It was easy and I made everything up as I went along, so this is not a tutorial, but rather a show- and- tell. Hope you like it!

 

Dismemberment!

Do I have your attention? :D

Sometimes, it's good to take things apart. Sometimes, it isn't.

An example for not- so- good taking apart of things is ripping the space bar off your laptop to figure out wether or not there is coffee under the keyboard. It is nigh impossible to get the bugger back into place and makes posting on your blog an adventure. Err.

A better idea is to go to the charity shop and buy an old necklace for just about next to nothing and then take it to pieces. Weird and wonderful pieces, like wooden beads with gorgeous crocheting around it and loads of little sparkling crystals. I lurve me some of that.

To get from necklace to this took about an hour... well worth it!

Then, if your hands are still your friends, it's an even better idea to reassemble all the bits and pieces into a little set of earrings and bracelet and display it proudly on your fantastic new £stretcher goblet for £2.

Totally wearable, and there's not another piece like it. I think I'll sport those babies at work today!

On a bit of a darker note, the kid I told you about yesterday totally messed up last night.
He ignored his 10 pm curfew and was picked up at half eleven by the police lurching around a neighbourhood miles away from ours with two other kids who ran off when the police materialized. They brought him home, and I managed not to explode. Still haven't exploded yet, and I hope not to at all. He is, for now, getting the silence treatment until we have made up our minds as to what to do. I don't want to give up on the lad, but at 14 he is old enough to know that whatever you do has consequences. The man and I will figure out together what these consequences are exactly, but they WILL sting.
For now he's stewing in his own juice, and that's quite alright. A lot better than being shouted at anyway.

Oh, the joy of being a...mum  carer  housemaid!

So sorry!

Peeps, I am really sorry. The bad blogger of the year award goes to... ME! Thanks to everybody who made this possible, I am honoured. Err.

Loads of things have happened, guys, and I simply didn't have much time to spend crafting and/or blogging.
The biggest change is that a friends 14 year old son temporarily moved in with us, smelly trainers and all. He's a bit of a troubled kid, so during the school holidays we sort of give him a bit of respite from his sometimes a tad chaotic family life. For me who's not a mom and whose only experience with 14 year olds comes from being 14 year old at some point it is, let's say, a novelty. But the lad is basically a good kid, and I am certainly not moaning.
The main work is done by The Man anyway, who is experienced in looking after teenagers. Thank goodness for that!

Another bit of news is that I have started listing a few items on Folksy, the british alternative to Etsy. There were a few "night shifts" of creating jewellery in the past few weeks, and I thought I'd rather give it a go than never know. (no, I don't play Lotto!) Here's the things I have listed so far:

No clue why the last picture refuses to appear the right way round... never mind.

So- I just wanted to let you all know I am still alive, just a bit busier than I used to be.

To my generous gifter in the Christmas In July gift exchange- I have received your wonderful notebook and will blog about it soon- I love it to bits!

Have a nice day, folks, and stay tuned. I will endeavour to blog a lot more regularly again! There is a little tutorial I have in mind for an easy- peasy piece of jewellery for pretty much the whole family. See you soon!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Best Birthday wishes from Erin, Shannon, Hope, The Man, BOB and, well, Loewenbaby!
Love you, Mom, can't wait for you to come over here!
xoxo

Batcidentally in love!

Yesterday was Not. My. Day. It was supposed to be my day off, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, I fell out of bed at 7 am. I mean, what the heck? So I went to lounge about on the couch with a coffee, read some blogs and make the most of it... and the phone rang. A dear colleague (luv ya, Barbara!) had an emergency and could not open the shop, so I duly went and did what a girl has to do. Sit in a badly airconditioned betting shop yawning her head off for 7 hours.

After crawling back home (man, I never felt so tired in my entire life!), I thought I'd just go back to where I left things and went about reading blogs, doing more yawning and pretty much being a waste of space when The Man suddenly stirred and shook his leg... onto which a fat spider had decided to climb.
Let's just say I spent some time on the middle floor, hyperventilating and shaking while the knight in shiny armour unarmoured himself in the quest to find the eight- legged freak. He thought it had made its way into his jeans, so he took them off, took his shirt off, examined the stuff properly and still couldn't find the foe.
Turns out the bugger sat under some furniture, but was eventually found out and politely asked to leave the house (with a gentle nudge towards the neighbour's door!)

With enough oxygen in my bloodstream to last me for a week without breathing, I thought I might as well do something useful (who said washing up? Are you kidding?) and get crafting. And that is where I batcidentally fell in love- have a look.

 The man decided that too many owls spoil the broth, so for my second shadow box (I have three of those ugly frame things going on!) I went with another favourite critter of mine: the Common Dozy Bat.
So again, some doodles first:

 Here they are, the prototypes.

After that, again transferring them to cardboard and some cutting- this time I went for an easier option and only cut the wings and bodies. Even lazier, they only got painted with my new brushes The Man got me the other day (together with a beautiful bag of beads, am I spoilt or what?) and his good old miniature paints.

 Heck yeah, he got me chocolate, too! :)

Bob helped me to prepare the frame, which I had spray painted while the bats dried. A piece of firewood ( I had to go into the basement to get it. Not happy.), some more potpourri and a bit of string, here we go:

The final result: (sorry about the lame pictures, it was pretty late and I had to use the flash)

Closer:

CLOSER:

Love them! Honest, the pictures don't do them much justice, if I may say so myself.

Yeah, and that's 2 out of three! The next one, I hope, will be nutty. Err. Any guesses? :)

Linkin' up:

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