Hit the snooze button!

It's about stupid o'clock in the morning and my mothers' daughter is a tiny wee bit insomniac.
So I thought I'd give a brief update on what's been going on since e spoke last (or was that the aforementioned lil' voices?)
I did not mention in my last post that I have sort of been promoted from customer service assistant (what does that even mean?) to deputy manager recently. That meant a change of shops for me, from a fairly busy 400 bets a day- shop to an almost dead 150 bets a day- place. When people ask me if I like it I delight myself in telling them that it's a tad more money for a helluva lot less work, so, yeah I do! The customers seem decent enough (apart from the inevitable bad apples, but you get them everywhere) and my new colleagues sure are remarkable characters.
The manager, let's call him Paul, is a dude of roundabout 50 summers. Soft- spoken, mild- mannered and suffering from a severe case of OCD. His whole life consists of double-, triple- and quadruple- checking everything to the tiniest detail. Everything apart from whatever the heck is going on around him, so the shop is an absolute mess. Enter moi, no way I'm putting up with cobwebs that are older than me. Good job he's a really sweet lad who will make people want to be patient and nice with him rather than take the mickey, otherwise even I would feel the need to grab him by the ears and shake some sense into him. An absolute darling, really, and as much as I want to shout, I could never even raise my voice around him. But if he keeps ringing the shop 5 times a day when I pull my shifts just to make sure I know the safe number, won't forget to set the alarm and keep the counter oor unlocked for Leroy the 70 year old cleaner I shall be screaming and shouting at every pot plant that is unlucky enough to cross my path for years to come. Local flora, you have been warned.
Then there is the male CSA, who I shall call Howard. He's about the same age as Paul and a jolly chubby dude. He's actually got a special chair for "disabled" people because he claims that due to his size he can't get bloody comfy on the chairs us mere mortals use. Cheeky bugger, he's nowhere near as... rounded as he makes himself out to be and he knows dang well that he has what must be the most comfortable chair any employee of my company ever had the good fortune of parking their backside on. Way to go, dude, you know how to play your cards! (needless to say I nick his chair whenever he's not working. Heaven on earth for my bum!) Howard has been married for about as long as I have been alive, owns a black lab pup called Dexter (he says Paul owns a dog as well, I shall have to inquire!) and speaks about 7 languages- or so he says. If his fluency in German is anything to go by, there is no doubt in my mind that his claim is true. How this guy managed to end up taking bets in a dead shop beats me. I can totally see him as a local librarian, cheerfully handing out obscure tomes to studious citizens. Either that or a teacher of evening classes in Yiddish. Oywey, and I thought I was good with languages!
The last, but most certainly not least new character in my work life is an amazing woman who should be named Adele. Why? Well, why not? If you could see her, you would agree. Adele is, I guess, around 60 and does not give a flying fiddlers' fart. Firetruck- red hair, emerald green eye shadow, bright nail polish, combat trousers and only happy with a telephone within reach. Larger than life, a veteran of 28 years of employment with the company. Every customer is a potential source of gossip and entertainment, and every colleague is a most valued acquaintance and candidate for friendship. Curiosity is a virtue, and nobody is too remote to be cared for/ about. Adele might come across as incredibly nosy, but fact is that she actually DOES care for everybody she ever met. Strangers really ARE friends she has not met yet, and I am certain that her phone holds more numbers than the pope, the president of the USA and Kofi Annan combined could cough up. Talking to Adele is like you're best buds with the nations' favourite agony aunt and you go for a pint or ten. Gossip meets genuine care and interest, your grandmother and high school bestie all in one. A firetruck- red avalanche. Howard calls her Frau Gaga, and I cannot think of a living person who does not love her.
So, take these three entities, a dead shop and myself thrown into the mix, and what do you think is the result?

That's Frau Gaga holding a needle- felted wee monster I came up with the other day at work (!). Note her jockey hat bracelet! You can't but love her. Anyway, it so happens that in preparation of surviving 12 hour shifts in that dead little place I have taken to bringing random craft supplies to work, and the other day some rovings turned into what I can only describe as the bunnyrabbit of doom. Adele recruited the wee bugger as a companion for her granddaughter straight away, which is why I only have this daft shot of him, but I thought I'd show him off anyway. He seems to sum up neatly what is going to be my main company from now on. Odd, unheard of and yet utterly... loveable.

I really hope I didn't bore you to death, guys, but really, you can't expect any coherent posts from an insomniac who needle felts at work for relaxation instead of snoozing at night... right?

Good job I have an 8 hour shift coming up in 5 hours, it's about time I get some sleep!

Times, they are a- changing!

Well, then.
I guess some of you (if there are any yous left to talk to, if not I'll just talk to those little voices nobody else seems to hear. Strange, that.) might have guessed that the changes that happened in this little life of mine have throw me into a bit of a rut.
Bleh.
Depression, more like. Let's keep it real, dudes and dudettes, I was utterly depressed. The full monty, days on end spent in bed without as much as getting up for a sneaky cigarette (kicked that habit recently, just so you know. Good view from this high horse!), increased consumption of auxiliary glasses of wine, decreased performance at work and little or no achievements on the home front, all of which led to a big, dark strain on the relationship with the Mister.
I could not be bothered doing anything that used to make me smile. Camera- dust catcher. Crafty equipment- clutter. Blog- dead pixels. The house I disliked to begin with turned into a despised trap, best to be avoided or ignored. Because we all know that ignoring stuff makes it go away, right?
Well, that might be true for drunk admirers in the pub (they tend to fall over at some point, literally disappearing from view) and spiders (either the cats eat them or the lil' buggers raise a brood of avengers behind the bed, either way you won't see them for a considerable amount of time and when you do you'll have forgotten they were there to start with) but it doesn't work well for ugly houses. Even though the cats made a fair attempt at eating it. Erm.
After going batty for Hallowe'en, I did do jack. Or maybe less, I'm not sure. All I wanted was to get out, get away, get over and done with it, and the poor Mister, well knowing our financial situation would not allow for it, could do little to improve my mood. Gosh, I took it out on him left, right and center. How he put up with it I really don't know- I keep checking if he's hiding a halo and a pair of wings somewhere but I just can't find any incriminating evidence for his angelic origin. Weird.
Let me cut short what could be a very long story.
About two weeks ago I came home from yet another soul- crushing shift at work and the house was dark. I let myself in and found nothing but an empty can of Lager in the living- room. A bad sign, I thought- in my head, he'd run off to the pub to drown all the grief I'd given him in a pint or ten, leaving me to brood over my ... broodiness without even as much as the comfort of a human punching ball. So upstairs I stomped to relieve myself of my work uniform. Just to find... this:

The bedroom wall. Owl. Individually cut leaves. More owls. Fresh sheets. All the clutter- gone. I could show you more crappy mobile pictures, but just take this one and believe me that I walked into an owl- y wonderland. All my owls were there (not that many, but all there!), candles lit, smell of pinecones in the air, I could not believe it was the same room I'd left some 14 hours earlier in a mood bad enough to make the pole caps melt. When he finally emerged from his hiding place (he was actually relaxing in the bath, bless him), the Mister informed me that he was sick of my complaints about not having any trees anywhere near (very urban, our new area), so he brought one into the house.
I nearly wept with joy.
Turns out that according to his estimate, he hadn't seen me that happy and smiley in best part of a year. I reckon he might have a point.
So, that sort of kickstarted me back into reality- the reality we make for ourselves, not the one that makes us. I finally gave up on the whole depression thing, the blame game and one- way trip to crazytown. The Mister dragged me back from that black, black hole and finally made me realize that the only thing that stood in my way of happiness was yours truly. There might have been a little help from a certain Sunny as well, but that's a story for another post, one that will show you (or those little voices in my head) why pansies can live in a bookcase and how a bed base turns into a japanese temple. Oh, and how you can be skint 3 days after pay day and not give a flying fiddlers' fart because everything is going to be just a little bit better than yesterday, but not quite as cool as tomorrow.
Not to forget the fox in the fireplace, rainbow dudes and other oddities that you won't find anywhere but in our... 2 bed terraced.
Ready for a new start? I am. For real this time!

Batpoop crazy!

Guys,
I find that simply posting on this blog really got me in the right mood to craft again. I mean, what's the point in moaning about a house that needs... customizing.. and then not do anything about it?
So I got to work Friday night. And I mean night, as I came home LATE after a rather long shift at work and a despicably tedious, wet, cold hike on the bus (which is new to me as the old house was so close to my shop that I only had to fall over face first twice and I was there) and decided that the lack of bats in the living room was rather disturbing.
Hoarder that I am, I luckily had some black cardboard at hand. Out came the trusty old scissors, and with the help of a bat shape neatly copied onto a white piece of paper from my laptop screen (hey, do I look like I can afford a new printer??) turned stencil, I got to work and cut out 18 ridiculously cute, fluttery bats.

Yup, another mobile phone picture as it was 3 am in the morning and my proper camera has decided that working her flash is just too much hard work. Can't blame her.

Obviously, there had to be more spiders since my arachnophobia is a considerable entity in my life and nothing says "batpoop crazy" better than surrounding yourself with the one thing you really fear, right?  So I used about 750 square feet of fake cobweb and loads more plastic spiders to really make a house a home.

By the time I had finished my infernal webbing, it was about 4 am... maybe I should mention that my alarm was due to go off at 8 to pull another fun filled, joyful shift in the bookies? I reckon that was what inspired the finishing touches. Enter Stephen King.

I figured (with stupid o'clock logic) that ketchup would be better than food colouring. Since ketchup does not contain food colouring. *d'oh* I also got the second R wrong, should have faced the other way 'round. Silly, overtired me!

I wasn't around to see the kids' faces when they turned up Saturday afternoon, but if the fact that they insisted on staying up 'til after ten to wait for my arrival back home to actually thank me is an indicator, I reckon they liked it.

I hope to be able to show off my chandelier tomorrow (THE BIG DAY, as Halloween is MY holiday of choice!) because it is sadly not even finished yet. On the twelfth day of Halloween my true love gave to me... *sigh* Please forgive the lame photos, I hope you still sort of get the knack.

Now if you will excuse  me, I have a little bit of sleeping to do to be fit for tomorrow! (bless me, I got 2 tubes of glow in the dark makeup for £1, I'll either die of the most epic rash ever or have the coolest complexion known to man. Maybe both.) Stay tuned, if you feel so inclined, for the chandelier reveal :)

BOO!

Hey, did I make you jump?
This old ghost from the past just crept up on you! Well, if there are any of you left to be crept upon.
I shall not even try and bore you to oblivion with why I was away for so long, let's just say we had a few major changes going on, including moving house. And just in case you've never tried to stuff a large 3 bed semi into a cozy 2 bed terraced, just be told DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!
Only today did I manage to get a little bit of my mojo back and make a few little decorations for my upcoming favourite day of the year, Halloween.
Just to illustrate how bad I suck at blogging, the pictures were taken not with my beloved DSLR but my mobile phone- if you can forgive me for being invisible and despicable and awful and altogether rather unwholesome, I promise a proper post with proper photos in the very near future.
What do you say, do I deserve a second chance? If I throw in a few spiders?

The arrangement is not final, I just wanted all I got so far in as few photos as possible. All there is are a few cheap pound shop Halloween toys, old book pages, red and green food colouring and fake cobweb. We are on a really tight budget, which sent me on a quest to come up with really cheap, yet cheerful stuff to creep the kids with.
There will be some more things, the coup de grace being a big roadkill rescue IKEA chandelier all spooked up.
I hope that I have not lost all my bloggy friends, as I've missed you all pretty much like crazy in the last few months of madness and mayhem.
Keep calm and scary on, eh? ;)
Love,
Steff

What the &;^%$#@ Are You Wearing Wednesday!?!?

I am, my lovelies, wearing a big, old, chunky wool sweater. Because the house is so dang cold that we actually considered switching the heating back on!
Don't get me wrong, it is lovely and sunny outside, but this lovely house of ours takes MONTHS to warm up and only minutes to go back to its natural freezing state. I reckon my next What the... Wednesday will feature me with snot stoppers stuffed up my nose! On the upside, my bathroom is now lime green rather than mould green. The walls are still bare and will remain bare until I find a stencil to spruce them up a little before putting up my new bling organizers.
Now... behold, yours truly:

Have a good day, peeps! 

It's not easy being green!

So we survived another weekend of minion infestation. Took 'em to the park, and a good time was had by all.
Who am I kidding? We had a blast!! The weather was awesome, the kids were on their absolute best behaviour, and it turns out that a walk in the woods is about a gazillion times more entertaining than the TV, the PC, and any random heap of plastic ever deemed a toy. This will be a (kinda) crafty post, but please let me show off the babes!

There were football hooligans, imaginary dogs, bear caves and ancient graves. Take that, Playstation, Wii and Cartoon Channel!

Anyway.

I figured that with my Mums' visit approaching fast, I better get my behind into gear and tackle the worst disaster areas in the house. Pretty much the first thing that come to mind is the fungus farm in the bathroom. It hasn't seen a lick of paint since we moved in, and mould is spreading like there is no tomorrow. There is pretty much nothing we can do about it- the house is old, the room is badly ventilated and the paint that graces the walls at the moment was, I suppose the cheapest on the market.
So we went all out and bought a bucket of "lime crush"- yes, "lime crush". My choice. In my first flat, I was still a teenager, I had a green "wet cell", and it sort of tickled my fancy. Wanna see the disaster zone I'm talking about? Behold- our poor bathroom!

I had a few brush strokes to test it, and I guess I can live with the colour. As long as it's not mould green, I'm all for it!


I intend to take down the shelves you see in the picture. All they do is steal light! Honestly, if I wanna slap on some make- up, I have to do it somewhere else because for the love of mascara I can't see what I'm doing in that bathroom mirror.
But that means the wall is going to be empty. And there is nothing worse than an empty wall, right?

Say hello to my new earring organizers!!

No tutorial needed for these bad boys. Have a look:

All I did was adhere some fabric to cardboard I cut to size to fit the frames (this way I can keep the original backing in case I get tired of organizing my bling!), added some wire to one of them, some crocheted flowers (please check Mandys blog for the super- easy tutorial, the green flower is my first ever and not at all bad, if I may say so!) to the other, stuck some of my shinies to them and there they are, ready to grace the new lime crush- coloured walls.

Unfortunately, the daylight disappeared before I could take pictures, so the colours look a tad (very) odd. In reality, they actually match, and I'm hoping they'll look ok on the wall, once it's done.
What I shall need now is a solution for my necklaces, but I think that a few twigs and white spray paint might help me out.

Stay tuned, I have a hunch my next post will involve paint, brushes and a lot of green!

Love y'all, hope you had a great weekend.

Gimme a jellyfish, will you?

Guys, I had this post all planned out.
I meant to present you with some perfectly crafted jellyfish, in honour both of Mich L and Saraccino.
Now, have you ever produced an utter FAIL? I mean, something so dang bad you can't even sell it as kids' craft, recycling, upcycling or repurposing?
Check out my Jellyfish.

They jelled their way into the bin, without even getting the benefit of doubt tentacles.
After failing with model clay, I decided that one fail isn't quite enough, I had to fail with the needle felting technique, too. On the upside, I got a pretty flower and some really decent felt beads out of it! But on the whole, there will be no jellyfish in the Three Bed Semi at any point in the foreseeable future. Boy, am I cheesed off!

In order to rescue todays post, I have something that I would love to share with you all, if you'd allow me. Nothing I had planned, just one of them little LOL moments that make jellyfish seem quite unimportant, even if you've spent a whole day off on creating a jelly disaster.

The Man and I went on a little stroll today, exploring charity shops and generally enjoying the nice weather. I came home with a bag full of fun finds, he came home regretting he ever took me for a stroll. Bless his cotton socks, he took it like a man and stopped crying about an hour ago, I am SO proud of him!

To cut a long story short, when we came home, I went upstairs to change into something comfy and found this:

Brownie points if you find the kitteh. I called The Man upstairs, and I swear he did not notice her! Domestic bliss on a mad cat lady scale.

She eventually emerged, and I managed to get some shots of her and Bob which I am really proud of, for no reason whatsoever. The light played into my hands, the camera is pretty much courtesy of my insurance (hey, a D40 was all I asked for, cheers!) and the models seemed to be in the best mood ever. All I did was click, and I was blessed with pictures that, in my book, capture the very reason why we put up with hairballs, spraying, hissing, cat fights, a bannister that is reduced to a mere toothpick and no room whatsoever on the couch, bed, comfy chair and pretty much anywhere else.
Meet Erin and Bob, people.

There are two more supermodels in the house, but apparently they were unavailable for this shoot. Divas... If this wan't too much for you guys, I will happily post glamour shots of them as soon as I manage to get an appointment in. As I am writing this, Shannon (skinny black slinky cat) is trying her upmost to sit on my lap, so I reckon I might have a foot in the door.
Sorry for another utterly non- crafty post, but if anyone feels the need to say JELLYFISH anywhere near me, I swear I will hurt somebody. Badly.
Love y'all, have a great weekend!