Here I am, demonstrating that major surgery need be no bar to looking elegant and well turned out!

I slipped a couple of discs in my spine over the summer and they got worse and worse until in September one of them ruptured and I had to have emergency surgery. I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about the success rate of spinal surgery before I had it, so I'm very thankful that mine seems to have been so successful. I'm left with sciatic pain down my leg and in my bum, but compared with how I was before and what might have been, I consider myself fortunate.

There is one thing that continues to prey on my mind. I was most definitely sporting sensible drawers when I was wheeled into that operating theatre and I awoke to find myself sans them. Which means that the surgeon was treated to the sight of my rosy red rump poking cheerfully up at him. Charming. I thought that with my childbearing years behind me I would be done with such unexpected invasions of modesty, but apparently not.

Friends say I should try to put such thoughts out of my mind. Coincidentally, I bet that is what the surgeon is trying to do too.

Anyway, I now face the grim spectre of returning to work in the next couple of weeks. The swines, do they not know I have a Christmas journal to complete??

Matalan bargain buy of the week: 12 wooden tree decorations for £3 (they have a 3 for 2 offer on decorations as well, if you feel like really pushing the boat out).

They come as plain wood, so I painted them black then coated them in black glitter (they are much sparklier IRL than they look in these pictures).

They look like ones that John Lewis were selling for £2 a pop a few weeks ago, but for a credit-crunching fraction of the price. Trouble is I now need a £45 white feather Christmas tree to display them on...

Me and oldest DS messing about the other day.

Looking at this I am faced with some difficult truths.
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While he has a skin like a peach, I have a strawberry nose.

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Furthermore, I look like a lairy old auntie, rather than the hip and dudey chickster I am in my head.

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Never mind. Wine and the application of Decleor Neroli Oil will help. Happy Friday!

Journal Your Christmas

I am really looking forward to starting Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas project next week. I'm hopeful it will be a great memory jogger for a period when (for me, at least) each day can blur seamlessly into the next. The only recent-ish Christmas that stands out in my memory is 2001, and that's only because starting on Christmas Eve me, DH, DS and anyone we came into contact with came down with the Norovirus, in very quick succession. I'm hoping that this Christmas will lodge in my memory in years to come, but for better reasons.

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(Obviously, having said that, I've jinxed it now. Something disastrous is bound to happen!!)

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Oh my, though. How about this for a Christmas journal? Gorgeous, I wish I'd made it...

I made the covers for my album for Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas project last night. It involved a lot of foul and unseasonal language, I don't mind telling you! Something to do with an acrylic album, Stazon and an unexpected chemical reaction. But anyway, it's done now.

I'm going for a mismatched look, so I'm not picking papers from any one particular Christmas range. Most of the things I've set aside to use aren't even Christmas papers anyway, although obviously these are (Cosmo Cricket and Papermania).

I'm a guest DT member for Make the Moment Last this month. I got to use some papers from the Crate Paper Lemongrass collection, plus some other bits and bobs and a gorgeous glittery Fancy Pants mini transparency. I've never come across them before and was a bit unsure how to use it, but it really lifted the LO.

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(It's great having a ginger boy. I'm never phased by orange papers!)

I used Fancy Pants Fresh Mod stamps on this one.

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The stalks are Daisy D floral rub ons.

I made this hanging for this month's UK Art Raffle. The theme was circles, so I used a Tim Holtz clock mask that I got at the weekend. My friend bought them by mistake, thinking they were stickers. Ha! As any fule kno, masks are used to create relief effects and of course you cannot use them as stickers!! Oh she may have appeared irritated, but trust me, one day she will thank me for pointing that out at length several times.

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Rrrrrr, I'm getting well and truly in the Christmas mood though, so come on December! I've signed up for Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas project (a page a day between 1st December and 12th night) and am using acrylic 8x8 covers for it. I've made some of the pages in advance, but I'll wait to make the others up until I've got a few entries under my belt and I know what direction I'm going in. Or alternatively, if the whole thing falls into disuse by oooh, day 8, then I've not wasted too much paper on it. (But of course that is not going to happen because I am on top of Christmas this year and absolutely will find the time each evening to sit with a small alcoholic beverage and reflect on and record the day's seasonal events for posterity.)

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I have also bought an artificial Christmas tree. I have mixed feelings about this, because I have always had a real tree at Christmas. When I was growing up artificial trees were one of my mother's key indicators for common-ness, (together with watching ITV and buying anything from the ice cream man) and while I have always fought against such nonsense I can't deny that artificial trees just don't seem right. Until earlier this year my FIL worked at a local garden centre and we always got a really nice, big tree for free from there, but he has retired this year (without so much as a thought as to our ongoing tree needs I might add!) and so we are left to fend for ourselves, tree-wise. I can't be doing with spending £30 each year on something that's going to shiver all its needles off by New Year. Plus the disposal of the real tree was getting to be a bit of a headache. My husband, invariably in a bad mood with Christmas by that time, always insists on chopping it to pieces to get it out of the door. By the end it's like that scene from Shallow Grave when Christopher Ecclestone goes mad and starts frenziedly hacking up the body. By contrast, wrestling an artificial tree back into the box in which it arrived will, I am confident, be a doddle.

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So I got one from B&Q (WHOOP! WHOOP! - "common" alert!). It cost £30 (WHOOP! WHOOP!). Apparently it is a "Luxury" model and has "Cashmere fronds" (WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! etc).

A couple of Christmas cards with my favourite stamp this year, Silly Reindeer by Rubber Soul. I got him from Sir Stampalot .

I bought this and a couple of Hero Arts stamps for this year's cards, but have struggled with the Hero Arts ones because really they need colouring in and I have reluctantly reached the view that I just can't colour in stamped images right. They look rubbish whatever I do, and I get really frustrated, so I think I am best avoiding them from now on.

This is a quick one using my cricut (Christmas Cheer).

More felt Christmas decorations. Damnit, there's a credit crunch on, people!

I made this, ahem, "charming", folksy Christmas felt star. Just to be clear, the legs and stitching absolutely are meant to be a bit wonky and bent out of shape. I think you'll find it's part of the piece's naive charm, actually!.

If I was Elsie you'd be lapping this up.
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Anyway, I thought I would make a few of these, and then it is just a short leap to pretending to dh that I also made the wreath below, and that I have not been out blowing the heating budget on Christmas frivolities.

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No, to be honest I don't think he'll buy it either.

Look at this! Just bought it at Lakeland. It was £12.99 and it feels pretty well made, although check for dried glue and stray stuffing if you are buying one, because there were a few slightly dodgy ones on the shelf.

These wreaths will either :

a) fly off the shelves and I will be at the forefront of this season's hottest home decor trend!!!!! Yesssss!;
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b) hang around like a fart in a spacesuit until marked down to £3 with still three weeks to go to the Big Day.

Hmm, judging by the success with which I've previously spotted hot new trends, I'm betting b). But I saw it and I liked it so I bought it. I try to buy only one new decoration each year, so I don't feel too bad.

Anyway, I'm making the rest of my Christmas decorations this year, so there! I got the Cosmo Cricket Christmas chipboard shapes and matching die cuts in a sale earlier in the year and I'm going to stick them together. Add a bit of glitter, add a bit of paint, punch a ruddy big hole through them and bish! bash! bosh!, instant heirlooms.

I think this photo will make me laugh until my dying day :). It's not just my older son's expression, but the fact that the mask is so big on my littlest one that you can only just see the tops of his eyes peeping through the eye holes. Bless.

I used the My Mind's Eye Night Light collection, plus a few other bits and bobs. And yes, Jackie, even a flower snuck its way in there. Oh, the horror!!!!! :)

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Gas man has still not been. Hat is firmly jammed on head out of necessity rather than vanity now. Am freeeeeeeezing.

Here I am! Totally rocking the knitted woollen hat look! I bought it today. It has a skull on. God, I'm so edgy! And me 40 and all! I'm even wearing it INDOORS, in the manner of Howard Donald, or similar cutting edge style icon. And it's not even as though the heating is off or anything. (I didn't get where I am today without knowing that there's NOTHING like adopting up-to-the-minute youth trends for shaving years off you in the eyes of others!)

I've never felt so alive, I tell you!!!!!

My 4 year old on his birthday last week (I know, I simply don't look old enough to have a four year old, do I?).

The orange frame was from a Love Elsie pack of 4 that I bought at the ambitiously titled Great Northern Papercrafts Extravaganza in February. I paid £6.99 for them. What was I thinking???? I was 40 that day, so I was generally feeling a bit strange and not right in the head, but still...

Anyway they have lain in my stash mocking me for the last few months, so this week I bit the bullet and used one of them. I quite like it, although I will always feel a peculiar stinging shame when I look at anything I make with them.

I mean, £6.99!! And that was the biggest one too - they were nested inside each other, so they only get smaller now.