January 29th 2015 - Making a Spell book

January 29th 2015 -Making a Spell book

I am starting the process of making a Spell book ready for Halloween, to go alongside my witches potion shelf and crystal ball that I have.  There are many ideas and tutorials on the internet but most are for an open book and only have 2 pages with spells on, this is 1 of the ideas on pinterest.

However, for my book I plan to add a Spell to every page!  Yes i'm being adventurous and yes I will get it to work and no it's not too early to be thinking about Halloween!  I also found this picture on Pinterest about Halloween that I thought was appropriate:

This is so me and sums things up.  I love Halloween and everything that goes with it, I have boxes of decorations and stuff in the loft, I really think that I should have lived in USA as they do everything on a big scale like I like to do.

Anyway back to the book.  I went to the old/second hand book shop in town on Tuesday 27th January in the hope of finding an old leather bound book of A4 type size that I could convert.  There were some lovely old books that would have been perfect, the only downside was the price of the £6.50 for an A5 and upto £50 an almost A3 size.  They would have been great but I can't justify the cost of it for use of a few hours 1 night a year.  So I went round the charity shops and picked up a 1978 encyclopeadia for 99p, its not as thick as I had hoped for but  i can make it work.

 

I plan to add texture by tissue paper to the cover and then paint it a deep purple, I also want the word spells in raised letters across the top and a silver pentagram underneath and the same on the spine.  I just have to find these bits or work out how to make them!  I am glueing every 2 pages together to make the paper thicker and I will painting them with acrylic paint in a brown to make them look old.  Once these are all done (going to take few weeks as can only glue 4 pages at a time so they dont all stick together and will be the same with paint).  I will then be printing out all the spells I have found  and saved on pinterest in a baord called spells and spell book, and sticking them to the pages.

This is going to be a work in progress and I will be re-visiting as I go during the year.

January 28th 2015 - Pinterest has arrived on my blog

January 28th 2015 - Pinterest has arrived on my blog

I have wondered for a long time HOW people have the "P" or "pin" appear on their images on blogs and websites, so I set about finding out.

 I started off by going through my blog to check I didn't already have, which I didn't think I did and I was correct.  I then hit settings and started playing about with those and also realised that my blog didn't show the tags/labels I have added to each post or have a search bar and a few other bits.  So I added these quite easily from the layout tab, but I couldn't find anything about the Pinterest bit on photos so I went and searched on Pinterest itself and there is loads, some not relevant to blogger but I eventually found a link that was.

I followed the insturctions and saved my template, added the coding  where it said saved it and went back to the blog page AND it worked! 

 I'm really happy and pleased with myself that I managed to do it.  My blog can now be linked to Pinterest via my pictures, it has a search bar and shows all the tags.  I even altered the background colour from Black to Purple, so its now now a really dark blog.  Another day I am going to try and find a really nice Purple blog template and see if I can change the template completely.  I need to work out how to link Pinterest to my blog as well.

January 27th 2015 - FIMO

January 27th 2015 - FIMO

Today has been one of those mad days.  We usually go shopping on a tuesday morning, today being no exception.  Except for the fact I needed to do some bits in town as well.  So rather than leaving food in the car and then doing town we did town first.  Makes sense right???  Well you would think so but it seems the world and his wife were in town and the supermarkets all at the same time.

We usually get to the supermarkets just after 9am once we have dropped the kids off at school and the shops are very quiet and we get really quickly.   But today with going into town first which was really busy we didn't get to the supermarkets until nearly 12.  And it was heaving, you couldn't move down half the ailses and people were pushing and shoving!  I'm NOT doing groceries this late again!

Well after finally getting the shopping and lunch and getting home there wasn't much time left before getting my boys from school so I hav done a very easy pin for today - the instructions for how to use FIMO Modelling Clay.  I have bought a white sparkly pack of it that I am going to turn into 2 unicorn horns to go in jars to be added to my witches potion shelf for halloween.

I have even found instructions on how to make them from air drying clay, so it wont be much different for the oven baked clay which FIMO is.

I remember when I was little me and Mum had loads of FIMO and I was always making things, beads and animals and things for in my dolls house.  I didn't know it was stilll made until I was looking for clay to make the horns from.  Then to the madness of it I asked my friend if she had used it and could tell me how long to bake it for as it came with no instructions...... see bottom left of picture!  DUH.  LOL!  I didn't even see it on there until she asked me for a picture of what "Type" I had bought, as they vary slightly.  Never mind.

I also bought a book in the charity shop for 99p to start making my old spell book from.  I did look in the old/secondhand bookshop in town and he had some LOVELY really old leath bound books which would have been ideal, the only downside was the price of the £6.50 for an A5 and upto £50 an almost A3 size.  They would have been great but I can't justify the cost of it for use of a few hours 1 night a year.  Watch this space for the advancement of the spell book.

January 26th 2015 - Printer re-set

January 26th 2015 - printer re-set

For today's pin I was going to attempt to reset my HP printer ink cartridges via a link on pinterest, where it said that you take the cartridge out, turn it over and using a paper clip gently press on the re-set button in the middle.  Brilliant and very easy.

Errrrr not very easy if you have a HP printer as they DONT have a re-set button!  So I had to look for another pin on how to reset a HP.  I found one and it said to remove the cartridges and turn them over, cover the top 4 pins of the left row with clear tape and put back in printer, you would get an error message and to wat 10seconds before removing.  remove the tape and place over top 4 on right side.  This would have been great except my cartridges didnt have 4 pins near the top!

Well I placed the tape over 4pins and put the cartridges back in, got the error message, waited and then removed, and did the same the other side.  Removed the tape altogther and put cartridges back in and printed the test page which it printed.  (YAY)

Unfortunately when I tried to print the document I needed it came out blank again.  So this pin was a total flop for my printer.  Was a worth a shot incase I could trick it it thinking there was abit more ink left.  Never mind, will have to wait to get new ink.

January 26th 2015 - Book 2 finished

January 25th 2015 - Book 2 finished

Today I haven't done much, I didn't get up until 09:45am and I was in bed at 8:30pm last night after the very early wake up in order to go on the course.  Which we made it to without falling asleep on the train and was very informative.

So today I have sat and typed up the notes I made on the course which actually took ages and then I tried to print for my printer to do 2 pages of 6 (plus I need 3 copies in total) and then said it was out of ink and chucked out blank pages.  I think tomorrow I am going to try and re-set the ink and see if I can get them printed out.   Then I sat and read the last part of my book.  This is 1 of the categories in the 2015 reading challenge.  It is called I heart New York.  And fits under the section of set in another country.

Was your typical romance book really, which I don't mind reading now and then, I used to read them all the time.

January 24th 2015 - What stupid hour is this?

January 24th 2015 - What stupid hour is this? (written on 23rd as wont have time on 24th - you will see why.)


WHAT STUPID HOUR IS 5AM???  I didn't even know this hour existed until today! (Well I did see the end of post.)  Whose stupid idea was it to make me wake up and get dressed at this hour???  That would be St John Ambulance, lol!  I'm NOT a morning person and havn't been for many years!!!  My mornings start near noon.   However, I knew that this pinning of "random things" would come in handy 1 day and today it has. lol!

Well my morning today doesn't start near noon/mid-day but today it started at 5am, as I was being picked up by a friend at 6am to be on the 06:20am train out of town.  God this is unusual torture!  This isn't even for a nice reason like a day of partying or a nice spa but to go on a St John Ambulance 1day course that I need to do, based in Preston!  They don't run courses locally in Cumbria, they are all in Preston, Manchester, Liverpool and Stockport because there is more units in those areas - what happened to rotating them around to make it fair on everyone???   This is just the first of a few over the next few months that have stupid wake up times.  At least with most of them they are full weekend courses and I can leave friday lunchtime to be there for teatime and the course start, and I will return on sunday afternoon.

From the first train from home I have an hours trip to Carlisle, and from here another train of over an hour to Preston.  We have to leave this early because the next train gets us there after the course start time, we are being picked up from Preston station to get to the venue of the course. 

My god, this hour really is bad - I left the house armed with a coffee in my thermal travel cup and a bottle of energy drink in my bag!  It was pitch black and bl**dy freezing!  I'm pretty sure there should be a law against this.  The coffee and energy drinks will hopefully keep me awake.  I had said I was going back to sleep on the train and my mate could wake me up when we got there, the thing is he said he was going back to sleep and I could wake him up when we got there.   This could be bad!!!  So we may not get to the course in Preston but stranded the other end of the country if we both fall asleep, good job i've set alarms for both stations for 10mins before the trains are due to arrive.

 

this just about sums me and today up!!!

(I'm really not sure HOW I used to get up at this hour many years ago when I started work at 7am as a career in the nursing homes!  And to top that off some nights I didn't actually get home from clubbing until 3am and I was still up on time.  Then there was me working in the clubs and not getting home until 4am and out again for day shift in nursing home at 6am - but I managed it, but then I was younger than I am now!)

January 23rd 2015 - Happy 40th Birthday

January 23rd 2015 - Happy 40th Birthday

Today is my sisters 40th Birthday.  Sadly we can't be with her as she lives 5.5hrs drive down south from where we live.  We had planned to go down tonight when we picked the kids up from school for the weekend but I'm on a course tomorrow with St John Ambulance so we can't go.

When we saw her the other weekend we left her birthday present there, but as its a special birthday I ordered her a bunch of flowers from eflorist.com, they were like these:

I ordered and paid for them online and selected delivery for today, it all went through really easily, and when I messaged my sister  at 09:15am today to wish her a happy birthday they had just been delivered (very impressed as I thought would be later in day).  She said they are absolutley lovely. 

Well she did't get away with her 40th with just a bottle of perfume and a bunch of flowers - oh no!  I posted these bits alos found on pinterest on her facebook as well: 40 and days old.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIS, HAVE A GREAT DAY. xxxx