Oh, you’re such an egg

I’ve been blogging more over at Miso Funky so that excuses the almost month-long hiatus here! Honest, guv.

In the past month, there has been not much of note to report. My dodgy gall bladder woes continue. I have been in and out of work – they are very supportive which is a huge relief, as having worked at iomart for 6 years, I have an ingrained sense of guilt when I have to take time off work. My old boss there made me feel I had to go in when I had mumps, ie contagious! But the new bosses are very nice and I think want to make sure I don’t end up dying on their watch.

I have been to casualty once too, when I collapsed after eating a banana at work – THAT was fun. I had to lie on the bathroom floor at work until someone came in and found me as I couldn’t breath or get up to go and get help. Crikey!

I’ve also had an ultrasound which confirms 2 big gall stones and inflammation, hence the pain. I saw the surgeon on Monday who was a total dick and wanted to wait for 6 months “to see what happens”. I managed to beg him to just put me on waiting list, which still means a 3 month wait anyway. He said himself that I’d need it out sooner or later, so I think I convinced him that sooner would suit me better than later. It’s ruling my entire life and is painful every day – something he seemed not to believe. I suppose it is his job not to indulge people too much or we’d all end up hypochondriacs but a teeny bit of sympathy might not have gone amiss. Needs to work on his bedside manner!

I have researched how much it would cost to go private – and worked out that I only need to sell approximately 280 emobroideries to pay for it. Maybe I should hold a benefit gig to raise the funds! Even if I had £5,000 I don’ t think I could bring myself to spend it on having surgery, no matter the pain.

Apart from this, it’s been pretty quiet at Brown Towers. The crafting continues – had quite a few wholesale enquiries recently and I’m working on 2 of those, restocking Red Door Gallery and 2 custom orders. I’ve also started making plans for Christmas and even bought someone a Christmas present yesterday!

Off to work now, hopefully I can stick it out for the full week this week!

There’s another giveaway happening at Miso Funky, so make sure you check it out.

Giveaway #1 Winners!

Wooo – loads of entries in the giveaway over on Miso Funky – only 3 here. Tsk tsk. You’re all losers!

Actually, you all ARE losers, as the magic randomiser chose people from MF, so no luck this time ladies!

However, the next batch of prizes will be announced over there later this afternoon, so get over there now. I’m too lazy to keep posting in two places

Giveaway #1 Reminder

You’ve only got 5 hours to get your entry in. You are fools if you don’t enter! No more prizes til these are gone and I have loads waiting!

GO GO GO!

A pony is NOT a form of transportation.

Come on, tardy giveaway enterers! Get to it, I have about another 20 things to give away once these are out the way!

In other news, my gall bladder woes continue. It’s quite dull even for me so I won’t bleat about it (plenty of that to come later, mwuhahah!) but suffice to say I am in pain and bored of not being able to do anything or eat anything fun.

But I have learned to cook a few new things to encompass my need for relatively low in fat foods. Here’s a recipe for my randomly put together but delicious soup I made today.

Roasted Balsamic Tomato and Red Pepper Soup

Ingredients

12 x tomatoes

2 x sweet red peppers

Balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

Dried garlic flakes

Salt and pepper

This is so easy a thumbless monkey could make it. First, quarter the tomatoes and chop up the red peppers into chunky bits.

Stick in a roasting tin and drizzle a bit of olive oil on. Drizzle balsamic vinegar on too so all the bits are coated well.

Shake on some garlic flakes or if you aren’t as lazy or pushed for time, crush some garlic cloves and wang them in (remember to take the skin off later tho or it will be minkin’.) Season with plenty of salt and pepper,

Roast in oven on about 180 degrees for an hour or so – until everything starts to go a bit gooey.

Leave to cool then stick in blender until everything is smooth.

Voila – soup! You could add a bit of creme fraiche or something to make it creamy but NOT ALLOWED for me, boo. This made enough for about 2 bowls, so a good snacky sized recipe – just increase the number of tomatoes for more and add another pepper.

We scoffed this as soon as it was made, so no photos but it was VERY tasty!

Hope you enjoy!

Giveaway!

I’m having a clear out in the craft room, so it’s giveaway time.

There’s likely to be a few different things going, here is today’s batch:

Firstly, a batch of ribbon in various colours, lengths and guises including black, white, red, lilac, tartan and some lilac paper ribbon.

Next up is jewellery findings – 2 bags of silver plated earring studs with butterfly backs and 4 hat pins.

And lastly for today, 4 old skool kids books – the batch comprises Downy Duckling, Animal Poems, Mr Plod and Little Noddy and Black Beauty, which has some lovely colour illustrations.

For your chance to win – simply leave a comment on this post before midnight GMT on Wednesday 22nd July! Extra entries if you Tweet, blog or link to this in anyway, mention it in your comments.

If you don’t win this time though, there’s plenty more where this came from!

In America they call brown sauce steak sauce

Yeah, I know I said it was Day In The Life, but sadly, I’ve been ill, so haven’t been able to do it. Sorry Lynsey, who was the only person to do it! The rest of you – feel shamed.

I had a nice day in Edinburgh on Sunday meeting lots of new people, talking to customers, selling lots of emobroidery and getting very wet feet in the torrential thunderstorm that thankfully didn’t last very long.

In the early hours of Monday morning though, I awoke to terrible stomach pains and a pain in my shoulder, which I’ve encountered before. Then the projectile vomiting started and continued for about 6 hours. UGH.

Cutting to the chase, I managed to drag myself to the doctors and it turns out that I need to have my gall bladder removed! I thought it was just a stomach bug or something, but it’s either gall stones or the actual gall bladder that needs to be whipped out. I’ve got to wait for an ultrasound to confirm which and in the meantime am dosed up with painkillers, anti-sickness tablets and feel like I have a permanent stitch the sort I’ve not experienced since cross-country running at secondary school. Very painful and most uncomfortable!

I’ve been off work for the last few days as that’s how my shifts had worked out, but will be back tomorrow, to see how I manage. And then I suppose I am just waiting to hear what it’s to be. BOOOOOO.

It also means I am immediately on a strict diet, cutting out as much fat as possible, no dairy, low sugar – i.e. no fun at all! It’s Lee’s birthday on Friday, so I won’t be able to indulge in cake even (well, maybe a mouthful). I’ve organised a smaller cake just for him though – he better not make me watch him eat it!

If anyone has any tips for fat-free low sugar cake, send ‘em my way!

He’s got a lovely soft Irish accent. He sounds like a cheese

Ooh, a crafty post! Just a quick one mind.

Here’s some work I’ve done recently.

Mini anchor gold framed cross stitch sampler – Nautical is in this season!

A custom order for Sally for her Manchester/Madchester friend.

New shelves for display! Here they are working out very well at Say No To Plastic recently.

And finally – Jeff’s first attempt at some images. Not bad for his debut.

More crafting soon! Really busy with preparing for Edinburgh this weekend just now, so more to follow, I promise!

I’m so glad you have no memory of me

Oooh, s’warm. It’s after 11pm and it’s still 20 degrees! Who knew Scotland was capable of such tropics? (Not me.)

Was thinking earlier that everyone could do with a bit of motivation re blogging, not least me, so let’s have a Day In The Life!

I’m going to nominate this Sunday 5th July as the day to be written about. I am doing a market in Edinburgh that day, so should have something to write about.

Please feel free to join in and spread the word – just leave a comment here when you’ve posted yours on Sunday and I’ll collate them all.

When you’re on holiday, like, abroad, you get these breakfasts where it’s all fruit

Yeah, I know. I’ve been back ages now and I’ve only blogged once. I’ve been too busy working or sewing or working at sewing. C’est la vie!

Also, I’ve been getting a tax refund that needs spent and having an earring surgically removed from inside my ear lobe. INSIDE! I also have scored many car boot sale bargains which I will try to blog about soon and had a letter from the police thanking me for my honesty.

If you have a burning desire to know what I am doing at any given moment and can’t wait for a sporadic blog post, then you can follow me on Twitter. Just click the icon below.

 

When they say it’s going to be a good summer, are they taking the piss?

Yeah, so I forgot to say, I went on holiday for 2 weeks. But I’m back now! Here’s where I’ve been:

Pretty much just there for 2 weeks solid! It was GREAT. Such a brilliant rest, and I sewed NOTHING the whole time I was there.

OK, I did sew one thing but it was just a single letter of something before I got bored with it, so it’s good as nothing. I did read all my books and had to go and raid the hotel library several times.

We’re back to glorious sunshine in Glasgow, which is nice but strange. We both feel like we’ve been away for months, so we are adjusting to being back, wandering around the flat and marvelling at things like carpet, our own pillows and the fact that we can have the windows open without being bitten by winged beasts.

Ah, winged beasts! The bloody mosquitos – nobody warned us about those. I got more bites on one leg in 2 weeks in Greece than I did in 5 months in Bangkok. We are both liberally covered in the bastarding things – ankles, knees, legs, arms, hands, neck, back, ass cheek (!) and I have 2 particularly gruesome ones on my right foot. I have some sort of reaction to mosquito bites which cause them to swell up into bubbles and … oh, you don’t want to know.  It’s HIDeous. I hope I won’t be scarred for life.

I am finding I am missing already the cast of thousands from our holiday. There were Jim and Senga, our neighbours in the next apartment. She’s a hair dresser and Sky customer services person and he wears tight Y fronts, the kind you would not expect a man of his considerable bulk to wear.

Then there were the Janices 1 & 2, both typical Glasgow women who expounded the virtues of their “pure beautiful” baked potatoes to me at great length in the pool on more than one occasion.

Our other neighbours were a couple from Northern England somewhere, probably Halifax, who had a little girl about 3 or 4, named Grace. She ate spaghetti hoops for tea every day and did a wee on the floor. We know this as her parents bellowed at her regularly. Grace, you’re not a baby, stop acting like one!

Oh, and Super Dad – how could I have forgotten him?A geordie and his Falkrik wife – who gave them licence to breed? The government should be informed. He was the biggest dolt I’ve met in  a long time – it turned out they were on their honeymoon – 2 weeks with their little girl, about 3 or 4 again. She was very demanding, cried a lot. Wife was quiet, sun tanned a lot. He was LOUD and tried to parent every child in the vicinity and flirted a lot with…

Welsh woman and her child. She got her tits out a lot and didn’t do much to stop her little girl from shoplifting ice cream and taking her pants off and running towards the sea. She was quite funny for a little kid.

Oh, how we laughed! For people watching is one of our favourite things to do on holiday. Along with eating and playing cards on the balcony in our pants. We did a lot of all those things. The eating thing was hit or miss, though we did find one fantastic restaurant nearby which never failed to hit the spot.

It’s called Casa Di Flavia and is just outside the resort area, fact finders, of Lardos on Rhodes. Go there and have the pork in tarragon sauce or the stifado – YUMMMMMM.

Now I’m hungry and I have to go and put the washing machine on again. I’ve put lots of photos up on Flickr, go see!

I’m not gettin’ on a bus. Buses are stinky

Well done, Day In The Lifers!

Here’s the posts so far:

Emma

Laura

Miss Crafty

Tracey

All you other slackers, hurry up

There’s nothing you can do about mould on grouting

A day in my life. Yesterday to be precise. My day starts at 00:01 because I am working til midnite on the Friday.

0010 I have been waiting for my work taxi home for 15 minutes and it’s still not here. Work very kindly pay for us to take a cab home on their account if we work late and usually they are waiting for us.  Decide to call them so have to go back upstairs to office to get number. Get through to nice man who says that for some reason, they have sent taxi to my house to bring me to work. Of course.

0015 Get back downstairs and taxi is waiting. Hurrah

0030 Home and eating some salt and vinegar crisps. Eddie Izzard is on the telly talking about jam. I decide, in my infinite wisdom, that now would be a great time to start my tax return, so switch on computer.

0045 Rootling around in bureau for P45s, pay slips and the like. Lee is working in Brechin for the weekend so I can make as much noise as I like.

0145 Plod through tax return with estimated figures until p60 arrives. The tax man tells me he owes me nearly £2,000. Yes, that’s  2 thousand Earth pounds. I must have input something wrong somewhere but too tired now to fix it. Head to bed to dream of what I would do if it were only correct.

0300 Still reading my book about a reformed crackwhore called Cupcake. Just as well, as the neighbours are having some sort of shindig.

0405 Enough’s enough, lights out.

1100 Wake up at 11am on the dot which is unusual, as I am usually awake every couple of hours. Get up and faff about and am most disgruntled to realise I have slept through the postman’s attempts to deliver a parcel. He has unhelpfully underlined the MONDAY option on the card, bah. I am doubly peeved as from his detailed description on the card, it’s the parcel of coaster bits I am waiting for.

1130 Have a shower and sing along to radio whilst drying hair. Text Jo to see what our revised plan is for the day as it’s such a miserable day outside. Tidy up a bit and get rid of the giant cardboard box which has been in our hall for a month and a half full of gold frames. Can get rid of it as it’s no longer even a quarter full of frames which is a little concerning. But the hall looks much better.

1245 Checking emails, answering customers questions and generally faffing on the internets briefly. Move all my craft books into my vintage cabinet in the hall along with my Govancroft teapot.

1300 Jo is going to come down with Basil for a cup of tea and a blether instead of us going out as it’s still horrible weather and she’s feeling a bit dodgy. Do some sewing and watch You Bet! on Challenge TV to relive my Saturday nights at my grandad’s when I was wee. Ruth Madoc is on it being a saucepot. Her challenger is a man who can snuff out candles with a fork lift truck. A handy skill if ever there was one.

1345 Straighten the painting in living room. This has been needing done for weeks.

1430 Sewing more I Heart Cake coasters for wholesale order and waiting for the Bartletts to arrive. Put heating on as it’s freezing and Lee, the heating grinch, is not here to shout at me.

1530 Playing with Basil!

1630 Pack the Bartletts off home after Basil tries to make love to the cushions one to many times. Lee texts to say he’ll be home this evening instead of Sunday.

1745 Lee returns and announces he is whisking me out to dinner. Hurrah, I am starving having eaten a slice of homemade bread and not much else today. Get changed and Lee has a shower to cleanse himself of Brechin.

1845 Walk along to Partick – it’s stopped raining thankfully. Forgot it was Old Firm game though, there are loads of mentalists out. Buy lottery ticket just in case we are lucky.

1900 Have a lovely meal at Papa Gill’s, our favourite local Indian. The food is great and it’s very reasonably priced AND they give you foam bananas and strawberries instead of mints when you pay the bill.

2045 Walking home. I put some foam bananas in my mouth like fangs and pretend to be a vampire to amuse Lee. Get home and check lottery ticket – one number! So close, yet so far away.

2130 Drinking the Kopparberg we got from Mr Stardust on the way home. Stardust is the name of our local corner shop. Watch Superbad on DVD which is actually super funny! Boom boom!

0000 Shuffle off to bed. Good nacht!

Why shouldn’t I call up your wife and tell her what a two-timing rat you are? I’ve got nothing to lose

Day In The Life – remember that?!

I am reinstating this seeing as it’s fallen by the way side! For the uninitiated, we choose a day and then we write about it – it’s really that simple.  For some inspiration, here’s mine from May last year:

http://mooosh.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/day-in-the-life/

The next Day In The Life I am selecting is Saturday 9th May.

To take part, just blog your day on Saturday in any format you like and leave a comment here. I’ll collate them all and link to them so we can all read.

Past participants include Marceline, Catherine, Sally, Alice, Alex, Liz and Jo who no longer blogs (booo).

Anyone can join in and I’m extending personal invitations to you, Laura, Tracey, Miss Crafty, Nicolette, Lynsey, Emma and other Lynsey, who really needs to get her ass in gear, blog wise. Some of you have done it before, but have probably forgotten.

Remember – Saturday 9th May!

We found a live frog in the cat’s water bowl with its hands over its eyes!

Just returned from a very pleasant evening spent with Jo and Catherine eating cake and chatting. It was so nice to see them, as I haven’t seen much of either of them recently.  We went to Delizique, or Cafezique as it now seems to be called – if you haven’t been, try it, it’s lovely!

I suppose I have been a bit slack with keeping up with friends recently, with one thing and another. My good intentions get lost in a mire of sewing, working and um… more sewing. This weekend was taken up with sewing, a rubbish craft fair that was easily the worst-publicised event I’ve ever attended and thus not worth mentioning and more sewing. 

Yesterday, in honour of it being a bank holiday here in the UK, I decided to do my accounts which I realised I had neglected since January, despite, again, the best of intentions. It took a while but I am now up to date and discovered that if it hadn’t been for the purchase of Jeff, I’d be in a pretty healthy profit – imagine my surprise!

You can check out the latest creations over on my Flickr, as WordPress is not uploading photos this eve. Back to work tomorrow, booo. After four days off, it will be tough! Only 11 more sleeps til we go on holiday though, woooo!

Miso Funky Giveaway

As it’s such a miserable bank holiday here in the UK, I’ve decided to have a little giveaway over at Miso Funky. It will also allow me to see if there is anyone actually reads the blog

I’m going to be giving away 5 sets of Robot Lovers Goodies, including a postcard, a magnet and a kawaii badge set.

To be in with a chance of winning, just leave a comment here before Midnight GMT on 11th May 2009! That’s it. Make sure you leave your email address too.

You’ll get an extra entry if you blog about this with a link or mention it on Twitter, just let me know if you do that in your comment.

Oh, yeah, you can read all about the stuff that goes on behind the scenes here at Miso Funky by following me on Twitter!