Apr
29
2007
0

Special cards

Here are some of my recent offering.

My Uncle Howard is 60 today so the first card is one I made for his wife to give him and the second one is the one I sent him from me…

Uncle Howard 1 Uncle Howard 2

And here is one for my cousin Sam…

Sam

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
29
2007
0

Which superhero are you?

Sorry everyone… there are loads of photos in this entry!!!

I have had a fabulous weekend. My “little” cousin Sam is 18 on Monday so my cousin Chloe and I travelled up to Beverley in Yorkshire to attend his birthday party. Chloe and I had a lovely drive up the A1 and over the Humber bridge, which is really rather beautiful, and not long after we had arrived we were whisked off to help decorate the village hall. It looked really fab by the time we skived off for a cup of tea and a little lie down before we had to get changed into our outfits.

Sam has never been known to miss the opportunity to dress up so the theme of the party was ‘superheroes’. He is a fab guy and such fun and he also has rather theatrical tendencies and is involved with Riding Lights theatre company. As a result of this a variety of rather dramatic friends arrived at the house over a period of time. I have never seen so many men in lycra in my life!

Sam had chosen to go as a superhero who could change the way he looked so over the evening he had several costume changes…

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(he is 3rd from the right in the first photo)

His little sister Steffi was wasp character whose name I still can’t remember…

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I was Cat Woman… Chloe went as Wonder Woman (doesn’t she have fabulous legs?!)… and Chloe’s brother Tom stole the show dressed as He Man. It would seem to me that students these days have far too much time on their hand as he created this outfit with the help of his flat-mates!

Sam’s mum was Super Mum (of course) and his dad was Gandalf (I would also like to point out that really he is respectable vicar!!)

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There were close to 100 people at the party and they really all had made the most amazing effort. There was a fab live band DJ was great and played “handbag music” all evening which as an awful lot of Sam’s friends are dancers made for a rather entertaining sight. I have to admit to doing the Macarena at least twice, and to knowing most of the actions! It was one of the gayest, campest parties I have ever been to… so here are a selection of photos from the evening.

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By the end of the party my feet were hurting so much as I almost never wear high heels. I think I am more cut out to wear flip-flops than posh shoes! So after the party all the people who were sleeping at my aunt and uncle’s house arrived back. The house looked more like a squat than anything else. Lots of people sleeping in the lounge, various lycra garments draped everywhere (!!) and generalised mayhem, but it was a lot of fun!

So once we had got rid of them all I wandered off to the car-boot sale with my cousins and the lovely dog Chango and we had a spot of lunch before Tom had to go home. Before we left Auntie Cath, Chloe, Steffi, Sam and I had a little run, and then a sit down on the field.

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A fabulous, if exhausting, weekend which was topped off by a diabolical drive home. I was so tired I had to stop and have a power nap to make sure I got home in one piece!! So, roll on the next party!!!

Ps…. … and a last couple of photos of myself and my cousins as ‘normal’ people and as out alter egos!!

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Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
27
2007
3

Why does exercise hurt so much?

I have been doing Pilates for about 4 years now and I love it, but every now and then our instructor takes it up another level and it hurts again! When I started we only ever did mat work which is a series of exercise using various types of equipment such as balls, bands, hoops etc, but a few months ago the studio installed some major pieces of equipment called Reformers (although our class tends to call them the Deformers!) They look like a bench which have a series of pulleys and springs attached to them and you use it to target specific muscles. The mat work exercises follow the same principles, but when you do them on the Reformers it makes them more effective.

So, last night we were doing Reformer exercise including one called leg circles which looks like this (sorry I couldn’t find a bigger pic!)…

reformer_legcircles

Basically you have your feet in the straps and then you do wide circles with your legs straight and lengthened. You have to use a lot of core stability to maintain your posture and it is bloody hard work. I am very flexible which means that my leg circles are quite big and this morning my muscles hurt so, so much. I guess it must have done me good but I have sore arms, stomach muscles and legs!!

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
25
2007
0
Apr
24
2007
7

Ouch!

I had a card-making accident today. I use a craft knife which is very sharp and has a blade about an inch long and as I was reaching out for something the knife fell off the tray on my lap and embedded itself in the top of my foot. I was pretty unnerved to see if standing vertically out of my foot and when I pulled it out there was loads of blood but I don’t seem to have done any permenant damage but there is a big hole and I suspect a nice bruise is brewing!

However, unlike Rosamundi whose first thought on injuring herself with a knife was to get the camera, mine was to avoid getting blood on the carpet. So, no gory photos for anyone. Sorry about that!!

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
21
2007
8

A creative fix

I have managed to dig out my unfinished quilt and here is a picture of the work in progress…

Patchwork

It is made up on 5cm squares in lots of different colours. Each colour block is made up of 16 squares of a similar colour and from a distance they look like one colour, but are actually lots of different fabrics. When finished the quilt will be 10 colour blocks by 10 colur blocks (does that make sense?!!) I made one of these quilts as a birthday present for Auntie Billie a couple of years ago and then decided I wanted one too but got bored about three quarters of the way through. SO, now I need to patch all the blocks together and then edge it and finish it off.

I love doing this stuff, but card-making took over for a while, but now I want this on my bed for the summer!!

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
21
2007
0

What to do today…

Today I have a day with nothing planned. Bliss! Also being skint at the moment severely limits my options.

I think I might go swimming later on but I am feeling pretty creative at the moment too. So here are my list of options.

1) Dig out my patchwork quilt that is sat in a box waiting for completion.
2) Make a couple of birthday cards for my Uncle’s 60th birthday (although I am waiting for some photos before I do that)
3) Have a go at felting some jumpers to use for craft things.
4) Make a bag with some beautiful fabric I have. I am feeling quite inspired by birdie’s beautiful bags.

Knowing me though I will surf the internet and and up doing nothing very productive at all!

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
19
2007
1

Poor bloke

I have to pity my colleague. He is the only bloke in an office with 4 women. This morning we have talked about bras, looked at bras on the internet, periods, pregnancy, stretch marks and men. The classic comment of the day came from my colleague Kate who said “I’m not being funny, I have had quite a few men’…. followed by gales of laughter. She has an awful cackle too so our poor boss up the end of the office can probably hear every word. Mind you, every time he walks into the office we are looking at clothes on the website and I heard him muttering earlier about “going through a motivational dip”. I think he knows he is losing the war on our commitment to work.

Sometimes work is very entertaining.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
18
2007
7

*sigh*

WARNING – SELF-PITYING POST ON ITS WAY!

After having a great weekend I have kind of crashed back down to earth in quite a major way.

On Monday evening my sister came to stay with me and told me that her boyfriend of a few months is moving to the island that we grew up on. My sister went through a pretty unpleasant divorce last year and I am pleased that she has met someone who isn’t a prick. However, not only is her boyfriend moving to the island, he is moving in with my parents until his housing licence gets sorted out.

Here’s where the problem starts. I already feel that I have become the gooseberry, the added extra, the plus one, the outsider (you get the picture). I am struggling so much with being on my own and feeling as though this is something that I am to blame for. My obsession with my weight feels as though it is slowly creeping back in and I unreasonably convince myself that the reason I am single is because I have an arse larger than a size 0.

In the past I have gone back to the island for a couple of weeks in the summer, but I am not sure that I can face going to stay with Mum and Dad if he is living there. I feel as though I will be putting myself into a situation which will be unbearably painful and like rubbing salt into the wound. My resentment towards my lovely sister is growing as I have to watch her have another crack at the relationship whip whilst I edge my way to the back of the shelf. Life seems unbelievably unfair sometimes, especially when there is nothing I can do to change it.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |
Apr
16
2007
8

The Wight Meet

I have had a fabulous weekend. I went to the Isle of Wight with about 30 people from the Ship of Fools.

On Friday I picked up one of the girls from the Ship and we got the boat over to the Isle of Wight where we met up with everyone else and a couple of very kind volunteers had made chilli and we met up at one of the local church halls.

The boats we were staying on were absolutely fab. I was on the boat on the left…
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Here’s one of the cabins and the ‘diner’
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On the Saturday after a proper breakfast we went off on the magical mystery car treasure hunt. Smudgie had done an amazing job and we had lots of fun.

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After the treasure hunt we went off on the steam railway which kept the little children, and some big children very happy.
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In the evening we had a nice meal.

Sunday was more fun. Some of us went to Smudgie’s church and we managed to not show her up too badly. Then lots of the posse went on a dinosaur walk type thing, but I decided to pop in on my old neighbours who had moved to the island. Lovely to see them. The evening was spent consuming fish’n’chips and several bottles of wine on the boat.

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As lots of people had gone home yesterday Yangtze and I went off to Osborne House which was Queen Victoria’s “cosy” holiday home. It is the most beautiful place with stunning gardens and very helpful people explaining about the rooms….

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Anyway, must go to bed. I had a fabulous weekend, the weather as wonderful and the company wasn’t bad either!!

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized |

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