It’s the 1st Day of the Last Month of the Year!!!

Hello friends!

Wow I can hardly believe how fast this year has flown by and here is my final page for Kate Crane’s Calendar Challenge.  I couldn’t resist and went with traditional Christmas colours of red and green for the background and for the days I used some Christmas paper that was free with a magazine last year and some chipboard embellisments.  The lettering for the month and days of the week were cut from glossy magazines, and the numbers for the days are stickers.

And below is my completed November spread.  This has not been the best month of the year for me so I am hoping things improve in December.

I hope all is good with you in your part of the world, it’s bloomin’ chilly here at the moment!  Proper wintery!

Stay warm and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

October’s gone and here is November :-)

 

Hello friends

Here is my journal page all ready for November for Kate Crane’s Calendar Challenge, time is just zipping by at the moment!  I am fairly sure now that I will complete the whole year.

I wanted my spread to have a wintery feel so I used cool colours for the background and then contrasted with warmer tones for the days.

I really love the quote and it has been a sort of motto for me this year.  I have done lots of things that previously I’d have been too scared to do and I am becoming braver and more self-confident.

I want to thank my friend Gretchen Miller for this – it was when I made my first Revo-lution Book as part of 21 Secrets 2011 that I first started to focus on the changes I wanted to make in my life and began to visualise my intentions.  You can find out about the Revo-lution over at Gretchen’s blog Creativity in Motion .  Just this week I have given presentations to two groups of strangers and I really enjoyed myself.  Just a few years ago I could not have contemplated standing in front of people and talking.  Inside there was a shouting voice telling me I wasn’t good enough and that I couldn’t do it, so of course I couldn’t.  But I have quietened that voice and now what I hear is “You can do this, relax and have fun”.  Thank you Gretchen  for helping me in this way and I am so glad I met you in cyber space 🙂  Thank you  also for the nomination as a Beautiful Blogger and when I get the time I will accept and nominate some of my favourite beautiful bloggers too.

And here is my completed October spread

 

Stay warm and safe people

Big love

AJ 🙂

That was August and here comes September

Hello friends

I hope you are all good.  I don’t have time to write much as I am busy, busy, busy!  But it’s the end of August (What happened to the summer?  We didn’t seem to have one here!) and it’s time to post my new calendar page for September which is part of Kate Crane’s Calendar Challenge.  I am just about managing to keep up with it and, as we have now completed 8 months, I think I will make it to the end of December.

And here is my completed page for August.

Right, I’ve got to go, I’ve got loads of printing and laminating to do this evening.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

PS  Still no news on the job front and I’m off work for a week now so won’t find out until mid September at the earliest!  So the quote on my September page is really appropriate.

August is here!

Hello friends

I hope you are all enjoying the summer, I am 🙂

Here is my August spread for Kate’s 366 Calendar challenge ready to go and here is my completed spread for July:

I have to say it’s a struggle at times to keep up with this, but I’m still hanging in there and so are plenty of others, so pop over to Kate’s page and check out all the other calendar spreads, everyone is doing a fantastic job!

Still no news on what is happening with my job at the moment, I guess I will just have to wait a while longer before I hear.  They are starting at the top and working down, at the moment they are looking at the management level above me.

Anyway I’m on leave now until Tuesday so I intend to enjoy the break and get some work done around the house and not worry about what might or might not happen.

Today my dad had his second flight in a glider, he and mum took the bus over to the airport and he got a flight, I am so pleased for him as it seems to be something he enjoys a lot.  I will ask him all about it when I see him at the weekend.

Are you all watching the Olympics?  Apart from the bit of the opening ceremony which I mentioned in my last post, I haven’t seen any, I’m just far too much busy to watch television these days and I’ve never liked sport, either as a participant or spectator.  However I was totally chuffed that Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France and now has won an Olympc Gold. Well done Wiggo!

That’s all for now folks

Big love AJ 🙂

July – is it summer yet?

Hello friends

Here is my spread for July for Kate Crane’s Calender Challenge.  I seem to have a butterfly theme this month 🙂

June was really busy for me so I didn’t get much time to doodle on my June spread, just recorded day by day what was happening in my life.  Here is the completed June spread.

Sorry, no time to write anything else today, Tony and I are going away for a week on Friday and I have loads of preparation to do before then.

Have a good week.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Here comes Jubbly June!

Hello friends!

That’s another month gone by and it’s time for Kate‘s Calendar challenge pages.  Here is June’s page.  It probably should be more red, white and blue considering it’s the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (or The Jubbly as my husband calls it) this month, but when I made the page I wanted it to have a holiday feel.  I painted the background in sea colours, added a little boat and some bunting at the top.  I used copies of old ferry tickets for the date squares.

The local history group I am involved had our Jubilee celebrations last weekend and to be honest with you I doubt if I will take any more interest in the Jubilee now.  I don’t really get all that excited about Royal events.  However I am grateful that we get two bank holidays next week, and in fact I get the whole week off because I’ve booked the other three days.  Yay!

It will be interesting to see how the month pans out.

And below is my completed May spread.  A month when we had unseasonally cold weather, lots of rain and then some hot weather for a few days. Some days when nothing seemed to happen and others when I achieved good things.

I hope all is good with all of you my friends.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Here comes May and that was April.

Hello friends!

I hope everyone is well and happy.

Here is my calendar page for May all ready to go, I’m excited because I think it’s going to be a good month.

April was apparently the wettest on record.  I know they say ‘April Showers’ but this was more like a monsoon at times.  It’s ironic because much of the south of England is currently under a drought order which basically means the use of hose pipes, sprinklers, etc. for domestic purposes is banned and we are being encouraged to be careful not to waste water.

People struggle to understand when we have had so much rain there is still a shortage of water, but two winters of less than average rainfall have left the ground water very depleted.  Although a drought in English terms has no comparison to a drought in Africa.  Here it means we have less water than we would like, in Africa it means there is no water.  The truth is that most of us take water for granted.  All my life I have been used to turning on a tap and clean water coming out of it.  I am sure that if I had to walk for hours a day and had to carry the water I needed, which even then would not be clean enough to drink, I would still treasure every drop.

Below is my completed page for April.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

This is April!

Hello friends!

I hope all is good with you.

What a busy day I’ve had since I posted That Was March this morning, I’ve been scanning negatives and uploading photos to my lomohome.

I stopped taking photos with my Lomo LCA camera a while ago because I couldn’t find anywhere to get my film processed.  Yes, I still use my analogue camera and film for my own personal photos (although I use a digi camera for photos for the history group).  Anyway there still are some places that will develop film, but I love to use slide film and get it processed as a normal negative.  Most photo developers look at you like you are completely nuts if you ask them to do that, or worse still like you are some sort of criminal and on the whole they refuse to do it.

Developing film in this way is called cross-processing and it has an ‘interesting’ effect on the end results.  Different films get different results.  My favourite film to use is/was Agfa Precisa CT 100 iso, but the production of it stopped years ago (in 2009 I think), I bought up a load of it at that time and it takes up a fair bit of space in the fridge (much to my husband’s annoyance).  However what I could buy then was already passed it’s ‘use by date’ so now in 2012 we are waaaaaaaaaay past that date and I thought the film might be not worth using, especially if I couldn’t get it developed.  Then a couple of weeks ago I found a place willing to cross process for me, I gave them 6 rolls film.  Two needed to be cross-processed and the other 4 (ordinary negative film) I had no idea what, if anything they had on them, so I told the developer “Just develop them and roll the film, no prints, no CDs”  Still cost me nearly £50!!!!

So today I have been scanning the first roll on my negative scanner, it takes ages as I have to use the highest resolution possible and then do some cleaning of any specks of dust that got on the film between me taking it out of the packet and putting it in the scanner, then resizing the photos and uploading them to the website.

I don’t think anyone else will be that impressed with the shots, but I am so pleased

a) that there was actually something on the film

b) that the Agfa Precisa, even though it is years out of date, still delivers the colours I want and

c) I can load up my camera again and get back into my other arty love – lomography 🙂

So today is April 1 and the start of 21 Secrets I am so looking forward to learning for all those great teachers, I think it is really good value for money considering the quality of the teachers and the number of workshops you can participate in once you sign up.  Maybe I’ll see you over there?

Sorry, I’m rambling on a bit aren’t I?  Above is my journal entry for April for the 366 Calender Challenge over at The Kathryn Wheel. Hopefully I got all the numbers in the right place and sequence this month!

I’m off to play, see you soon

Big love

AJ

That was March!

Hello friends

What an interesting month that’s been – I gave some presenations at work (something I couldn’t have imagined myself doing a few years ago), we’ve had some sickness, some worries at work, glorious summerlike weather, met Royalty and a fantastic Party on the Pier yesterday.

Above is my completed journal entry for March and below is how it looked at the beginning of the month.  I didn’t notice until I got to 12 March but I’d completely messed up with the numbering!  No wonder I got myself into such a pickle at work adding things up – sometimes I think I have number blindness, or maybe I’m just plain stupid?!  Oh well it all came good in the end.

I hope you had as interesting a month as I did.

Big love

AJ

Here comes March :-)

Hello friends!

Here is my March calendar all ready to be filled in.  I know there are at least two exciting things happening this month…

Big love

AJ