Let’s have coffee …

I have the following quote printed it out and keep it below my computer screen in my craft room… …

We are all cups,  constantly and quietly being filled.  The trick,  is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the Beautiful Stuff out.”

isn’t it lovely?  . . .  It’s by a gentleman called Ray Bradbury, an American author and screen writer, and I just love it.  And today came the perfect chance to share it with you because …

I’m forever inviting you to come and have a coffee with me, so when I saw last week that ‘Kanban Cards’ had brought out a fabulous new collection of die- cuts, papers and cardstock, I had to have some of it.  It would have been so rude not to!

To be honest, I fell in love with it.  The colours are just beautiful.  The quality is really great and it gives you such scope to play around with.

I made a card today using some of it and as I was making it I thought …  “it’s AGES since I’ve done a ‘giveaway’, so perhaps this would make an ideal card for that very thing!”

I made the card as a 12″x 6″ – so quite a long card.  On a base card of white, scored and folded, and then topped with a sheet of Kanban foiled heavy weight paper.   I added some wide, Satin, pale coffee coloured ribbon, topped with some deep brown seam binding.

On top of the ribbons,  I used two toppers and a sentiment from the kit.  The coffee cup topper I layered on top of a vintage looking doily, made from cotton, with cotton crochet lace all around the edge.  I bought a pack of these little doilies from a pound shop about 8 years ago and originally bought them to make little pouches of dried lavender.  I still have a few unused ones left.

The duo coloured bow (to the right hand)  has a dazzler fixed to the centre to bring a touch of sparkle and colour to the card.  If you look carefully under the bow, but above the satin/seam binding ribbons, you can just see a golden circle of leaves and vines.  This is a chipboard die cut, which I coloured up with gold embossing pad and then a combination of gold emboss. powder and gold glittery embossing powder.

The spoon …  well that began life as one of those plastic spoons they give you in coffee shops or Mc.Donalds.  I never use the spoons, but keep them with the thought that they might come in useful. And look!  One did!  🙂

Finally … inside.  One of my sheep (craft room buddies) wanted to show you what was inside…  I told him:  “No, absolutely not.  Get out of there you rascal!”. . .

He seemed determined, as he backed himself into the middle of the card.  I knew what he was up to.  He was going to give one great big JUMP and open the card to show you what was inside, but I wanted to keep it a secret known only to the person who won the give-away  . . .   so I chased him around the craft room, caught him, and he’s now safely back where he belongs … under my craft room computer monitor, with the rest of the flock.  tsk, tsk!

So anyhoo ….  If you’re a follower of The Cobweborium Emporium blog,  and would like to have your name ‘thrown into the hat’ and be in with a chance of receiving this card then please just leave a comment below with the word:  ‘GIVEAWAY’  – either at the start or the end of your comment.

To make sure that all is fair,  I’ll get the Random Number Generator to choose the number.

If you’re the winner then you have a choice:-  You can choose to have the card for yourself, in which case I’ll write the card to you, sign it and send it with love. Or …  you can choose to receive the card un-written, so that you can write it and send it to someone else.

But … If you don’t want to enter but still want to leave a comment or have a  chat,  then that’s fine too.  You really don’t have to get involved in a give-away.  Any comment which doesn’t have the word ‘GIVEAWAY’ won’t be entered.

NB:  Please  DON’T  put your real name or address in the comments box.  I need to look after your privacy and security.

Happy Thursday, by the way!

We’re heading to the end of October now, after this it’s just a walk to Christmas, and although I have got a few Christmas Presents tucked away …  it’s only a few and I really do need to get a wiggle on with the buying.  I don’t want to be left with only the stuff the shops have left over!

I also have to get a very BIG wiggle on with making Christmas Cards!  Maybe I’ll start in a couple of weeks time and cross my fingers.  It worked last year.  And the year before.  And the year before that too.  Need I go on or are you getting the idea?  lol.

Right … I really must stop yacking and let you get on with your day.

I wish you a blessed, calm, comfortable, happy Thursday! 

(I saved that last photo from this card,  just so I could use that right there … )  😀  Toodles!

EDIT on 30th October 2017 to add:

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.  NO FURTHER ENTRIES ARE BEING TAKEN.  Please see the post on 30th October 2017 to find out the winner.

Thank you to all who entered.  Watch out for the next giveaway soon. ~ Cobs. x

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The Friday Post!

Well hello there.  Have I told you recently how fabulous you are?  No?  Well it would be very remiss of me not to put that right, so I shall,  straight away.  You are totally gorgeous.  Your hair is a great colour and the cut and style really suits you.

Your eyes … how incredible they are.  They light up your face in a way which shows that slightly mischievous imp which lives within you and sometimes pops out for a bit of fun..  Boy, do they twinkle merrily!

Your smile …  go on…  smile for me.  Give me one of those smiles which reaches your eyes and makes your whole face glow.  Give me a smile which tells me that your happy in the moment your living in right now.  Crumbs you’re so fabulous. 

I’m so blessed to have you in my blogging life.  Thank you for being here.

Well, I don’t know about you but it’s been a really trying week in my world.  My littlest cat, Maisie Doates, had a bit of a run in with the neighbourhood feline bully, and she came home on Monday in a bit of a battered and bleeding state.  From Tuesday she began being sick about three times a day.  By Thursday morning she was still the same – although quite bright in herself, – so an appointment was made with the vet,  and, much to her disgust, I took her to see the vet in the cat carrier.

She wasn’t impressed at how lovely the vet was, and wasn’t overly happy about the two injections which she had to have.  However … I fear that she’s going to be even less impressed with the nasty tasting (the vet told me) medicine which I have to force into her using a syringe.  That’s going to be a fun time this lovely Friday morning.

The day previously:  On Wednesday it was pouring down with rain … and we discovered we had a leaky roof in the conservatory.  [BIG sigh].  Mr.Cobs thankfully managed to find where the problem was and following a trip to the big DIY (B&Q for the UK folks) shop, he came home armed with the stuff which he told a wobbly lipped me that I was to stop worrying and stressing, and he was going to fix the problem.  And … he did!  God Bless Mr.C.  I’m thinking that I should keep him.

And on Tuesday:  On Tuesday this week … I decided that the blood-shot eye which I’d called my Doctor about last week (and who prescribed some gel stuff with the warning that if it got worse or didn’t seem to be getting better, then I had to go in and see him urgently),  well, it seemed  to be getting worse.  (I knew he was going to tell me off, because I shouldn’t have left it as long as I did).  Off to the Surgery and saw the Doctor.  He examined my eye and said: “I want you to go directly to the Acute Referral Eye Clinic straight away.  I’ll phone them and tell them you’re coming”.

Cutting a long story short … I found out on Tuesday that not only did I have an infection in my eye, I also had a Corneal Ulcer and … just to add a bit of salt to the situation … I was told I had a cataract in that eye too.  Ha!  My eye’s having a party and I didn’t get the invite!  How very dare it!

Summing up ….  I shall be glad to see the end of this week.  I’ll be packing its bags and watching it walking off into the sunset.

But … enough of my cr@ppy week ….  shall we have a little fun with some …

FRIDAY  FACTOIDS

Emus cannot walk backwards.

Giraffes have no vocal cords. (Here I was, thinking they just didn’t want to talk to me)

There are more than a 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee, of these only 26 have been tested and half caused cancer in rats.

On the subject of coffee … here’s some other coffee ‘stuff’

Caffeine and Its Effects

Caffeine is the most important chemical in coffee. It is an odourless and slightly bitter solid. Caffeine mostly affects the brain, kidneys, and the cardiovascular (heart and blood vessels) system, but it also increases metabolism and breathing. A five ounce serving of regular coffee contains about 90-125 milligrams of caffeine; whereas, an equal amount of tea only contains 30-70 milligrams of caffeine.

A soft drink only has about 37 milligrams of caffeine per five ounces.

Coffee has several effects on the human body:

It helps to increase circulation of the blood
It can cause nervousness and loss of sleep when taken in large amounts
It can speed up a person’s thoughts
It produces a feeling of well-being
It gives some people the ability to memorize simple numbers, concepts, and thought sequences easier

If you drink one or two cups several times a day, coffee will have little effect on the cardiovascular system.
However, if you drink three to four cups several times a day, it will slow your pulse rate, raise blood pressure, contract blood vessels that are right under the skin, and dilate blood vessels of the kidneys, muscles, skin, and heart.

Finally, on the coffee factoids:  … caffeine makes the heart contract harder while it’s pumping.

Maybe we should all switch to decaf.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!

If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

Ten Obscure Factoids Concerning Albert Einstein

1. He Liked His Feet Naked

“When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in the sock,”  he once said. “So I stopped wearing socks.”  Einstein was also a fanatical slob, refusing to “dress properly”  for anyone. Either people knew him or they didn’t, he reasoned – so it didn’t matter either way.

2. He Hated Scrabble

Aside from his favorite past-time sailing (“the sport which demands the least energy”), Einstein shunned any recreational activity that required mental agility. As he told the New York Times, “When I get through with work I don’t want anything that requires the working of the mind.”

3. He Was A Rotten Speller

Although he lived for many years in the United States and was fully bilingual, Einstein claimed never to be able to write in English because of “the treacherous spelling”.  He never lost his distinctive German accent either, summed up by his catch-phrase  “I vill a little t’ink”.

4. He Loathed Science Fiction

Lest it distort pure science and give people the false illusion of scientific understanding, he recommended complete abstinence from any type of science fiction. “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”  He also thought people who claimed to have seen flying saucers should keep it to themselves.

5. He Smoked Like A Chimney

A life member of the Montreal Pipe Smokers Club, Einstein was quoted as saying: “Pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment of human affairs.”  He once fell into the water during a boating expedition but managed heroically to hold on to his pipe.

6. He Wasn’t Much Of A Musician

Einstein would relax in his kitchen with his trusty violin, stubbornly trying to improvise something of a tune. When that didn’t work, he’d have a crack at Mozart.

7. Alcohol Was Not His Preferred Drug

At a press conference upon his arrival to New York in 1930, he said jokingly of Prohibition: “I don’t drink, so it’s all the same to me.”  In fact, Einstein had been an outspoken critic of  “passing laws which cannot be enforced”.

8. He Equated Monogamy With Monotony

“All marriages are dangerous,” he once told an interviewer. “Marriage is the unsuccessful attempt to make something lasting out of an incident.”  He was notoriously unfaithful as a husband, prone to falling in love with somebody else directly after the exchanging of vows.

9. His Memory Was Shot

Believing that birthdays were for children, his attitude is summed up in a letter he wrote to his girlfriend Mileva Maric: “My dear little sweetheart … first, my belated cordial congratulations on your birthday yesterday, which I forgot once again.”

10. His Cat Suffered Depression

Fond of animals, Einstein kept a house cat which tended to get depressed whenever it rained. Ernst Straus recalls him saying to the melancholy cat: “I know what’s wrong, dear fellow, but I don’t know how to turn it off.”

Here’s an interesting little exercise.

How smart is your right foot?
This is from an orthopaedic surgeon . . .
It will boggle your mind and you will keep trying over and over again to see if you can outsmart your foot, but you can’t.  It’s preprogrammed in your brain!

While sitting where you are at your desk in front of your computer or on a comfy chair etc, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles with your foot and ankle.

Now, while doing this, draw the number ‘6’ in the air with your right hand.  Your foot will change direction.

See?!!!   And  . . .  there’s nothing you can do about it!

You and I both know how stupid it is,  but before the day is done you are going to try it again,  if you’ve not already done so.

And with that, I shall bid you a fabulous last Friday of June, and a truly wonderful weekend.

Be the reason someone smiles today. 

With much love, and a barrel of squidges  ~

 

If Love is Blind, then why is Lingerie so Expensive?

Well,  …  I could leave that statement (title of the post) right where it is …  because it’s a serious question.

But … it’s also the stamped sentiment on a card I made a couple of days ago, and I’m here to share it with you.

I love this stamp.  It’s one of those fun little ‘sentiments’ which pops into my head now and again, ~  and I came across it last week while on a search for another stamp which had gone into hiding.  Once I saw this one I knew I had to change my plans just so I could use it.  So the search for the original stamp was abandoned, and I cracked on with the ‘change of plan’.

Everything I used on this card all came from stash.  

As all crafters will tell you …

• You might need three different coloured Tiny Buttons, but you have to buy a pack of about 30 …  so you save the 27 for when you’ll need them next.
• You might want some Dictionary Print type paper … so you buy a little pad of 25 sheets, and use two … so you save the remaining 23 for another time.
• Lace .. you buy a yard (or metre) but only need five inches … the rest gets saved.
• You perhaps require a miniature Frame,  you buy a pack of 12, use the one you need and the rest .. .

. . .  well..  you can see where this is going.  I have half a packs of this, that, and the other – and some of the things I have here in my craft room are years old.  Seriously.  I’m really not making it up.  The little metal thimble you see in the photo above (hanging from the trinkets pin) … is from my stash, and I’ve had a little box of those for about 8 or 9 years now.

And the inside …   well that’s  Just for You! . . .

It makes a fun card for any gal pal .. who has a birthday;  down day;  up day;  just want to make you smile day;  ….  anything.  It would even make Mom or Grandma laugh.  (Or maybe that’s just my Grandma (Dads Mom) … cause she had such a rascal sense of humour and loved nothing more than us travelling the distance to see her and then taking her to the posh pub across the road from where she lived and buying her, her favourite drink,  half a pint of *Stout!   She would get quite giddy on it. (just one drink!)  lol  Bless her beautiful heart).

(*Stout is a dark beer made using roasted malt or roasted barley, hops, water and yeast.)

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee time with me!  I SO enjoy your company.

We’ve all met such wonderful ‘friends’ via our computers and blogs, and we’ve learned a lot from each other too.  Mainly, in my case, I’ve learned that there are some really great people out there who have a similar sense of humour to me, and aren’t shy about allowing their inner child out to play.  Which is just INCREDIBLE!  Such a laugh and so much fun.  (Yes …you know who you are.  I’m not going to name names, but you, sat there with your face going just a light shade of hot, you know I’m talking about you!  LOL)  🙂

Have a spiffingly brilliant day today. 

Do something lovely for someone else.  The first person you walk past when you’re outside, or the first person who walks past your house …  wish them wonderful things.  Pray for them, if you pray, or, if you don’t, then just push a really lovely wish out of your head and out into the world.  Lets all get this going.  Let’s make the world feel like a better place.  And who knows …  the first person you see, might just be praying for you or wishing something wonderful for you.  It happens!

Sending you happy Wednesday squidges, from me in my corner, to you in yours.

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Tea or Coffee, my Fabulous Friend?

Personally, I’m a coffee drinker.  But I’m more than happy to make you tea…  or  –  we could go out to that lovely little tea room, here in town, where everything feels like it belongs in the 1940’s and 1950’s?  There’s even a good old-fashioned Globe of the World in the window which has paled with time, and harsh sunshine.  They have cakes under domes, and table cloths, and it looks kind of kitsch and is painted all lemony.

Remember those carnival type ornaments which we were told were precious (when we were little), but they were actually made of a chalk like substance and if they got chipped, you could see the white chalky ‘stuff’ inside.  They have some of those there too, decorating the walls or placed around the tea shop in strategic places.  (I’m not sure if they really were worth something – a genuine ‘collectible’  type of thing, – or if they were just precious because of the memories attached to them).

Or, we could go round the corner to that much-loved cottage tea room, which has a courtyard garden.  It’s very lovely in there and just a little bit ‘vintage swish’ too – and we can sit in the garden if the weather is good, or inside if it’s a little chilly!

OK.. so I’ve got mine,  . . .   what are you going to order for yourself?

Anyhoo . . .

I made a card asking my fabulous friend if you’d like to share a coffee, or a tea, with me… while you peruse this latest offering from the Cobweb.

The paper in the background is just so lovely.  Just the right blue, with little circles made from pearly white dots,  and perfect for what I needed, but I don’t know who’s paper it actually is.  It was still in it’s ‘book’ – but the front cover has disappeared  –  leaving me without even a note!  tsk tsk.  The cup and saucer are Tilda.  Yes indeedly doodly!  None of those cheap market stall cups and saucers for you!  However, I fussy cut into parts of it in order to make it what I needed it to be, then covered the original ‘picture’ of a glittered star (in the saucer) with proper glitter, in two colours to give it a little more depth.

The doilies, flowers, cotton muslin (behind the flowers) and the hat pins all came from my stash.  The Pearl Strand of small, medium and large pearls which trails around the card, is by Anna-Marie Designs.

soft little fabric roses all sewn onto a ribbon of net.

The little fabric roses (shown above) – which run along the top and the bottom of the card, actually came from The Range.  I’m hoping that The Range still has these in stock (I doubt it) because I absolutely love them.  They’re so soft, so pretty and so light weight.  They go into envelopes easily but then pop back up again upon opening, and they don’t add any weight to posting a card either.

And that, as all the very best Magicians say, is all there was to it!

Happy Wednesday all!  Monday and Tuesday just flew past and I now find myself in the middle of the week with what feels like a gazillion things which I need to do, and not enough days left in this week in which to do them!  Honestly, I swear to Dog that since we moved to the seaside, someone is taking whole chunks of hours, days and sometimes even getting very cheeky and stealing a whole week out of my time, for time, apparently, flies past like it’s on the wings of a jumbo jet!  Aw, enough moaning Cobs!

So … what about you..  what are you up to today?  Going anywhere?  Doing anything?  Supposed to be doing something but want to do something else instead?  Go on, tell me all about it.  It’s just you and me (and a few others), and I’m not going to tell anyone!

Wishing you a truly Wonderful Wednesday.  May the sun shine, if the wind blows, may it blow softly, and may you end the day with a gentle smile and the knowledge that life, even if a bit tough sometimes, is still good.

Sending you my love, and a special Cobs squidge!