Ooooh but I just hate them....

cockraoches that is... one of the best things about living in Scotland... no roaches!! There I was sitting at the scrap table, playing away quite happily when a scurrying movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention! Cockroach alert!! Its something about them... they are unmistakable and creepy and make my skin crawl... the little blighter is no more... he was PifPaffed to death... and I want to know who thought it was a clever name for an insect repellant/cockroach killer... Pif Paf... and its market? Saudi Arabia... where they speak Arabic... and Arabic has a missing letter in its alphabet... P. They all pronounce P as a B - so its actually Bif Baf here... but Bif Baf or Pif Paf it just doesn't spell death to roaches and other yucky insects that invade my home.... In South Africa we always bought DOOM - now that said it... DOOM... get sprayed with this stuff and you have met your DOOM.... not get Pif Paffed to death!!

So, no more scrapping for me... I am now in manic mode and will have to clean and disinfectant and mop and vacuum until I know there aren't friends lurking of the unfortunate fellow who got Pif Paffed!! ;) And can someone please pass me a Bebsi Cola? LOL

Oh the embarassment of it...

The day started off well, albeit a tad early... I get up at 5 a.m. to see Chris off to work and I haven't as yet been able to persuade my brain to just wave him goodbye from the doorstep and return to bed for another couple of hours sleep... so I sat and made up the trick or treat bags ready for the weekend. I perused the Village phone directory and worked out there are 20 children so allowed an extra five in case of visitors or guests... I think they look quite presentable!!

and then I went on to working on a mini book... but come dinner time I was preparing dinner and managed to set fire to the oven cloth which was resting on the back stove ring... which isn't so bad, you say... I turned on the expelair oven thingy and turned up the aircon and was congratulating myself on the fact that the smoke alarm only made a couple of beeps when the doorbell rang... a wee mannie asked if everything was alright as the alarm had gone off in the admin office..... well poop, this is what happens when you live in one of these highly sophisticated villas... you can't even burn dinner without everyone being informed!! He said he would return with the electrician mannie to reset the alarm... which he did, and the electrician mannie had a wee mannie who holds the ladder whilst he goes up to reset the alarm... and then they go to my understairs cupboard and get the vacuum out and have a tidy in case they made a mess... and I am mortified because they are smiling and being nice and know I burned dinner... (well, the oven mitt anyways)... but one good thing has come of it!! The carpenter is coming tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. to put up the two oil paintings that have been sitting against the wall for weeks....

So, now I am not only the batty Brit who wears her slippers in the supermarket but I also burn dinner... its not doing my street cred much good, is it? :)

and the wee carpenter mannie turned up bright and early and hung the paintings for me! Now the really funny bit about these paintings is that Chris bought them when he was in Korea some 30 years ago and neither of us really like them... they are so big they dominant any wall I put them on in our home in Scotland.... well, I had to smile after the carpenter left this morning because they look sort of lost on the walls in this house!!

Here's the other one at the lounge end... so why did I ship them half way round the world? Well, it seemed practical to bring things that I would not be heartbroken if they got damaged... and I might actually find someone mad enough to buy them off me before I leave!! LOL

Oh and this is the little middle reception lounge type place in the middle of the other two... perfect for afternoon tea and cucumber sandwiches, don't you think? Just remember to crook your little finger when you pick your tea cup up.... ;)

Shopping in downtown Jubail..

So it was Friday and Chris' day off, so we spent the day quietly, went for a walk along the beach and fed the fishes, I introduced him to the little crabs that make the balls of sand - which amazingly are called sand bubble crabs!! Everything here is closed on Fridays till 4 oclock in the afternoon and people had warned me that Jubail is manic, the shops are little individual shops, some with air con, some without - not your shopping mall type of place... well, that sounds like my type of place - you never know what you will find and once found, you can barter/haggle over the price and know you are coming home with a bargain!!

I found this gorgeous bedset in bronze with fringes and dangly crystals beads, 8 pieces in all, the comforter, 3 little cushions, a tissue box cover, 2 pillow cases and the thingy you put over your mattress to hide the edges of the bed... no idea what it is called!! LOL Sharon provided the word - its a valance!! I knew that!! ;) Price? £30.00 for the lot!! Yahooooo - one happy bunny bounced out of there!!

Had to pick up some prayer mats didn't I? This house is tiled floors everywhere and I figure come winter people might appreciate a mat next to the bed.

Ooooh, and these... now the four glass balls Chris bought me in a proper shopping mall a couple of weeks ago - I think they will look lovely for Christmas but in this weird little shop yesterday I found the bowl with just the right colour tortoiseshell inner and the bowl cost me the same as one of those balls!!

We also found the feather pillow shop!! Well, actually we never found the feather pillow shop... we tried lots of bedding places (thus I found the bedset) but only foam pillows were available and I was giving up hope... then we found this shop and asked the owner if he had feather pillows... and he told us to wait in the shop and disappeared off down the street.... returning a few minutes later with 5 feather pillows in his arms!! Now you don't get that sort of service at home... they might at a push phone to see if another branch has something... but they don't go rushing out the door to the other branch to fetch the stuff back for you!! He even offered us a cold drink or tea... and reduced the price on the five pillows we bought by 10 Riyals each (about £1.50)!!

If I'd known you were coming I'd have baked a cake...

Chris is bringing a colleague home for dinner tonight so I did... bake a cake and what a yummy cake it is too... french vanilla spnge with vanilla topping with sprinkles... I love sprinkles!!

But... when I was packing I forgot to pack the serviette rings and glass mats that go with my placemats.... oops, perhaps I was concentrating on getting all the stash I needed into the shipment?

So what is a girl to do... she gets her scrap stash put to good use and makes serviette rings and those beer mats she was saving for a mini book come into their own... a stamp, a little gold embossing powder and a heatgun.... voila!! Think it looks pretty good too!! ;)

If you go down to the beach today....

you will have it completely to yourself!! I had a stroll down about 7.45 a.m. and the water was like a mill pond, nobody in sight... I collected shells, fed the fish and sat....
One set of footprints...
and the fish were happy to see me and my bag of bread!
and I solved the mystery of the little balls of sand and perfect holes... little crabs make them!! They are the weirdest thing to watch... if you stand very still for a loooong time then they all pop out of the holes with a ball of sand, deposit it and pop right back down again! I've been to the beach loads of times and wondered what created the balls of sand but never saw anything until today...
maybe its because I was wearing my new sandals and not my Crocs!! How cool are they? They are made of plastic so I can wade in the water and they cost £1.00 !!! LOL

I think I started a new fashion...

Little Merrick, who lives next door to me, must have seen my hat and decided he just had to have one too! LOL He certainly looks cuter in his than I do in mine and that's with chocolate chip cookies all over his face...
Made a couple of ATC's this morning - Saudi Sandstorm... well, I had to do something after the dismal failures of the Batik technique of Hels.... and no, you do not get to see the failures!!
Here is my grown-ups Advent Calendar... not sure I really want a visual reminder of how many shopping days are left before panic sets in...

BIA Mini Books

I have had this book going around in my head for such a long time, I remember vividly the day I was shouting at Christopher in the garden and I actually turned and looked for my Mother because it was definitely her voice I heard... so no matter how hard we try, we all end up saying the same things... Dream Street papers Art nouveau and I love the way the plain chipboard letters for the cover turned out. I painted them with pebeo cerne relief and while still wet coated them with clear embossing powder. Let them dry and then heat embossed them and they ended with a really nice effect!

This is a little chipboard mini book made from chipboard shapes. Papers are K & Co McKenna.

Here is my Halloween mini book, used K & Co papers and 7Gypsies Halloween stickers. I made the hat, ghost, cat etc embellishments from chipboard.

If you want some more inspiration you have to check out the DT gallery at Zutters and see what the other girls have made... some lush stuff there!

More Coffins

There I was surfing the net and found Martha Stewart also making coffins, and in true Martha Stewart style, hers were bigger and easier, so I abandoned the first one and have made two more for my wee neighbours ready for Halloween.

No sweets were eaten during the production of these items... well, not many anyways and only to test that they were of high enough quality for little people!!

If you are wondering if making coffins is all I have been doing... no, its not, just a few more days and I can show you my latest batch of mini books... let's hope it is worth the wait!! LOL

Al Khobar here we come!

So it was Friday and Friday is Chris' one day off a week, and I am not allowed to drive so the poor man had to spend his only day of rest taking me to Al Khobar to find the scrap shop!! Its about an hour and half to drive there but being Friday, nothing is open until 4 oclock in the afternoon and everywhere shuts for prayers..... first prayers was at 5 oclock. Now the scrappers reading this are agreeing with me... an hour to scrap shop? So, we speed scrap... I must learn how to speed stash shop!! Well, we drove there and arrived in one piece... the drivers here are appalling.... really appalling... they have no lane discipline and none have figured out what the little indicator lever on the steering wheel is for.... though this could be because they don't have a spare hand... its on the horn.... all the time!! LOL Sooooo, the shop... well, its not a scrap shop as we know and love them... it did have some 12 x 12 papers - Chris says it did... he saw them!! I did not... I found some lovely ribbons - extremely cheap at 80p for a 20 metre roll, I found lovely beads for threading onto my BIA wires, I found some lovely offcuts of lace and sequinny stuff which will become covers of books and some gorgeous suede type sticky back stuff which will also become covers for mini books and by then they said they were closing for prayers!! :(

Hmmm, not quite the sort of place I would want to live... or even walk about alone in!!
Yay... look - they have an internet cafe!!
You get no points for identifying this place... but it was closed... it is Friday!
And nil points for identifying this place either... which was open... but you had to cross 6 lanes of traffic to get to it and I think I mentioned the driving....

So here is my haul... lovely lace, ribbons, even a ribbon with arabic on it!!

and these hearts... aren't they gorgeous? I can just see them dangling off the spine of a mini book...

So that Al Khobar... Chris says he will take me back there again before Christmas.... geee, I can't wait!! I think we will try Dammam next time... I hear they have a Marks and Sparks and BHS!!

What's the difference between....

sandals and slippers? They are of a similar shape, used for a similar purpose, albeit one keeps my toes cosy on the cold tiles of the house and the other keeps my feet from scorching on the brick paths outside... but you have to admit they are comparable.... yes they are!! OK, so one shouldn't find oneself wandering the aisles of the local village mini market in the lilac things with flowers and bling on them perhaps.... but its an easy mistake to make!! OK, OK... so they don't match the orange hat with pink and blue flowers on it.... amazingly nobody said a word... nope, not one comment!! Come to think of it, if I saw this woman wandering around the mini mart in lilac slippers and an orange floral hat I probably wouldn't attempt to speak to her either... she would obviously be deranged... maybe even dangerous... and she's British you know... they always seem a bit eccentric...


The mortification of it... they'll never invite me to join the local ladies group now....

The Hat....

For those poor souls who actually follow and read this blog... here is 'the hat' in all its orange floral glory.... Chris came up to the scrap room with camera in hand last night... that's my excuse for looking this way, and I am sticking to it!!
and I cannot recall the comedian's name that comes to mind when looking at this photo...
and this is probably the best view of all.... LOL
but personally speaking, I think Chris looks particularly fetching in it.... so, you have now seen the hat... and I am sure I can make it look acceptable... I have flowers, brads, bling, ribbon...just need to get the Crop-aDile and Bejeweller out and see what happens!!