big wow and huge grin

went for my lung function tests today and part of the test was to get weighed (GULP) was dreading it but was very very pleased to discover i have lost almost 2 and a half stone since i started my healthy eating (BIG HUGE GRIN) so i do not feel the slightest bit guilty about going out for a chinese tonight with the girls from work!!!

my test results are looking like i have asthma so i have to make an appointment to see the doctor next week to get my treatment regime and to get my inhalers logged up as repeat prescription items, what did shock me though is the test gives your lungs an age and my lung age is 69 which is decidedly not good when i'm only 41!!!!

i may be becoming slightly obsessed

with crocs !!!! i have now bought my third pair after deciding the two pairs i already have are the most comfortable shoes i have ever worn LOL i now own a pair of caymans in bright red, a pair of capri flip flops in cream and the latest addition are a pair of mary janes in grape LOL

all scrapped out LOL

and considering i've done 15 lo's over the past 2 days it's no wonder LOL here's a few of todays classes and challenges, just shows what i can do if i actually put my mind to it LOL

a few more cc lo's

just a few more of what i've been busy with today, i am really enjoying the cyber crop so far, got lots of my holiday album done, planning on having a wee long lie in then get a bit more doen tomorrow before lunch LOL

before and after

it cost £22, it's a lot shorter than i was planning this morning, and i don't look like winona ryder BUT i do like my new hairstyle LOL

and apologies for the crap photos LOL

a few cc lo's

thought i'd add a few of the lo's i have done so far for the cyber crop over on uk scrappers really enjoying myself so far LOL so we should have in order (ha ha !!!!) the angel, islington class, technique was to hand cut a frame, photo's of us at the ben doran in tyndrum on our turkey and tinsel holiday, it was xmas dinner LOL


new moon is the bow street class which was to use paint, liked this one, i could get a bit messy, love the photo too, of the moon over the hills in tyndrum


next one is the pre crop challenge, had to be someone who made a difference in your life, well only one person it could be really LOL the title is half of my favourite quote "i never had the chance to choose the man to be my dad, so i thank my lucky stars for the taste my mother had"


last one is the mystery kit from sarahs cards which was american crafts abode, did a lo with it as i didn't have any other ideas, love how it turned out though, lots of silicon glue for height and depth

out for tea

the plan was to get in from work and start the cybercrop over on uks, then me and a couple of pals from work decided we needed a night out for tea and gossip LOL so we went out and had a lovely natter and a lovely meal, i am feeling especially proud as i stuck to my healthy eating plan and had a salad :) we had a good chat and put the world to rights LOL so i am now 3 classes/challenges behind in the cc and have no chance to catch up with it all now, might do a bit tomorrow but i have an appointment to get my hair cut at 12:45, it's the first time i have been to a hairdressers in a long time as i usually chop it all off myself but i fancy a new style so need to see someone trained, i'm nervous because so far i have never found a hairdresser i have been able to trust as i have ended up with bald patches, hair snapping off and burnt scalp before and since i really don't know what i fancy except it's got to be easy to care for and short LOL i have seen some photo's i like but unless the hairdresser is a miracle worker i won't be stepping out of the salon looking like winona ryder or alyssa milano tomorrow will i LOL

treat myself

to a gorgeous bunch of flowers from morrisons tonight, just felt the need to treat myself so normally it would be a large bar of chocolate but i was good and got a bunch of tulips, some gypsophelia and a couple of bunches of freesias, then got a cute little glass vase to put them in, they are all closed up at the moment but when they start to open up a bit i'm planning on taking a photo or two of them to brighten this place up a bit LOL

trying to stay on the straight and narrow

can be very hard especially when i have a massive attack of the munchies LOL last night i could have eaten for england and just wanted to stuff my face with anything i could get my hands on, mind you since there is nothing unhealthy in the house what i did eat wasn't too destructive for the healthy eating plan, so back to being good again today, though i could demolish a bar of galaxy i will try not too

planning on getting my hair cut soon, i normally chop it all off myself but i fancy a bit of a change and don't want to go as short as i have been so plan to pop into the hairdressers tomorrow on my way home from work and see if i can get an appointment either this saturday or next

so far so good

i had my long lie in and i have also been doing some scrapping and i changed my wardrobe around so all the winter stuff is away (for away read jammed into the top of my craft room cupboard LOL) and all my summer stuff is out, so this means that the warm weather will most likely not continue LOL

did my pre crop challenge for the cyber crop, it turned out really lovely and i'm rather proud of it and also used my mystery kit, i ended up deciding to make a lo with it rather than try and make something that i would never use and the lo came out gorgeous, not allowed to show it yet, it has to be uploaded into a secret gallery until the start of the cyber crop

can show you this one though which is this weeks challenge, did it digi as usual for challenges :) pleased with the way it turned out too :)

the recovery continues

fingers x'd, had a few pains last night but they went away really quickly after a couple of paracetamol LOL

had a trip to the park with the kids from work today, they were as good as gold on the bus there and were falling asleep on the bus on the way back as they had never stopped running, climbing, swinging and sliding LOL oh and yelling "i need a wee!!!!!" luckily there is a library right next door to the park so it was quite easy to nip in for a wee when needed LOL

planning a scrapping weekend now that i am feeling better, i want to do something with my mystery kit and do the pre crop challenge so i can get a few points for the team at the cyber crop next weekend over on uk scrappers, it would be nice to be on the winning team for a change LOL

miracle recovery ?????

woke up this morning in complete agony :( the pains in my chest, back, sides and shoulders were horrendous and i was in tears with the pain, and because i was so sore i was taking tiny shallow breaths as it hurt so much to breathe in and out :( took my peak flow which had gone down from 340 last night to 280 this morning, took my inhalers, stuffed some painkillers down my throat then headed off to work, we had the room to empty as we are getting new carpets and lino fitted tomorrow so we managed to get everything into this tiny little room, mind you it is all packed in just like a tetris game LOL at lunch time i decided to take another couple of painkillers as i was still in a bit of pain BUT by about 2pm i started to realise i was feeling better and the pain was going away, by the time i came home it really feels like a miracle has occured and i am breathing so much better and the pain is hardly there anymore :):):) fingers crossed it continues :)

the test that wasn't a test GRRRRRR

went for a spirometry test today to decide whether or not the 6 month old cough, the chest pains and the wheezing are due to asthma or something else, changed my shift at work and got up early only to get there to be told that because i am still on antibiotics i can't have the test and have to be antibiotic free for a month before i can have the test, got a tad tearful and told them i was fed up of being ill and i really needed to get this sorted as i am getting hassle at work due to my time off because of the bad chest, so anyhow she managed to find me an appointment in a couple of weeks time after deciding she will do the test after two weeks antibiotic free and white phlegm !!!!!! she also gave me a different inhaler, a peak flow monitor and an asthma diary to record my peak flow in after she took mine at the surgery and it was down to 340!!!! which i gather is not good, so to cheer myself up i abandoned the stash diet and treat myself to a few bits and bobs to cheer me up, was good though and didn't abandon the real diet having a very nice salad with sardines for my tea LOL

lets lighten the mood

thought i'd try and cheer myself up a bit by doing a bit of digi scrapping yesterday so decided to do the two current challenges over on uk scrappers, the first one (if i manage to put the photo's on the right way LOL) is the monthly challenge which was to scrap a silly photo, i had the perfect one, me in the hot tub when we were away in march, yes i am holding an umbrella, it was pouring with rain and i didn't want to get wet, in fact i bought the umbrella that day with the express thought in mind of sitting under it in the hot tub LOL

the second lo was done for the first april weekly challenge, and it was a challenge i liked so i thought i'd give it a go, the photo was taken on the west coast of scotland when we went to the scottish sea life centre near oban in november and as far as i can tell by looking at the map it is of loch creran, used my new digi kit for this one, i know i am on a stash diet but i reckon digi stuff doesn't count LOL

slowly getting better

in body if not in spirit, the antibiotics seem to be working eventually and i am feeling less breathless and a bit better, feeling really low though and worrying about the usual stuff, work, work work, especially after i rang in yesterday to say i would be back on monday and l said "oh we were just talking about you" oh great, what does that mean and thanks a great thing to say guaranteed to send me into a weekend of worrying about what she meant.

then just to add to the worry i get a phone call from the fraud department of my bank asking whether i had authorised all these transactions that they were classing as suspicous and were stopping my card for, so we went through this great long list of transactions and i'm ashamed to say they were all mine LOL

and back to the doctors

cos i needed different antibiotics as the ones they had given me were truly foul, i am allergic to penicillin so i am always prescribed erythromicin, it is notorious for its side effects and normally i get the stomach cramps which are pretty bad but i can cope, well not this time, i have had diarrhoea, horrendous agonizing stomach cramps and every time i have anything to eat (dry toast it's all i can manage) i feel like i am going to vomit, i was taking 8 tablets a day so never got a chance to get my stomach settled, last night i had had enough so rang the docs this morning and they said to call in before one pm and they would get me a new prescription set up, so i am now on doxycycline which i have never heard of but at least i only have to take one tablet a day :)

is it just me

or are everybody elses doctors a bit dim and useless LOL woke up yesterday morning feeling decidedly yuk and very breathless, by the time i had got to the loo i was gasping for breath so got a doctors appointment and rang in sick at work, spent the day sitting on the sofa and every time i got up to do anything i couldn't breathe again, and the pain in my chest was awful, now this has been going on for months now and i'm fed up, i have checked my symptoms time and time again and i'm pretty certain i might have asthma, i have all the symptoms but no matter how many times i tell the doctors they just give me antibiotics and say the cough will go away in time, i mean come on it's been since november last year it should have gone by now, so when i gets to the doctors she listens to my chest and says it seems ok, but we'll give you some more antibiotics, so i thought sod this and said to her, i think i have asthma, oh she says why do you think that, so i repeats my symptoms to her for the 99th time and she says oh maybe you're right!!!!!! i mean WTF surely she should be guessing what is wrong with me from my symptoms not me going in and saying i think i've got .............!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so i now have an inhaler as well as the antibiotics and i'm booked in for a spirometry test next week to see if we can get to the bottom of this, the inhaler seems to be working cos the pain and tightness in my chest seems to have diminished slightly but i'm still very breathless unless i am sitting doing nothing, so let's see how things go!!!

thinking time

this weekend came at just the right time as it has given me some much needed thinking time, and i have put it to good use, having come up with quite a few decisions, the main one being the healthy eating plan which i hope to continue, tried on the jeans i want to get back into as goal one last night and i need to lose quite a bit before they fit so i'm hoping i can manage that in 81 days (the time until my next holiday), i have also decided i am spending far too much time attached to this machine,either on uks or trawling the sites to spend money on, so to that effect, starting from today i am limiting myself to once a day on uks only the time it takes me to read my sg and teams, the plan being to spend the time i would use attached to the computer to do more scrapping, reading and exercising to help with the weight loss, i was completely disgusted with the amount of stash i have when i tidied up the other day so the other conclusion i have come to is that apart from adhesives and the monthly kit i get i buying nothing else for the rest of the year !!!! yup a strict stash diet to see how much of a dent i can put in my pp mountain LOL i am hoping these decisions will help lift the grey mood i have been under for a few weeks now, well probably since the end of february, i have continued with my usual facade but i really needed time for a bit of self evaluation and i am feeling a bit brighter for having done it, now just to get rid of the cough i have had since november and the tight feeling and wheezing in my chest and life would be rosy LOL

late night or an early morning

got so engrossed in my book last night that i decided i really couldn't go to bed without finishing it so i did :) unfortunately it took me until 1am LOL so this morning i am decidedly knackered LOL

feeling a bit virtuous as there is no chocolate in the house for easter, my easter treat is the roast lamb dinner and the glass or two of wine i am planning on having :)

the scrapathon that never happened

cos it turned into a readathon and then later on a tidy up athon LOL i ended up reading my new book for nearly all of the day after i had been and washed my car, then later on i went upstairs to the craft room, i was putting my holiday stash away and suddenly realised i couldn't find the crate paper brooke papers i had bought at the sarah's cards retreat, turned out it was still in the bag and i hadn't put it away LOL, so i decided that meant a good tidy up, so having filled two black bin bags of empty pizza boxes and various other packaging i now have a floor to see LOL

am sitting supping a rather nice glass of gooseberry wine that i bought when we were away, i got it at the scottish deer centre but fancy going to the actual winery when we go back up in june, it specializes in wines made from fruits and hedgerow ingredients and so far the couple i have tried have been very delicous so i may need a wee stocking up when we go back up there in 13 weeks time LOL

made the shortlist again

one of the photos i took while we were at glamis castle has made it to the shortlist of the photography competiton over on uks again this month, it's this photo of the buds on the tree near the woodland walk at glamis that has made it through :) there are some completely stunning photo's on this month so i feel very honoured to have made it again :)

thank goodness for bank holidays

i am so looking forward to this long weekend, can't quite decide whether to spend the entire weekend in bed or to spend the entire weekend scrapping, think it will be a bit of both and if the weather holds up i just might get the car washed LOL