Tony Blair has spoilt my day

Yup, its true. See I am travelling up to Hartlepool with H today. He has an interview at Teesside Uni tomorrow so I am taking advantage of it and nipping back to the old town to spend the night at my first Hartlepool friend's house. The most wonderful Elspeth. We met when on an antenatal course. Because I moved during my pregnancy I had to start again and all the other mums to be were about 6-8 weeks behind me. I was in a new place, alone and we got talking on a tour of the maternity suite and she invited me round for tea and that was that! Elspeth already had a child and so was a real source of wisdom and support for me. We have 10 years to catch up on (can't beleive it is that long!) apart from Christmas cards and a little bit of Facebook chat.

So what has Blair got to do with it? Well it is a long way from London to Hartlepool and I had my radio listening all planned out - Radio 2 Jeremy Vine; Radio 5 Film review with Kermode and Mayo; Radio 2 Drive time with Mayo. But Radio 5 is spending the whole day at the Iraq Enquiry. How dare they concentrate on a most unusual and ground breaking day when we ask a former leader to account for his actions in taking the country to war? Especially when it means I won't find out the top 10 box office films this week?

In all seriousness I do commend the fact that we are calling people to account over a war that I do not feel was justified. I think it may well help people to see that our decisions have consequences. I was against the war - the rest of the family went on the anti war demo (can't remember why I didn't but it was probably something shallow again) and wish we could have found another way. But now we are there I think we need to stay and sort out the mess as much as we can. We owe it to the Iraqi people.

I'll just have to listen to the afternoon play instead.... But before we drive I have a few chores to do - getting Hywel to try on the new smart casual clothes for his interview; ironing said; packing said; doing a little reading for my MA essay (Google book reader is my friend) and finishing this blog post.

So on I go
Daring Cardmakers this week had a great challenge from Keryn

Schooldays
Its back to school in NZ To celebrate this I want you all to create cards using the theme of school. If you've got children at school what they're up to might inspire your card, if not maybe memories of your own school days might be your inspiration.

I knew I wanted to use some of my "Report Card" papers from October Afternoon as they are kind of school based. But when I looked at them again I realised that they are very US school based and some of the cute bits were also too big for a card. And THEN I remembered that one of the great things about OA is that lots of elements of their collections are interchangeable
so 2 of these papers (the back 2) are from the Road Map collection. This card is quite simple but layered and I wonder if it needs more embellishment. In real life you can see the glitter on the star a lot better which I think adds something. (Can I ever make a card without glue pen and glamour dust? I think not)
Papers: OA Road Map and Report Card
Letter Stickers: OA
Punch: Martha Stewart
Nestabilities Label 2
Pen: Sharpie

I finally picked up the latest Docrafts mag this week as I have a feature in it using one of the new Collections of papers and embellishments. Here are some of the things I made in close up

although I did rather like the arty photography display in the mag!
And I had forgotten that I had also made this and was surprised when I saw it in a template section
All the papers are WRMemoryKeepers Tiffany and the brads and Letters are Doodlebug.

Right better get ready to hit the road Jack!