Kitchen makeover..............On a shoestring. Watch this space!

Gosh!! Is it really Friday again! Hello all.. happy Friday! Thank you for your kind wishes for George's poor back, It is much better now thank you!  Sorry to all of ny  bloggy friends  who I may have neglected a bit this week, but I have been so busy drawing and painting for my secret project, and when I get going hours can simply fly by, I get a headache from all the close work (must get new glasses!) and the housework and all else goes out of the window!  Here is another little glimpse of what I am up to! Maybe I should rename this blog Itch2draw!

Anyone for cake? Not quite finished yet!And not good reproduction as I took a photo instead of scanning!

Yes! As a matter of fact I forget to do housework, the dinner, to get dressed.... I become like some hermit creature busily engrossed in my little make believe world!  Then I remember all the other things that need doing and I have to whirl about like a whirling dervish trying to catch up! 

Archibald Peabody-Smythe, being the attention seeker of the Sroka household is not at all impressed with being ignored!

No! I am not talking to you!

It is no use hiding behind those flowers you know. We can see you! HELLO-O!

Now, on to something else! What is your dream kitchen? Country, modern and sleek, traditional.....? 

I love this kitchen... this is my dream kitchen.....

Come to think of it,....... that is my kitchen, or rather it WAS my kitchen in my last house. This picture does not do it justice, it was not orangey  at all. Made from reclaimed pine, with a belfast sink and granite tops and a chinese slate floor.....

This picture shows the colour of the cupboards much better! The top pic was the one taken by the Estate agent, and don't they take awful pics?!  If we had stayed, I was going to paint the cupboards cream.

Is it at all decent to miss a kitchen so much???  Well I do! I even left my range cooker behind... boo hoo! 

Anyway, We are soon to do a kitchen makeover. This is my kitchen here......

A single oven , with the grill in it! A fridge that literally fills up with water and a white cushion floor! I mean... white, and me with 3 dogs! Mopping doesn't work, you literally have to scrub, and life is toooooo short! 

So stay tuned, as I am about to shake this baby by the neck! On a very, very tight budget, I intend to make it look as good as I can. This is my challenge. A vert strict budget as all of our money was all spent up in the last house! We have the 'new' cupboards in the garage. My friend has just had her kitchen done, so we have bought her old cupboards, which look as good as new. How much? £200. That includes the sink too (and taps)  Yes, cheap! Not bad I think. You will have to wait to see them in to decide whether I have pulled off my hoped for transformation!  

In fact we have the whole house to do on a tight budget... as we want to move back to Poulton soon, we have found that we really miss our old town! SO! If you would like to share our journey, I will keep you up to date!  The challenge in our home is to make the house look as beautiful as possible, as cheaply as possible!

A thank you now before I go for another week. Thank you Angel for these lovely awards!

You are such a kind lady, and I am really so happy that you picked me!  I award these awards to all the lovely talented bloggers that I follow... thats why I follow you.... because you are all sooooo darn good! 

Now, at the risk of boring you, here are 7 things about me that you may not know.  I have decided to tell you funny things!

1:  I went through a spell of falling over.  Hey! I had a lot on my mind at the time!  Once, I fell at the feet of a very, very old lady. She bent down to pick me up and said " shouldn't this be the other way round?" Another time I slipped and fell into a very large puddle, which resembled a small pond! This would have been fine if I was the only one in the car park, but a man was stood watching me, and didn't have the decency to look the other way, or to stop smiling to himself! To make it worse, one of my shoes had flown off, and I was flailing about in the water trying to find it! He stayed for the whole show by the way!

2:  I hated sewing at school...I  loathed it!

Now anything involving a sewing needle is just heaven to me..This is one of my drawings which I made into a cross stitch! 

3:  At school I got in detention.. a lot... usually for laughing. One term I got in detention 22 times and some of the detentions were given to me while standing in detention,  for giggling!  The boys in physics used to knock me off those very high stools That they always have in those classrooms, and the teacher would stop writing on the blackboard, not even look around, and would say " Get off the floor Calderbank"... he just knew it would be me! Mum was not impressed... being a teacher!

4:   I was once a hoffman presser at a dry cleaners. Very hot and steamy! And very smelly too! Yuk! The dry cleaning does not remove BO, pee or other smells. the steam released them... straight into my face!
I once forgot to take my thumb out before closing the lid, and then actually pressed the steam jet... OUCH!

 5:  When I was 12/13/14 ish I used to make my Dad howl laughing by shouting at the top of my voice in a very silly accent.."WELL SLAP MY ASS"  and by shouting "CHARGE" as I ran down the stairs very fast, (inspired by the film with Cary Grant, Arsenic and Old Lace!)

6:   About the same age, I discovered a Rugby song book in my brother's bedroom... I had heard him singing them quietly in his room, but Mum didn't know he had them. So I snook into his room when he was out and swiped the offending item. Being aqauinted with the tunes.. I quickly put together a fine collection and memorised the songs. Then I hid the book. At first I sang them quietly, and then began to get a bit louder! When at last the melodic notes of Dinah, dinah show us your leg, (and others which are way too rude to be repeated here) finally reached my big brother's lugholes, he came flying in to try and retrieve the book. Ha ha what fun I had watching him trying to stop me!  I had to get him back somehow for constantly dead legging me, stuffing his dirty socks in my mouth and hanging me over the stairs! You would never believe it of him, he is a respectable member of society now.. a solicitor! He he!

7: Years ago I was walking my first Old English Sheepdog Dylan, when he decided that he wanted to go one way, while I wished to go another. Hey! He was bigger than me!  He had seen something so interesting that he actually knocked me over and proceeded to drag me along the ground and then to my dismay.. through a bush! At that point I let go of the lead, stood up and frustrated and rather sore shouted to him " you can go to hell and back". Then I noticed a woman and her very well behaved Chow dog stood across the road, both looking at me with disdain!

I often used to come home after taking him onto the fields with cowpats and dyke slime on me and him, after trying to.. a) stop him eating the pats, and b) having to jump in the dyke to get him out!  I have had 4 of these comical, loving, soft creatures!

Oooops I did it again! I meant to write only a short post today, and still have managed to waffle on and on! I hope I haven't bored you too much... can I hear someone snoring?!!!

Have a rather jolly weekend all! Lots of love  Suzie.xxxx

Mad dogs and Englishmen!

Hello Peeps,

First of all before I get to my post, I would like to thank all of you who have supported me and followed my blog so far, I really do appreciate it, so lots of hugs to you all!

Last week I told you that I was going to spend my weekend smiling at everybody. Well I certainly did, and got very mixed reactions! Some people blanked me out, some looked at the floor, some looked at me like I had lost my mind! Thankfully though, the majority of them smiled warmly back at me. So there really are lots of smiley people out there!

Which leads me very nicely to my Friday blog.

A mad dog!!! My Old English sheepdog, Ralph!

Being a Brit myself and being English I got to thinking about our reputation for being a bit eccentric! One of my childhood dreams, besides becoming an artist and a Beatnik, was to become completely eccentric as I got into my dotage. Not got completely there yet, but there's still plenty of time, I hope.

I love individualism, and I suppose eccentricity is an off shoot, after all, it is a self expression. In some cases you could even call it creativity, art. It is a beautiful part of the human experience, being able to express through colour, art, clothes. Art appears in many forms after all.

This is one of a few of my stitcheries of eccentric ladies!

I love this book! It is a poem, and the title says it all really, but why do we have to wait until we are old? My husband, George, bought this for me, which speaks volumes! He is obviously sat watching me, looking out for signs!!

An example of an eccentric English person! I particularily Love Quentin Crisp, who has sadly now left the planet, His observations on life were so colourful, warm and funny. when asked about housework and dusting his reply (not sure of the exact words!) was that after

2 years (I think 2!) the dust doesn't get any worse!

Eccentricity is not just for famous people though!




















So, all in all I would love to see more eccentrics (especially smiling ones!!!!) But I wonder what Queen Victoria would have thought, would she be amooosed?

One of my amoosing stitcheries!

You will be please to hear that Pumpkin is still happy in the veggie patch, and I think I detect a slight change in colour. either that or he/she is blushing! Maybe there will be enough change next week to warrent a photo. Carolyn, A Jersey Girl, wild gypsy art ( click on this! ) has made a suggestion for a name for Pumpkin, it is Soul Man, which is a wonderful one! Carolyn has become a friend, and we have had some wonderful chats on facebook! I have made some wonderful friends on the web, including Christine, Colette and many more, you know who you are!!!

So until next week, get on those polka dot wellies, Easter bonnets and stripey stockings and be happy! And in good old fashioned Englishness I will say Ta Ta Old Beans! Suzie X.

Angels and pumpkins!

Hello again!

It's Friday, so it must be blog day! I have decided that I love anything with wings, especially fairies and angels. So here is another one of my stitcheries. This one belongs to a small collection of angst ridden angels. They literally 'flew' into my head one day as I was walking the dogs. I was pondering on the fact that some of us sometimes ask angels for help, or to watch over us in our everyday lives as well as in difficult times. For instance 'parking angels', have you heard of them? I have read about people asking their parking angel to help find them a space and they reckon it really does work. So, being the curious person that I am, I decided to try it too. Now, I can't say whether it was a fluke or not, but it did actually work. Still though I thought, surely these angels have better things to do with their time and more pressing problems to deal with! So as I walked along I got to thinking about angels and if they ever had a bad day themselves, perhaps maybe they get a little fed up with always having to be the ones who came out good! I went straight home and started doodling and came up with a few ideas, and the photograph below is one of seven angel angst designs. They may wish that just for one day someone would look after them for a change. We all know that feeling I think!


































Now for something completely different!
While I was rummaging about in the undergrowth of my vegetable patch (as you do!) look what I found. Yes! a baby pumpkin, so sweet, hiding under the sunflowers and leaves. I have decided from now on I will give a pumpkin update to show how this baby grows! Will it grow and live long enough to be rewarded with a face at Halloween? I really hope so! Just don't tell the poor thing that it will end up in a bowl of soup, or wrapped up in pastry! I know you shouldn't give a pumpkin a name, but I'm up for it, and any suggestions will would be welcome. Well if you are going to go bonkers, you may as well go all the way and do it well!





That is it again until next time, I wish you all good times! Suzie X.