The excitement is building

I've got so many plans in my head that I think it's either going to explode or I'll forget them all! 

I'm working on building my own website! I have now purchased my domain and hosting, and am ready to get stuck in. 

But... I've hit my first techi snag. I've had to call in the cavalry in the form of my brother. My tech guy is on holiday so I'm working through as much of this as I can as it's a good experience to learn if I'm going to maintain it. So my bro is my stand in tech guy while I get to work on the content.  

Eventually I'll have my online shops in one place where I plan to sell the ceramics and craft supplies together. 

I will also move this blog over and I have a second blog in the making about how crafting has been the making and saving of me. 

I hope to be able to pay it forward and help others who are chronically ill to find new meaning in life, as I did with the help of my many friends and fellow spoonies. It will be a place where we can share experiences and tips on how to cope with things in day to day life. 

This is a long term project of mine. I will be putting together posts about how chronic illness affects different aspects of our lives and how we can move forward with it, posts on different crafts and activities that I have tried (and will be trying) that have helped with my wellbeing, and posts on articles and items that I find that could be beneficial to us, such as household aids. I will be essentially opening a window into my life in the hope that I might be able to help someone who is perhaps newly diagnosed and feeling lost. The biggest lesson that I learnt was that I am not alone. 

So watch this space and hopefully in the coming weeks I'll have a new project called 'Crafting is my Therapy' to share with you. I'm very excited about this and I do hope that you will come along for the ride and take part with advice of your own as well. 

Cath xx

Planning for the future, a new workshop

I'm very excited about this piece of news. I'm going to be sorting out my workshop properly this year. 

You see I've been doing my pottery in my garage for the last few years but it is so cold in the winter months that production stops. Well not next winter! 

I'm going to be bricking up the garage door and replacing it with a big window that will let in lots of lovely light without needing to be exposed to the elements. Planning applications are in and we have our building firm sorted. I really can't wait!

Where the garage door is now is where I plan to have my art desk and do my painting. I'll have good light there. I will also have space to put up more shelving so that I can store my paints and glazes downstairs (they are in the spare bedroom at the moment) and also have space to store more stock. 

The other up side is that we will get back out spare room for overnight guests. Or somewhere for me or hubby to run to when one of us decides to snore. It's usually him snoring! Shh... I didn't say that! 

So there's my little piece of exciting news. I had to share it with you. I know that my crafty buddies will understand the significance and I daresay that their spouses will appreciate not having craft supplies all around the house as well! 

I'll try to remember to photograph things as they progress. 

Cath x

www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TySiriolCeramics 
www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TySiriolCrafts 
www.facebook.com/TySiriolCeramicsandCrafts
G+: http://ht.ly/UvPxX
Twitter: @tysiriolceramic
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/tysiriol/

Wearing my savvy savings hat

It seems that I have many different hats; mother, wife, business owner, doctor, kisser of bumps and bruises and so on. Sometimes it can be a bit confusing as to which hat I'm wearing at a given time but recently I have pulled out my good ole savvy savings hat again. 

One of my duties (I believe) is not so much to bring in extra income, as that is optional as a stay at home mum, but more to reduce our household expenditure. I started to really look into this 6 years ago when I found myself a single parent out of the blue with no income other than child benefit and disability living allowance. I had to become creative and down right inventful back then.  

Nowadays being savvy with my expenditure is second nature to me but even so there is always room to learn a few new tricks. I wish I had known this one before Christmas!  

So what am I talking about? I'm talking about the app Zeek. 

I downloaded Zeek onto my phone for a look. It's an app where you can buy reduced cost gift cards for various online and in store retailers. The savings are anything up to 20% from what I've seen. That's not to be turned down lightly. That is unless money has no meaning to you. However, I believe that no matter how much (or how little) money you might have there is no reason whatsoever to throw it away. It's plain common sense. 

I'm pretty sure that there will be at least one retailer on there that you will use regularly. For instance, Amazon, Morrisons, Sainsburys, M&S, iTunes and so many more. 

The other side of Zeek is that you can also sell gift cards to the site. Now I haven't tried this yet although I might do as we still have a few gift cards from our wedding over 18 months ago that we don't seem to have need for. If you've tried this feature out please let me know how it worked out for you in the comments. 

Back to the buying side. I originally saw this described in another blogger's post so I used her promo code to get £5 free credit. Yes, that's £5 just for using a promo code and signing up! 

Hubby then signed up using my promo code and also bagged himself £5 for signing up. I should add that for every person who uses your promo code you will also get £5 added to your account once they have made a purchase. 

We are interested regularly in Morrisons gift cards as we live in walking distance to one and shop there often. So hubby purchased an £80 gift card for £73. That is £80 minus £2 (3%) and minus his £5 referral credit. A saving of £7 for food that we would have bought anyway!

It doesn't stop there. Now that hubby had made a purchase using my promo code I had an additional £5 credited to my account giving me a balance of £10. I also bought an £80 Morrisons gift card but I paid only £68 for it. That is £80 minus £2 (3%), minus my £5 sign up credit and minus £5 referral credit!! That saved me £12!

Overall we saved between us £19 towards our monthly food shop. Now I think that was worth the effort for all of 5 minutes work. 

If you wanted to be super duper savvy then you could also buy your gift cards using a credit card that gives you cashback on all your purchases. However, don't forget to pay it off in full each month or the interest that you are charged will outweigh the gain. 

If you are interested in taking a look at Zeek and seeing what else might be useful to your family then please do use my promo code (24E47B) to claim your £5 sign up credit. 

I will be ordering Amazon gift cards ready for next Christmas and any large purchases that I might make from them. Over the course of a year I think we'll all be surprised how these little things can add up. 

If you've had any experience with Zeek or any similar apps then please let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading,
Cath xx

Disclaimer: This post is in no way affiliated with or reimbursed by Zeek or any other company. This is about my recent experience with the app and no more. 

www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TySiriolCeramics 
www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TySiriolCrafts 
www.facebook.com/TySiriolCeramicsandCrafts
G+: http://ht.ly/UvPxX
Twitter: @tysiriolceramic
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/tysiriol/

Scrapbooking *by* beginners.

Hi there folks! I've been reading a lot about scrapbooking on Pinterest (one of my fave places) lately. I love the idea. We already have a rememberlutions jar in the house where we add post-its with all the good things that happen throughout the year so that we can go over them again on New Years Eve. It's worked well... but... there are no photos and I LOVE photos! So we decided to have a go at scrapbooking as a way of combining our memories, photo albums and journals.

I have been looking around for some nice scrapbooks and I'm amazed firstly at how much they cost in a hobby shop. As I have no idea what I'm doing I didn't feel I could quite stretch that far just yet. Maybe, later on when I'm a seasoned scrapbooker. Is that a word?

So I kept an eye out for a few weeks while the idea was ruminating and then Mr TS found 2 beautiful handmade books in a charity shop of all places! I really can't imagine why anyone would ever want to part with these.

Aren't they lovely. They appear to be made from bamboo strips and leaves with the binding fastened with a twig. I absolutely love them. 

Naturally Missy had to have one of them! I was thinking of her when I got the idea to scrap book. She's going through an awful lot of crap at the moment and it'll be good for her to have a book to hand that she can put her happy memories and time with friends in to look back over when she's feeling blue.

Here's mine and Mr TS's first attempts at scrapbooking. Don't laugh, it's a work in progress and I think that once we get into our groove we'll become more creative. 

I did have a go at making mini-bunting with washi tape (my new favourite play thing) and I raided Missy's craft box for other bits and bobs. I'll be on the look out for pretty things now to decorate more pages with.

So there you have it, scrapbooking by a complete novice! It is fun and I do love sticking things with glue. (Some things you never out grow!) Hopefully this will become a new thing for us as a family and I will have new (and improved) pages for you to see. Until then, thanks for reading.

Cath xx

www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TySiriolCeramics
www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TySiriolCrafts
www.facebook.com/TySiriolCeramicsandCrafts
G+: http://ht.ly/UvPxX
Twitter: @tysiriolceramic
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/tysiriol/

My own little piece of France

I really do have a wonderful husband. We have a dream of retiring in France and we had an amazing holiday in Normandy last summer. The link is here. I think what really made that holiday was that my parents and one of my brothers came with us. French living really does seem to be all about the family, and the bigger, the better!

Since going out there it has really made our goal of living in France a lot stronger. This year we are going to the south west of France near Carcassonne for 2 weeks. It is a beautiful region and we can't wait to explore. We're staying in a villa in the mountains but only half an hour drive from some of the highest rated beaches on the Mediterranean coast.

While we are waiting for our trip hubby has brought a little of France to our house for me. We can't afford to change our kitchen and it was starting to look rather tired and worn out (a bit like me!) so hubs decided to paint it for me.

This photo shows the before kitchen. This was taken when I had the wall knocked down between the kitchen and dining room. I was in a wheelchair most of 2014 and needed better access in the house. I will be in and out of the wheelchair for the rest of my life but thankfully I'm doing ok at the moment. Due to this we decided to cash in my pension and use the money to adapt the house to some of my needs. So the wall came down and the doorway removed to make a wider space for my chair. We also had a lowered counter top, our breakfast bar put in so I have somewhere to work downstairs and use for things like food prep without having to stand. I'm not sure what Missy is doing in this pic!

This is the motley crew who did the work for me. My bro, Uncle Bob the builder (as Missy calls him, even though he's a carpenter), hubs (love ya) and a friend of ours, who has experience renovating his own houses.

This is my brand new breakfast bar/office! You can see the old units in the background.

This is the dining room side before we painted it cream and put a sofa in there. I like this pic because it all look nice and clean.

All this was done in 2014 then we took a break from house improvements to get married and go on honeymoon.

At the end of 2015 Matt was made redundant from his job of 25 years. It was a big blow to us especially as my ex also went back on his maintenance agreement that we had and it meant that we lost half our household income in a matter of months. We are now living off savings. Thankfully Matt has a new job starting next month but it's on a fraction of his old pay. So obviously we can't afford to change the kitchen any time soon. Matt however discovered chalk paint and decided that he was going to transform our kitchen for me and we were going to have a slice of our French dream.

I think the choice of green paint was great as it contrasts really well with the black counters and floor tiles. And look at the lovely hand painted motifs he's done to add a bit of charm to the kitchen. I guess I'd better get back into cooking again now the kitchen is back together!

I am very lucky to have such a thoughtful and clever hubby. I love my little piece of France and I can look at it from the breakfast bar where I tend to work and admire it each day. Thank you Sweet xx