I promised you that I had lots to share and I am now able to share most of it. In my usual style, I’m going to tell you a bit of a story first.

I am a renowned rubbish practical joker. I try and play jokes on people all the time and they usually fall flat, this year’s April Fool’s Day was no exception when I told the kids that I was pregnant again and that as a result we would have to move into a one bedroom flat since we couldn’t afford to stay in our house anymore. They fell for it so well that I decided to expand it and phoned my sister, whereupon the following conversation ensued:
Me: Steph? Steph! Oh my GOD I’m pregnant. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I’m pregnant and I have no idea how it happened and how can I possibly have another baby I’ll have five kids under 10!
Steph – Deadpan: Oh my actual God. Are you kidding?
Me – almost crying: NO I’M NOT KIDDING I can’t believe this how on earth did this happen?!
Steph: Are you kidding?
Me: NO!
Steph: No way. I am too.
Me – shrieking: OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I WAS ONLY KIDDING BECAUSE IT’S APRIL FOOL’S DAY! Are you ACTUALLY pregnant?!
Steph: I hate you.

What this little vignette doesn’t tell the reader is that I am also renowned for being the worst secret keeper in all the land. Seriously. And Stephanie is the only person I know who actually managed to keep her first pregnancy secret until she’d got past 12 weeks. GNNNNNNNNNGGGGGG! So the last eight weeks has been torturous for me knowing but not able to tell anyone until today. Steph & Gary had their scan yesterday and there’s a little baby in there! It’s the clearest scan picture I’ve ever seen – you can see it here which is a photo of the scan and therefore not great, but clear enough to see a bambino in there. Hooray! Baby is due to land before Christmas which is just perfect. I am seriously excited

So that’s my first piece of news. My SECOND piece of news is that Bob & I’s business The Life Craft (which we’ve been sporadically blogging about here) has been entered into a really amazing competition run by Barclay’s Bank. Competitors are divided up by location and then by sector; in 12 days the judges will shortlist their favourite three entries per location and whoever gets the most votes wins up to £50,000 to develop their business. We really need people to back us just now – a task that will take literally seconds to do in the hope that we can be shortlisted. If you could take a moment to do this I really would be most grateful.

So that’s the news for just now! Onto the reviews.

I posted yesterday about our big walk around Calderglen Park with Penny the other night. When we got home, I was so knackered that I decided to have a bath. Lush had sent me a Big Blue bath ballistic and a bar of Sandstone soap last week as a freebie to encourage me to take 90 minutes as a World Cup Widow and I wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth (although I didn’t have the heart to ‘fess up about Scotland’s lack of qualifying!) I’ve used the Big Blue loads of times before and love it but the Sandstone soap was a new one to my crappy sensitive skin and I’m really impressed with it! I got off all of the dry flaky bits without irritating my skin any further and it smells really nice too. Lush are also promoting their BB Seaweed facemask to World Cup Widows but I haven’t tried that one yet.

Although I have to say I’m very jealous of our friends in the South after discovering that Lush have Spas, but they’re only in London, Leeds, Poole and Kingston! Have any of you tried them out before?

The other review I wanted to share with you is for a website that I discovered after Christmas called Dot Com Giftshop. I got these supercute Russian Doll tins for the girls to keep their hairbobbles, colouring pencils and various tiny toys in so that I’d stop standing on them and I was really impressed with the speed and service offered by the site. A few weeks ago, they contacted me to say they’d listed Adventures of a Lady in Training in their top 50 craft blogs (at #42! The cheek of it, I reckon I should have been top 20 at least!) and would I be interested in reviewing some of their products. So they sent me out some of their Heart gifts range and I have to say that yet again, I was impressed with the speed, service and quality offered by them.

This gorgeous & classy tealight holder has been claimed by Erica for above her bed:

and they also sent this selection:

which just made me smile as soon as I opened the box which contained Feltcraft butterfly hearts, Iron-on patches, thick wrapping tape with hearts, thinner gift tape, alphabet heart stickers and decorative heart stickers which I have to admit made me want to sit down and write a letter to someone – anyone – which I could decorate with hearts. Yes I know, I’m unashamedly girly. Anyway, it’s a big thumbs up from me for the Dot Com Giftshop not just for having such a wide variety of cute and inexpensive gift items but also for the brilliant customer service experience.

And finally the bit you’ve all been waiting for – the giveaway! This giveaway has now closed

OK – up for grabs we have everything in this photograph:

and to enter the giveaway I would like you to:

1) Comment here (that gets you one entry)
2) Be a fan on facebook (that gets you another entry
3) Tweet about the giveaway (that gets you yet another entry)

Please remember to tell me in your comment if you’ve done steps 2 & 3 otherwise you won’t be credited for that entry! Also ensure you leave an email address for me to contact you on. You have until 8pm on Wednesday 2nd June 2010 to enter and I will post anywhere in the world.

Please note: I am not paid for reviews other than getting to keep the product I’m reviewing. You can therefore be assured that the review I write is unbiased.

Posted under giveaway

The Ecover giveaway closed last night.

I used the random number integer:

and #23 was drawn:

And entry #23 was Eileen with this answer:

Congratulations Eileen! I’ll get your prize to you ASAP.

Posted under giveaway

NOW! A giveaway.

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the PR company who represent Ecover asking if I’d like to review Ecover’s new range on my blog. In order to review the products honestly, they have supplied me with not only their own range but comparable products from other petrochemical-based well-known brands. I will be posting my findings tomorrow.

Before agreeing to this, I asked Ecover’s PR company to supply me with a pack to giveaway to my readers which they kindly did. The pack contains four 500ml bottles – multi surface cleaner, all purpose cleaner, power cleaner (degreaser) and window & glass cleaner.

To be in with a chance of winning this pack, leave a comment below telling me what you do to make your house a happier home. Closing date for entries is Sunday 11th October at midnight. Now closed! Thanks for entering! Due to the weight of the bottles I’m afraid this giveaway is restricted to the UK & Eire.

Posted under giveaway

Thank you all so very much for your help and advice with picking paint. Over the last week I’ve been in a frenzy of decorating, designing and mopping up after the kids who have been sick again hence me still not finishing part 2 of “A day in the life” But! Fret no more, starting this afternoon and running until Monday you are going to be treated to not one but TWO fabulous giveaways, a review of some cleaning products I have been sent and asked to talk to you about, some bona fide crafting and maybe a recipe or two. Also as a general reminder, the “A day in the life… Crafter’s special” takes place on Friday 25th September. I will write a post just about this, later.

I have also decided to start a new feature called “Fabulous Friday” where I’ll showcase fabulous interiors that I’ve found. Doing my research in order to finally make my house a home has been truly awe-inspiring and I’ve found some jaw droppingly gorgeous rooms. If you’d like to be featured, please email me with a link or photo.

In the meantime, can I point you all towards a resource I found today and fell in love with? The fabulous Indie Fixx site has been running an art project called Feed Your Soul and is giving away free downloads of gorgeous prints from a variety of different designers. Free! Gratis! I can’t actually decide which ones I want to use but it’s fine because the downloads are free! I am extremely excited by this and have already selected three for the girls’ room and one for mine.

Posted under Fabulous Friday, inspiration

My apologies for taking so long to update with this – life has kind of got in the way recently!

Using random.org’s random integer, the winner of the giveaway is:

Commenter 18! – Congratulations to Lisa!. Lisa if you could email me with your address I’ll get your goodies posted off to you at some point this week.

Thank you to everyone who participated – I have a cracking load of new books and sites to check out and I appreciate you all stopping by. I’ll maybe do something for my 250th

Next update is going to be the craft challenge entrants – keep your eyes peeled because I’ll need you lovely lot to vote!

Posted under site stuff

As promised, here is my belated 100th post giveaway entry!

I’ve been trying to come up with entry criteria but due to lack of sleep thanks to a very cute little girl I haven’t got the imagination. So! I recently finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (which is amazing and beautiful and made me cry) and I absolutely loved it. Embarrassingly this is the first book in many a month that I’ve successfully completed but it’s really triggered my inner bookworm.

With that in mind, to enter this giveaway I would like you to recommend a book to me – it can be any genre at all – and tell me why I need to have this book in my life. If you’re not a literary type then feel free to recommend a website that you think I need to see.

In return? One of you lucky types will win four stitch markers, a pair of gorgeous pink resin knitting needles (made by Kerry at PennyDog Jewellery) and the knitting bag made by me and embellished with a removeable needlepointed flower brooch by Debbs for the Crafteroo mixed media craft challenge (with apologies for the picture of the bag, it’s not the easiest thing to photograph!).

Go!

Posted under recommendations, site stuff

Sorry for the radio silence, suffice to say that big things are happening chez BCB-and-Bob and I really haven’t been able to sit for long enough to type up a post. Next post is the big 100 and will feature a whole load of stuff INCLUDING a very cool giveaway which the knitters amongst you will want to get in on.

In the meantime, I’m going to leave you with possibly the best photo I think I’ve ever seen of any of my children and which certainly put my nine-months-pregnant pelvic floor to the test. This was Erica the day before her birthday when all the family had come to visit. Please note that there’s no way I’d have put her in a red dress and pink hairband, I blame her Daddy for that one. Click for embiggenisation.

Posted under family

Very quick little update from me today, I’m going to bullet-point for speed and efficiency.

• This is my 90th post. 90 posts! NINETY! For my 100th post I’m going to have a very special giveaway featuring some handmade goodies so tune in. I anticipate the 100th post to arrive within the next four weeks.
• I have finally bitten the bullet and opened my very own Folksy shop. There’s only some owl stitch markers listed right now but I’ll expand that with time. I am very nervous about this and hope it pans out because I need to start recouping some of the money I spend on crafty things!
• For the fifth week in a row, Erica is too sick to go to nursery. I can’t even explain in words of more than two syllables just how frustrating this is for me. Is it selfish to crave some time on your own? I have one day a week where everyone is at work/school/nursery and I haven’t had that day for over a month and I resent losing that time. I don’t resent Erica because sure it’s not her fault, but I really needed today. Ah well.
• I decided against using the cookie dough. It probably would have been fine, but there were eggs in the mix and with Erica being ill with seemingly no reason I just didn’t want to risk it. I am quite annoyed at the waste, truth be told.
• You can now become a fan on Facebook! Click the link to go to our fan page on facebook – I promise you won’t be bombarded by updates etc.
• We also have a web presence on Twitter and Flickr
• You may have noticed at the bottom of each post now there are a row of little icons. Can I encourage you to explore what they do and how they work for both you and I? Any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them
• Finally, I was wondering why whenever I leave a comment on your blogs I have no avatar that shows up beside my details**. Turns out that there’s a very simple way to do this – just go to www.gravatar.com, register your email address and the picture you’d like associated with your comments et voila! If you already have a wordpress.com account then your gravatar should be linked as long as you’ve registered the email address you use to comment. I know there’s a fair few of you who comment here but don’t have a gravatar set so go go go!

Today is going to be a day in the car. I have to get Nairn to nursery, Erica to see her Doctor, take our growhouse back to a large nationwide DIY store after it blew away Wizard of Oz-style last week destroying all our seedlings (nearly a month’s worth of planting and the DIY store in question are refusing to replace our seeds, making out like they’re doing us a favour by replacing the growhouse. I am unimpressed to say the least!) then we have to get some food in and finally take the cats to the vet before I can sit down. Happy days!

**Edit to add – the ever-lovely Ryan tells me that the gravatar thing doesn’t work for every blog as the blog owner needs to enable that option. For the most part it should work though!

Posted under general crafty updates, site stuff

Firstly I’d like to say thank you to everyone for your very kind comments over the last week or so. Things here are still nowhere near back to normal but as the saying goes, “This too shall pass” and in fairness the worst certainly seems to be past us. I am frantically grabbing at the door to touch wood right now!

Secondly, I would like all of you with young children to head on over to Amanda of Kitschycoo fame’s blog, in particular this post and this post. You see, a month ago I bought this pattern and Amanda also sent me the pattern for her Matinee jacket asking me to test it for her. The pattern pieces are still sitting cut out but unsewn – a month after Amanda asked, I haven’t had two minutes peace to finish it. The thing is her patterns are fantastic! Very easy to follow, beautifully put together and unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else so when I saw she was doing a giveaway I thought, “I must let my readers know about this!”

Thirdly, I finally managed to get my Time for Tea swap goodies posted off today although I’ve missed the last collection. Sue has been very patient with me as the world collapsed around my ears and I just hope that she’s as happy with what I’ve sent her as I was with her package which Sue blogged here. I actually wore the earrings the night my package arrived and they’re just gorgeous so thank you again, Sue!

This is what I sent to Sue – the candle is made from beeswax and is made in a vintage teacup with matching saucer. This was my first attempt at candle making and in fact I made another to burn myself and make sure it was okay! The silver caddy is filled with Faerie’s blood tea from my favourite little teahouse and there’s also a packet of shortbread fingers as I believe shortbread to be the best biscuit in the world

I also made a little bag with a felt cupcake appliqué and Japanese knot-style closure which I’m very proud of!

What do you think?

Posted under general crafty updates, sewing, swaps

So rather than do the names in a hat thing, I decided to use the Random.org integer generator. First, I put in my criteria:

Then it selected commenter #8:



(I appreciate the photos here are teeny tiny, but if you click on them they’ll open up for you).

Congratulations to Drop One! You are the winner of the Namaste needle shell, I’ve sent you an email if you could reply with your post details

Thank you all for your comments and I hope you all have a wonderful Hogmanay and New Year. I’ll be back with lots more projects in January, I promise!

Posted under Uncategorized