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Welcome to my inaugural post!

I figured I’d start by sharing some of this year’s successful projects, since it’s nearly 2015! This year has been incredibly busy for me in terms of work; I’ve completed my green belt in Lean Six Sigma (project management) on top of my usual day-to-day role which has been much harder as we were two team members down for a large chunk of the year!

I still found time for these little projects though:

1. A “Puntastic” thank you present

This was a gift box I put together for a friend and colleague who helped me massively during my Lean Six Sigma qualification; crunching data for me and being a sounding board when I was getting increasingly stressed and mental.

As we both love puns and wordplay I put together a box of mini presents to say thank you. I wrapped a box in wrapping paper inside and out (wish I’d seen this tutorial before for the inside!)

I hit the jackpot in Tesco as I found present tags shaped like speech bubbles. I have saved the leftover ones and will likely trace around them in the future!

I started with some Krispy Kremes and added a tag saying I “doughnut” know what I would do without YOU!

I was putting this together just before Halloween so I couldn’t resist the eyeballs chocolates:

I found a lovely large latte mug (Sainsburys) for the classic “Thanks a Latte” pun. I didn’t get a picture of it but I also got a £10 Starbucks card and squeezed it inside the mug.

Everyone loves a moustache! I found this moustache pencil topper in W H Smith’s while I was waiting for my housie to post something. “I moustache you for the secret of your awesomeness” sounds best when said like Sean Connery!

I had a lot of choices on the bear pun but I went with a Lindt bear in the end

My friend is a major fan of Lego so I got her a Lego key ring torch (also Sainsburys). Superman since she saved my sanity on more than one occasion! Also I liked that it created a double wordplay/pun opportunity:

And here is the final present:

I hid it in my car, waited until she had gone for the annual office flu jab and put it on her desk for when she came back.

I think she likes it!

2. An impromptu Alice in Wonderland Costume

Our office decided to have a charity dress up day. As I’m the social committee floor rep (don’t ask me how that happened!) I felt I definitely had to get involved. I had a blue pinafore dress already so I decided to improvise by getting a white blouse and make a white apron from some scrap material:

I essentially sewed a sealed pillowcase and attached two strips as ties:

Last year’s christmas party was also Alice themed so I had a big bow headband to wear. My final outfit was topped off with stripy socks borrowed from the housie:

I also made my first foray into nail art:

I used this tutorial for the white square decals on my chequerboard nails, pinky and thumb nails. The heart and bows were done with a sharpie (I know, but it was gone midnight by the time I finished!!)

It turned out our team were some of the few to get properly dressed up but we raised lots of money nonetheless:

Yes that is a puntastic “Dumble-Door” on the end there!

3. Christmas Nails

I failed to get pictures while I was doing this one but I have the final product:

I used nail striping tape (from Amazon here) to do the christmas trees and then a nail dotting tool (also from Amazon here) to add the baubles and stars on top. I thought doing trees on all my nails would be a bit much (plus I’m lazy…)

They looked good on Christmas day!

I’ll be making a build your own fort kit (based on this tutorial) for my cousin’s kids over the next couple of days so I’ll be back with a British version of the tutorial on it soon. I’m babysitting for the kids on New Year’s Eve so hoping to have it finished by then!