Cinderella went to the Ball

To be more precise Sarah went to the Masquerade Bad Taste Bear Ball. Didn't manage to get the dress but went in Gold sparkly tights, black skirt and a new top. My mask was finished in time but the bloody glitter went everywhere, and why after 2 weeks I'm still finding bits even in the most unlikely places where the glitter didn't touch.

The event was held at Bramall Lane where Sheffield United play, now I'm a Sheffield Wednesday fan so this wasn't going to be the perfect venue, but the room was ok and the food was slightly edible, a selection of wraps, sandwiches, potato wedges, tortilla chips and a selection of nice desserts. We still felt the need to visit the chippy afterwards though.

The event bear was called Fanny and she was a Burlesque dancer. I did well at this event as I only got a further 5 bears for the collection, we haven't been purchasing as many this year, due to the credit crunch and the fact there hasn't been many bears that we both like.

The entertainment for the night was two Burlesque dances going by the name of Missy Malone and Lola. They both did 2 dances each then a dance together at the end. Miss Malone was ok, a former belly dancer she looked the part with nipple tassels intact but the other girl Lola wasn't that good, she was too skinny and for a burlesque dancer you would have thought that she would have had a decent pair of boobs, but no they were flatter than a pancake. Maybe Miss Malone was making up for the pair of them.

I entered by Mask into the mask making competition but didn't even come close to winning, but I'm not really surprised as they were quite a lot of really good masks, and you could tell that more than 2 days worth of engineering had gone into them. At least mine has pride of place on the bookshelf in the office.

The next Bad Taste Bear event is in the summer at Warwick Castle, which also co-insides with the 10th anniversary of BTB so there will be a special bear to mark the occasion. We haven't decided if we are going yet, but we probably will be.

Frosty the snowman

Well it has been snowing all last week and tonight we have more of the fluffy white stuff. It was fun for a while but now it's just damn annoying, all the world stops for a bit of snow. Schools were shut, trains and buses cancelled but thankfully the Supertram was still in action. The only thing that has been the most annoying is that I've been able to still make it into work, it's taken that little bit longer but still I've been there, whilst other people work from home (well they try to log on then give up and go back to bed or to the TV) I'm not bitter honest.

This weekend was the two local football teams clash in a Sheffield Derby. These teams are well known for hating each other and already this year Wednesday have been the better team and won one clash, but this weekend they did the double. Sheffield Wednesday beat United 2-1 at Bramall Lane. This, on the back of a 1-0 victory for the Owls at Hillsborough earlier in the season, gave Wednesday their first double over United since the 1913/14 season. Well deserved as well.

Another good thing that has happened is that the next Bad Taste Bear mini event is to be held in my home city of Sheffield, it's about time really I was getting a little sick of travelling all over the country for these little fellas. The only issue, well 2 issues really. One it's at Sheffield United football club and being a Wednesday supporter it's not ideal but having done the double as mentioned above it will be bearable (no pun intended). Two the theme of the event is Burlesque / Masquerade Ball. Although fancy dress is optional, this event is smart dress too. So I've got to find a cheap ball gown in fat size, good luck I here you cry. What would be perfect is that if I looked like Jennifer Connolly in Labyrinth and had her dress, but that's not going to happen between now and the 18th April. I'll keep you posted on the costume hunt.

Lego rocks!!!

Well I'm now into week 10 of my Weight Watches diet and I'm 17lbs lighter, which I'm ecstatic about and I'm starting to see a difference in my features. I'm slowly losing my double chin and for the first time in a while I've got my neck back whoo hoo!!! but i can't get too exited I've still got a long way to go.

I've been reading a book that started off as a blog called "The amazing adventures of Dietgirl" I'm addicted to this book, it's about a girl from Australia who has lost 12 and a half stone and hats off to her, she has done it over 6 years and I really admire her determination, I just hope I can achieve the same determination and achieve my goals.

So since my last post I've been in London for a weeks holiday which was ace, there were lots of photo taking and walking around and two amazing meals at Garfunkel's, if you ever go to London you have to experience a Garfunkel's Burger, they are just so nice, the meat melts in your mouth and their chips are so divine. I've still got to upload my photos to Flickr but hopefully I'll get round to it this weekend.

Currently I'm so addicted to Lego Indiana Jones on the Xbox 360, much to my boyfriends annoyance. I'm one of those people that likes to collect everything I need to get all the artifacts, all the parcels and all the characters and won't stop till I've completed it all. Then once I've done that I'm going back to Lego Star Wars and go and complete all that too.

I'm also sort of watching Big Brother, now I've watched them all but in my opinion the first three were the best and it has gone down hill since, but I've not got into the obsession just yet on this series and I'm not sure I will hit that stage. All I can really say I'm glad that Alex got kicked out as she was a nasty piece of work, even though she claims that BB edited it so it makes her look bad and that what she was saying was out of context, but what I don't understand is what other context should it have been taken in, she said those words and they were offensive and she was being a bully to Steph, Mo and Rebecca, which is wrong.

The next Bad Taste Bear event is fast approaching and this years summer event is atWhipsnade Zoo, I'm very looking forward to this one as I've been wanting to go to Whipsnade for a while now, I love Zoo's and animals.

Actioned Packed Weekend

The weekend of the 17th Aug was hectic but great, the weather held out but the traffic didn't. We set off on the Friday morning on our journey to Kent to the annual Bad Taste Bear outing. We had a reasonable journey down but hit traffic on the M25, going at 50mph on a motorway isn't great and I think at one point my BF put the hand brake on because we weren't even moving. But we arrived safely, and with only about half an hour added on to our journey time.

Our first stop off was Bluewater shopping centre, the reason for this is that like any other gal i like shopping and more importantly I like Krispy Kreme donuts. I first discovered KK at Harrods in London and fell in love with the little dough circles, they are the best donuts in the whole world, but the only problem is that up north were I live we haven't had the luxury get so I took this opportunity of going to Bluewater to sample some more of these wondrous delights, well 12 donuts later and I'm stuffed. I just want to make it clear I didn't eat them all, I did have some help.

Now Bluewater isn't a bad shopping centre but I feel that I had worked myself up for it to be twice the size of our Local shopping mall, Meadowhall but I was surprised that I think it might be just a little bigger. There are more expensive shops at BW and the most important one the Lego shop, where i nearly lost my BF, it was like a little child in a sweet shop, bless...

So we checked in our hotel that night and had a well deserved rest from all the shopping and donuts.
The next day was the trip to the event, which was at Groombridge place gardens in Kent, and also in the middle of nowhere, thank god for SatNav.

The event was really good, we got our bears and goodie bag, and then joined the queue for the shop, another 14 or so bears later we joined the queue for the tombola, at £5 per go we limited ourselves to 4 goes but the prizes were rare bears, so later in the day we had another few goes. Things were starting to run out, the shop was fast running out of stock and so was the tombola, it was apparent that one collector had spent £400 on the tombola, now in my book this isn't fair, the organisers really should have done something about this or limited the amount of goes you were able to have. Oh well we were glad with our wins and thankful we went to the shop first. We had a look around the gardens then went back to the hotel.

On the way home the next day we stopped off in Slough to visit friends, so all in all a very good but tiring and expensive weekend.

And the rain came

Sorry for not posting for about 2 months but I've been rather busy and it's been until recently that I've had time to get back to normal and finally update my blog. Well from the title of this post i refer to the recent spell of rain, we were affected by the floods in South Yorkshire and had to spend an evening in the town hall in Sheffield and a few nights in the city centre Travel Inn. But despite it all we are now back to normal and the insurance company have been great and paid out. We were quite fortunate compared to the people in Doncaster and down south they have had it really bad and are still in temporary accommodation.

I can't believe that in June/July we were having great downpours and then for example today and the past week it's been in the 70's F. It seems to have all come at once. Hopefully it will still be nice on the 17Th as this is the weekend we are going to Kent to the annual Bad Taste Bear summer outing, this year it is at Groombridge place gardens, it looks like a action packed weekend.

Valentines Day

I've not got a great fondness for Valentines Day, I just think it's just another day to spend x amount of money, saying that though I do like receiving presents.

This year I bought my fiance Da Vinci's Secret as he loves puzzle things. I got 2 Bad Taste Bear figurines the Red Hot Pussys, which I've been wanting for a while now, so now I only need the last 2 top complete the mini set.

I asked my Fiance what he was cooking me for a Valentines meal at home, the reply I got was did I want to be ill the next day? my answer was no I didn't, this is the reason why I do all the cooking in our house. Never mind, so then my next question was well if your not cooking, then where are you taking me? This then meant he had to find a table for 2 on Valentines day, which he did, The Boardwalk at Valley Centertainment in Sheffield at 9:15pm. So at 8:30 that evening we arrived and drove round for a while to find a car parking space, no luck it was all full, even the little bits of pavement had cars on them, it looked like it does when someone is playing at Sheffield Arena as people tend to park in the centertainment to avoid paying £5 parking in the arena.

So we had to abandon the Boardwalk and find somewhere else, luckily just down the road is a TGI Friday's, a place where I've not been before. So we tried there, they had loads of tables and space to park. I had a Cheese Burger and the fiance had a BBQ Burger, plus we shared Garlic Bread. The meal and service was very nice and the same price range as the Boardwalk.

You might be thinking that we could have got a burger anywhere but we aren't the type of people who order something they have never had for the fun of it, we tend to stick to things we know we like that isn't going to make us ill.

So a nice Valentines meal was had by all.

Angel's & Demons

Firstly for those who haven't a clue what I'm talking about I'll give a little background to this event. Me and my partner collect Bad Taste Bears, these are little bear figurines with a Bad Taste persona. We are both collector members and each year they have an event where other collectors can get together and socialise. This year as well as the yearly event BTB have decided to hold mini events which the Angel and Demons is the first one.

I didn't get my different coloured shoes but a nice pair of silver sandals and a silver bag so they matched.

The event was in Blackpool so we set off about 11:45 and got there just after 2pm we couldn't check in till 2 anyway so we got there just about right, apart from having a detour round Blackpool looking for the hotel as I had the postcode wrong for TomTom, we stopped and called in at the travel information place, where the lady wasn't really that helpful, she seem to assume that I knew where all the roads were. Oh well we got there in plenty of time, the event didn't start till 5pm. So having had a bit to eat and sorting out our costumes it was time to call a taxi and head off. The weather was really not nice, there was a drizzle of rain and the winds were gale force, I had a few incidents with my costume wings. But safely inside everything was fine.

The event was really good and we got to meet a few collectors along the way, didn't speak to half as many people as we would like, but oh well next time we might have more chance. The event consisted of a quiz, the blood brothers, Pete (the creator) Underhill's questions and answers speech, buffet and Disco oh and the fancy dress contest. Didn't win but never mind I thought my costume was cool.

But overall we both had a great time and can't wait for the next one.