Thursday 22 December 2011

*only 3 more sleeps*

I can't believe it's almost Christmas. It seems to have come round so quickly, yet this last week is going sooooooo slowly! It's my last day of work today until the new year so after my 2 after school children go home, it's just me and mine... really looking forward to it!

I have a few LOs to share with you.
These were created with the November Sarah's Cards kit, which was so lovely to work with.






These are the LOs I created for my December blog post. I used Echo Park Times & Seasons, which is much more versatile than you might first think.









You can see the blog posts here and here.

I'm busy busy busy playing with the January kit, and getting my January blog work finished, so I better go and get photo printing so I can do something tonight, rather than faffing....

Be back in the new year. Hope you have a very Merry Christmas.
xxx

Monday 14 November 2011

Having a poorly sick day...

I have Things 1 and 3 at home feeling all poorly sick and sorry for themselves, so whilst they are asleep on the sofa I thought I might actually update my blog. Well it was either that, or do some ironing, and when it comes down to it, blogging beats ironing hands down!

What's been happening since I last blogged way back in September? Well, to be honest, nothing worth writing about. Life has pretty much gone on the same way it usually does for us... school/back from school/after school activities/busy weekends trying to complete unrealistic to do lists... lol!
One thing that is worth writing about is the 3rd Sarah's Cards Ltd retreat that took place in Warrington at the beginning of November. It was another fun weekend with lots of laughs, too much food, and in my case very little scrapping!
You can see a post about the retreat on the blog here. I can't believe it's only 4 months until the next retreat in March!!! There are still a few places left and you can grab yourself one of them here. There were 6 fab LO classes, and the LOs can be seen here. My mum came to the retreat this time as a late birthday/early Christmas present. She was really nervous about going as she didn't know anybody (apart from me obviously), but she was soon befriended and chatting away like she'd known everyone for years... and she soon got a 'fresh air' buddy too! She loved it and had a fab time, making lots of new friends. Here she is with 2 of her table friends, Dr Eileen and Trina.
Now it's bad enough having to have the DT photo at the end of the retreat, but this year I was forced into having a small group photo too... lol! It's been printed out and stuck to the treat cupboard door so I don't go in there... look at that tummy!!! Oh dear!
 Like I say I got very little scrapping done... I only completed 1 LO!!! As it happens it was a LO for the November challenge on the Sarah's Cards blog, set by Nat. The theme is to think NEGATIVE. I went down the using the negative space in my alphas to create the eyes design feature.

 I bought the Pink Paislee Phantom range, including stamps, stickers and transparencies as soon as they came out, because I just knew they'd be perfect for the Halloween photos I have yet to scrap from previous years... but of course I started with photos from this year first! As well as the challenge LO, I also did this LO of Drew studying 'little Oliver' dressed as Harry Potter. I don't know if it was the glasses or the scar, or just how incredibly cute he looked, but Drew was fascinated with him. The photos were taken at the 'First Annual' Garratt Halloween Party... there you go Jen, it's out there now, you HAVE to have another party next year! There will be lots of LOs appearing from the fantastic afternoon, so watch this space, this space and this space.
I used the chalkboard stickers to make the spider embellishment, the very cute Halloween stamp set from American Crafts and a strip of gorgeous Amy Tangerine mix tape., the background grid paper was also by Amy Tan.
I can share a few more LOs that were created using the September kit. This was a gorgeous kit to work with, and even though at first glance it looks like a 'girly' kit, it was really easy to use on boys LOs. There are a couple left to buy.









 My blog post goes up on the 1st of each month, and this month I decided to use a mix of papers by Lily Bee and Studio Calico. Here are my LOs, and you can see the blog post here with a tutorial on how to create perfect stitched titles, and the flower embellishment using a circle punch here and here.





Righty ho, that's all there is for now folks... I'll be back one day... I may even make the effort to blog again before Christmas... lol!
XXX

Monday 12 September 2011

Testing, testing...

Just seeing if blogging using a phone is as easy peasy as the app write up says it is!!!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday 11 September 2011

Another New Year

I guess it's the teacher in me that I still work on an academic year... I can't believe we're well into September already!!! Harry started full time school o Monday, which h is so far really loving. It means that I only have 2 small children at home at any time now, and on some days it's just me and Drew... which is fab! Harry was very excited about starting school and on his first day (which was just a half day) he sat holding his bags all morning just waiting to go.
He's not so keen on the school dinners, so we're going to have to see how that one goes.
A few weeks ago Rob and the boys did a bit of tree surgery, removing all the dead leaves from the Cordyline tree. I got some great photos from the afternoon, and can't wait to scrap the sequence of Drew picking up a snail, studying the snail then realising he didn't like the snail touching him!!! Here are a couple from the sequence.
Harry had the very important job of project manager, so got to wear the high vis vest and hard hat....
After a summer of being scared to go on the trampoline Drew discovered this week that he now REALLY like to bounce. Trouble is we have to lock and hide the keys or he lets himself out to bounce no matter what the weather or the time of the day!!!

On Friday Drew and I had an afternoon in the garden together... he's such a monkey and wouldn't let me take his photo, so out of over 100 photos taken I got lots like this....

I'm not looking...
 I'm still not looking...
 But I did get this cute one of him telling me to go away...
 Then he escaped into the playhouse, so this was taken through the window...
 And I got loads of him hiding behind the playhouse and peeping round at me.... I love this one in particular...
 On the scrapping front... I've recently bought lots of the new yumminess coming into Sarah's Cards. My favourite being the Pink Paislee Phantom range... can't wait to start playing with these. I also bought some MME Lost and Found 2 Breeze papers, which I used for the September sketch challenge over on the Sarah's Cards Blog. I've started to look through some of my old photos to scrap, and decided to use my favourite one of Oliver when he was 5 days old. His first few scrapbooks are really basic as I didn't have any tools or pretty papers, so I feel like I should re-scrap some of the photos so that hi are as nice as Thing 2 and 3's.... it's just my very valid excuse to buy more papers and scrap baby photos!
 


I used the same range of papers for this LO of my lovely friends who got married at the beginning of the month. It was a refreshing change being able to use sparklies for sparklies sake.
Here are a few images of work I've done for the Sarah's Cards Blog. This month I started an Art Journal using kraft envelopes as my base. You can see the blog post here.

I also did this LO using a kraft envelope as a pocket, using these Glitz stamps, which are also in the sale section so you'd be foolish not to get!!!


These LOs were for the July blog post.... but I forgot to blog them on here, because I'm good at being forgetful like that!



Ok, that's it for a few more days/weeks/moths/years... I doubt it'll be the last option, but it's not likely to be the first... lol!!!