A Weekend Round-Up…

Phew! That was a well & truly filled weekend!! 

It started with an appointment on Friday afternoon, to see the Consultant re my shoulder surgery. He was pleased with my progress, although he says I still need a further six months of physiotherapy & may not regain 100% mobility in the joint! I’m just glad to be relatively pain free & able to sleep at night…the rest will follow, as far as it can!! Apparently, when he ‘went in’ he discovered that not only was the joint frozen & the tendons calcified, but I had excess bone above the joint too, so that had to be shaved off! Now I understand why it was so painful afterwards & why my recovery is frustratingly slow!! But I will get there!!

Anyhow, he declared me fit to return to work, & that’s what I did on Sunday! It felt good to be back & it was lovely to be so welcomed by both colleagues & customers alike!

Then on Saturday I headed off to the Merly Impressions crop where it was lovely to see old friends Dawn & Sharon…& to meet a new one too…

 
  …Lucy, who sat next to
  me! The crop was an
  extended one, from 10am
  to 8pm & the time just
  flew by!

 

There were two class Layouts for inspiration, by the very talented Chrissy.

The first was very feminine & although I liked the chair I didn’t feel I wanted to include it in my LO, so I’ve saved it for another time & just went with more fussy cut flowers!

 

  
Featuring my marvellous (spot the spelling error!!) Mum-In-Law Patricia!  She’s well worth immortalising in a LO!!

  The second LO was a real
  inspiration! As soon as I
  saw the sneak-peak I
  knew what I wanted to do
  with it!!

  I think it appealed to me
  because of its graphic
  style & structured feel!

  Again though, I did make
  some changes…

I thoroughly enjoyed using the tree bark stamp that came in the kit (I don’t do enough stamping even though I have a good selection of stamps!!). I used foam pads to raise the frame & give a 3D effect & added journaling strips, blooms, pearls & embroidery silk! My only disappointment is that the title alpha’s which I inked & gilded, blend in a tad too much!

When I arrived home there was happy mail waiting me, all the way from Canada! It was my prize from recent soul Scrappers challenge sent by the lovely Karen Findlay… a fabulous assortment of scrappy goodies on a holiday theme! Perfect for documenting my up-coming trip to Turkey! Thanks Karen!

 

 
  As I mentioned earlier, it
  was back to work on
  Sunday, which meant back
  to the cinema after work
  too! I have missed so
  many recent releases that
  I was pleased that we
  managed to catch ‘The
  Lucky One’ starring Zac
  Efron. He was always a
  cutie in his ‘High School
  Musical’ days, but now he
  is all grown up & just plain
  gorgeous!!

 
The story is so romantic but not mushy! Touching on current affairs & the injustice of war, it’s a tale of how fate does bring people together if they let it! I laughed, felt angry, shed a few tears & left the cinema with a sigh, content with the ending! A lovely film I’m glad to have seen on the big screen.

And that was my weekend!

So, thanks for stopping by & let’s hope the good weather that’s been promised for the UK, for the remainder of this week, actually arrives! Enjoy your week, wherever you are!

Come back soon!

Many Happy Returns Mrs A’…

Today is my good friend Karen's birthday…not sure which one, but suffice to say she’s younger than me!!

Knowing that with all that's going on in our busy lives, it would be unlikely that I’d see her ‘on-the-day’ I wanted to try & make a card that was perfect for her!!

Karen is someone who becomes an expert at everything she tries…cooking, knitting, sewing, interior design, scrapbooking, photography!  In fact we’ve likened her to Mary Poppins…Practically Perfect In Every Way’!! So when I saw this design available for my Silhouette library, I had to have it!!

I printed it off & mounted it
onto some card to make a 
pocket, then pleated some
PP to frill the edge. I added
some of the leaf ribbon that
was in the pack sent as an
RAK by the lovely Julie (Thanks again Julie!) &
used some peach paper
rosebuds & pearls to finish!
 

Then I made a tag & used
the above photo of Karen so
we could see who it is that’s ‘Practically Perfect’!! I’m hoping that Mr Postman delivered it today &
she’s not seeing it here for the first time!!!

Whatever happens…I hope you’re having an amazing birthday Karen & I hope we can get together again very soon!

Today is also the deadline for the third recipe challenge over at Soul Scrappers, set by the aforementioned Julie!

The recipe had to include 1 x 12x12 sheet of Kraft CS
                                      1 x 12x4 piece of PP
                                      1 x 7x5 piece of PP
                                      1x 5.75x6.5piece of PP

After that anything else could be included by way of photo’s & embellishments! This is what I came up with…

  …yes! That’s me at age three & a half!! The original photo was so tiny that when scanned, it appeared so grainy I didn’t think I’d ever use it! But after editing it to incorporate the graininess into a vintage sepia feel, I think it’s worked OK?!!

That’s all from me for today! Thanks for stopping by & come back soon!

Drought? What Drought??!!

Didn’t we have a gorgeous weekend? Almost wall-to-wall sunshine & although there was a cool breeze, I even donned a pair of cropped trousers & flip-flops! I got three loads of washing line dried & pottered about in the garden.

The only frustration was not being able to use the hosepipe!! we are right at the centre of the ‘hosepipe ban’ zone! After all the rain we've had over the past two weeks, you’d think the apparent drought conditions would have improved a little wouldn’t you?

As part of my ‘Move More’ resolution for 2012, I have been parking my car out of town at a local leisure park & walking into town along the river embankment. Why am I telling you this? Well, last Wednesday I wasn’t able to walk on the path! The river that usually looks like this…

…looks like this!

I had to stay on one side & walk along the roadside, but did get onto the bridge to get this photo!…&  on my way back I braved the footpath (as far as I could!) to get these too…

So, please Mr Weatherman, I don’t understand why this isn’t the ‘right’ sort of rain. If we have floods in our town centre & surrounding villages, why aren’t the reservoirs filling up too?!

I guess, in the meantime, I’ll have to keep on with the watering can & catch as much rainwater as possible, but I’m looking forward to the ban being lifted soon!!

I’ve just glanced out of the window to see hailstones bouncing off the window ledge! Summer is surely here!!

Thanks for stopping by & come back soon!

How Can I Be Sure?

Forty years ago an adolescent English girl fell rapturously in love with a fresh faced American boy. It didn’t matter that they’d never met, it didn’t matter that gazillions of other girls worldwide thought they loved him too. He was the centre of her world & when she listened to him sing, with her hormones raging, she knew he was singing to her alone!

The inside of her wardrobe doors (her parents forbade Sellotape on the wallpaper & this was before Blutack!!) were covered with posters of him, carefully removed centrefolds from Jackie magazine. She would gaze into those deep brown eyes & kiss her favourite poster goodnight each night! His albums were hardly ever removed from her portable record player.

 

 

 

 

 

  Her prized garment, at age twelve
  was a white T-shirt with his face
  emblazoned across her chest!
  (worn with her oh-so-trendy
  brown check Oxford bags &
  platform brogues!) She had read
  (in Jackie, so it must be true) that
  his favourite colour was brown, so
  it dominated her wardrobe!

  But, growing up on the outskirts
  of Hereford, with older-than-
  average parents, the thought of
being able to go to see her true love in concert never even crossed her mind! The distance? The cost?  Impossible!!

So, as adolescent girls do, she grew up! Her first love unrequited, destined never to see him in the flesh!!

Until now that is!! Yes folks, that adolescent love-stricken girl was me & I am in proud possession of two tickets to see David Cassidy in the LG Arena, at Birmingham's NEC in November!!

Performing alongside him in this ‘70’s-fest’ will be Hot Chocolate, Leo Sayer & Smokie, but as much as I’ll enjoy reminiscing along with their songs, my heart will belong to David!! I still have those albums (on vinyl, CD & on my MP4!)…I still know all the words to all the songs!! Sadly I don’t remember what happened to the T-shirt!

The venue will probably be filled with ‘women of a certain age’ & David himself is now in his early 60’s, but you can be sure (see what I did there?!!) that in our heads we will all be as we were back in 1972!

Thanks for stopping by & come back soon! 

Famine Or Feast!

With one thing or another I’ve not made it along to any ‘real life’ crops in quite a while, so when I saw that Big Picture Classes & Creating Keepsakes were holding an on-line crop to commemorate (Inter)National Scrapbooking Day, I thought “That’s for me!”

With an eight hour difference in the Time Zones, kick off was at 5pm on Saturday, with the deadline at 6am this morning! What a fabulous event it was! Twelve challenges, live video chats & a live (non video)chat room, buzzing message boards & some amazing sponsors offering fabulous prizes for each challenge (& one overall uber-prize!)

Anyone who has scrapped alongside me knows that I am a very S-L-O-W scrapper! I take an age, arranging & rearranging before I will commit to glue!! But I enjoy the process, & that’s what it’s all about isn't it?! I’m not a speed scrapper & never will be!!

So…for me to have completed SIX different LO’s in 18 hours of scrapping  is something of a feat!!  To have completed all twelve would have been a MIRACLE!! LOL!!

Without further ado, here they are…

Challenge #1…’Feature a photo with a fanciful frame’…

…I used photo’s from our 2010 trip to ‘Windy City Scrapbookers’ in Chicago where I hyperventilated over the HUGE selection of ‘Thickers’ (my passion!) on offer!!

Challenge #2…’Grab a photo from a few years back & one from today & compare’…

…as I had just scanned this photo of a three year old Alex for yesterdays ‘Storytelling Sunday’ it was the obvious starting point!!

Challenge #4…’Use twine as a technique on a LO’…

…Nathan at twelve months! I hate stickiness & my boys were wiped clean to within an inch of their lives!! But my sister had given Nathan an ice cream & proceeded to teach him to bite off the end of the cone & suck the ice cream through the hole!! A skill he has never forgotten! I used twine to mark the butterfly’s route & spiralled some over buttons for the flower centres.

Challenge #7…’Create a LO using three colours that are adjacent on the colour wheel’…

It was the colour of Nathan’s hoodie that decided for me! I went with Lime Green/Orange/Yellow & photo’s from last years London holiday, outside Buckingham Palace!

Challenge #10…’Use any ‘Cast-Off’ item on a LO’…

…hmmm? This one took some thought & them I had a ‘light bulb’ moment & remembered the packaging from my recent ‘Cath Kidston’ mail order delivery! Using strips of the plastic & fashioning a name tag from the address label I created a LO to document my passion for all things CK, featuring my first CK bag! I now have quite a collection but this one remains my favourite!

Finally…Challenge #12…’Use Kraft in at least two different ways on a LO’…

…this time photo’s from Amanda & mine’s visit to Betty’s in York! I used Kraft as my background, to cut the scalloped frames for the small photo’s, the journaling strip & for the tone-on-tone title alpha’s The doily was actually one from a saucer on the day, so it was perfect to use!

So, that’s me all scrapped out for this weekend! Actually my mojo is all fired up still, but I have to spend some time with my family, don’t I?!!!

Apparently this on-line (I)NSD crop is an annual event, so I highly recommend you mark your calendars for next year!

Thanks for stopping by & hanging in there through this pic heavy post! If you’re in the UK, enjoy your Bank Holiday! Come back soon!

Party Time For Daffodils!

This post comes to you as part of Sian's ‘Storytelling Sunday’ over at ‘From High In The Sky’. Do pop over & check out some more of the stories on offer!

What seems like a lifetime ago, I had two very small boys! At the time of this story Alex was just three & Nathan was a baby of six months.

  This particular spring day
  I was driving the boys
  home from playgroup &
  we were queuing in traffic
  alongside a grassy space,
  covered in daffodils all in
  full bloom & bobbing
  about in the breeze.



Alex was gazing out of the car window, so I said  “look at all those daffodils dancing. Do you think they’re having a party?”.  To which he replied  ”I think so, but I wonder which one’s birthday it is?!”

I was so glad that we were stationary in traffic as I was able to lean across & give him a big hug there & then!

Don’t you just love how children see life as so uncomplicated?!

Thanks for stopping by & do come back soon

The Countdown Begins…

It’s the first of May!  In exactly one calendar month I will be jetting off to Turkey for a week in the sun!  It will be just what I need to recharge the ol’ batteries & get some colour into my pasty winter skin!

Having lost a bit of weight I’m not shopping for holiday clothes as so much more in my wardrobe is fitting me better!! BUT…I have invested in a new pair of Birkenstocks!

The soles of these are definitely non-slip, so hopefully I shouldn’t need to travel home in a wheelchair, unlike my last holiday in Turkey!!!

As it's the first of the month I also have some scrappy projects to share…

 

  Firstly, for the lovely Dawns
  ‘Chinese Whispers’. The LO I
  received from Jacky for this
  months lift was this one...

 

  …& this is what I did with it…

It’ a photo of Alex that I have scrapped before, but I had an extra print & was pleased to use it!  I had fun with the pinwheels, which I used instead of the buttons on Jacky’s LO.

Secondly, this months poster challenge over at ‘From Screen 2 Scrap’ is for the movie ‘Memento’ & the added criteria to include are…

1. White cardstock
2. Black Title
3. One or more photo’s to be in
    ‘polaroid’ style.

Here is my LO…

I used photo’s of Nathan, taken on trip to ‘Toys R Us’ in 2010, where he tried on a skaters helmet for a laugh….I quite liked it, but it wasn’t ‘Cool’ enough for him!!   It would be lovely to see you join in with this months challenge…I had fun with it!!

I’ll leave you with something that made me smile this week…

 

…thanks for stopping by & come back soon!