Monday 29 June 2009

Weekend in Somerset!

What a lovely weekend we have had at my parents house. Alex and I left at 9am on Friday morning and arrived in Somerset at 1.30, so not bad going really. Alex coped remarkably well with the journey chatting about lorries, diggers, cars, horses, cows, sheep etc most of the way down, and slept for about an hour. We called into see a close friend of mine, Hilary, who lives about 20 minutes from my parents, and Alex had a lovely time playing with her two spaniels. It was so special to see her, as I haven’t seen her for far too long. Dad met us there and then we drove on home. Mother joined us a bit later and we went for a walk down to the farm to stroke the pigs which are very tame. Then Andy, Nel and Daniel arrived much later than they had hoped and we fed the boys who were both tired and over excited. Mother read to both boys to try and calm them down before they went to bed, although it didn't work as neither of them got to sleep very quickly. On Saturday we had a lovely time. Various people had to go into town so Dad and I looked after the boys who had a fantastic time exploring Grandma’s enormous garden.
Walking across the lawn (anyone for tennis!)
Wandering through the secret parts of the garden shutting the gateshiding under the trees
Playing with the little hedges
Dad even read a story to them, a most unusual sight!
Alex loved playing with Daniels scooter
While Daniel was happy on his bike.
Both boys thought that Juno, the enormous black Labrador-flat coat retriever cross was wonderful. The weather was so gorgeous that we spent most of the weekend outside lying on the grass
Eating outside and generally having a gentle restful and relaxing time. On Sunday morning we went out for a walk to the farm to stroke the pigs again,
Playing pooh sticks in the mill stream
Walking across the fields to the train tracks where we were lucky enough to see 5 trains.
The boys alternated between being carried
Which was exhausting
and required assistance and walking themselves. After a very early lunch we left to go to Frenchay Hospital and see Gran. Unfortunately Alex wasn’t allowed into the ward to see her so Mother looked after him while I got to spend about 30 minutes with Gran which was lovely. She is having a tough time still and is having another operation today to try and clean out the centre of her wound. Bless her, she is desperate to move hospitals as she is so cut off from everyone where she is and she is feeling so lonely. Please pray for her as she is struggling to keep positive. We got back home late last night and I am having today to try and catch up with things like washing, cleaning etc before I go back to work tomorrow. Have a great week everyone.
Love,
Caro
x

Thursday 25 June 2009

Crafting bonanza!

What a lovely week off work I have had…the weather has been fantastic, and Alex has been in nursery giving Tim and myself some much needed time together. We have watched several films of different genres (action, drama, musical and comedy) including going to the cinema for the first time in over two years. We saw the new Star Trek movie which we both loved as it managed to capture the essence of the original 60s series. We also went out for a lovely Chinese meal for our wedding anniversary stuffing ourselves silly on BBQ spare ribs, spring rolls, Crispy aromatic duck, and chicken in Cantonese sauce with egg fried rice. Needless to say the diet is off for this week! Although we took a couple of romantic photos of the two of us Tim doesn’t want me to post them on my blog so the photo is of the table decoration at the Chinese. Tim spoilt me rotten with my anniversary present as I was given a mountain of crafting goodies including two sets of nestabilities, two cuttlebug embossing folders, some stamps, ink pads, sizzix die cuts, scrapbook album, letter stickers, a Martha Stewart doily lace edge punch and some 12x12 papers. In the evenings Alex and I have been playing all sorts of fun games including the usual rounds of cars, racing cars down ramps and into tunnels, blowing bubbles at bath-time and games of dancing, chase and rough and tumble. He is very tired as he isn’t sleeping well at the moment, but other than that is his usual cheeky fun self, chatting away to us non-stop, and to his toys and teddies when we aren’t there! Tomorrow we are heading down to Somerset to see my parents so I hope that Alex copes with the 5 hour journey. I am packing lots of toys, books and food with which to bribe him...I hope it works!The advantage of having lots of time without a 2 year old around is that I have been able to catch up on some scrapbooking. I have a mountain of printed photos waiting to be scrapped so this provided a good opportunity to start dealing with them. This first page is of Tim’s family at Christmas using Bazzil and K&Co papers with papermania stickers, and purple Onion stamps. The title ‘Christmas fun’ comes from the huge grins on the boys faces and the journaling reads ‘We had a lot of fun and laughter when we all got together to celebrate Christmas 2008’.
The second page follows this weeks sketch from Pencil Lines (#140) and uses a mixture of American Traditional, Basic Grey, Bo Bunny & K&Co cardstock. The title is ‘Family portrait’ and the journaling (cut with my new labels 4 nestability) reads ‘Our Christmas portrait 2008 was taken at our third Christmas celebration on 30th Dec when Alex had almost recovered from his illness’. The third page is the last of the Christmas ones for now and uses Bazzil, American Traditional, Sandylion, Bo Bunny and Basic Grey cardstock. The title is ‘Christmas present joy’ and the journaling reads ‘Despite Alex being very poorly we had a fun family time opening our Christmas presents in bed on our early Christmas Day. 21st Dec 2008’. This next page uses Penny Black, Bazzil and Making memories cardstock, with my new Hero Arts swirl stamps and a Dove craft punch for the leaf shapes. The journaling reads ‘Alex loved playing with all the Autumn Leaves, hearing them scrunch underfoot and throwing them round. Oct 2008’. This next page is a fairly simple one as I wanted to keep the focus on the photograph which I love. I used Sizzix die cuts for the swirls, leaves and bird and accented the bird with water colour pencils. The chipboard letters are made by Anker International and the journaling tag was cut out using labels four nestabilities. The title of this is ‘Bird’ and the journaling reads ‘Every time Alex sees a bird he shouts ‘BIRD’ and stops to watch until it has flown out of sight. Jan ‘09’.
The final scrapbook page is of this years ‘Easter Egg hunt’ and uses Sandylion and Hot off the press papers with inkadinkado stamps. The journaling reads ‘Alex found his first ever Easter Egg hunt very exciting, running round the garden looking for the ‘Shiny Eggs’, shouting with joy when he found them before giving them to Daddy for safe keeping. Easter 2009’. This layout was supposed to have Easter egg stickers added to it, but I have no idea where they have disappeared to, so they will have to be added when they turn up. Finally, I decided to take a break from scrapbooking and make a few ATCs as I owe some to people for swaps. These all used Hot off the press heritage papers and images and my new Martha Stewart Doily Lace punch and new Hero Arts swirl stamps. As usual I would love to know what you think about my artwork so please feel free to leave a comment. As I am off for the weekend tomorrow I wont be updating my blog until my return on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone.
Love,
Caro
x

Sunday 21 June 2009

Good start to my holiday

Well this has been a lovely weekend despite the mixed weather. As it is the start of a 10 day holiday for me we decided that we would go for a little outing each day. Yesterday as it was rather damp we went to the museum where we dressed up in silly outfits (Tim wont let me show his photo on here) and chased Alex round the place.
Today, as it was dry and sunny, we went to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is near Doncaster. It is fairly small, which is a good thing for Tim's ME, but there was enough there for us all to see and enjoy. I always love Meerkats and Alex liked them too... he was more impressed with the llama's though, especially the baby who was born this morning. The great thing about this park was being able to walk into the wallaby enclosure and get within a few feet of them.We could do the same with the lemurs, which we spent ages watching as they were bouncing through the trees just above our heads. Finally we let Alex play in the outdoor play area where he made a bee-line for the tractor. It was a great trip out which we all enjoyed. I have also been crafting and managed to complete three layouts this weekend. OK, I know it is summer, but for some reason I ended up scrapping the snow scenes I took in February. It was fun though. This first one uses Bo Bunny, Basic grey and Bazzil cardstock and loosely follows Pencil Lines sketch #139. The title is 'Snow fun' and the journalling reads 'Alex's first experience of deep snow was 2nd Feb 2009. It was too deep for him to walk so he kept falling over. However, he soon learnt that snow was great fun!'. The second page uses a mixture of papers from Sandylion, Bazzil and mulberry. It is a collage of us as a family out in the snow in our garden and is titled 'Winter fun'. The journalling reads 'We had a lovely time as a family playing in 6 inches of fresh snow in our garden'. Finally I scrapbooked our snowman, unimaginatively entitled 'my first snowman'. The papers I used were basic grey on a Bazzil cardstock background. I cut the snow flakes out with my cuttlebug and used silver peel-offs to give them a bit of flourish. The journalling reads 'Alex was somewhat puzzled by the idea of building a snowman, although he did like patting the snow on the body'. I would love to know what you all think of this. Have a great week everyone.
Love,
Caro
x

Friday 19 June 2009

Yippee!

I am officially on holiday as I am taking just over a week off work to relax and do some things at home. I am exhausted and in need of a break so can’t wait. Hopefully I will have some more time for crafting as well. Over the past two days Alex and I have been making his Father’s day card for Tim, very messy as he used a mixture of painting, stamping and stickers, but great fun…the paint is on the inside of the card. We have also done a lot of dancing which Alex is into at the moment, playing games of rough and tumble and playing with his garage – watching cars go down the ramps and then into tunnels made with the rug, all to the sound of laughter and excitement. Great fun! For Father’s Day Tim wanted some downloadable content for some of his computer games, but this meant that he wouldn’t have anything to open on the day so I have got him a little photobook full of photos of him and Alex playing games together over the past year. As Tim loves white chocolate I also bought him three milky bars and made these wrappers using images of his games taken from the net. I hope he likes them! I have now made some tags for his wedding anniversary present. These are really simple made with the labels one nestability and will go with the blue and white wrapping paper I have used. That’s all for now and I hope you all have a great weekend.
Love,
Caro
x

Wednesday 17 June 2009

Mid-week update!

Alex has had a tough week so far as I was at a conference here in Sheffield for Monday and Tuesday meaning that I was late in collecting him from nursery both days. The poor boy was shattered! Sadly he has a nasty cough which means he isn’t sleeping well, which doesn’t help. Despite that he has been good fun playing with cars, helicopters, trains, planes and general run, cuddle and tickle type games…not to mention soaking me at bath-time! The other news from home is that Gran is having her operation today so please pray it is a complete success and that she is able to heal fully and come home soon. Crafting wise it has been a busy week. I have managed to finish my first ever ‘never-ending card’ which is for Tim’s anniversary card. I wanted to keep it simple and sophisticated, so I kept the same colour scheme of green (Tim’s favourite colour), white and gold throughout. The green of the base card is much nicer in real life…the photos haven’t properly captured it. This is the front of the card which has been decorated with gold peel-offs, K&Co paper and the heart stamp which was free with the CM&PC magazine. This is the next part of the card using two photos from our wedding and the start of a little poem which I adapted for us…‘God brought us together, as husband and wife’. The patterned green papers were free from last month’s CM&PC magazine. The next part of the card uses photos of us from 2004 and 2006 to celebrate our on-going relationship, and has the rest of the poem… ‘And gave each of us, a best friend for life’. The final part of the card is a photo that was taken at Christmas and the blank space at the bottom is for my personal message to Tim. This is the first time I have ever made a never ending card and it was the greatest of fun…I hope Tim likes it. I have also made some ATCs and inchies for swapping by cutting up an A5 doodle I did during the course of the conference! I would love to know what you think of these. I hope you are all having a great week.
Love,
Caro
x