Time to Party - 10pm Saturday Challenge

This has got to be the most difficult challenge of the weekend! After careful deliberation I've managed to come up with five layouts that I love. Here we go.....

1. I love this layout. I don't know about you but I have been known to have some brilliant ideas (at the time) that then become a labour of love. This was one such thing.  

"I know I'll put some music on the paper" This entailed finding some music for Half a pound of tupenny rice and copying it into powerpoint with musical notes found somewhere else and resized. I then printed it out on vellum.

"Wouldn't it be great to have a drum" Couldn't find any stickers so decided to make my own. Found some shiny paper, drew out drum by hand (I am aware it is a little lopsided). I bought some black elastic. Then put it all together, using eyelets to thread the elastic. It took hours, but I love it.

2. I think this layout is my favourite favourite. I love the photos, I love that is just a normal day doing normal stuff. Most of all I love the paper. This sheet of paper is one I received in a pack of American Craft Metropolitan. I remember thinking, wow that is bright, I don't think I'll ever find a use for that. It just goes so well with the pattern on the highchair.

3. This next layout is from out Honeymoon in Iceland. The most amazing place on Earth. One of our favourite stays was a night in  Akureyri. We loved the atmosphere of this town. I took a series of pictures from the road on the way out. I was so pleased when they all joined together so well.

It took me ages to pick the letters for the title. In the end I picked these, sanded the shiny green paint off them and embossed them silver. That was a bit of an experiment, Although not how I planned them to look, I was pleased with the slightly mottled effect.

4. A slightly newer layout. It just seemed to all come together. It is such a happy memory of Jacob's 2nd birthday. I love how all the colours from his t-shirt match the papers. I love the use of space on the page, normally I like to fill, but this just seemed right.

5. A really recent layout. The beginning of a new geocaching adventure for us, it has become our new favourite hobby. I really like the sassafrass paper at the bottom cut into a scallop edge (another sheet of paper I never thought I'd use) I really like the journalling mats too, they were just right for that layout.

There you have it my top 5. Mind you, ask me in a couple of months and I'm sure it would be different!

Time to Party - 6pm Saturday Challenge

Today has been super busy in our house. Had a little lie in this morning and then I went to church with Daniel and Mike took Jacob to the park. We both got back about 1pm and then got everything ready for some geocaching near to Beeston Castle (and the Ice Cream Farm). In a nutshell, didn't manage to do any scrapping until 8pm. There was quite a bit of hand cutting so it was quite a time consuming layout.

This challenge was about handwriting. Quite an easy one for me, as I can never be bothered to faff around on the computer with fonts and margins and printing. So, although I'm not in love with my own handwriting it is just much more practical and means I can get more scrapping done. You can read about the challenge here

Time to Party - 8pm Saturday Challenge

Not too bad. I've managed to complete three challenges so far. I'm determined to do one more before I go to bed. Part of me wants to get cracking right away and part of wants to wait ten minutes to find out what the next challenge will be!

So, here is my layout for the 8pm challenge. I already had these photos printed off and a plan for them. That plan was sketch #31 from Capture these sketches. So I've combined the two challenges. I've decided to enter this on Shimelle's blog and just to use the sketch as inspiration.

(For some reason blogger has decided that it should be sideways. As I took this picture with the flash I shall replace it in the morning anyway.)

Time to Party - 8am Saturday Challenge

Well, I managed to start scrapping at about 10:30 once i'd sorted everyone out. I had a whole 40 minutes before Daniel woke up. I snuck back into the conservatory about an hour ago and have just managed to finish this layout. The challenge is here. I didn't mean to use American Crafts paper, it just happened as they were the ones that suited the photos best. It was good however to use up some really old stash.

Time to Party - 8pm Friday Challenge

Shimelle is hosting her first online crop party this weekend. It started last night and there is a new challenge every two hours. I have three main obstacles to a whole uninterrupted weekend of scrapping - Mike, Jacob and Daniel. So, although it would be nice to do them all, I'll just dip in and out.

I managed 1 out of 3 of Friday nights challenges, which was a scraplift of a Shimelle layout with a bonus for woodgrain. You may not be able to see it too well, but my journalling tag is woodgrain.

Hopefully I'll be back really soon with some more completed challenges.

Getting back to normal

Well, I can't believe how long it has been since I blogged. Life has been a little overwhelming so far this year. I think with pretty much everything changing in our world made me just want to hide away for a bit. I don't think the terrible wintry weather helped much. I took a break from lots of things for a couple of months, including scrapbooking. However the last few weeks I have been feeling much more like my normal self and the paper trimmer and double-sided tape has come out again.

Here are my layouts from the last couple of weeks. I have used a combination of Capture these Sketches and Pencillines sketches as a basis. Enjoy.

Recent Scrapbooking

Here are my layouts from December. I would normally upload them one by one as I go but, life has just been busy.

So, this one is from our day at Martin Mere feeding the ducks over the summer. This is based on sketch 165 over at pencil lines.

My brother graduated in 2008. I think I put this one off because I look so terrible in the photo, but finally bit the bullet early one morning in December while everyone was still in bed.

Another family day out in the summer holiday. A visit to Stockley farm. I think it might've been the only day that week when it rained, but was the only day Mike was off work. I used this sketch from Capture these Sketches blog.

I had this layout in my head from around the middle of December, but didn't manage to scrap it until Jan 2nd. This is a picture from Jacob's Christmas party in 2008, he is with his nursery key worker very reluctantly meeting Father Christmas. The idea came from The Studio December 16th challenge. You can read about it here. I didn't use any Christmas themed products for this layout (as per the challenge). 

I love this photo of Jacob and Daniel. Extremely posed, trying to take a good photo of thenm both from my nanna for Christmas.

Here is my sleeping beauty. I've been dying to crack open this pack of paper wimsies from sassafrass lass.

Hope you like them xx

Week 2 - Project 365

Well, here are my pics from week 2. I'm only half way through January and I'm already starting to find this hard work. Some days are easy but others I just don't know what to photograph. It would be easy to just take photos of Jacob and Daniel every day, but I'm resisting the urge to do that as much as possible, unless there is a specific story attached to that particular day.

So here is the 8 January. Daniel wearing about a million layers before we went for walk in the freezing but beautiful cold.

9 January. A picture of Jacob and his friend after swimming lesson with a big plastic cow. A couple of people have asked whether this is a real cow. As if I would let 2 year old's near a real cow that size!

10 January. Come on Ipswich! This game was being shown on tv on Sunday afternoon, so all three boys put on their shirts to cheer the tractor boys on.

11 January. Another day, another headache. This was the third day on the trot where my head really hurt.

12 January. A peek inside my shopping bag. Before Christmas I shopped with my sister, I'm really missing doing it in the evening with her. We need to start it again soon.

13 January. Jacob's balloons. He had three but burst one. He got them from his BSF class.

14 January. Chocolate fountain enjoyed with friends. This was a gift from a friend in the Caymen Islands. Very yummy.

My 365

So, 2010, I've decided to photograph my year and do project 365. I shall upload my photos here on a weekly basis. A little late, but here is my first week of the year.

Happy New Year. We spent new year with great friends.

 

Early morning cuteness with Daniel and blue bear

The 3rd shall always be a self-portrait. This is a bit of a cheat I know, but we had been travelling and it was quite late when I took this, shall try harder next month.

Jacob being helpful and taking the decorations off a rather sad looking tree.

We had snow in Chester. (Yes, I know everyone in the UK had snow, but it's super rare for it to snow here.)

Wednesday brought a powercut, 2 hours were without heat and light. Luckily I managed to find some candles.

It took 3 days to convince Jacob to play in the snow. He still won't touch it!

Merry Christmas

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas Day.

We had so much fun, it is brilliant having children on Christmas day, Jacob helped Daniel open his presents. It was all far too exciting, he just didn't know what to play with first.

We have however missed our pre-children Boxing Day, which used to consist of staying bed until lunch time and watching Christmas television whilst eating chocolates.