Friday Five - More Sccrapbook layouts

This week I've got some new layouts to show you.  Last weekend I went to my local scrapbooking shop and cropped for a couple (OK four!) hours and did two layouts for our wedding album, which give me a total of three so far.  Its been nearly three years since we got married but I've never been sure how I wanted to scrap the pictures but thanks to Becky I got the idea of using the same paper (Bazzil Bling in my case) and using what ever tickled my fancy for the rest of the page.  Anyway, here are five recent layouts:

1.  My baby shower.  

I used Basic Grey Wisteria papers, the flower is Prima, the brads are Basic Grey and rub-ons from Dear Lizzy.  The layout came from a Kelly Purkey sketch class that I signed up to earlier in the year.

 2.  Eilidh's birth story.

Another layout from KP's sketch class, this time using papers from Girls Paperie and Thickers from Dear Lizzy.  I scraplifted the idea for the bunting and the ribbon is the handle of a shopping bag that I cut off and ironed flat.

 3.  Wedding layout 1.

 I did this on Sunday at the shop, the lovely Pat convinced me to use papers I wouldn't normally, i.e. Basic Grey so I stepped outside my comfort zone for Echo Park.  The tag and the bling swirl have been in my stash forever so it was good to use them up.  The title is 'Surfer Dude?' because as some of you may know, Andrew isn't the biggest fan of water!

 4.  Wedding layout 2.

 The second layout from my cropping this time using Making Memories papers.  I love these butterflies using a punch from the shop.  I punch one in purple card stock and the other in the patterned paper.  I then creased them in the middle and glued them together making sure they weren't flat (does that make sense?)  Confession time, under that W (which is for Woody, the type of car we borrowed) there is a huge mistake!! I tried to put three brads around the corner but I put them in crooked so out they came and I had to make something to cover three holes!

 

5.  Wedding layout 3.

 This is a Julie Bonner sketch that we were given as a Scrap Club challenge, and I really went to town with 78 brads!  The papers are Basic Grey June Bug.

 Happy Friday everyone!

Friday Five - Things I've been doing instead of blogging

Well its been two weeks now since I last blogged, I just seem to be so busy lately, the older she gets (seven months now) the busier I get!  So I've decided to share some of the more exciting things I've been doing.




1.  Pick your own.  We've been to our local Pick Your Own farm twice to pick raspberries.  Raspberries are my favourite berry and these ones were huge!  Its so much more rewarding (and so much cheaper) to pick them yourself too.  Two good things about picking raspberries are that the canes are mostly at standing height and therefore the berries are easy to pick.  The other thing is that they don't (well these ones anyway) have thorns so no scratches or pricks!

2.  Scrapbooking.  I'm going to try and get my A into G (as my dad would say) and post some of my latest layouts because I'm quite proud of them.  I've scrapped my baby shower, Eilidh's birth story, a picture of our god-daughter Emma at our wedding, us at Andrew's work Christmas party two years ago, and us at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  At the end of each year I go through all our photos and make a list of the layouts I want to do and then cross them off when done.  I try and make sure I scrap older photos and newer ones, otherwise I'll get behind on the old ones.

3.  Cooking.  I've been cooking meals for Chicken.  I've got a post coming tomorrow or Sunday about her food so I won't go into too much detail, but let it be said, that girl likes to eat!!  This weekend I'm going to make spaghetti bolognese, some sort of chicken dish, more rice pudding and a custard for her.

4.  Hanging out with my baby friends.  Usually the girls from my ante-natal group and I meet every Tuesday, but this week we went back to our tutors house for a pool party (the babies paddled and we held them)  and today we tried to go swimming.  I say tried because we got to the pool and it was shut so we went to an overcrowded playground and sat at an overpriced cafe (and didn't buy anything) and fed the kiddies.  My lovely friend Jo and her adorable son George have been driving us around.  Indecently George is Eilidh's boyfriend, she likes her younger men you see (G is three weeks younger than her).

5.  Saying goodbye to a good friend.  My lovely friend Michelle has left London after living her for nine years.  Michelle and I met at high school 15 years ago when we went on a school trip to Barcelona Spain.  We hung out there and then when we got home to NZ.  Michelle and our other friend Jonelle are some of my oldest friends, and I'm really going to miss her.  Eilidh and I went to Heathrow to wave goodbye as she left to start her new adventure in Hong Kong where she is going to teach in an international school.

So there you go, that's been my last couple of weeks, Eilidh is now in a more reliable sleep pattern in the day so I'm going to try and blog then, fingers crossed it works!

Friday Five - Favourites

I'm sorry I've not blogged this week, again I have been crazy busy, Harry Potter at the cinema, highlights in my hair, pedicure, going to my school's end of term party, watching the Year 6 production, and today I'm packing for a long weekend away at a friends wedding. Who said this stay at home mum business would be at home?? Anyway this weeks Friday five is in response to Kat's questions. Here goes!



1. Favourite cuisine: Italian. Hands down, I loves me some Italian food! Spaghetti alla vongole, risotto, tiramisu, pannacotta, you name it I love it! Oh and don't get me started on a really good thin based pizza with artichokes, olives, pancetta and mozzarella!

Our group, left to right: Me, Andrew, Amy, Delia, Fran, Kay, Dr Mel, Dennis, Paul and in front Graham.


2. Favourite vacation: In NZ and the UK we call a vacation a holiday, but I digress. I think (and this is quite a hard choice because I've been on a lot of holidays, both in Europe and further away!) I've chosen Egypt. We spent two weeks in Egypt with 9 friends over Christmas 2007. It was brilliant, I've seen all the sights, pyramids, tombs, the Nile etc etc, but do you know what the best part was? Two or three days in a town called Siwa which is very remote, only 50km from the Lybian border. We rode bikes, ate great food, relaxed in hot pools in the dessert!! and went sand-boarding down the dunes. Sometimes its nice to get off the beaten track.

Sand-boarding.
3. Favourite hobby: I've got lots of hobbies but my favourite is definitely scrapbooking! I love recording our memories, cutting and pasting and choosing the lovely papers. Some people (Andrew maybe) might say that I've got too much stash, but you can never have too much stash surely?

Andrew and I on a sand dune enjoying the sunset.

4. Favourite Holiday tradition: I've not done this in a while because we've been in the UK for Christmases but I love the $5 present. On Christmas night we have anything from fifteen to thirty plus people at our family camp-site (it is summer in NZ remember) and that is far too many presents to buy! Each person buys one present worth $5 that fits the theme set by my mum (she's the youngest of seven and the unofficial boss) last year it was bottles. All the presents get put in the middle and the first person in the circle chooses one and opens it in front of everybody. The second person looks at that first present (still following me??) and has to decide, do I want that present or a new one? If they take the first present, the first person goes back and takes another present and opens that, and then its the third person's turn, and so on. It gets quite hilarious because some presents (one year it was some naughty dice) get hotly fought over and someone always ends up with the duds!

Waiting to go on our bike ride.

5. Favourite “the-baby’s-asleep-the-chores-are-done-now-what-shall-I-do” pastime: Drinking wine. Lounging on the couch, watching some TV and (not often enough) blogging. It’s my way to unwind. Confession, I mostly read blogs, and need to write more, but thanks to Kat for the answer to number five.

Fran on the main street of Siwa
PS the photos are from our visit to Siwa!

Friday Five - Scrapbooking layouts

I'm a scrapbooker, I started about seven years ago when I was living in NZ.  I find its a great way to display my photos, tell a story and be creative at the same time.  When we came to the UK I went on hiatus for a couple of years, but when it became obvious we weren't moving home any time soon I decided to get scrapping again.  I love patterned papers, brads, journalling using my own writing, and inking edges.  If you're not a scrapper, I'm sorry but that won't mean anything to you.  Anyway this week my Friday Five is all about my favourite layouts I've done recently.

1.  Photos from our trip to NYC Christmas 2009.  Basic Grey Indian Summer papers used.

 2.  Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic, from our trip in October 2009.  Basic Grey Origins papers used.

3.  More Origins papers, this time from our trip to Portugal in February 2010.

4.  Andrew and his best mate at the beach, Easter 2010.  Max and Whiskers papers from Basic Grey.

5.  More photos from our trip to NYC, this was the coldest day I've ever had - seriously -15c!  Basic Grey Offbeat.

There you go, can you tell I like Basic Grey?

A list on Sunday

I have a lot of mini thoughts to write about, but none of them by themselves would be a full post, so this morning, we have a list!

1.  Its been quite nice in my part of England this week and today we are having some family over for a BBQ. Isn't it typical that I wake up and the sky is overcast.  BBC says its going to be warm all day with a chance of rain in the evening, stay away rain!

2.  I've been meaning to bake a certain cake for about two months now.  Its a pistachio, lemon and polenta cake, the recipe comes from Sainsbury's magazine about two years ago and it looks good.  Why do I keep putting off making cake?  I mean, I'm quite good at that sort of thing, must do that today, it'll be nice for the BBQ.

3.  We went swimming at the local pool last week.  Now this would normally fill a full post, but since you are not allowed to take pictures in public pools (and cause I don't want photos of me in a swim suit on the net) it wouldn't be as much fun.  We did have a great time and Chicken really loves the water and is becoming more and more confident.  She also has the cutest outfit!

4.  My father-in-law Graham (and MIL Moira) are staying with us at the moment, and we asked him to do some gardening to tidy up a bit.  There is a privet tree out the front of our house and I said he could trim it as it makes me sneeze and it was quite over grown.  This is what he did.  Effective but it will take a bit of getting used to, and anyway, plants grow back.  And I am very pleased that the privet has gone!

5.  We watched Roman Holiday last night with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.  This was the first time I've seen a Hepburn film, great eyebrows and I love the pixie hair cut, but what big ears!  I got it at the supermarket for £3, and didn't realise till I got home that it was in black and white.  I really enjoyed it, such a restrained love story, they don't make em like they used to!

6.  Because the in-laws are staying I have farmed out my child Chicken is spending quality time with them while I write this, makes things go much quicker.  Thanks guys!

7.  I made ribs yesterday, two different marinades even.  And well, they were ok, I mean ribs, if not overcooked are usually nice, but these marinades didn't quite cut it.  I like sticky ribs and they had potential but ... oh well, I'll keep trying.  Apparently my little brother makes nice ribs, maybe he'll make some when we visit him in September.

8.  Speaking of my brother, his girlfriend Amanda, who make this amazing quilt for Chicken got a kitchen aid mixer for her birthday recently.  I am seriously jealous!  I covet one, sooooooooooo much, shame the voltage is different for electrical things from the US to the UK, I'd put one in my suitcase in Sept!

9.  I am going out this Wednesday coming at night time without Chicken.  Since she now takes a bottle I am going to go scrapbooking for a couple of hours.  I chose this time cause the in-laws will be here to help Andrew if needed.  I'll let you know how it goes, a practice run for the hens party in a month!

10.  I said to my friend Jo the other day (we are new friends btw) "I don't know if you've realised but my brain things about lots of different things at once, which is why the conversation changes a lot" and she said (in a deservedly slightly sarcastic tone, "No Jess, hadn't noticed at all, not!"  She also said she likes it and it keeps her on her toes because she has to pay attention to the whole conversation.  I hope she meant it and wasn't just being nice, I don't think so, she doesn't seem like that sort of person.

So, my point being, this list of ten is really just my stream of consciousness (I think that's what its called) on a Sunday morning.  Hope you have a relaxing Sunday, wherever you are!

Oh wait!

11.  My little girl was five months old yesterday, where has the time gone?

Here comes the sun (doo do doo)

The last five days here have been amazing!  Its been getting warmer and warmer with everyday, but sadly its not going to last so the weather people at BBC tell me.  To be fair we have made the most of it, getting out and about.

On Thursday we went to a sing-along session at the local library which Chicken didn't really like, too many other children and too much noise, we'll keep persevering because I am sure once she gets the hang of it, she'll have great fun.  We went home to ice cupcakes to take to my afternoon coffee group when Chicken promptly did a spit up over the both of us, not to bother because she got to wear this super cute (and cool) dress.

On Friday we went scrapbooking at A Maze of Memories and I completed my first layout of Chicken, the theme was spring or days out, so I used the photos from our first walk with her when she was five days old.  Not exactly spring I know but I'm still quite happy with it.

Friday afternoon we headed to Cookham Moor to go for a walk along the Thames with a friend from my ante-natal group and her son.  We got to Bourne End and found a pub called The Bounty, right on the rivers edge.  It even has its own mooring!  We found another one of the girls from our group there too (I know, that's all us yummy mummies do is hang out at pubs all day, hehe)  We had a drink in the beer garden, and the babies had a nice kick around, while a large group of teenagers hogged the tables playing drinking games, ahh the good old days.  Karen and I decided that even though we were much older we'd still show them a thing or two!  That was also the last time I changed a poopy nappy, yep that's right, its been 48 hours since my Chicken has done a poo!  Poor thing, I imagine it really hurts!  (Thanks for the nappy Karen, I'll start to bring my own stuff soon, I promise!)

Chicken also got her feet dirty for the first time, she was sitting on a mat but managed to dig her heels into the grass, Andrew says its more proof I'm her mother, we both like being bare feet!

 On Saturday a parcel arrived from Scott and Panda, Eilidh is a very lucky girl, they sent her some fab summer clothes (Scott and I have a shopping problem, we got it from our Nana, we also inherited her shoe problem too, but that's not the point)

Sorry about the blurry photos, she was having too much fun to sit still!  We decided to go to Windsor (not to see the Queen) for lunch and a walk, so did every man and his dog it seemed because there wasn't an outside table to be found anywhere for love nor money.  In retrospect it probably was a good thing, it was very hot and we could have had a fried Chicken!  When she woke up from her nap Eilidh was rather preoccupied with Andrew's drink, he was very proud!

Today we walked to the Farmers market, and did jobs around the house.  Now Chicken is three months old, she is beginning to entertain herself for longer periods of time.  Her latest trick is 'talking' which she's done all day

Hopefully your weekend was as nice as ours!