A Busy Week- End

The week-end just gone was a busy busy one with the girls dancing at the Northampton Dance Festival. Saturday saw Molly winning her Ballet Class and came 3rd in her modern. The song & dance group also won their class. Sunday saw Molly coming third in her song & Dance and the junior Modern Group came 2nd in their class. Although Emily danced her ballet very well she wasn't placed but we have made great strides.....she smiled all the way through the dance !!!!! It must have been something in the Roast Lamb she had for lunch before we went !! Lets hope we've cracked it now, bless her. Back again on Monday morning to see Molly & Miles win the junior classical duet, quite an achievement as the class they have to enter is for 9 and under and they're both only just 7. I had to return in the evening with Molly so she could collect her classical award and also the agregate award for her age group.Carys needed to go for a run ! Dance Festivals takes a little break now until the May half term when Molly will be competing in the semi finals for the London North Region at Welwyn.
Carys needs to keep in training for a little while longer until this Sunday when she'll be pounding the streets of London in the Marathon, running for Marie Curie Cancer Care. Me, I'll be jumping from one Tube/Dockland train to another with my sister in law & brother in law to cheer her on at various points in the race ! Nick and the girls, together with a few friends, will be at other points.We've tried to work it out that she sees one of us every 5 miles which is what we did the last time she did it and it worked well.

On Friday the headteacher of Molly's school retired after 21 years as head. She'll be sorely missed,she ran an excellent, firm on discipline but a very happy school and has gained an outstanding grading across the whole school from Ofsted since 1997.
Carys asked me to make a little book and this is what I came up with using some Echo Park Springtime paper.The girls wrote a little message on a couple of journalling cards and Carys attached them to the back of the book before she wrapped it up.

It's been so long !

Oh dear I really have neglected this blog over the last few weeks. If it's not one thing it's another but hopefully I'm now seeing a light at the end of the tunnel :)

Craft Fayres have finished until Christmas so I can take a bit of a break from card making.
We had mother-in-laws 90th birthday celebrations last Saturday, although her birthday isn't until tomorrow,one of her daughters is off to Spain tonight for her hols. A great day was had by all and she's truly remarkable for someone of her age.
I thought with everything out of the way it would give me time to do some scrapping but Oh No ! DD2 dropped me into making a mini book, well two in fact,when asked by one of the teachers that had. in the past, received one of my Teachers Quote Books.The 1st one is for a Teacher that's retiring from my grand-daughters school at the end of term. Now that I've finished this one I can start on the other and finish that before the end of term too.

The book has 33 tags in it so that the staff can record their best wishes on her retirement. I used Basic Grey Max & Whiskers paper throughout, picked up some cat buttons ( she likes cats, that was the brief )and various ribbons & buttons from stash.

Another week !

Hope you had a good week-end and didn't have too many Halloween visitors on a Trick or Treat journey. I only had four little ones and I welcome them any time...my grandchildren. They looked so sweet bless them.
This is what I made yesterday, I just love this little stamp and I think it looks fab on this Advent Calendar and ideal for a baby I think, well they can't have one full of chocolate now can they !!!!
I also made a bauble card cut from the Wild Cart on the Cricut.

The 1st of the Advent Calendars !

I had a little break from card-making last night and made the 1st of a few advent calendars that will be needed for the stall.
These are so quick to make if you take care with the measurements so that there's no faffing about when you come to bind it with the Bind it All.You'll just need to measure carefully the width of the flip over tags that have the numbers on, to make sure they are both in the center of the three wires.
I coloured the stamped image with my Promarkers.

Just catching up !

As the title says so, I'm just catching up. Had a busy week-end and did really well at the summer fair. Thankfully the weather was kind...lovely & sunny, so it was quite busy.
I seem to have been chasing my tail since though !
Monday, I had to clear away the bits & bobs from the fair and return the dislay stands etc to the loft for a few months until November. Thank goodness I have a pull down loft ladder, makes it easier and there's plenty of room up there.

Tuesday, DD1 wanted me to take some photos of the boys so that she could have them printed on to a canvas for Daddy's birthday, who'll be 40 next Wednesday. Well Charlie had decided he wasn't going to co-operate at all! Normally he likes having his photo taken provided you show him the screen afterwards. Managed to get a choice of about three of him out of about 149 shots. I was worn out & stressed by the tme I had finished! I think child photographers deserve a medal !

Yesterday I went out to lunch, well took mother-in-law out really as it was her 89th birthday.

And finally made this slide show of the Baby Boy Album that I had made earlier. I didn't sell either of them on the day but had quite a few people looking at them and then asked if I was always at the fair. Hopefully they've liked what they've seen and will return with some more money in November...you never know !

Yeh ! Ist Baby book upload

At last I've got round to finishing the cover of the "girl" baby book. The actual pages have been made a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have my thinking cap on when I started these ( nothing new there! ). I'd ordered 2 Bind it All cover all to make this book and the boy book, made all the pages and put them in their page protectors, then the cover all arrived and that was when I discovered, although I had ordered the 8 x 8 covers they were obviously not going to fit if the actual pages were in page protectors now were they....so I had to do a bit of cutting and covering up..to the cover all that is.So the cover all is no longer a cover all !!!

A Wedding Book

I'm so pleased at how this little 6 x 6 wedding album has turned out and an added bonus was that I really enjoyed doing it even though I was on a time scale.It did help that I absolutely love the colours of it. I'm only hoping now that DD2 will be equally as pleased with it as it's for a school friend of hers that's getting married this coming Saturday.The only problem is that S is a very talented Graphic Designer, she designed her own invitations and they were absolutely beautiful. I've tried to " match" them in colour & the use of the flourish stamps. It was a bit of challenge as well, with no photos to work with and also being on a mch smaller scale that I usually work with. All the matts for the photos are made to take 2 x 3inch photographs. I though this would be an ideal size as it's quite a standard small size that most on-line photo printers use.


















I'm now off, hopefully to finally finish the covers for my baby books !!!

Teachers Books

My grandson finishes school tomorrow and DD1 asked me a few days ago if I would make, not one, but two teachers quote books. I've made a few of these now but even so it was still a bit short on the notice front for these two. Anyhow, even in this terrible heat I went ahead and managed to finish both by 9pm tonight. She likes them so that's one good thing!
They're both very similar though as with so little time I was running out of ideas to make the 2nd one any different from the others I've made.