Oh dear...

I don't think I'll be winning any awards for regular blogger of the year somehow ! I've had a bit of a 'switch off' recently...I haven't felt like blogging and seem pretty incapable of scrapping :( I've spent a couple of evenings pushing bits of paper & photos round a page, but nothing and has worked and I've given up in the end.Shame as I have tons of Disney stuff I want to start using.Maybe once the holidays are over I'll be back in more of a routine...

So a quick round up of what we've been doing the last couple of weeks....

The guinea pigs ended up staying a bit longer than originally planned for various reasons.It's lucky I didn't lose them all though ,as when I went to clean their hutch out one morning ,I discovered the bottom of the hutch was hanging off by about 2 inches!

Last week we did the dreaded school shoe shop,which should have been followed by a trip to see Toy Story 3.Except the cinema was closed due to an electrical problem :( But we got passes to another showing, upgraded to 3D.We just need to find time to go back!I actually went for a night out last week,for a lovely meal with some mum's from school :) And the folllowing day we took all the kids out to Fairlands Valley park in Stevenage.It was a lovely relaxed day and everyone had a good catch up :)

Last Sunday the girls and I went over to see Pitstone Windmill with my Dad.It's somewhere we used to go as kids so took me back a bit :) Realising that it was 20 yrs since I'd last been there made me feel a bit old though!

On Tuesday we went for our annual trip to Whipsnade Zoo.The day didn't go quite according to plan though :( Em fell over and ripped her knee open, requiring a trip to A&E and stitches :( We did see the little baby cheetahs before we came though :) (They are 4 weeks old!)

Anyway, as this has turned into a huge post, I'll carry on tomorrow :)

It will be...

...big! My Florida album,that is :) I went into John Lewis the other day and found the perfect book to use for the 'diary style' album I want to do of what we did each day :) With 80 pages, it's big enough to do a double page of each day,and as it's 12" by 16 1/2 ", large enough to get a few photos on each page :)I'm not going to make it lumpy & bumpy, it will just have maps,photos and journalling in it :) The front cover is as far as I've got ,but I still need to add something else to it, I'm not sure what though.

The guinea pigs seem happy so far and are getting lots of cuddles (weather permitting!)

Pencil Lines :)

This week I joined in at Pencil Lines :) I loved this sketch as soon as I opened the email from Anna :) (I still get the sketches sent to me for each week :) ) The photo I was used was my original choice,but then I tried to do a Florida layout.After faffing for a while I gave up and went back to my original choice of photo!



I used mix from October Afternoon papers from the Cherry Hill, Thrift Shop and Fly a Kite ranges, love how they all match so well :)I also used ribbon roses from Sarahs Cards,Doodlebug Loopy Lou stickers and AC glitter Thickers. I always find Kraft Bazzill difficult to photofraph, it tands to come out looking 'dirty'! The layout does look better if you click on the photo to enlarge it :)


On Friday Geoff was home so we went to Dunstable Downs for a bit of kite flying.Typically, the kids cheapy £3 kites performed far better than the huge stunt kite that Geoff had!

Holly doing a bit of lazy kite-ing! Yesterday morning the girls went to see Shrek 4 at the cheapy cinema in town ,whilst I went for a wander round the shops. I went into the British Herat Foudation shop and bought myself a bargain book to read whilst waiting for the girls :) I've done this a lot recently and have a huge pile of books under the bed at the moment,waiting for me to read them!

And Friday night we had some visitors arrive who will be staying with us for the next 10 days :) But I'll share photos of then tomorrow otherwise this post will be over loaded!

This weekend was a good one :)
Saturday was spent food shopping and mooching about the house (well us girls spent the afternoon bathing,nail painting & hair washing!) before heading over to Anna's for their annual barbecue :) The girls met Suki and loved her ,no photos though as she moves too fast! My camera had a very lucky escape,when I managed to embarrass myself by tripping and falling flat on my face,dropping it very hard.Luckily it survived and I love this photo of Holly's new hair band :)

The yesterday afternoon, we went to Hitchin Lavender,lavender fields and sunflowers together :) Although I kept hoping the sun would come out, I think my photos were probably better with it being fairly dull (note, my camera is qite old and I haven't photoshopped or 'popped' any of these!) I took loads of photos so I won't bore you with too many :)

The whole place smells gorgeous and you can hear the humming of the bees in the lavender :) We came home with three big bags full and five huge sunflowers :)

The first week

Yep, the first week of the holidays is almost over, and typically the glorious weather has vanished and we've had showers ,grey skies with just the odd bit of sunshine :( Oh well! Holly has been the busiest out of all of us ,with trips to friends and parties, how I wish I had the social life of a nine year old! Yesterday she went in to town with Geoff and had her ears pierced,she was more excited than nervous!


This morning we went down the lakes ,taking the tennis raquets & balls with us.This was to save losing all the balls over our hedges or smashing our neighbours new conservatory windows! I got some photos of the girls which I'm really pleased with (shame about the parched brown grass!)


This weekend we are off to the Bowkis Family bash ,the girls are really looking forward to meeting Suki :)
No more scrapping done, though I have finally tried out my lovely pink Bind It All and made asmall mini book :) (Which still needs photos !)

The second one :)

Yep, I have done my 2nd holiday layout ,it's a miracle! I have loads of different ways that I want to do my Florida albums,but as I can't decide where to start first I've been doing pretty much nothing so far :( I'm hoping to do a diary type album of what we did each day,another one with the maps and ride details etc and character meet ones for the girls...eventually! This is the one I did on Wednesday, strangely enough not using any of the Disney scrapping stuff I have just bought here or in the US! I used Echo Park paper (the yellow piece) and mixed it with some old Scenic Route Salem papers (the circles reminded me of Tigger!)I added some Kaisercraft pearls (the orange ones were coloured with a Sharpie as I didn't have the right colour ),some old Love Elsie ribbon and stamped some random bees :) The title is done using Junkitz and Scenic Route rub-ons (because I didn't have an alphabet with 3 g's in it!) Both girls have now finished school for the summer - yipee! Holly has had a friend round this afternoon ,whilst Em has been in hairdressers having some deep red streaks put in :) I will share a photo when I've has chance to look at them .
This weekend is Anna's crop so I might have some more scrapping to share next week :)

Almost the end of term...

and I can't wait :) Holly finishes on Wednesday and Em finishes Friday.It seems like this school year has gone on forever and I will be glad to see the back of it ,for Holly's sake...
Just trying to remember what we've been doing the last two weeks...!
Last weekend Holly and I put together the small green house that we'd bought her,I'm quite surprised at how sturdy it is! She has been busying herself planting sunflower seeds :)

Last week I finally did a layout :) The orange piece of paper lifts up and there's some journalling underneath, about some of the stuff Holly has been going through recently.It tucks under the big photo corner to keep it in place :) I used the lovely new Walk In The Park papers by Echo Park,which I got from 3 Jolly Scrappers :)I bought the collection pack, so I have loads more to play with still...watch this space :)
Last week Holly has her sports day at school.No photo taking allowed though :( We also had a bit of a 'surprise' in her school report ,as it stated how much she'd enjoyed her school residential trip..erm, hardly, we were delayed in Florida and she missed it!We now have a new report...
Well it must have been a pretty boring two weeks as I can't think of anything else we've done!
This weekend I've been suffering from the 'want to go back to Florida' blues :( It's not going to happen for a few years yet so I need to get over it! I think it was brought on by buying some bargain scrapping Disney stuff this weekend (mainly for Holly )!So I may just have to use some of it myself :)

One I prepared earlier!

Or at last weeks crop anyway! This is the one that needed the photo replacing on it as I'm so clumsy! I used lots of October Afternoon papers which I love,but I can never decide which side to use!

We are still enjoying a bit of a heatwave here, though to be honest ,last week was far too hot and sticky for my liking! Today and yesterday have been much more bearable though ,with lots of breeze :)

Yesterday was another day for sitting in the sun as we went to watch Holly take part in the Herts Folk Dance festival at Hatfield House. Needless to say, I have now have some annoying suntan stripes over my shoulders! It was a lovely day even if it was very hot! And I feel very left out that I am the only one without a fancy picnic bag so I'm hoping to remedy that this week!

This week is open evening at Holly's school, as well as meeting her new teacher.Anything will be an improvement on this years...though I can't believe another school year is almost over.It's two years since Em left junior school and two years till Holly leaves- scary thought!

Today I finally caught up and tackled the ironing mountain that has been growing in the kitchen since the weather turned really hot.I have been doing it on 'when iit's neded 'basis' recently!I also did a bit of tidyng up in the garden ,whilst Holly played 'London's Burning' in her tent,on the recorder :)The girls were going to have a picnic lunch in there too,but then Holly twisted her ankle and they ended up staying indoors!The old Princess tent has been very handy recently as there is very little shade in our garden until later in the day :)

Heat wave!

The weather has been gorgeous the last week...though yesterday I spent most of the hottest day of the year indoors scrapping!
On Friday night I started the weekend with a very civilised 'picnic in the park' with three friends ,whilst our daughters were at Brownies.We did consider the pub, but as all the outside seats would be taken up by the smokers and the football would probably be on inside(and it was far too nice to sit indoors),so we settled for a couple of drinks sitting out on the grass instead :) I supplied the drinks while another mum supplied the Pringles, grapes, & strawberries..all produced from her very lovely picnic basket complete with pink tablecloth.I wish I'd taken photos but they would probably have thought I was mad!If the weather's as good again this Friday evening we may do the same again!
Saturday I went to watch Holly's girls kwik cricket team take part in the Herts Youth Games.Considering they have only been practising few weeks,they did really well ,only losing their matches by a few runs.It was a beautiful hot day,and the perfect excuse to sit out in the sun and do nothng for four hours!
Yesterday was crop day,and I got almost three LO's done.Well, two completed but one needs the photo replacing after I managed to drop a very sticky journaling sticker on it!This one still needs the date adding, as the sheet of letter stickers I used didn't have numbers on it - really annoys me when that happens!

We have strawberries!

Ok, so not loads (yet!) ,but it's more than we managed a couple of years ago when we first tried growing them.I think then,we got about one ripe one that the birds and slugs didn't get to first....

So far this year,we've picked three (I did warn you it wasn't loads!) and there are lots more that are nearly ready :) I never seem to be organised enough to have a whole veggie patch growing,so this year we have some potatoes in a tub as well as runner beans again.

I'm not sure how much of a success Holly's Brownie camp was ,to be honest :( She has become very 'anxious' about a couple of things over the last year or so,one of those things being, being away from home :( She gets herself really worked up ,eventually making herself ill.However, she did stay the night so that's something ,I was expecting a phone call to go and pick her up! She came home absolutely shattered and was out like a light on Sunday night.

The Maypole Dancing was as sweet as ever at the school fete, plus being a PTA run event,there is nothing to stop us taking photos :) (Wow, my photo editing is so professional!!)

Monday evening Em hurt herself whist playing basketball with Holly in the garden.Turns out that she has a splintered a bone in one of the fingers of her left hand -ouch! It needs to kept strapped up for the next two weeks and then we need to return to the fracture clinic.

Yesterday we got a letter from her school ,telling us that she has been chosen to study for all three science GCSE's,starting in September (her school start theirs a year early) She's worked really hard for this so we are very proud of her :)

Yesterday was also Geoff's birthday,but he spent the morning in A&E with Em getting her hand looked at.This meant that our original plan of a trip to Ikea was cancelled (see, we really know how to party!).We did make it to Frankie & Benny's for tea though :) And as Geoff doesn't really eat birthday cake, I made some cupcakes for me & the girls, letting him blow the candle out :)

Mad week....

...that isn't over yet!


Today Holly spent most the day doing this...



and ended it doing this!

She spent the day at 'Wind Day' learning two pieces of music to perform at a concert for the parents in the afternoon. And then at Brownies this evening they went bell boating down at the lakes.Although she was adamant that there was no way she was going to jump into the lake at the end again,like she did last year, she changed her mind and did a spectacular High School Musical style jump off the jetty!Needless to say she needed a warm bath and a shampoo when we got home!

Tomorrow she is maypole dancing at the school fete before heading off to Brownie District camp for the night and all day Sunday.They get to do fab stuff like archery, zip wires and abseiling.it wasn't like that in my day! And poor Em gets to spend her weekend doing homework and revising :(

I keep saying I'll do some scrapping soon, but somehow I don't think it's going to happen til the crop next week!

Another week

..has whizzed by,oops!I did make a point of being a bit lazy at the beginning of the week by doing nothing but the bare essentials!
Holly started at a girls cricket club this week and has been roped in to play at a match in a couple of weeks ,she's also halfway through a golf course at school:) She is a busy bee at the moment as she is also practising for a Country Dancing festival in a couple of weeks,as well as dancing at the school fete this coming weekend.I;m not surprised she's tired at night!
This weekensd I am lucky enough to be back on Pencil Lines and Anna had some gorgeous sponsorship from My Little Shoebox :) I love these papers :) I cut out the doors, and the door handle is a self adhesive pearl :)I also used one of the *ahem* few Disney gift cards that I picked up (literally!) whilst we were on holiday.Monsters Inc is one of my favourite Disney films :) I have now filled in the date details on the journalling die cut !) Today I have been helping Anna at the last Scrapping Angels retreat :) My feet ache and my purse is little lighter,but it was worth it :) I'm tempted to back through my photos and find pictures of us from the last five years,but that might be a little scary!
Geoff has been decorating the hallway since Friday and I arrived home this evening to find that he had managed to sand down our rubbishy hand rail back to plain wood, and it looks fab :)
I am off to rest my feet :)

A sneak ...and a farewell...

Much as I would love to be scrapping at the moment,I haven't had much chance.So here's a sneak of one for Pencil Lines next week,just to prove I do still do it!


Yesterday we had a bit of a farewell.I know there some people who think I'm absolutely barking about this,but we finally gave away the girls play kitchen and I am really sad :( !! It was Em's 'big' birthday pressie when she was 2,so it's been with us a while ,with lots of happy hours spent playing with it(the girls you understand, not me!) Sadly,we just don't have room in the house for it any more and it's spent the last couple of years feeling neglected in the shed,making brief appearances in the garden during warm school holidays.Luckily we have found a good home for it and Holly should still get a chance to play with it now and again .To me, it just kind of symbolises a end to part of my girls childhood,those days happily spent playing imaginary cafes with a wonderful menu of plastic chips! That said we still have a big box of plastic food which does still get played with now and then - long may it last!

Thankfully it's a bit cooler here today, though the rain meant we dashed indoors for the last five minutes of our BBQ last night! I am looking forward to having a few minutes peace & quiet to myself at some point this week :)

I'm still here!

Having had a dodgy modem and then managing to get a virus on the PC,I had an enforced break from blogging.And the longer I left it, the less I remembered to come back !
Last weekend we went to Thurrock as Em had some money to spend and wanted to go to Build A Bear.She came home with this sweet little friend.

I got some new things too :)
Last weekend saw me attempting ( and almost failing!) to be a domestic goddess by making cookies and lemon loaf from my Humming Bird Bakery book.Let's just say that cleaning the oven after the lemon loaf mixture dripped every where was not my idea of fun!
Half term seems to have whizzed by and luckily the weather has been beautiful since Tuesday.Holly has been on a Brownie trip to London,going to the House of Lords and the London Eye - I think most of the mum's wanted to go too!She came home very tired but managed to stay up late playing on Rock Band with her Aunty Sylv and Uncle Pete who were visiting for a couple of days :)Em spent the morning at mum & dad's and made a banana loaf cake from the Humming Bird book again,as well as with making the icing.Although it was supposed to be Aunty Sylv's birthday cake she was very reluctant to let her actually take any home with her!
Today Em has been out with her friend all day and then off to a sleep over.In turn Holly has had her best friend over and they are camped out in Em's room for the night :) They've been in the paddling pool, painted, read their Brownie handbook (sweet!) and finished the evening watching Disneys Peter Pan in bed :)Tomorrow they have plans to make bisciuts and photo frames :) I have actually done a bit of scrapping,though I can't show it as it's for Pencil Lines next week :) I have speny ages ordering loads of holiday photos so who knows,I might start scrapping some of those soon...! I have to admit that I am still missing Florida even though we've been back just over a month now :( I am still missing cheesecake,the Disney Parks and that huge villa.Plus I'm on my last huge bag of Reeses's Pieces....:( !!

Another one finished :)

This LO is the one that had a title I wasn't happy with.I may have loads of alphabets, but I couldn't think of any that would match the green in this LO, until I got home and remembered the lovely green spotty October Afternoon ones.There is a full size copy of the letter inside the Maya Road envelope,and the papers are October Afternoon.The green paper clip is one from a cute set I found in WHSmiths,I just stick some pearls on it.Anyway, I am really pleased with this now it's all done :)
At this very moment,the sun is shining and I'm hoping the weekend is full of more sunshine:) WE have loads to do around the house and graden, but if the weather stays nice, I'm opting to stay in the garden! I did make a start on Holly's room but as I wasn't feeling well that day I sort of gave up half way through and threw everything back where it came from :( I did whittle her wardrobe down from being full to half though ,which is a start!
Our PC is going on a major go-slow at the moment so I may blog even less than usual as it takes so long to do anything!

A couple of layouts :)

Yesterday was crop day, and after faffing about with a Disney layout for ages, I gave up and actually got some scrapping done :)This Lo is one I did at the last crop, but still needed a title so I took it with me and made sure I finished it this time! And this second one is done using some lovely Colourbox papers & die cuts and bobble trim that I bought from J0-Ann's whilst we were on holiday :) The butterfly & star were from a bargain set from embellishments in the kids dept in Michaels.I also managed to use up yet another of those very old KI memories Ice Candy word tiles

I did do a couple of other LO's, but one needs something else on it,and I'm not happy with the title on the other one, so they need fixing before I class them as finished :)
I feel like I have spent the last week constantly ironing,and guess what...the ironing bin is still full! Tomorrow sees me venturing into Holly's room to try & and have a clear out and a tidy up.I may be gone some time...!!

I finished one :)

I've spent most of today doing really boring jobs that have been building up and put off for ages,like sorting out that big heap of 'stuff' at the end of the bed and sorting out the shoe rack - deep joy! Along with some hoovering,lots of washing and some paper shredding it's been one of those days...
But I did stop for five minutes to stick a title on this LO that I did at the crop in March.I used Basic Grey Green at Heart papers,stickers & ribbon doilies and Doodlebug letter stickers.

Before we went on holiday, I had noticed lots of 'things' sprouting up in the garden.Upon our return, bearing in mind we were gone nearly a month, we have a crop of conker trees growing all over the place!All courtesy of the cheeky squirrel who spent ages burying the girls conkers in various pots and mud patches last Autumn! I know they will take absolutely years to grow,but I'm not sure where to grow them 'safely' as the garden isn't that big compared to the size of a full grown conker tree!

So the last week has been a bit glum really :( I guess it is just post holiday blues,coupled with snotty school letters and various other stuff.And the miserable weather really doesn't help much.The girls went out in the garden this afternoon...wearing winter coats and mittens -it's May for goodness sake!!

I also manged to give myself a DIY trout pout on Tuesday - not a good look I can assure you! I reached up to get something from the high shelf in the bathroom and a full bottle of shampoo fell off and smacked me in the mouthmcutting my top lip on my front teeth.I will admit to swearing in a very high pitched voice before crying! Not for long though as I had five minutes before I needed to leave and pick Holly up from school.The first couple of days were the worst, I really did look like I'd been punched in the mouth,and I still have a delightful purple top lip - nice!

I feel like I should do some sort or re-cap on the holiday, but I don't really want to bore everyone!So I will doa few photos here & there :)

The higlight of the trip for Holly was meeting Mickey, while for Em it was probably being so close (and yet so far!) to seeing the Harry Potter part of Universal Studios.

I put away the new scrapping stuff that I bought in the US today...ok, that's a lie,I just sort of shoved most of it in to any gap I could find! I have no idea where to start with scrapping the holiday to be honest, although I have bought quite a lot of nice Disney/Mickey stuff already.I am cropping this weekend so I need to sort myself something to whilst there, so I may have some scrapping to share soon :)

Remember me?!

Yes, I was among those people who went on holiday for 14 days and ended up staying for a further 11 !!

Not that I am complaining! We looked on the bright side and saw it as an oppurtunity to have an almost month long holiday, which we would never had under normal circumstances :) After the mad dashing around of parks we did in the first planned two weels, it was good to have a rest during the extra days!

I have loads of photos ,but I won't bore you too many right now, just a few ;)...

Tomorrow sees life returning to normal,I'm just hoping we can drag ourselves out of bed in the morning!