Half a cup of coffee...

The Good, the Bad and the Exciting.

The Good.

Legoman Matthew entered a lego competition at his school summer fair and guess what?

 

Yep, he was the winner in his year group! He built a ship complete with engine room, bridge, man overboard, shark, boardwalk, anchor, waves and cargo.

 

Fathers Day was lovely, the boys both made cards and I made Jeff a mini tag book of him and the boys. I'll show you photo's another time as I haven't photographed it yet. 

Then he left us to go play golf in the Club Championships, he came in 4th out of 83 golfers, pretty good huh? The boys and I took the opportunity to go and spend some time with my Dad on Fathers Day. I gave him a handmade tea cosy (not a hat as modelled below), his favourite chocolate and a "Keep Calm and Carry On" book (which I also gave to Jeff).

I wanted to have a photo of me and my Dad on Fathers Day, Callum wanted to take the photo and Matthew had to get in the way...

Matthew had to take a photo too, so he took one of my Mum and Dad together and then Callum had to get in the way!

 

Good news on the 'summer skirt 2009' - it has been made and infact I am wearing it right now. Here it is in a photo taken by Callum...

I used Amy Butler fabric (love her fabrics), this one is called Lotus Green Wallpaper which I found in John Lewis. It's now in rotation with my summer 2008 skirt (made in Amy Butler Seagreen Coriander fabric) and a brown Animal skirt. And boy the weather is hot this week, 29 degrees today, so skirts are definitely the thing to wear.

Callum had a play session at First school a week and a half ago. He really enjoyed himself. When I came back in from a coffee with the other parents he was singing and doing the actions to the song 'Five little ducks' with all the other children. He has never settled well at Pre-school and is looking forward to going to 'Matthew's School', long may this continue.

The Bad

Later that same day I went to pick up Matthew from school, all of us parents were ushered into the playground. I thought the children were going to do a little show for us as I knew they had an African drummer in that day. Alas no, we were told that there was a 'serious situation' at school and that it was going to close for one week and this is why...

Yep, we were all shocked to say the least. A boy in Year 4 had been confirmed as having it, he caught it whilst on holiday in America (he is now fully recovered). Anyway school reopened on Tuesday and I haven't heard of any others having caught it, thank goodness.

So what did we get up to whilst the boys were home for a week? (By the way for the most part this has to be put in the Good category!)

We played shops in the playhouse.

 

...lots of shops.

We made signs for an ice-cream shop, a cafe, a hotel and this one...

Sewing together felt finger puppets.

 

And we baked. Including these scrummy muffins, which has to be put in both the good and the bad categories as I later realised they each contain 300 calories!

And The Exciting

I have been asked by Scrapbooking.com Magazine if I'd like two of my layouts to be published in the August issue of their online scrapbooking magazine. Eh, that would be a yes please! I can't show you which layouts will be published, BUT I can show you this instead!

Also super exciting, I have enrolled in another online scrapbooking course run by Cathy Zielske. It's called 'Me, the abridged version' and is based on the Amy Krouse Rosenthal book "Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life". I bought this book a year or so ago and it resides in the en-suite next to my other scrapbooking books, it's a great book to flick through. I'm really looking forward to the course starting in September, but I have some cool pre-class work to keep me busy before then.

I'll leave you with a layout I made a few days ago. It's about Callum sticking his tongue out in my sisters wedding photos. (You might like to click on it to make it larger).

 

Oh and one last exciting thing...6 days until we go to Legoland!

Creative Minds

I had a good fair at the weekend, hurrah! It's been a tough slog this year, the credit crunch has most definitely hit the craft fairs and this was the best fair I've done this year with regards to takings. This fair was held at a large shopping centre, Castlepoint on the outskirts of Bournemouth. Because we were outside I got to use my gazebo and  hang a washing line up to display my kids aprons, bags and bunting. 

My time recently has been spent making lovely things to sell, or at least try to sell. I made these cute little iPod nano slipcovers in the most beautiful Amy Butler fabric. Such a joy to work with these gorgeous fabrics, the colours make me happy.

Made some tissues holders too, if you have a cold you may as well cheer yourself up with a pretty tissue holder!

 

Then I made some larger slipcovers for mobiles / gadgets, this time I added a little ribbon tab detail, very cute. The first two covers are the nano size, replacing stock sold at a fair I had at the beginning of June and all the others are the larger size.

 

Last week I drilled, painted and strung up a load of wooden hearts, small and large. The large ones I also applied rub-ons letters on to spell out words such at 'love', 'baby' and 'home'. It was a good thing I'd replenished my stock of these because I sold loads of them on Sunday.

But my crafting time hasn't only been used on my Hearts & Flowers stock. I've found some time to make stuff for the boys too. The other day I knocked up a sofa for the playhouse, as you do! I bought a £10 toy box from Ikea which was low and ideal for the base of the sofa. I used an old foam cot mattress (from when Matthew was a baby), an old Ikea throw (bought 10 years ago to cover the sofa in our rented house) and some wadding and velcro. Under the seat, the lid of the toy box can lift off to provide storage for other toys.

 

Way back at Easter I made some oven gloves, as per Matthew's request. I have now made some for stock to sell in red gingham and some in pink gingham. I have also made mini tablecloth and napkins sets to sell; blue chambray tablecloth with red gingham napkins and pink gingham tablecloth with white napkins. I don't have any photos of these stock items but you can see in the photo below the ones I made for the boys.

Laying in pieces on my dining room table waiting to be sewn together is a new summer skirt (have to sew in a zip next, I hate sewing in zips, this is why it's still in pieces!) and a bag - both in Amy Butler fabric. But before I can make them up I have a custom order for a camera strap which needs to be made, that's this afternoon's job!

Anyway, it would seem that I'm not the only creative one in the house, my boys have creative minds too.

Callum loves to make the strangest of 'things' with the lego kits, much to Matthew's annoyance (he likes to keep them as they are supposed to be). It usually involves a lego man missing some body part or other. Here the policeman has a propellor attached to his bottom!

Matthew's school topic this half term is Kenya, so for this weeks home learning (weekly homework) we found all 'loosely' related african toys we had in the house and had a 'safari adventure' in the garden. Can you spot Matthew?

Last week my sister Janet gave us a helium canister which they had used for blowing up balloons for the kids at their wedding. We used some of what was left in the canister to blow up some balloons at home. We had fun seeing what could be lifted by the ballooons and in the end they had their own unique Lego airmail service, complete with flying postman, letters and parcels!

Finally, I'll leave you with the only two scrapbook layouts I managed to do in the last month; my May and June 12 of the 12th photo project.

 

See you next time!

Just Married

My sister Janet and her new husband Richard were married in Breamore Church, at 11am on 23rd May (the same church that Jeff and I got married in way back in 2001). The sun shone and my boys (after much worrying on my part) did indeed wear their page boy outfits and behave well - phew! Look how cute they were (including my husband!) ...

There were three page boys (my two boys and the best man's son) and three bridesmaids (me and Janet's two best friends Sarah and Zoe). Here's some more photos taken at the church. Some taken by Jeff, some by my in-laws and some by me. Yep, I took my SLR with me, there was no way I was going to miss this photo opportunity!

Janet and Rich with my Mum and Dad.

 

Callum making faces!

   

Matthew holding my bouquet.

 

And that would be me taking some photos!

 

Confetti time - see Callum ready to throw confetti with all his might!

The reception was held at The Bartley Lodge, a country hotel in the New Forest. It had great lawns for the kids to run around, an old tree which was climbed by many a child and an old wooden summerhouse that to the kids became known as 'the warehouse'.

   

The newly wed's Mr and Mrs Carter cutting the cake.

 

And me and my husband Jeff.

Matthew with his VW Camper Van money box, a present for being a page boy.

 

Janet and Rich hired a band for the evening reception (I mentioned them in a previous post). They were again brilliant, playing Crowded House, Del Amitri and my favourite song at the moment The Kooks 'She moves in her own way'. Janet and Rich's first dance was to The Bee Gees 'How deep is your love', great choice.

The boys loved dancing, in Callum's case this involved lots of being spun around and hopping, so that was me up on the dance floor for most of the night too!

Matthew was really proud when the lead singer of the band dedicated a song to him, of course Callum then wanted a song for him too. Later in the evening the three page boys could be seen sliding across the dance floor in their page boy outfits! We thought we'd stay as long as the boys could manage, in the end they were still on the dance floor at 11pm and there were tears when we said it was time to go home!

Hey May, where did you go?

Wow, May this year has been super busy. Matthew celebrated his 6th Birthday, we had a sad unexpected trip back to Northern Ireland, I had two fairs, Jeff's parents came to visit and my sister got married. Also since I last posted, way back in April there was my sisters Hen Weekend and Matthew learnt to ride his bike without stabilisers. Want to see some pics?

April

Hen Weekend in Lymington.

Matthew learnt to ride his bike (this picture shows him practising on Callum's bike). When Matthew saw our 4 year old neighbour Joseph learning to ride his bike, it gave him all the confidence he needed to try it for himself. AND guess what, he picked it up within minutes!

May

We bought a trampoline for a joint birthday present for Matthew and Callum. It arrived a few days before Matthew's birthday and sat in it's box in the garden undiscovered for a day. Then the boys were off sick from school and it was spotted. I decided to see how far I could get with putting it together before Jeff came home from work. As it turned out I got this far...not bad for 1 woman?

 

Especially considering that this is what I had to contend with...

 

And after dinner, the enclosure was fitted and the trampoline moved to it's new home. Secretly, it felt like it was my birthday too, you'll often find me out jumping on it, even when the kids aren't!

 

Matthew's 6th birthday. We had a party for him at home on the sunday, the day before his actual birthday. The weather was lovely and the kids enjoyed playing on the trampoline, the swings and in the playhouse. AND of course you can't have a party without musical statues and pass-the-parcel. Nor, in my case, bunting and homemade party bags!

  

Matthew's birthday this year shall be remembered as the year of the Lego. He received 9 kits and amazingly they were all different - this made for one very happy kid, he loves the stuff.

The day after his birthday I helped out on a school trip to Corfe Castle. The photo below looks beautiful, but believe me it was very windy and cold up there!

 

May also gave us some sad news amongst all the happy events; Jeff's Gran died at the age of 89. When we told Matthew he was beside himself sobbing - he's a sensitive wee soul. An unplanned trip to Northern Ireland followed, although the reason for going was sad, it meant that we got to spend lots of time with Jeff's family which was lovely. We managed to squeeze in some time with our friends and the boys got to go to birthday party.

Matthew had Medieval Day at school. This time I decided not to make him a costume. I was simply too busy and with his birthday a week before there was the perfect excuse to buy him an outfit and accessories. This is him outside his classroom before he went into school. He had a great day, coming home with a gold medal (made out of paper) for his jousting! 

 

The same day I had a stall at Callum's Pre-school May fair in the morning, Matthew had a birthday party to go to after school and I had a wedding rehearsal to go to as well. Meanwhile Jeff was away for the day in a golf tournament, which he did very well in, winning the afternoon competition. All this the day before the wedding - thank goodness Jeff's parents (who had come over for the wedding) were staying with us and could help.

As for the wedding itself, you'll have to come back soon to read all about it!

Got to love Golf!

The recent Masters Golf on the TV and a two day golfing break for Jeff meant I had some guilt-free scrapping time!

Firstly three layouts about my weekend spent with the girls Janine and Sheila.

Ready for your close-up girls? You have been scalloped!

I used a Heidi Swapp polka dot mask to paint pink dots on the white cardstock on the layout below, very girlie.

Here's a layout I scrapped whilst the girls were staying here. I had used white cardstock but decided it would look better on kraft, so I swapped it over.

 

And a layout about the new Ikea store in Southampton which I'd been longing to visit (even had the opening date marked on the calendar), but it took me nearly 2 more months to get there.

 

And with that I must dash, I've my Sister's Hen Weekend to pack for, got to leave in an hour's time!

Have a great weekend.

Observations from Easter Sunday

This years Easter Egg hunt took place in our garden with 17 clues leading to where treasure could be found. Matthew was great at reading the clues and then the race was on between him and Callum as to who could get to the treasure first.

Each clue was inside a little plastic egg, along with 2 mini chocolate eggs OR hidden with a bigger Easter egg from a member of the family. They were hidden all over the garden ...

and in the playhouse...

and...

At the end there were two happy boys.

As Easter Sunday fell on the 12th April I got to document the day through my 12 of the 12th photo / scrapbook project.

Used a Heidi Swapp damask sticker which I cut in half, Basic Grey chipboard numbers and stamps by 7gypsies and Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday. The cardstock is a deep pink which I chose to pick up the colours of my new favourite mug (VW Camper Van by Pearl & Earl), the prima layered lollipop flower and the box of beautiful soap roses (an Easter present from my in-laws). 

You see that I was working on two other layouts that night; Hello Portobello and Hairspray. I finished them, but I'll show you next time.

"Can you believe it's really Easter tomorrow?"

That's what Matthew said when he was in bed tonight and when I came upstairs after it had all gone quiet this is what I found...

 

and this...

As you can see photos were taken and Jeff was called up to take a look at our sleeping babes.

We've been preparing for Easter by baking easter shaped cookies, thanks to a special easter parcel from Grandma and Grandad in Northern Ireland (thank you so much for the cookie cutters, chick craft pack and the lovely pink cupcake tray).

 

AND by making Easter Nests with the mini eggs which Sheila kindly left for the boys.

Much chocolate was eaten by the boys during that cooking session, you might just be able to make out Matthew's chocolate beard!

Wednesday we met up with my good friend Ros and her son Ted for an afternoon at the park. I took a flask of coffee, Ros took yummy biscuits and some bread for the ducks. The boys enjoyed running around and playing on all the play equipment, especially the roundabout. So much so that when Matthew was in bed that night he said it felt like he was still on the roundabout!

Last weekend was a busy one for me, as I had two craft fairs. The saturday fair was our first Cornflower Country Craft fair in Burley of the year (we have 5 more during the year) and Sunday we held our first outdoor fair at a big shopping centre in Bournemouth, Castlepoint. Sales weren't as good as I would have hoped for, but I guess that's the way it's going to be this year what with the state of the economy.

The boys had a great day out at a farm meeting and feeding the animals with Auntie Janet and Richard last Saturday. (Thank you for having them and giving them a lovely day out)

Lego is always a favourite with the boys, especially Matthew; for example the almost daily taking apart and rebuilding of the green cargo plane (seen on the end of his bed in the very first photo). At school the topic for the last half-term has been 'Parklife' (I have to say 'Parklife' in the style of the Blur song of the same title!). So the week before last he (and I) made a play park out of lego which he took into school with him to show his teacher.

I showed the boys this photo blog called a Lego a day which I'd seen a link for on Cathy Zielske's blog. I also showed Matthew this post on Cathy's blog about a lego scene her son had made. Well the next day Matthew came into the kitchen to ask me to take off a lego man's leg's. I asked him why and before we could tell me, I twigged. Check it out...his own lego 'body shop'. The lego men can come and choose their new legs, body, head and even hat (they're in the bin on the right hand side of the picture).

Hoping the weather will be dry tomorrow for an easter egg hunt in the garden for the boys. Also tomorrow happens to be the 12th of April so this month I'll have no shortage of photo's for my 12 of the 12th photo/scrapbooking project.

"Hey, I can't believe it's Easter in about 10 minutes time!" I'd better get this posted and get to bed. Happy Easter!

Hello Portobello and Hey There Hairspray!

A week and a half a go my two friends Sheila and Janine came over from Northern Ireland to spend a very short but fantastic weekend with me in England. Shortened even further by a 5 hour delay in Belfast Airport before they could even board the plane to Southampton. Still we managed to pack a load of things into 48 hours, including; my favourite coffee shop, hobbycraft, scrapbooking at my house and a full day in London. Yep, we sure know how to make a weekend of it!

We met up with my friend Laura for coffee and the biggest Pain au chocolate's I have ever seen (thank you for welcoming us into your home). From Laura's house we went to Portobello market where we browsed and I bought a printers drawer to do some Ali type project, infact you can see the one I bought hanging from the top of the stall in the middle of the photo below. We were going to have cupcakes from Hummingbirds bakery but the queue was out the door and up the street, nevermind maybe next time.

On from Portobello we went to the theatre to collect our tickets then took a walk down to Covent Garden. After a coffees, cupcake and muffins in Starbucks the rain came down and what better excuse to get out of the rain than to go into the shops! Purchases were made by all of us in Cath Kidston and by Janine and I in Fat Face, amongst others.

Before the show we decided to get a meal early. We gave ourselves plenty of time to have pizza from a non-chain Italian restaurant, unfortunately we waited over an hour for our food, and still had to leg it to the theatre.

Hairspray was fantastic, made you want to get up and dance, although I contented myself with sitting and singing! Really pleased I'd bought the CD and DVD a few weeks prior to get to know the songs, it made the whole experience even better.

Hey girls, I wasn't the only one who missed you when you left, Matthew and Callum missed you too. They really enjoyed having you around to play with and read them bedtime stories. (And if you're wondering what is happening in the bottom photo, Matthew is getting Janine to time how long it's takes him to build his Lego cargo plane!)

Let's start planning our next trip!

Spring Flowers and Happy Cats

Ahh Mothers Day; handmade cards, breakfast in bed, time at the beach, lunch out and flowers. OK so I didn't get any scrap time but at least I did get lots of great photos to scrap when I do get some time! The flowers above were the ones I gave to my Mum and below you can see the ones my boys gave to me; lovely tulips and roses.

All week we had beautiful weather and thankfully it held on until Sunday, a great excuse to head down to the beach. If you look closely at the middle picture you might see 3 brave people swimming in the sea! We had planned to go to our favourite restaurant on the beach 'Vesuvio' but they were fully booked. A surprise to us because they haven't taken bookings during the day before - great. Nevermind, meant I got to choose to go to a lovely cafe at a garden centre instead (Janine and Sheila, this is where I'm taking you on Friday).

Got some layouts to show you; Matthew has been trying to whistle for ages and then he lost three of his bottom teeth and 'bingo' now he can!

Also my 12 of the 12th layouts for February and March. I had to do my February one again because I realised I'd left out the photo that showed my kitchen floor painted blue by Callum!

AND I promised I'd show you the mini book in a box I made for Valentines Day. It's a take on one that Donna Downey made in her 'Creative Albums' book, when I spotted the stickers she had used in the sale at Artbase I knew I had to make one too...

Since my last blog update I got around to taking some photos of the things I'd made for 'Hearts & Flowers'...

Crocheted hairclips and hairbands.

Camera strap covers in Amy Butler fabric.

Handmade notepads and covered notebooks.

Made since, but not photographed are tea cosies and lots of cards.

AND the latest recipient in the house to have something handmade is our cat Chloe. She now has a gingham padded mat for when she wants to sleep on the leather sofa (no way is she allowed to get her claws on that) and a cushion for her basket. One happy cat, well at least she should be.

Right now I am very excited about;

a. Bridesmaid dress fitting tomorrow with my sister who's having her wedding dress fitting.

b. The girls coming over from Northern Ireland for the weekend, so, so excited - do you have to go home again?

c. Janine and Sheila remember to pack your scrap stuff for friday night!

d. Going to London to see Hairspray with the girls.

e. Coffee and shopping, Portabello here we come!

Hello March!

Wow, time just seems to be flying and what with half-term, making stuff for a craft fair and a boy off sick from school, my blogging has yet again been pushed to the end of the queue! The scrapbook layout above and below was made over a month ago and I didn't get round to posting it. It shows Matthew's love of the classic Ladybird 'Key Words' reading books, encouraged by me! He has progressed really well with his reading and most nights he wants to read his Ladybird books rather than any other book. I have series 5 on their way from Amazon!

AND of course I made a layout of Matthew dressed as a policeman (from the last post)...

We spent Valentines Day at the beach with the boys. We went prepared with a flask of hot chocolate, buckets and spades, picnic lunch accompanied with lovely chips. The weather was beautiful; blue skies and warmish sunshine. I made Jeff a mini book in a little box, I think is very cute, but to be fair it probably has too much pink for Jeff's liking! I'll share photo's next time as I haven't photographed it yet, but here's some from the beach (to be made into a layout very soon!).

On the long walk back along the beach Matthew kept stopping to draw hearts in the sand - such a cute boy, he'll make some girl very happy one day.

Since this photo was taken Matthew has lost 3 teeth, the tooth fairy has visited and on each occasion has kindly left a £1 coin. We had to write a note to the tooth fairy to ask her to leave the tooth behind, Matthew was very worried that she'd take it away and all things must be kept by Matthew! His 3rd tooth came out yesterday at breakfast and this morning he not only woke up to see if the tooth fairy had indeed 'paid' a visit during the night, but also to snow! Large snowflakes were falling fairly fast when we woke up, but it wasn't settling on the roads and school was still open - not so exciting!

I've been busy crafting again, making a load of new items; fabric slip-covered notebooks, handmade notepads (made using my new Bind-it-All), needle books with vintage style pins, crochet flower hairclips and hairbands. Haven't even photographed them yet with the exception of these two new items; cafetiere cosies and SLR camera strap slipcovers. I'll get the others photographed soon.

Sickness has hit the house again recently with Callum throwing up in bed on Friday night, conveniently I was out at the craft fair that night. Matthew had also come out of school earlier that day not looking well; temp, headache and tummyache, so he spent a couple of days home from school at the beginning of the week. He still has a terrible barking cough, Callum on the other hand was right as rain the following morning! When the kids are home from school what do you do? Well clearly not blogging, but playing with the lego!

Before

And after.

Jeff and I enjoyed a rare evening out together a couple of weeks ago with my sister Janet and her fiance Rich. We went to a pub for dinner and to hear a covers band play that were potentially going to play at their evening wedding reception in May. They were great, the first song was Crowded House's 'Weather With You' and the 3rd or 5th song was Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens' (Jeff and I love Del Amitri and Crowded House). They also played songs by The Beatles, The Stereophonics, Oasis and so many other great bands. We were sold and they have been booked.

On the subject of weddings, my Dad now owns this beautiful vintage car, a 1932 Lanchester, one of only two in the country. He is planning to use it for weddings, the first will be my sisters and he has bookings for two other weddings already. 

That's it for now, all being well I'll back before the end of March!