My first 2012 page!

So its May and I've scrapped my first photo of 2012.  You may recognise the photo - it got a mention in my January month in numbers post here.

It tells the story of how the youngest decided one Sunday morning that her farm animals needed to have plaster casts applied.  This involved tearing up tissues, spraying with water and slapping on the animal! You gotta love her style!

I have been pondering for a while whether to do 2012 album along the same lines as 2011.  I was reluctant to commit to a format until the 2011 album was complete.  Whilst pondering I have been taking Shimelle's Cover to Cover" online class which has given me lots of food for thought in terms of album organisation.  As I wrote the other day, the 2011 album did become a chore towards the end.

So after all this deliberating I have decided to let my 2012 album run without any set format.  It will probably contain a whole mix of page formats etc but will run chronologically.  Because I have now organised my photos by month and am going to print them each month, I will not "worry" that I am going to miss anything - it may take me a few(?) years to get all the stories down but that doesn't phase me like it used to.  It makes me happy to know where I am going, however long it takes.

Some interesting bits

A few weeks ago I purchased some "interesting bits" from Julie Kirk - you can read about them here and find them in her etsy shop here.  Mine were on a yellow and green theme.  So anyway the other day I pulled them out and decided to make a layout.

The only things on the layout that are not from the kit are the alpha's on the title, the tag to the right of the photo, the stamped grid and ink splashes!  The photo has been in the "to scrap" pile for some time.  It is from a visit my children made with my brother in law and partner to the Roald Dahl museum, which I have blogged about before.

There are still loads of the kit left for me to create some more "interesting bits"

A favourite photo

They always say if you need something doing, ask a busy person!  Well that's me at the moment and I'd rather you didn't ask, as I not sure I could possibly squeeze anything else in.  Fortunately it has not all been work and I have managed to include playing with paper!

This is one of my favourite photos of my youngest, taken in 2010 on her sisters birthday.  This layout was inspired by the layout on the front of the latest issue of Scrap365;

I'm considering putting this in a box frame - very brave of me as I usually don't like displaying my own work.  Next time we go to ikea I'm going to look at their frames to see if any are suitable.  I have a very similar photo of the oldest one so I could put them together.

This layout came together very quickly as last week I had a major sort out of all my stash.  All my paper and cardstock is now sorted by colour and everthing else has been sorted by type and labelled.  I realised that although I had very good storage, I was not using it effectively!  So now when I scrap, I can select everything very easily, meaning I am actually creating rather than trying to find something!  It has certainly worked as over the two days I created four layouts which is a world record for me!

Game On!

After enjoying a lovely Sunday lunch at Simon and Fred's (my brother in law and partner), Louisa decided we should play checkers. However rather than use a traditional game board, she decided that bigger was better.  Much more fun to use the checked rug for the board and cocktail umbrellas for the pieces! (you gotta love her style) It was Daddy against Louisa but we all gathered round to watch and give advice when needed.  Good old fashioned Sunday afternoon fun!

This story was bought to you as part of "Story Telling Sunday".  Click here to enjoy some more stories.


Have a lovely Sunday!

Introducing......

Finally in a moment of rare peace, I have made it back to my blog!  With now only two weeks left until the school term finishes, it has been a roller coaster of end of term concerts, meetings for up and coming guide camps, visits to new schools for both the oldest and youngest, school trips plus fitting in my normal working hours.  Frankly I am exhausted!  So please excuse my absence and lack of commenting on your lovely blogs - normal service should be resumed shortly I hope.


Anyway the reason I popped back was to introduce you to a new member of the family. Please say hello to Fred!

Last weekend we went to a local church fete as my oldest was performing with her dance school.  Daddy and the youngest thought it would be a great idea to guess the name of the teddy and guess what we won!  As you can imagine I am overjoyed to welcome Fred into the family to join the seven build a bears we currently have plus two shelves of soft toys  in the youngest bedroom.


This bear is seriously large and heavy but the youngest loves him.  And so on Friday he had to visit school.  So if on your Friday morning journey, you saw a very wet women carrying a huge bear who was dressed in a floral raincoat - that was me.  Oh the joys of parenthood.

Coming to an end

Not so long ago, the youngest was experiencing many firsts - her first day at school, her first Christmas concert and her first Sports day.  Now she is in her final weeks at infant school and everything is coming to an end.  On Friday she said goodbye to her Monday/Friday teacher (who also happened to be the eldest year two teacher when she was at the infant school) as she was going on maternity leave and this week she had her Sports day.

In a few weeks time, she will have her leavers concert - I'm pretty sure tissues will be required! As I said in my post here - they days are long, but the years are short.

Monday memories

This was taken in May 2008 on a trip to Cotswold wildlife park to celebrate the youngests 4th birthday.  She is with my brother in law - "Uncle Simon".  It was a lovely day out, although a little damp at times!  It is one of the very few photos on the calender I have already scrapped.

Looking back at old layouts, its interesting to see if my style has changed?  I'm not even sure if I have a style - but one thing that does stand out is that my early layouts tend to be quite flat, whereas now I try to add more depth.  Also I seem to like putting buttons on - usuallly in a group of three.

What about you - do you have a style and do you think it has changed over time?

Here comes the sun?

As I sit and write this, we seem to be enjoying some June sunshine and I managed to eat my lunch outside.  However as this post is sheduled I'm not sure if it will be the case by the time you read it! Lets hope so.

Anyway a sunny day, deserves a summer layout.

Now I had intended to use yellows, pinks and reds but some how the bright papers I picked to start with didn't seem to work so I ending up with the greens and the browns. My starting point was this sketch of the week by Shimelle.  

These photos were taken during a trip to the park in July 2009.  The journalling reads "One night after school, it was such lovely weather that Daddy and I took you round to the park.  You went on your bikes.  It was about 6.00pm so you had the place to yourselves.  You certainely had fun on the bucket swing."  The park is just round the corner to us and is known as 'Punt Hill', however the youngest has always called it 'Punk Hill' so I made a little note at the top to remind us. 

I hope the weather is kind to you what ever you are doing today.

Monday Memories

Did you enjoy Shimelles 10 on the 10th?  I did - it tied in nicely with my already planned Ireland holiday show and tell! It was nice to get some comments from so new visitors - thank you.  I also enjoyed looking at everyone elses ideas and loved how they were all so different.  I've got some good ideas for next month, and hope I can incorporate a scrapbook page next time as well.

This weeks photo, is yet another from the Roald Dahl musuem shoot!  And I think you can see why this one was included.  Isn't it fabulous!

As so many of these photos have been coming up on the calender, I have done a photobox order of the whole shoot.  I think a mini book is in order, don't you?

Hello!

Yes - I'm back from our holiday in Ireland.  Did you miss me?  I certainly missed blogging and hopping around to see all my blog friends.  Anyway we had a lovely week away - lots of fresh air and visiting new places and so lots of photos to show and scrap.

Anyway to ease me back into the weekday routine, here is the photo on my calendar this week.

It's another one taken by Frederick at the Roald Dahl museum - I posted about it here.  As I was not present during their visit, I do not know what the oldest is drawing/writing but I just love how he has captured the moment and that look on the youngests face!

Monday Memories

There are two photos on my calendar this morning -both of the youngest, both taken at Easter last year.

The first one shows her thoroughly enjoying the chocolate fountain that Uncle Simon bought over on Easter Sunday - I think the photo speaks for itself. Yum, yum!

The other is of her in her Spanish outfit, we bought at Santa Pola market whilst in Spain last April.  She desperately wanted one, and was thrilled when hubby managed to negotiate the "right price".  It has been worn to many a party or special occasion since!

Must fly - lots to do this week as we are off on holiday next week.  I can't wait.

Scrapping the here and now!

So Amy from "Over at our place" threw down the challenge to scrap a story from this week and gave us a template to follow. Well our styles are very different, but I thought I would give it a go.


This week has been "Walk to School Week" school which aims to get children out of the car and onto the pavement. To add a bit of fun, my youngest daughters school set a theme for each day e.g Wednesday was wear your clothes back to front.  Well we walk everyday (not much choice when your Mum doesn't drive, I hear the children cry!) so the youngest participated fully.  It is also the week where I finally got round to downloading the Hispstamatic" app onto my phone, so I decided to combine both stories.

As you can see, its not quite as "simple" in style as Amy's but it is probably the least layered and least amount of patterned paper I have used on a page in a long time and I couldn't resist adding the odd sticker!


Its good to try something different once in a while, but most of all it felt good to record the moment.  Thanks for the challenge Amy, I really enjoyed it.