Birdies and bears.

Our babies have flown! Last year Allan put up a bird box that a friend of his had given him. He was really disappointed as the birds deemed it not to be the des res for 2007. Obviously the location, location, location has got better this year as a pair of great tits set up home in it. We checked the nest box this morning and all the babies have gone, except for one poor little one which had died. I did manage to get a pic of them in the nest between feeds, by standing precariously on top of a milk crate. It's a wonder I didn't break my neck but all Allan cared about was getting a pic and I certainly wasn't going to let him loose with my camera.

I was up at 6.30 this morning so as well as checking the nest, feeding the animals, doing the dishwasher and putting some washing in I decided to start scrapping a photo of Jessie on holiday a few years ago, which I'd been meaning to do for ages. I really shouldn't do that - I ended up 20 minutes late for work and it still wasn't finished so then I came home for lunch - and was late back again. I managed to finish it tonight just before Emmerdale started so I'm happy now.

The flowers at the bottom came from the Bubblyfunk May kit, as did the Bazzill cardstock. The papers are, surprise, surprise, the DCWV Spring Stack - I'm really addicted to these at the mo. I painted the flowers with the Stargazers paints which are gorgeous and then blinged them up a bit with a few 'diamonds'(as our Jess calls them!)

I haven't bought many kits before, but I'm going to start as you get such a nice mixture of things some of which I wouldn't dream of buying normally and in small amounts so you can have a bash with them without breaking the bank.

Why is it happening?

Isn't it funny how things can affect us. I've felt really down all day, partly to do with the horrible weather I think, but also because I have been watching the news over the last week or so, and there is so much sadness in the world. The images of the poor people in Burma and China affected by awful natural disasters and then there have been three young men killed in mindless attacks of violence within just a few days of each other. A young child actually starved to death in the care of her parents. My heart goes out to the families of the young people who were murdered and you question how they bear such emotional pain. I also question how society misses such a thing as a starving child. I work in the children and families department of social services and have often been involved with child protection cases, but the system relies heavily on someone reporting what is going on. I am sure there must be many children who slip through the net because family members and neighbours, who know there is something wrong, don't want to rock the boat by reporting neglect to the authorities.

Anyway, I'll get my miserable head off now and cheer myself up by talking about my gorgeous grandbabies. Jess had her school photo taken last week and the photographer also agreed to take photographs of pupils with younger siblings who were not yet at school so Clare also had one taken of Jessie and Millie together. They came the other day and are absolutely gorgeous. I have them both on display on the sideboard but also conned two more out of Clare so I could scrap them.

The photographer was excellent, not the usual boring old school photos so the results were lovely. The 'Watch the Birdie' LO was done exclusively with papers from the Bubblyfunk May kit. The 'Love is a Sister' LO is done from a sketch on Bubblyfunk by Anna Bowkis. It is completely different to my normal style as its a very simple LO and I have only used a couple of colours but I was really pleased with the result.

Five Senses CJ

I can't believe its nearly a fortnight since I posted. Talk about time flies when your enjoying yourself. I really have enjoyed myself today. I had some lieu time to come, so took today off, intending to do some ironing and other housework. It was not to be. I'm doing a CJ at UKS and the first one came this morning, so I sat down, just to look at it ... big mistake! I've spent all day doing my layout. The theme was 5 senses and you had to do a layout showing your favourite thing relating to each of the five senses. The lady whose CJ it is also asked for the layout to be colourful - yippee! I got out the DCWV Spring stack of papers again, which I absolutely love, and away I went. The results are below. The photos are under the little tabs with the journalling on them and my list was:

Favourite sight: Jessie and Millie (no surprise there then)
sound: Heavy rain on the window when I'm tucked up in bed
touch: My cats long, shiny, soft fur
taste: Chocolate of course!
smell: Spring blossom

If you decide to comment why not put your faves for us to have a look at.

Hot, hot, hot

I've just come in out of the garden for half an hour to cool off so I thought I'd do a bit of blogging. The weather is beautiful and we've spent the majority of yesterday and today in the garden. All the family are here, we've just had lunch out in the garden and I feel totally blessed. I've done quite a lot of crafting over the past week. I've dug out a couple of older photos to scrap, they have been in a drawer for a few years so I thought I'd do something with them as they are so nice.

This is David, my son and his girlfriend Louise. They have been together since she was 15 and he was 17 years old. This photo was taken around 2000. There were a quite a few popular phrases from the tele they used around that time and one of those was 'appy' . They taught Clares daughter, Jess, who was around two at the time to say it which caused great delight so I thought I'd put it on the LO. The papers are from the DCWV Spring stack and the letters are just plain letters from the Paper Mill Shop which I papered with the same papers then just glittered with glitter glue.

This is the first photo Jess had taken at nursery. I'm not sure where the papers came from, they were just some I found at the bottom of one of my 12 x 12 paper drawers. To be honest I had forgotten about them. Although I normally try and tie up the colours between the photo and the papers, somehow this one seemed to work even though the colours were completely different. I added a little blue to the layout by putting blue stitches around the white flowers and writing Jessies name in blue on the largest flower.

I've also got round to scrapping the 'Jessies Saturday morning breakfast' photos from a little while ago. I was really pleased with the result as I tried colours I haven't tried before, inspired by the egg and toast - food always has been a true inspiration! You can tell by how wonderfully trim I am.

I Scrapped it!

I kept looking at the photo of Allan ringing work, on what was supposed to be a day of quality time for me and him and decided to shame him by doing a scrapbook page with it to show everyone what I have to put up with.

It didn't work, he thought it was great!

Back to Work and CJ's

I can't believe its a fortnight since I last posted. I've been so busy! I went back to work last Wednesday and as usual, when anyones been away for any reason, within five minutes of being there, I had a phone call to say one of my cases has gone pear shaped. Typical! So it was back in at the deep end. Never mind though, I had a brilliant three weeks off and even managed to persuade Allan to take a day off (which is a total miracle). We went out for lunch then went for a ride to Spurn point and had a walk on the beach. It was lovely, we spend so little time together just doing what we want to. Although he did get one phone call from his brother about business while we were out. I decided not to get wound up while he was on the phone, I just took a photo instead. I felt it was my statement - even though we were in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beauty, he could not be seperated from his precious garage. I give up!


I've managed to do the covers and layouts for the two CJ's I've joined. I'm really pleased with both of them as I've tried some different stuff this time, especially on the covers. I usually go for quite bright, light colours but this time, on my covers, I've gone for more muted tones and have done some distressing. I must admit to being a bit scared of distressing, my previous attempts have been a bit wishy washy as I was scared of making a mess of it. This time I thought, blow it, if its a mess I'll just do it again. I went to town with my finger nails, nail file, chalks and ink pads and hey presto...

The 'My Place' one is the better of the two but it was the second one I did so thats to be expected. I also think I made a mistake with the corners on the 'Seasons' one but, hey ho, you live and learn.