I’m a Mummy on the Edge……

Ali is obsessed with Halloween (more of that after it is all over).

I have encouraged this, I have to admit, as his excitement has been something to behold.

Yesterday I bought home a Donkey (from Shrek) dress-up kit for him. He has channelled Donkey all day……walking around on all fours, neighing and spouting catchphrases from the films.

One of our favourites is ‘I’m a Donkey on the edge’.

This made the title of the layout come together easily

I have mixed a hodgepodge of the ideas from the last few Pretty Paper Party prompts, a sketch from the first few days, monochromatic with kraft, my favourite colour, turquoise/blue and using inspiration from other crafts, patchwork quilting was the example Shimelle used and I went with the log cabin pattern. I love the block of it. I wish I could sew, or even use a sewing machine.

After all the back-to-school shenanigans that have gone on here today, I am the Mummy on the Edge. Time for Downton Abbey and some peace and quiet.

Ali-Donkey is snoring in his stable.

Splash!

The last time my sons were simultaneously clean…..2005.

I have used the stash diving kit I put together yesterday afternoon to scrap this one of them.

I used the strips sketch for it from prompt 1. What a great first week, it feels as though there was enough in the first week to last all month.

I have made another layout tonight for a CJ, but I can’t share that here as the recipient might pop in here.

Last week I was amazed that I scrapped on a Tuesday, this week it is Monday. So easy with this kit, because it has such different papers in it you can go different ways.

It was my first go with the forever violet perfect pearls to colour the thickers from the kit to match. Love white thickers.

I miss clean boys.

 

 

Flippin’ heck…….

I watched something shocking on the internet the other day
Shimelle stood in front of her paper cutter with lots of pretty paper and chopped it up. She was so provocative, and I reckon she knew it too There was no hesitation just chop, chop, chop.
Made me feel quite odd.
So I have put together the kit this morning
this is the plain side

and this is the patterned side..
and now i’m off to chop, chop, chop.
Deep breath and 1, 2, 3.

ok, I'm back and now look at it!

Pink

Pretty pink paper, too sweet for me so I added some black, red and kraft to dial it down a bit.

I loved the prompt today, lots to think about.

Celestial Laura

Celestial adj: belonging or relating to heaven or supremely good.

She’s both. (She is Celestial Willow on UKS-fact fans)

She is the next Dr Who’s assistant or at least she should be – geeky sci-fi nerd that she is (and rightly proud of it).

Instead of doing that she has decided to marry the very lovely John and have the most gorgeous baby.

Dr Who’s loss.

The tea cakes were celestially good as well. This is Laura at the retreat in March when she was still cooking up the lovely Adam. I cannot quite fathom that he is 6 months old now and I haven’t been able to get to them for a cuddle with him. Trust me when I say that he is adorable.

So here is the layout. I had to go with colours from that lovely top and so that means some pretty papers.

 I used BG Sweet Threads. In the class we have been looking at pretty paper, what we like and how do we use it. This range of papers have been so good to me.

I love Basic Grey, they were one of my favourites and although I have ventured off into other ranges…I found this recently.

I ordered Sweet Threads thinking they were going to be one thing, they arrived and they weren’t and to be honest I wasn’t overwhelmed (you know like sometimes you can get when the pizza box arrives ).

It has been the most oft used though, 6 layouts so far. There were only 2 pages that I really had a problem cutting up, the rest were a breeze. That got me to thinking about the difference between pretty paper and useful paper. I do tend to buy a collection of useful and then a collection of pretty.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the Celestial Laura. I am so happy and proud to call her my friend

An unexpected day at the beach.

 

I was incredibly irritated at work on friday, frantically trying to make a dent in my workload when Mum rang.

“20 degrees and sunny tomorrow, beach?”

Just the thought of it chilled me out. At the beach I relax, I take deeper breaths and smile more.

The boys had to be tucked in quite early on saturday night they ran and ran. They had a play fight for about an hour as well.

So satisfying watching children wear themselves out.

Going…

Going…

Gone.

Then they bizarrely spent about 20 minutes running to and fro the stream with bags filled with water (who needs buckets? we forgot ‘em!) to try and make Minty a water bowl.

Don’t hold your breath Minty, and be very glad that they are not your sole carers.

Not their brightest moment…..as my mum taught me, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all….so moving on.

Ali carried on with scrabbling a diversion in the stream whilst Louis, well Louis had a rest.

Then down to the sea for a few waves. There was an amazing rip, as the smaller waves were peaking they were ripping along so fast your eye could only just keep up with it.

Beautifully busy…

The dark marks in the sand was a mussel bed, some with barnacles on them.

And the sparkly water that finally persuaded me to update my blog!

I love layout fodder

 

 

 

A Pretty Paper Party….

…..and a pretty new blog background for the party!
The inspirational Shimelle has a new party planned for this month starting on monday and it is is *gasp* about cutting up our pretty paper. As my good friend Laura would say *boggle*.

I know I wont be able to make a layout a day but I am going to try and do three a week…….mmmmm we’ll see.
I have been inspired to change the blog by this pretty pink and white theme and this photo of sparkles on the water I snapped at the beach today
If you want to join the prettiness then Shimelle has the details.
The more the merrier I should think.

October Colour Combo - autumn infused

Amy gave us a choice of three combinations this month and I plumped for this one.

That burnt red is incandescent, against that steely blue and grey it is vibrant and very, very cool.
I prefer the cooler side of the spectrum and so I started thinking about what sort of layout or project would suit this as a backdrop.
I decided on a layout and then decided on my photo of Louis, my eldest son, taken fairly recently; he was being told a tale from his Nanny

Enthralled. I loved the look on his face so I scooched back and snapped him.
I do believe that this will be a photo that I will treasure (and scrap) till the end of my days.  I also very much need to add that this layout looked quite sparse until I saw Sian's layout here that I loved and inspired me to add the strips which has finished it off. Thanks Sian.
So usual colour combo blog hop info applies. I hope you got here from Bunnyfreak’s fab blog-she’s clever, well you know that if you have come from there.
If you made it all the way here then many thanks, I appreciate it.
Here is the full blog hop.
www.abstractsmixedwithextracts.com
http://suealthouse.blogspot.com
http://xnomads.typepad.com
http://michelleroycroft.blogspot.com
http://throughthecameralens.typepad.com/
http://snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com
http://scrapyourlife.net
http://spud-pickle.blogspot.com/
http://curlyscrapbooker.blogspot.com
http://1200somemiles.blogspot.com
http://sugarandscrap.blogspot.com
http://alyssephotographs.blogspot.com
http://istampscrapcraft.blogspot.com
http://handmadebykirsty.blogspot.com
http://adriennefalzon.blogspot.com/
http://helenascreativemaven.blogspot.com
http://digipage-blog.everything-digital-scrapbooking.com/
http://scribblesstickingstitchingstroking.blogspot.com/

LSNED:Done.

I am so so pleased I finished it….I really didn’t think I would as I had so many to catch up on. I didn’t do it one week and I couldn’t do it the next week so I had 15 days to catch up on.

I had made notes on my calendar about the day and I made 8 pages very, very simply.

I enjoyed the whole thing (apart from the stress of being behind )

I have made it into a set on Flickr.

A couple of the pages i’m most happy with.

I will enjoy this class over the years and will look forward to thinking of new formats to do it in.

But for now I’m so pleased it’s done.

4x6 Photo Love: Alex in Legoland

Alex’s 7th Birthday….we were going to go to Plymouth Aquarium and then out of nowhere he became obsessed with lego, I mean crazy obsessed, he wanted the laptop to browse the shop for hours.
I managed to get a deal for Legoland with a stay-over and we went.
I had so many photos, Shimelle’s 4x6 Photo Love Layout was perfect for this. I have so many occasions where the photos could be better or there are too many to decide which one sums up the event best.
This layout idea is perfect for this.

I used Bo Bunny Timepiece, a piece of patterned paper for a background which I hardly ever do  
Some acetate as I didn’t have an overlay as in Shimelle’s example.
Then layered up two pieces of cs with the 8 photos, journalled and then built up the ‘descriptive’ photo on the front.



It was an amazing weekend. Sometimes these things don’t live up to the hype or, in my experience, the children can play up. They didn’t, they were angels. I don’t often get to say that out loud, so i’ll say it again. They Were Angels.
Next time, they will have something to live up to. Uh-Oh.