Picture of the Week x 2

Ok,  turns out I never got round to actually posting last weeks picture! 
Mad weekend here - I was in the middle of writing my apologies Friday night for not posting last week's Picture when my little girl woke up, struggling to breathe and very upset.. long story short they loaded us up in an ambulance and sent us off to our local hospital, put her on a nebuliser (twice) and admitted her overnight.  By the time they moved us to the children's ward she had calmed down enough to be checked over.. turns out she is suffering from croup, which thankfully is responding very well to the steroids they gave her - but needless to say we were terrified and very stressed out!
Unfortunately having declared her fine to be discharged at 11am, we then had to wait round, stuck on a ward with a much better {and bored!} 1 year old, until gone 4pm for the paperwork, missing a friend's wedding in the process :-(  Although my lovely friend was very understanding and was texting me right up to an hour before she was due to walk up the aisle to check on Hannah - bless her! 
And another friend who, although not a scrapbooker, understands my hobby quite well, saved me all our placecards and some of the table decorations etc, so I can still create a page for my wedding album!  :-)  I am blessed to have some very lovely friends!

So, despite all that, I am determined to post on time for this one...so here is this week's Picture(s) of the Week...
A Jaffa Cake inspired birthday cake!

I am quite proud of this one.. Hubby really doesn't like icing as he says it is too sweet (no such thing in my book) and so usually resists having a birthday cake but this year I insisted that he had to have *something* for his 30th and I cannot abide a bare sponge cake - they just look a bit boring, so we compromised and I put together this beauty - plain sponge, thick orange jelly and lovely dark chocolate.  I think it went down very well but I have been told by hubby that I need to make a few tweaks - which he will happily taste-test - apparently it will take several tries to make the orange more tangy and he accepts that the chocolate may also need altering (I used 85% so really dark which suits him but not necessaily anyone else!)

~~~~~

And... here is the original post for last week!
My picture this week is a bit late as I have been caught up in birthday celebrations - my own and hubby's too!  Hubby turned 30 this week although he is strongly denying it - mutterings of "I only just turned 21, I cannot possibly be 30 already"!  I had a lovely birthday, the morning spent having fun with the family, the afternoon at Miss Emily's first birthday party and then back round Mum's for dinner in the evening.  Then later in the week we went shopping at Hobbycraft and I have been thoroughly spoilt with lots of lovely new stash :)  Can't wait to play with it all!

The photo shows the start of one of my family's "mad moments"!  After opening all my birthday cards and working our way through monstrous sized slices of cake - VJ made me a birthday cake and she can't do anything "normal" sized - we wandered out to the garden.  Miss Hannah demanded we play ball and before we knew it we'd gone from throwing around a soft baby ball, to a full on game of football and then an impromptu 'volleyball' ending when Mum decided to drop the washing line down in the middle of the game!  Loads of fun!!

C x

A second challenge page..

I am very impressed with myself, as normally I *intend* to follow a sketch or do a challenge and somehow never quite get round to it or never finish it in time, and yet here I am with a second layout for Shimelle's challenge to use a border between photos...

I also had a go at creating my own embellishment out of bits and pieces left over or lying around and I'm really pleased with the result, even if it is quite simple.

I have had these photos in my To Scrap box for ages - they are both photos of the first time our Dads held Hannah after she was born and I only recently looked at them together and realised the look on their faces was so similar!  The top photo is my Dad when we were still in hospital and the bottom is Dean's Dad, who lives in the US and flew over to meet Hannah in the July, so the photos were taken about three months apart.

Back tomorrow (hopefully) with my Photo of the Week...

C x

Document 2011 - and my first ever Challenge!

First up, Shimelle's Challenges...

For National Scrapbooking Day, Shimelle posted a series of challenges and I decided to try some of them, unfortunately with being ill, I have only actually completed one so far, but I am holding out hope that I may manage a few more!

Challenge 1 was to use a full page of patterned paper

This challenge worked perfectly as I have had this paper for a while but couldn't bring myself to use it.  I always feel wasteful using patterned paper as a background as you hide most of it behind photos and journalling (or I make my pages to avoid covering it - see below!), but for this page I used the clipping from the local paper for the journalling so you can still see lots of the gorgeous paper!

I love this photo of Miss Hannah in the bluebell patch so have been looking forward to scrapping it!

and also, a catch up on blogging my current project... As promised, just a little while ago, I have finally got round to taking some pictures of my Document 2011 February pages!!
The envelope page..

The mini-picture pages, including Project 365

  and my feature page, which shows the moving of my craft area out of the nursery and into the corner of our bedroom, now that Miss Hannah is getting bigger and nosier!

Hopefully I will catch up with March and April's Document soon - I have run out of ink (again!) so I am thinking I may need to start ordering my prints online (I'm just so impatient, I hate waiting for pictures when I have pages in mind!)

C x

Photo of the Week

A few days late thanks to poorly baby suffering a rotten cold, which she lovingly gave to me on Sunday, leaving me not up to doing much in the way of blogging or scrapping this weekend, but a Picture of (last) Week

When Carrie met Harry...

My best friend K {finally} had her baby on Thursday evening, a week after her due date.  A very quick labour (2hrs 15 start to finish!) and "little" Harry was born weighing a whopping 10lb 15oz!  Up early Friday morning to make a Congrats card, now that I knew "Sprout" was a boy ( I was betting on a girl so I guessed wrong this time!) and dropped card and present round to proud Papa and new Big Brother D after work Friday, then I patiently waited for K to come home and Saturday morning found me getting my first cuddles in :-) 

He's gorgeous, but definitely doesn't feel like the 5/6lb newborns I've held over the last couple of months (bit of a baby boom going on 'round here!)

Now I'm off to write the post I originally intended to put up today, before remembering that I hadn't finished this one...

C x

Picture of the Week *a day late*

Well, another very busy weekend here, complete with a Royal themed Street Party on Saturday.  The "Royal" street party was actually a cover story and the party was a surprise 70th birthday do for a close friend of our family but it was great fun with a Red White and Blue dress code which made for some interesting outfits!
We've also had a week of Easter egg hunts, a trip to the zoo and lots of outdoor time playing in the garden - I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow!

But, on to the Picture(s) of the Week... I hope you'll forgive the multiple photos, but they are a sequence :-)
On Easter Monday, Miss H learnt to push herself up to standing without holding on to anything! We have had the odd wobbly step for a couple of months now, and she is an expert at whizzing around from chair to sofa to table so we thought it wouldn't be long and then by Friday we had....
Uppp....

 Upppp....

 and awaaayyyy...

No stopping her now! She's up and running!

I am hoping to upload some more scrapbooking pages today too.. probably should post February's Document pages as we are now in May! 

In the mean time.. A sneak peek at some of February by sharing my Project 365 entries...

1^st -                On audit, counting shotguns – sometimes I love my job! :)

2^nd -              Switched Miss Hannah to cow’s milk

3^rd -               Stress-relief baking – chocolate fudge cake

4^th -               Dean was delighted at the arrival of his new tyres

5^th -               Miss H playing on our bed after her bath – blowing raspberries on Daddy!

6^th -               Hannah (& I) got to see Dean’s new toy up and running

7^th -               Very casually sneaking upstairs – no one will notice…

8^th -               Dean made us enchiladas for tea – yummy!

9^th -               First McD’s for Miss Hannah as I met VJ for lunch in town

10^th -            Miss Hannah helped to unpack the shopping, all over the lounge floor!

11^th -            Nice hot bubble bath to relax was followed by a surprise from Dean –a White Hot Chocolate waiting for me in bed!

12^th -            Miss Hannah started having weetabix for breakfast this week

13^th -            Poorly baby has the measles!

14^th -            Valentines cupcakes

15^th -            Dean spent his day off trying to find our bedroom after moving my craft stuff in!

16^th -            Dean had to leave for work before 7 this morning, so Miss H and I headed to Nannie’s for breakfast at 7.30am!

17^th -            A moonlit walk to Nannie’s this evening – a lovely night

18^th -            Big hugs on a visit to D (& Auntie K of course!)

19^th -            I met baby R for the first time – he’s sooo tiny!

20^th -            Daffodils in bloom in my garden J I love spring flowers

21^st -             Lattes at our crop at Rachel’s house

22^nd -           Miss Hannah wore her new shoes for the first time!

23^rd -            Ball-in-a-Box – Miss Hannah’s new favourite game!

24^th -            Finally – coming home in daylight at last (just!)

25^th -            Stealing Mummy’s crisps – straight from the pack

26^th -            We took Kira shopping to Primark as she has out grown all her trousers again, and I bought one or two bits for Miss as well (of course!)

27^th -            Waving Daddy off on a ride out

28^th -            Copying the Music Lady from Baby Club – anything and everything is now a drum!

Back soon with some pages hopefully

C x