Just one more.....

What has happened to the sun????
It has done nothing but rain, rain, rain for the past two days - its so dark and gloomy outside that we haven't dared to venture out.
Instead the guys have had friends over to hang out here and all have given the Wii a good bashing.
Whilst they have been battling their way through the Olympics, I decided to give their bedrooms a blooming good sort out.
I turfed out a pile of old toys, as they have lain forgotten for a few years now.
My intention was to pass them on to a friend, as she has children a good few years younger than mine - so I bagged up the boxes in preparation of dropping them off to her house.
The bags were left in the living room as I went back upstairs to tackle the pit under Bobs bed.
As I was busy debunking his room I could hear the guys laughing down stairs - I thought they were on the Wii....NOPE! They had unpacked the boxes and were playing with their old games!

This little chap was J's favourite game to play with about 3-4 years ago and he has given the guys hours of fun whilst the rain has been beating down outside.
The aim of the game is to balance as many of the the pizza toppings on top without the pizza base toppling over!
They have been betting sweets, with the loser having to give everyone a pick of his mix - we never played by those rules before - I guess the guys have adapted the rules to make it a little more fun now they are older.

Maybe we will keep him for a little while longer???

With the guys rooms all clean, tidy and dejunked I settled down to a little scrappy session with the August Bad Girls kit.
I seriously adore the shabby vintage feel of this kit, and although its not my normal style of scrapping, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time working with the products - in fact I am on a scrapping high!

Ive managed to create 7 layouts and 2 projects - and still have a pile of stash left to complete quite a few more!
The kit goes live at 10pm PST on the 31st - that's 5am for those in the UK - set your alarms girls, because I have a feeling this kit and the 4 addons will be gone pretty darn quick!

I'm off to go play with a fat little Italian Pizza maker.
Have fun.
T.x.x.x

Scrapfest!

Ive really got the Scrapping bug and have spent the past two days up to my eyes in so many pretty things - some of them very old and some so precious that I had to do something with them.....I couldnt leave them in a box hidden away to be forgotten - so they have been scrapped!
The full versions will go live real soon as they are all for Bad Girls.....in the meantime I'll leave a few peeks -



I need to go tidy my scrapping space now as it resembles the local rubbish tip!
Have fun
T.x.x.

Sunday Night Catch Up!

What with the guys home and the glorious sun shining, Ive been filling my days by having fun with them out and about.
On Friday Bobs went to Cornwall for the day with some mates to go check out Mount Hawk Skate park - from all accounts its an excellent place to skate and it looks like we will be heading down that way for a long weekend, in the not so distant future, so that both boys can go skate :D
With Bobs out for the day J and I treated ourselves to a slap up brekkie before heading into town to go shop for Wedding attire!
The guys are all suited and booted and ready for their Godparents big day, which is just under 7 weeks from now :)
Ive managed to find me a nice posh frock - I love the Monsoon sale :D I just need some shoes and accessories now :)

All weekend we have chilled out - pottered in the garden - Hubs is in DIY mode so has been busy with his Workmate whilst I have scrapped and fed and watered the gang.
I love weekends like these when we have nothing else to do but just meander at our leisure :)

The Bad Girls Birthday Bash was fun and if you get yourself over to the message board you still have time to grab a glimpse of the classes designed by the DT members.
All of the classes have a Birthday theme, so I created a little Birthday Gift Bag for my class -

I'm excited to see the Bad Girls August kit reveal in a few days time, as we have not one, but three new DT members joining us - Heidi Sonboul, Emilie Ahern and Bethany Kartchner - all are so very talented and I'm sure they will bring loads of inspiration to all the Bad Girl's out there.
I cant share any of my LO's just yet as they are DT assignments - with me on top of all commitments I plan to do a little extra scrapping this week - but I can share these little snippets -

Ive been scrapping with some of Nana's old photographs and I'm really enjoying using them - in a weird kinda way it makes me feel closer to her, if you know what I mean?
Its hard to describe how I feel in words - but she loved to look at my albums and would spend hours telling us the stories behind her photographs - I'm just so very thankful that she made notes on the back of her images because I can now share her stories with my boys.

I created this page using My Minds Eye PP's and embellishments from Chatterbox for Scrapdreamie, using a photograph of Hubs Grampy and Nana - it was taken whilst they were on their honeymoon in 1953 - they toured around the Devon coastline and stopped of at a place called Beer - it was always a bit of a family joke because Grampy was known to like a drop of the real stuff in his younger days ;)

Scrapping with Nana's old photos has made me even more determined to dig out and use up the back log of our own family photo's - although J isn't too happy with me because I have scrapped these '98 photos of him having his first kiss at age 2!!!

Whoo hooo!
T.x.x.x.x

Sneaky!

This wave of sunshine that has hit the UK makes a welcome change to the horrid rain we have had of late.
Fingers crossed it lasts throughout the next 6 weeks because the guys are having a blast outside all day enjoying plenty of fresh air with their buddies.
I guess because we live the closest to the beach it makes our house the perfect drop off point....not that I mind - I love to hear the sound of laughter and listening to them plotting their sneaky little plans of trickery and frivolity - which usually involve someone getting wet!

In between feeding the masses and taxing the guys around Ive been a Bad Girl and have been scrapping :D


Have fun.
T.x.x.

Being Bad!

Mr Postie paid me a visit and delivered to my doorstep my favourite type of mail.....

my August Bad Girls kit has arrived and WOW! it is a stunner with papers and embellishments which are just simply adorable......the guys are out with friends this afternoon so I'm going to take advantage and indulge myself in an afternoons creativity in the sunshine :D



I've been a busy gal over the past couple of days finalising some of the Fun & Games to be had at the Bad Girls Birthday Bash Croppin Party which is taking place on Saturday 26th July over on the Bad Girls message board.

With classes, challenges and the guarantee that there will be loads of FUN to be had, why not pop over and join us for what promises to be a PARTY you wont want to miss.

Happy days.
T.x.x

Lets go Fly a Kite

With the guys getting to that age when they become embarrassed to be seen out and about with their parents, Hubs and I are starting to feel a little redundant.

The events of the past few weeks have made us even more aware of just how precious our time together is and we want to make sure we give our boys the best memories ever.

Nana's passing has whisked Hubs back to his childhood, as he relives his own childhood memories by looking through the old family photographs. The guys have spent hours with him sorting through box after box of tattered and torn images of the years gone by.

J found some old and very discoloured Polaroid pictures of Hubs and his Sis when they were "little Tackers".....Gramps and Nana had taken them up on to Exmoor to go and fly kites and Hubs remembered that day 30+ years ago as if it was just yesterday.

I'm so thankful that, although Nana had boxed up the hoards of photos, she had written brief descriptions on the back of almost every image......information that we would have never known and all of which would have been gone forever if she hadn't taken the time to document it.

So with Hubs sharing his tales of his kite flying days J asked if we could go fly a kite and we did just that!

With the picnic basket packed full of delicious treats we headed off to Exmoor for the day and managed to find the exact same spot Hubs and his Sis had been whisked off to all those years ago in Grampys old Morris Minor Traveller.




We had so much fun and on the way home the guys declared that hanging out with "the oldies" wasn't so bad after all :D

Scrapping wise, in between entertaining visitors who had travelled down to pay their last respect to Nana, I managed to get 3 LO's completed.

This page was for Scrapdreamie using the wonderful Eclectique range from Chatterbox


and just a sneak of another page as its not gone live yet.


My Pencil Lines LO for this week uses a real mix of product from Sassafrass, 7 Gyspises, My Minds Eye, Making Memories, Urban Lily, Cherry Arte, American Crafts, Doodlebug and Chatterbox - I'm trying to use up my scraps as my newly revamped scraproom is bursting at its seams and I really need to use up some stash!



The guys have broken up from school for the Summer and both are all geared up to go hit the beach for the day as the sun is shining at last.

Have fun.
T.x.x

Healing

Life is slowly beginning to resemble some sort of normality for us.
To say the past couple of weeks have been easy would be a lie....they have possibly been the longest and hardest for us to endure.

Our heartache has been eased momentarily by the treasures we have found in amongst Nana's belongings.
As we have unpacked the treasure boxes of her life, we have laughed, we have remembered, we have cried and then laughed some more, only for the heartache to begin all over again.....Nana will be missed so very much by us all, but as she would say "life has to go on" - we will never ever forget her or the love she gave us.

Our hearts may begin to heal, but I don't think they will ever be fully mended.

T.x.x.x

This and that

With my time being taken up elsewhere I've not had any spare time to update my blog....sadly we lost Hubs Nana last week and my days have been filled with all of the gubbins that need to be done when someone passes away.

It would have been her 89th birthday yesterday and we had made plans to celebrate her day by treating her to afternoon tea at one of her favourite places.....but with Nana celebrating with the angels instead, we decided we would still go - but it just didn't feel the same without her sitting alongside us :(

We are both feeling totally devastated and are finding it difficult to believe that she is gone :(The boys are heartbroken - J especially - which totally threw us as ASD kids - according to the thousands of books out there - aren't supposed to react to death in a typical fashion - which simply proves you can never quite believe all that you read.

Scrapping has been put on the back burner for me for a few more days as I turn my time to much more important affairs.

In the meantime I'll share some recent pages that I created for Karen from Charmed Cards and Crafts using totally divine papers from Prima Marketing.

I dug out my watercolours and played with some Prima Paintables.....the butterflies on this LO are Heidi Swapp mini masks which I folded and covered in Stickles before adhering to the page.




This LO is created using 3 Prima Paintables - I handcut the patterned detail from two other pages before painting and adhering them, using 3d foam tape, to this LO. The butterfly was created using a rubon which I applied to acetate before cutting out and securing to the LO.

Quick! Call the Scrapbook Police!! I have scrapped this photo before - maybe 2-3 times - but never for my own album - I cant help it if Grace has a huge family who all want their own page featuring her for their albums!


A quick 6x12 page to mark my 40th year of life!

I created this LO as part of the BAD GIRLS BIRTHDAY BASH Scraplift Challenge.

PP's are a mix of Rusty Pickle and Urban Lily with a combo of Scenic Route, Cherry Arte and Heidi Swapp alphas to create the title.....the ribbon is from Fancy Pants and the buttons a mix of Basic Grey, Doodlebug and others from my stash box.
The Scraplift Challenge is in full swing with the members of the message board taking part all month long......with classes and plenty of FUN and games galore why not pop over and join in the celebration of Bad Girls 1st Birthday.

I haven't yet shared my LO's using the bumper Bad Girls Birthday Kit....

I sorted through some old photographs and found this photo of the guys with their buddies Matty and Jon....the photograph was taken in 1999 and yet it only seems like yesterday that the guys were playing in the park!

Bobs loves to pull tricks - especially if they are slick tricks....my guy would skate 24/7 if I allowed him to!




A blast from the past - J was just 5 when these photographs were taken - they show him meeting his cousin, "J2", for the very first time.


A couple of the pages are now making their way across the pond to be used by Sassafrass on their stand at CHA :)

Time for bed!

T.x.x.x

:(

To know you are really truly loved is such a precious blessing.
Love is stronger than death even though it can not stop death from happening.
No matter how hard death tries it will never separate people from love.
Death can't take away our memories either.
In the end, love and life will always be stronger than death.

RIP Nana.

:(