One I made earlier..

Almost reached Scrapper's block and threw the lot out... but eventually got together one of my 'busy' pages.. almost a record to scrap them within a week of the event !

Quote for today..

'I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit

in jars and open a jar of it every month.'

....seems a little way away talking of Christmas, but just wanted to keep today's quote. True enough, on days when nothing seems too special and the mundane threatens to destroy our brains, a little Sprinkle of Christmas-ness might be just the ticket!

Mind you, a wood fire and a good film on a wet summer night might be a close second!

Or a long lie in the sun with a great book...hey, sobbed my heart out finishing Lovely Bones last evening.....just what the doctor ordered!

Awe-some!

An over used expression I know, but got up early this morning (yawn,.. what, on a Saturday?) and headed off to Pz where Col, JB, Zac and Simon had already launched the boat. Trish, Kate and I left the warmth of our cars and went along for the good bits... the chat, sun and sea air!

It was Simon's birthday and he had us all in awe as he jumped in to be first to try the doughnutting. Adrenalin junkie that he is he wanted to go faster and every trip was only happy when he had been bucked off.










Zac was our brave soul, kept our end up really well and did three fantastic runs off Roskilly beach.. he's my hero! Back home and lunch eaten at 12.30 it certainly helped give my relentless weary a kick shove to the back of my mind...

Seafood Cafe

The whole family went out to eat last w/e for Lisa's 21st birthday, also for Ross, but generally it is her tagging her celebration onto his.. this time it was her biggie, though she tells me she won't be getting any older than this!

Seafood Cafe in St Ives... ahhh, words are not in existance to compliment the place enough, it is just great, always predictably lovely food.. decided we won't be going anywhere else to eat now, everywhere else is just a compromise and a wish you'd got take-away!

They realised it was a birthday and delivered this beautiful version of Sticky Toffee Pudding!

Birthday layout.

I had a call from great pal Will in the US and he has added himself to my (growing) list of birthdays in July! His is tomorrow 24th and then I remembered our mate Simon, here at STS, on the 25th.. I wish I'd never started this now! (I remember loads of people having July / August birthdays when I was a teenager,, what was it that happened Oct / Nov time which caused this phenomenon?.. oh yeah. dark wet evenings and no TV!)


Anyway, after much poring over the myriad of tiny pics I found of my brother's childhood, (I have Lisa to thank for her photoshop skills) I created this layout, framed it and sent to Ken for his birthday w/e celebration. I quite fell in love with the little boy in the pics, as we played with the images and printed them bigger he came to life and I was sad to think I never really shared my childhood with him... being a late addition just as he went off to secondary school, I was no doubt a novelty / hindrance / tiresome squealer / babe magnet (ahh, he is soo nice bringing his little sis along) to him, in that order!.. not sure how he's describe me now but guess control freak would be in there somewhere!

Oh and by the way, it says.. The Cove-ers, not the Covers as in blankets, as if Cover was our name....you see we lived in the beautiful fishing cove and Dad was happy enough to spend all his days 'down Cove' and we would refer to someone who really belonged there as a 'proper cover'
Hope that sorts it for anyone still awake (Tom!)


.. oh and I still love that heat gun and embossing powder.. Pawel in our workshop was even appreciative of that!

Eight days.

... and 3 birthdays.. in fact if you count my dear brothers, it is 12 days and 4 birthdays!

It has been rather a celebratory week with Ross having his 23rd, Lisa being '21 Today!' and Lilly being one next week. So far we have barbecued for Ross, all the kids together here, laughing and eating, playing rounders and cards... then today we have lunched for Lisa. Next week we will no doubt have cake for Lilly-bug and on Saturday evening someone else is in charge of catering as we go out for the family meal..all eleven of us!

My brother is 60 on 20th, a milestone in itself and I have loved finding photos of his childhood for his daughter who is making a huge collage for him. it was good to be able to show her pics I have found in my Auntie Edna's albums showing him as a boy, pictures most of us hadn't seen before.

He's having a shindig at his place in France in a couple of weeks but I'll try to catch up with him soon, alittle quieter affair I think..and I know I'll not be able to resist a small album of his 'first 20 years' as this is the one easiest for me to document, as after that wives, 8 children and an entourage of grandchildren would be a job too many! And since on his 20th birthday Man Landed on the Moon I guess it would be a fitting place to finish. Ideas for that final layout welcome!

Embossing delight!

I promise this is my last of these layouts.. well, for this week, and until I do the next..!
As you may know I love the double layout, I think it's the Virgo perfectionist coming out in me.. (as it is certainly not exhibited in the not-compulsive cleaning and the not-tidy scrap space is it?) I just love a double page to look complimentary and generally work it that way .. the first 2 pages of my 2009 album are a Christmas Santa and a blue / orange feel summer layout.. and they hurt my head everytime I open the album.. sad I know, but true!

Anyways, this is the second layout to go with LillyBug below. (LillyBug because her first pushchair was called the Bug..why else!) This shows the rarer sighted me and Jordan, generally behind the lens.

I had a quiet evening in the week and experimented with my not-so-new-now heat gun, and discovered again that I love embossing, and it will make my letter using habit worse, but at least now I can create my own instead of covetting other people's...do you think Thou Shalt Not Covet was a commandment made for those who would never learn to scrapbook?!

What a great idea..

Loved the format of landscape type backgrounds that I did a couple more..one double layout using underwater scenes from our holiday (by the way our waterproof shockproof, Lillyproof Olympus is just the best for hols)

Colin's folks had given me lots of the Ocean range form K & Co last Christmas and these were just perfect for our holiday pages. Linda also had the lovely seahorses which we could paint / ink up and these were perfect for accenting the story of Kate's (temporary!) henna tattoo of a seahorse she had done to match the one Tom has.. oh, yes, his IS a dragon.. honest.

Great pics of Col and Zac, they are sooo alike as the pictures show, and so much more than in just appearance....he gets so much pleasure teaching Zac stuff and experiencing the learning with him, and Zac is like a sponge, just soaking up the info.

Just wanted to add this close-up so I can show the background picture I used of my favourite little fish, these yellow stripey reef raiders bounce along the seabed in huge shoals, trying to eat all the little bits and pieces from the coral. Really funny to see the little Dory (ala Nemo) fish getting real cross that their territory is being temporarily invaded by these cheeky raiders.. and all in 4 feet of water.

Scrapilicious!

We got home from Centre Parcs at 6pm on the Friday and by 9pm I had viewed, chosen and printed off a whole new batch of pics for Scrapbooking in Newlyn the next day. I was soooo excited.

I had an email from Linda whilst away talking about her layout ideas for the Saturday scrap..she asked us to prepare a landscape shot for a background / frame effect so while we were out and about I took some pictures to suit this perfectly... on the Saturday morning as we meet there is always a moment when you wonder if you have got the right end of the stick, and then you see what she has prepared and that your pics will fit and it all comes together.. I just love it!

So much to tell..

Sometimes I have a lull in my posting as there has been some big event (generally tinged with sadness) that I find it hard to get past before I can chat away again; then other times, as is the case this time, there has been so much going on I don't quite know where to begin!

Here goes..
We had a terrific week at Longleat Centre Parcs.. it is the longest journey I have driven in a lot of years (how sad is that), but with the aid of good old TomTom (as in Go, not the famous son-in-law!) we got there safely in good time. We arrived to a busy car park and loads of people doing just as we did, holidaying with at least 3 generations together, all getting something nice out of it. (In my case I had 4 of the 5 kids, one son-in-law and a son's girlfriend.. and of course baby Lilly.)


The house was fantastic, 4 en-suite rooms, sauna, steam room, hot tub.. no wonder we spent more than half our time there.. the surroundings were great, lots of deer, squirrels and birds, and the scenery was great, a huge lake, trees as far as you could see..so many opportunites for cycling / wandering etc.

I think everyone came home sporting a proud bruise, ache or pain.....from the cycling, the once a year badminton match, (can you call it a match? I think not..) or most likely the rapids and demon drops in the pool. Lilly loved it all and I read a book and a half in 3 days, which more or less a marker of how relaxing it was.

I did miss Col though, so much... it's so different for me to be the one away, and to have taken all the tribe as well, it must have been quite strange for him too. He said he didn't even open some of the cupboards where I had left enough food for a seige....and I can vouch for that, the sweets were still there on our return.