Loving Ten Second Studio!

I just love having a set of different pictures come together like these. I have often managed to use old and new views of the same places to tell my story and accent the vintage / modern dilemmas in my head!

I have a little to do on these layouts, the B&W pics show the old winch being used by my Dad and pieces of wood in the background because they were in the process of building the new Winch House. And what an event that was with everyone watching, probably on a Staurday afternoon.. unlikley to have been a Sunday!  The colour photo of my Dad shows the old capstan in the background and the landscape pic shows it only a year or two ago, on a Christmas visit.

(Dad, on a summer's day, just before catching the afternoon tide, eating brown bread with a tomato on the side and Cheeko and Mrs Mellonie standing just behind him... footnote for those 'in the know'.. Sarah)

I have held the old photos in with metal corners in case anyone wants copies one day. Carrying through the metal feel I loved the chain and rope effects we could get too.. perfect for my Penberth life! And just how true the lovely quote attached...

And there we have it.. we get back to the reason I started scrapbooking in the first place...Mum had started to have real memory problems and had more or less travelled back to her own childhood, so it seemed marriage and having us kids didn't really figure in the things she really remembered.  I imagined what it might be like if I ever started to forget, if I hadn't written down things about our kids lives, the simple things, the days that came and went, unsignificant, but on our lips each day when chatting. 

And for me, right now, the things I enjoyed and remember from my childhood and the stories I attach to the photos are the ones I enjoy scrapbooking the most....xx

Daffodils / spring layouts.

 

It was a real challenge to find a way to suit my pink / yellow images to the burgundy papers, but call in good old Distress Inks in mustrard and there we are!

Doing what comes naturally?

Sometimes living as an extended family has it's appeal...my latest snapshots of Kate and her two nieces laid out on the sofa, watching TV!

Needless to say at GCSE options night Kate chose Child Development, she just needs someone to put words to what she knows already!

Betty Boop goes scrapbooking!

Having a little bimble 'round town with Jordan after her interview, we couldn't resist a browse in The Works and Rymans, we're both suckers for stationery!

Mind you, I am just as bad about the sale baskets.. and found this half price Betty Boop desk calendar. 

Having scrapbooking on my mind I reckon this would make some lovely little features on some layouts, and the calendar months and even the notes spots will be really nice accents.

Now to find the pictures to match... oh, I think that's the wrong way 'round!

Footnote...mmm, Lisa came by and I showed her, and she suggested maybe I make the whole calendar an altered art project, adding a photo from each month and making notes etc... what a good idea.. and a scrapbook daughter in the making??

Penwith College

Interesting view today whilst waiting for JB when she went for her college interview!

As I was at this site when it was the Girl's Grammar I have always been interested in its growth into the fully fledged Penwith College it is (just about) today. You can only just see a little of the old main building and I was wowed today to sit in the car park facing this new Sennen building. 

All our kids have all spent time there in some way or another so it was noticeable to even the interviewer how relaxed JB was about it...no debate for her as to where to go, and for me, obviously, I like knowing that they too will grow up here and feel comfy in the area they live in.

Friends & family.

Lovely weekend, not least of all because I haven't had to cook! Don't get me wrong, I like cooking, but at the end of a working day it is often a chore, so weekends I either go all out and do big soups, roasts and stuff, or opt out altogether.   Yesterday I was on a long scrap day, had a super lunch thrown in (at Tregenna Castle.. mushroom stroganoff) so we had fresh bread and cheese, and today Col brought home Domino's Pizza after an afternoon car hunting for his Dad. 

The scrapbook day was lovely. caught up with some of the girls from the Newlyn crop and also some old & new faces from Linda's weekend. The family are all so good, they have really embraced me doing this, they never moan that I'm not around or that it's distracting me too much... well, I get the odd bit of ribbing and Tom looks sleepy whenever I start talking about it, and our Ben in the office gets me to talk about scrapbooking Penberth on Mondays so I've got it over for the week, but all in all I think I've been hobby-less for most of my life and it is well deserved and well overdue!

We did quite a few new things and whilst I found the hot resin / melting pot embellishments a little fussy for what you get, I fell in love, big-style with the metal work.  I did two layouts, one of Lilly in the daffodils, again loving using other people's photos(!), and the second layout of my Dad at Penberth.  The metalwork is a bit like brass rubbing but I think it could be the to answer my long standing problem of not having an alphabet to title with! (mmm, and Mother's Day coming soon....)

I think I'm going to have to reorganise my albums sometime. Currently I have a Maldives album and the others are organised by the year I did the layouts, but more and more I think they need sorting into vintage / family history and current history.  I must find time too to photograph and update the blog with some of the layouts I've done.. been ages since I got a decent camera out and took pics of them... all talk, that's me.

The 'three L's'came by today and I got to give baby her first bath.. I just love how at a week old they fit so perfectly into a basin..

...meanwhile Nannie's jewelry was a welcome distraction to big-sis!

So many opportunities..

... so hard to choose!  As Zac returns home from his first interview for the deck officer cadetship he is planning with cruise companies, Jordan changes her mind from month to month and day to day, as to what she'll be when she 'grows up'

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed my link to her blog, but she's really creative and has posted some great pics of her drawings / paintings/ altered art and baking!

Yes, baking... every time we have a family event, (and they're just about monthly in our house) Jordan bakes a cake and gets dessert making... and dreams of being a graphic artist in the advertising industry fade out, and plans to be a pastry chef come to the fore...here's some of her offerings last weekend for Kate's special day..

Spring!




Spring!

 I was going to leave this as a one-word entry, but then I saw today's quote and it cannot go un-noticed as it so suits little one:

'Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.'

Albert Einstein

What goes around..

... comes around!  With the swift arrival of the new baby, Colin away and life in trolley world being fairly hectic, it's been a whirlwind of a week. It always serves to remind me that monotenous and mundane never lasts long in our family, there's always an event coming along to shake us up, whether good or bad, and make us appreciate just what we've got., and not least of all what we have had, and how that moulded us, making us what we are today.

Quite often as our second grandchild was due to make her appearance into the world I marvelled at her parents determination in everything they do, but remembering how at one point we had 5 children under 12  and moved to a derelict farm with two sets of in-laws living alongside us in caravans!  

I recounted to one of my oldest friends last week (in fact we have agreed to be surrogate sisters since Mum died) that only now, as a parent myself, could I realise what my mum must have thought when we announced a fifth baby on the way, a business to run and plans to move house en masse.  My friend told me that mum did think we were crazy, and in fact she wondered whether we would ever stop having children...but I left 5+ to Ken, so Mum ended up with 13 grandchildren in all, not a bad number from just the two of us, the only kids from both Mum & Dad's immediate familes...


Mum with baby JB, Christmastime 1994



.. so, as the teenagers in our family have helped me so much this week to entertain the non-stop dynamo, aka Lilly, I have quietly appreciated all the more the stability and endless patience my own mum had for me: always there to drop children with, always listening, never judging, all for us.... sadly I cannot profess to being as available, as patient, and certainly I am not as good at listening and I do try not to judge...

Luckily perhaps for me, it is a new world and the demands of work and 21st Century living in general will never let the comparison between life for me and my mum be very obvious to anyone else, but I thank her every time I get the chance to pay it forward a generation...and somehow I reckon  maybe Kate will collect from Lisa someday when she gets the chance to 'collect'...xxx

(not sure if this makes sense to anyone.. but as Lisa says, probably no-one reads it anyway!)

Her name was Lyla...

... today she was a show girl!  (sorry, couldn't resist the plagarism.. I think it's one isn't it!)

I tried using one of Jordan's many pics but my old faithful phone pics are just the right resolution for blogging ...xxx

The weekend that was!

It was a hectic Saturday, playing taxi to a teen and then my phone battery croaking mid afternoon, not a good moment when you're waiting on looking after grandchild no.1 when no.2 decides to make itself known!

Anyhow, I got through a good day's scrapbooking at Newlyn in the company of some lovely people and as usual it inspired me to carry on into the evening, not least of all because there was a good deal of creative energy coming from Jordan too... she's been a dynamo all day, cleaning, sorting, cooking...it's Kate's 14th birthday today and she had been planning an epic cake all month.  It was lovely to hang out in the kitchen together, tasting chocolate decorations and finishing great layouts of St Levan Sports Day and Violet Heaven! (pics to follow.. need to find a moment to take and upload)

Kate's birthday dawned, we did the usual breakfast and present thing and we went to buy Zac some stuff for his big cruise company interview later in the week.. he does scrub up well!  He looks tidy even in scruffs, but he'll definitely look the part on Thursday.  Kate bought a cute little cardi, hedging her bets that Lisa would have a baby girl.... and hey presto, she did.

We got the call at 2.30, collected Lilly and I ushered them out of the door.. within the hour a cute sister entered the world.. and not even in the maternity unit!!  As they say, mother & baby doing well!   We were all a little shell shocked here, let alone what proud parents must be feeling!   We ate fresh tuna as a homage to where we'd all like to be (a tropical island in the sun), walked the dogs and texted friends...and it's a lull now before I go do the night shift!

Col's away next week so it'll be all hands to the pump, work to fit in amongst toddler runs and catering.. just what Nan's were made for!  Loving it! xx