The passing of time.

When the family's new baby entered the world on her Auntie Kate's 14th birthday it was only a matter of time before the comparisons began..well for me anyway. And then there was the photographs, I found two sets of great photos, both taken on 7th March, only 14 years apart:

A few evenings with 'easy tea' and from 8pm playing with my new Fiskars embossing sheets, my so far rather under-used Cuttlebug and some of my favourite Core d'Inations core papers and new favourite Distressed Inks has resulted in these pages...

and here's some detail from the 1997 page..ooops, just some ribbon to add  on the tags xx

Long week!

Lots happened but not sure most of it is worth blogging! Work has been mad busy and on top of that we had our yard tarmaced, it was a week long job and took 14 wagons worth of the black stuff.

Funniest moment was after our veteran cat Joey decided to play Mr Cool and walk across the just laid layer.. talk about hot tin roof!  Early evening he was spotted again, walking very gingerly along the concrete at the very edge, tentatively touching the black every now and then for fear of being caught out the second time..!  And for all the cat lovers, he was fine.. no one puts Joey in a corner!  Today in the sun he was seen enjoying the warmth, so he wasn't off sides with us for long.

Best news yesterday was that Kate and two of her friends got 90% plus, Distinctions in their Grade 5 acrobatics exams. They were in the exam for almost 45 minutes and it was a tense time, they're all friends but a couple of times Kate has missed a grade by just one point, so happy this year they all got equal recognition.
The tears as they all came out the door made your heart stop, but so good that they all used the adrenalin of the exams to achieve some really hard tricks and stretches..


Jordan and I had to go to Truro in the week and I took the chance to go to the Range for some crafty shopping (!)  Loving a bargain I bought some Fiskars embossing sheets which were reduced, thinking they'd double up for masking with inks etc...but on closer inspection at home, and thinking more clearly I realised that I really now need a framework for them, so promptly got myself one of those yesterday! 

Buy in haste, repent at leisure.. maybe that should be one of my cannibalised mottoes! But to be honest, I've been playing with them and have got some nice results, so I'm sure they'll not be quite the White Elephant I'd feared... so watch this space. (I have plans to do 'easy teas' this week while my man is on his travels, so I can get some serious scrapping done..)

Ooops..again!

I think that's already been the title of a blog entry..Ooops!..the word itself seems to be the story of my life!

Again, I digress.. forgot to tell you about the layouts we did yesterday.. before the round robin extravaganza!

We took 6x6 (quarter pages) of card stock and speed scrapped them with masks, Shimmerz and stamping. It was a little bit random for me initially as I quite like to be in control of how it is all going to come out, (like that should be a surprise to anyone?) but I had an idea in mind (our new baby's birth-day) and the pictures ready to go.

In the background I also wanted to use words from the song 'What a Difference a Day makes..' and I did these in inks around the pictures. This is a new stamp I had from Karen, I'm sure it'll be well used, a little girl with the words 'Once Upon a Time'

As usual I couldn't let it go without some evening additions, and Col falling asleep watching Aircrash Investigation or some other crash, bang, wallop channel made it the ideal time!  I fixed the 6x6 layouts to 12x12 card and have embossed a few bits to finish it off. It's a little busy but I think Lisa will like the fact it has lots of photos..

p.s. the embossed bits not fixed yet.. need to get a needle to open the glue!!

Nice change today..

... and a change is as good as a rest they say...so I should be well rested by the end of the month!   I get quite bored when the weekends, and weeks too really, follow the same old routine. So today and the forthcoming few weeks will be quite enjoyable, even if mad busy!

Kate finally got her Christmas present of going to 'model school' today. As usual for a teen, she was out all day yesterday (local festival day at Helston Flora) and not quite organised this morning, but JB and I sorted her (for sorted, read bossed her about a bit) and she looked quite a classy little chick when we delivered her this morning.  JB and I got an hour in Truro, some splash / dash retail therapy, home to do chores and then I fetched Kate again later.  

I think she enjoyed it, as ever with something you've waited for for a while, it doesn't always deliver in the 'wow, zap, kappow' way we hope, but I think it was worth doing, she met some other nice girls and learnt a few things. 

It'll be nice to see the pics we get in a few weeks. Kate has done several shoots for her pal 's 'A' level course so it'll be interesting to compare the 1500 we laready have with the ten or twenty from the 'pro'... 

Oh, and two days in a row we've had fresh tuna for our tea.. well subconsciously I think it's my way of making up to Col for not getting him to the Maldives for a while .. just so much to do here (tarmac next week, sheds  and extensions to build, boats to go fishing in, sons to send away to sea..) 

Pops brought the latest catch today..(!)..and I just had to share this little piece with you.. all say ahhhhh...it's exactly as it came out of the pack..xxx

(Amazing too, that whilst I'm playing 'taxi' all the sorting / digging / remodelling back home gets done.. so I reckon catering is a small price to pay eh?)

Phew!

It's been a busy weekend, non-stop doing stuff, even when at home it's feeding the masses (as ever) and making sure the wash pile is done (as ever!)  The F1 is on TV and I've had a couple glasses of wine, so it must be blog time! (I do follow it, but some days it's just too long a race!)

Yesterday we had our monthly scrap session, it was almost a full house, 9 and Linda in the morning, and 8 in the afternoon.  Great fun. To celebrate National Scrapbooking Day we had a picture taken, then did a round robin kind of thing, each adding elements to the layouts as they came past. In the end we took home the finished layout we'd started. Not quite the lazy Saturday afternoon many of us had gotten used to, but it made us kind of work together (or not and a lot of fun and banter was had by all!

This is the layout I started and ended up with.. well, the lavender was almost 'neutral' wasn't it?

I started with some Shimmerz paints and let it run down the page but it's been lost in the development of the page somewhere! And at last found a use for the painted hand print vellum too (but I've kept a little for the pics I plan to take of the kids painting!)

Everyone was very kind and we all tried to complement the layouts with our additions, a real 'we-job' as Mum would say..

P.S..on yesterday.

Kate's beautiful self-depracating humour rose to the surface this morning.

Nicely tanned overnight she came down for school and looked even browner with the white shirt. (Lucky it has few days to wear down before Sunday's model day...)  Jordan observed that Kate's shirt was inside out and then a little later I noticed her strap top underneath was also inside out...'Oh hell,' ,she commented..'I've really turned into an Essex girl, my brain has just cratered too..'

...ahhh, the powers of televison and the old jokes, always the best. (and apologies to those who may hail from Essex, almost made a life there myself once!)

Attitude...what?... me?

It was a real girlie afternoon, I took our Kate to town and got her a spray tan, all in readiness for her Christmas present this coming weekend... Model School!  I know it's rather indulgent but she works so hard to make herself look nice and it does kind of add a little to the whole experience..doesn't it) She got an 8%, apparently your percentage depends on your skin tone.. and the county you live in...ala Essex orange!

No, it should be great fun and hopefully give her a little taste of how life could be. (I just hope that the people running the course emphasise how a good education is also a necessity for the budding globe-trotting model girl. It's quite hard at the moment to motivate her much where education is concerned, so maybe a little encouragement to be more fluent in French or something would be quite timely!)

Anyway, as ever I digress.... en route to the beauty shop we called in at New Look, always a quick sortie to check out the latest additions.   In the shoe aisles I swapped ducks with an old friend of our family, I guess she's known me since I was about six or seven and once used to pick violets for mum & dad.  It was great to catch up and we swapped news and stuff, agreeing that us girls definitely love being able to buy ten years with the odd hair colour here and there.

Looking at Kate I introduced her as my 'baby girl' and my friend laughed and told her that she used to know me 'when I had an attitude'....'attitude?' asked Kate, she was made up to think that I used to be a bolshy teenager myself.  Not that I deny it, maybe that's why on the one hand I give mine a fair bit of lee-way, and on the other hand I rein them in, remembering the scrapes I might have got myself in at that age!

So much for nostalgia eh...sometimes other people have memories which bite you on the bum!

Our 'Ennnereeeee...

Interestingly I had a little more nostalgia for my teenage years again this weekend. Usually reserved for my true 'child'hood but the death of dear Henry Cooper, the heavyweight boxer and much loved Brut 'splash it all over' man took me right back to my mid teens... late nights watching boxing matches with Mum & step-Dad Phil in Mousehole. 

But boxing wasn't the half of it.. I also found myself knowing football scores (1973 FA Cup Sunderland beat Leeds!...2:1... I think) and staying up very late for the Torvill & Dean ice dancing. Funny how you get swept along with other people's enthusiasm.. and in those days there wasn't generally late night telly so it was quite a deal to stay up and have something to watch!

One Boxing Day I remember Mum rushing upstairs to let me know that another hero, Mohammed Ali was on 'This is your Life'..classic telly. Sadly I have just calculated that I think this was Christmas 1978...oh if I ever get dementia my mind is going to be a complete blank..I use it so much for back calculating all the time!!

Talking dementia, an interesting little mini-series on BBC this weekend, 'Exile' with John Simm (always broody and fab!) and Jim Broadbent (understated, but just as fab!)  Colin & I have so understood the frustration, the tough love and the humour, looking forward to last episode tonight.

And on reflection for the weekend.. a 'weekend that was'..started with a family TV session, oohing and ahhhing about those dresses at the Royal Wedding, ending with more ooooohs as we hear that Osama Bin Laden is dead..all pretty major news really and I guess the fall-out from both events will remain to be seen..