Getting organised early..

....is a kind of requirement when you have booked to return from a holiday on the eve of Christmas Eve!  Well it's a good intention and currently I am actually on schedule to be that organised. It will be Jordan's birthday just before we go away and I'm hoping we can do what I've always wanted, and get the house 'Christmassed' to celebrate her birthday too.

So, in all honesty, where am I? Well, under my bed lies the first bag of goodies and a few filler gifts... and today I have measured up the two bowls of fruit, ready to make some Christmas Cakes, probably tomorrow evening. I keep losing the recipe I used to use so I am cannibalising a couple I found on the BBC website...I really like including black treacle as I am sure it makes it darker and essentially 'more Christmassy'.

Funny, sitting here writing this I am getting quite excited and the thought that I may even have done some of those special preparations you see on TV and in everyone else's house is so good.... can you hear the undercurrent of pressure here, to create that all singing, all dancing event which is almost destined to failure due to the unrealistic expectations we always have before we have started! 

But I will not be deterred..consider this the first Christmas blog for the year.

Sport.

I just noticed Karen's photo challenge this week is sport, not something I often encounter, unless of thr verbal kind.. and emailing too, that kind of sporting banter gets me into a fair bit of trouble too.. but I do always think I should do more exercise.. blah blah.

So, no sport image from my camera today....but the day cannot go by without mention of Marco Simoncelli. Breakfast and a cuppa in our bed, settled back down to watch the MotoGP as is our want of a Sunday when it's on...but within minutes the story which unfolded has stayed with us all day, the horrendous crash which took Marco Simonceli's life..he was a personality and a half, a rising star in the highest level of the sport, gladiators every one of them, a tragedy x

http://plus.autosport.com/free/feature/3972/toby-moody-remembers-marco-simoncelli/

Last few bits..

I can see I'm going to have to tweak on the pc later, just can't get the pics the right sizing..but still, they do beat my phone offerings!

I have played with some metal work and this is a date addition I should add to the last layout..I'm not sure if I like the distressed sanded one or the 'clean' version yet, but I am loving Ten Second Studio stuff..(hint, Santa x)

I did work on another layout last time, it was a single page, but on a Dear Photograph type theme, just featuring, as I often find myself doing, a then and now pair of pictures. The old pic is a little faded but maybe for the best as I am very short skirted, sitting on a bridge...(mmm, aged 13...sorry Kate for nagging you these days!)

White Gate then &now

Almost there..

October at Just Scrapbooking was great, I took Ross' girlfriend along, she's doing art at Uni and got really absorbed in a layout..amazing the effect some inks and paper can have on you, it's a cross between total relaxation and full mental attention, sometimes I come home exhausted... yeah, like therapy!

The theme was music and incorporated a 45 single, though my kids didn't know what I meant when I said that. Amazing, they won't get having a film processed either will they, just lucky JB is doing photograohy 'A' so she is actually doing dark room work (and loving it)

I worked backwards as I was keen to use the great pics we took out at Logan Rock, the last trip in the boat where Zac and Kate went right into the rocks, I adore it there, it is so majestic and I really do get some kind of recharge from being there, esp on the sea side.

The song was hard to find but I plumped for words from You Raise Me Up..the page has been flattened a bit in my album which is almost full for this year, but hope you get the idea.

Devil is in the detail..

..or so they say.. and it's a devil of a job getting the tablet equivalent of the right click to come easy!  But hey, whatever..the manual is a pdf so you have to read it, then exit it to see what it means in practice..I know, maybe you should get the manual up on your pc so you can read it whilst playing with the tablet... yeah, right!

Oh, where was I? Ah, yes, detail...I used up some of the clothes labels I have had stashed away and they worked into this surf layout perfectly. I have been promising Ross his album now for a while, but the more I scrap the longer each page takes...
and don't you just love the cloud stamp..x

How is it?

..that we have been without a computer in our kitchen for the past three weeks (it lives above the boiler which became very old, infirm and subsequently died), so during all the upheavasl Ihaven't been blogging,I say because I had no pc to take pics from...but now I am blogging off my tablet, along with some pics taken on it... but the question reains why I did not take them before and get going... who knows.. it's a strange old world..

So I'm not going to write too much for the first post, as i need to check out how thisis thing works.. and dear Zac is too far away to cry 'help!' and hear any decent re

 Okay, so I'm having a few probs sizing these, but hey..they are the two layouts I did in September. The theme was summer collage and we used strips of all kinds of paper, I tried to keep mine relevant, strips from Boardmaster ads, surf events and even old RipCurl posters..then we covered them to bind the look together and lost almost all the detail.I wasn't sure if I liked that but when I revisited the page in October it all came together, esp with the fab little cloud stamp I borrowed from Linda...why does she always have the best ever stamps!

th

Catch up challenges..

.. I am trying to keep up with Karen's photo challenges in a slack kind of way, but that's the way I am, I have it in my head all week, have a few ideas and then do nothing except post some bits.. usually late, but in the spirit of the thing anyways. I am no great photographer but think that the challenges at least give some inspiration for blog entires .. so thanks Karen!

.. we have had a great weekend.. Zac came home... and to explain the post below..no, Mandy, not too much wine (well not at lunchtime Saturday anyways)... it was the result of Zac showing me how to rationalise my blogger / Google stuff on my new tablet. He took a pic and we did a dummy post, but there it stayed, and will do, a nice memory of hanging out with my boy when he came home.

We did just that.. hung out, ate and drank and all learnt lots about how things will be for him (and consequently us) in the next few years...when he's qualified he reckons it will be four months on / two months off.. and you can imagine there will be a few things reorganised here to fit in with his home time.. weddings, Christmasses and babies maybe..!!!

Yesterday we made the most of the Indian Summer, the hottest weekend in October in years, and went out in the boat. Out the back of St Michaels Mount, laying in the sun, more eats, more chat./.. mmm, if only we had the wine too... mental note for next year!

On the way in we had to anchor up and wait for the tide.. I took this great shot of a water-skier going through a great sky..it's not great quality as (the photographer that I am) I had no memory card and a duff battery in the camera, so I was on the old delayed reaction mobile phone camera..had a bunch of pics of a sedate dolphin swimming by, but the little guy had always gone under by the time the lens kicked in!!

I do love it when there is clouds and they make the sun peeking through have such personality.. and it always reminds me that somewhere, up there, are a good few peple watching over us..saying Hi.

... the evening was lovely too.. in our books.. Domino's BoGoF and then Spooks at 9pm and the MotoGP before bed..perfickt!

And for Karen's vehicle challenge I am using another of Jordan's lovely shots...we got the Brio out last week and it was a hit with Lilly..

(Ross had fun cleaning it up and laying out a track, after all it was his thing 23 years ago..)

I really like the way Jordan has kept Lilly on the edge of the image, it makes it look ala Gulliver's Travels I think.

Oh.. and for nothing bar the acknowledgment, here is another tray of JB's cakes..

Zac

Zacs post