First Date

It's our 8yr anniversary of our first date today.
I used my August Cocoa Daisy Kit to make him this.

A tiny little mini book using the Fancy Pants papers from the main kit.

Just a quick and simple book with a few snapshots of us.

 With our favourite ever memory being in LA this January.

And the back of the book.
There are more photos of the inside in my Cocoa Daisy gallery here.

We are taking my niece and nephew home this morning and then heading out for a childfree afternoon. We are going to Bristol for the first time for a wander and some lunch.
Our first ever date was the movies 'War of the Worlds' and dinner at Wagamamas where Ade introduced me to Japanese Noodles : )

Have a fab day xxx

Travel and Explore with 80 Days

It was the Cocoa Daisy reveal last night.
I totally love this kit, infact I've made so much even with getting 2 addons, I've almost run out.
I did make 2 mini books though (one of which is huge) plus LO's.

I made this LO journaling to the kids how much Ade and I love travelling and how fortunate the kids have been with the lovely places we have taken them to. I do hope they have our travel bug. I know Hollie does already. Bless her, she had her first visit to the States at just 10months old and the second time she was 2 and Louis was in my tummy : )

CALCUTTA ADD-ON

The Calcutta addon comes with a pack of cute Fancy Pants paper bags. I used one to store my hidden journal tag. The tag in a vinyl wooden vaneer and comes with the main kit. I wasn't sure how well it would take to pen, but left to dry and was fine.

You can see more of the kit and the addons here.
It goes on sale to non subbers on the 1st.

xxx

An ickle bit FIERCE

Hello.

I've had this one sat on my desk all week waiting to be finished.
I grabbed a few minutes and did the journaling this morning so now I can finally share.
The inspiration came from the OLW challenge blog.
This months word is 'FIERCE'.

Can you tell how much fun I had with this?
I opened up a lovely new set of inktense pencils for this LO.
I used a dinner plate to draw around with the pencils and them went over with a thin paint brush and water.
The title is hand drawn and cut out.
The bits and pieces are 'MME' Take Note card & Pins, Jillibean butterfly and Studio Calico wooden chevrons. The journal lines are all hand stitched.
You can visit OLW here.

 
How's the summer going?
We finally broke up from school on Tuesday.
Louis got the Gold Book Award.
Each class has one award per term. As the classes are kept together throughout Junior School this means that out of about 35, they get 12 chances to get this award.
We are so proud of him.

 

 

Hollie also got the award when she was at this school : )

 

Talking of Hollie, we had some blue flashes put through her hair on Wednesday.

 

 

She is getting older and more grown up.

She had friends sleep over Wednesday night and they took the train in to Reading yesterday to go shopping.

They woke up yesterday morning to freshly baked strawberry muffins.

I love them being home.

 

 

I hope you are enjoying your summer.

Lots of love xxx

 

 



Princess Dolphin & a Sketch

I'm going to start with a bright and fun one this week.
It's Princess Dolphin.
I don't think that's her real name, but that's what Hollie and I called her.
Isn't she pretty?

We were at SeaWorld and Hollie was in a very fun and happy to be photographed mood. So you have to just make the most of it whilst it lasts : )

This LO is for the Sketchbook365 challenge. It's the new August Sketch. See here.
Love this sketch!!
You can click that link to see what the other DT'ers did and the prize that's up for grabs too.

 

I hope you are enjoying this lovely weather.

Smelling the nivea sun lotion and after sun each day just reminds us of Florida : (

446 days to go....

 

Speak soon xxx

 

Cover Girl

I'm a little bit excited today : )

I'm on this months cover of SCRAP365.
How cool is that?!!

Here's a LO that I made for the 365 Sketch Blog a while ago, that I never ended up posting here.

 

We took this photo of Louis as we entered Universal Studios in Orlando.

 

 

Hollie is off to the Alton Towers theme park with school today. I dropped her off at 5.45am.
Louis had his leavers bbq and disco at school yesterday. We are almost at the end of term.
Louis and I are going strawberry picking with friends after school tonight and off for coffee and cake after : )

Have a delightful day xxx

80 Days

That's the name of our August Kit.
he he he he ....and I have it already : )

I love this kit so much.
Fancy a sneak?

 

Cool eh?!!

 

It goes on sale on the 1st August here.

And the addons go live on the 28th July.

Exciting!!!

 

I have a big project planned with mine that I plan to start later today and it has nothing to do with travel either.

I can't wait to get stuck in.

 

Have a lovely day xx 

Crazy Times Ahead

I've been meaning to finish this LO here all week.
Today I finally sat in the garden with my needle and thread and added those final finishing touches.

It's been a while since I played along with OLW.
I adore these challenges and find the team so inspiring.
I haven't had chance to be as creative as I would like recently. Work seems to be taking over everything, but these past few days I've been pushing myself to find some creative time and I feel so much better for it.
I need it.
The word this month is 'CRAZY'. I instantly thought of my mad family.
Dad is due over next month and life just goes crazy for a few days whilst he's over. The journaling reads:

the time has almost come. dad will arrive from the States and the rest of the family will join us. Our 4 will become 11 for a few days. There will be lots of laughter, rude jokes, noise, late nights & early mornings as we will want to spend as much time together as we can. There will be picnics, late night snacking with movies, fun days out, games, catching up & just being together. My family are mad. These few days will be crazy. bring it on!   

 

I used a gorgeous pp from Glitz for my frame. The days of the week paper is a Cocoa Daisy exclusive. I made my own tag and added a fabric Cosmo Cricket brad. The alphas are foam grey thickers which I transformed using my fingers and acrylic paints.

The finishing touches before adding the journaling are some inktense blocks.

 

A very therapeutic page for me to make.

 

If you are interested, here is the OLW challenge blog.

There is a DT call until the end of today.

 

And before I head off to help Ade with the bbq. This was me getting creative again this morning in the garden whilst Ade dug the flower beds : )

 

 

Enjoy the last bit of your weekend xx

 

Hook, Line and Sinker

It's been one of those weeks.
Full of ups and downs.
Hollie turned 14 and we had a really good day.
Louis had his last sports day before he heads off to 'big school'.
4 races with 2 2nd places and a 3rd. He didn't do so well at the skipping race : )
We are in to our 2nd week without a fridge/freezer. So not funny in this heat.
The maintenance guy is now booked for Tuesday to fix it.
It's great having the insurance as we would have needed £1200 to replace it, but they've messed us around abit : (
There's been some other crap too thrown in that I won't bore you with.

My August Cocoa Daisy kit landed yesterday though. Yay!!! I have so many ideas spinning right now.

I've still been enjoying the July Cabana Kit though. I've just put up a blog post for Cocoa Daisy showing different ways how we've used the anchors in the kit.
Here's my LO.

 

I documented how Ade and I got together in the summer and that the summer always feels special to us. 

There are some other great examples of how some of the other CD Girls used theirs here. 

If anything it's worth checking it out just to see Ashley's page. I think it's my favourite LO of the whole month.

 

Not quite sure what we are up to today. The kids are both at sleepovers and due home in a couple of hours. Despicable Me 2 was planned but it seems too nice outside to watch a movie.

We shall see....

 

Enjoy your Sunday xxx

Celebration

I was really excited last month when we got told that Cocoa Daisy would be working with Becky Fleck's Pagemaps this month. I'm a huge fan of Becky's sketches.
You can see my sketch that I was given along with some of the other designers work on the Cocoa Daisy blog today here.
Using my July Cocoa Daisy Kit, here is my LO.

 

I'm so happy with this LO. It's funny how you have that feeling about certain LO's.

This was such a lovely afternoon. There is a residential area in Disney, Orlando called 'Celebration'. It's like the perfect place to live. Beautifully kept, picture perfect homes, a small lake with lovely walks, quaint shops along the waterfront with cafes. It's just lovely. We had a quiet Saturday afternoon away from the business of the parks. Just wandering, enjoying the wildlife on the lake and stopping for ice cream floats by the lake and luckily there was a little arts and crafts fair on too. It was a really good afternoon and definitely a place we will visit again.

 

 

 

I love the summery colours in this kit. They were perfect for my photos. It still seems strange thinking how hot is was and it was just before Halloween : )

Those sparkly Thickers in the main kit are fab and that Elle's Studio patterened paper that I used has to be an all time fave of mine.

The blue circle was made using the stamp from the main kit. There are the words in the centre 'You Are My' but they didn't fit with my page, so I added a Studio Calico Cork Sticker which came in the 'day in the life kit' to finish it off and it worked perfectly.

 

If you also love sketches, I really recommend the Pagemaps Blog.

And by clicking here you will also see the fab Cocoa Daisy contest that is running right now.

 

Thanks for stopping by today xxx

 

  

Using Up Scraps

I feel so much happier in myself this week for finding some creative time.
Thanks so much for taking the time to comment on my blog. It really means a lot.

I got my fingers messy this week too. That felt so good. It had been a while.

I've posted a whole step by step piece over at Cocoa Daisy today showing how I turned my leftover July Kit Scraps from this.

To this.

It's all here with photos and instructions.
Please let me know what you think.

Thanks. Have a lovely day xxx

Breakfast in Seaworld

I've had a real scrappy urge this week. Not much time, but I treated myself yesterday.

I'd planned to play along with the Cocoa Daisy July Sketch Challenge anyway and printed off my photos yesterday morning. You can see the sketch here.

I then carried on working. Louis finished school at 3.15 and should be home around 3.30pm.
It got to 3.45 and he still wasn't. I know he chats with his friends, but he's only just started walking home alone and I keep telling him to come straight home. I've also told him to only ever walk home the one way. So that if ever he's late I can walk that way and no where he is.
So 3.50pm, I looked up the road, no sign. I grabbed my phone and went looking. The second road. no sign. I then called one of the Mum's who's sons he walks with, her son was home but was late. I walked on in her direction. No sign of anyone. I was now feeling really sick.
I called another Mum, her son wasn't home either. At least I knew they were together, but they don't live near us.
I was started to feel sick and shakey wondering where on earth he was.
Ade then called and said he was home.
He'd walked part of the way with the other friend and came home a different and longer way arriving after 4pm.
That was the worst 10/15mins of my life.

  After lots of hugs and a serious chat I turned to some scrap therapy.... and a glass of wine.

 

Half an hour later I'd made this. It seriously helped calm my nerves.

(the photos and papers etc were laid out ready)

 

 

I loved this morning at SeaWorld. We arrived early as we'd booked a 'behind the scenes tour' which was amazing. Touching sharks and stroking a penguin.

This breakfast was so good. Sat outside in the sun nice and early. With lattes, muffins and cookies.

See the black and white cookies dish in the photo. We'd bought a couple back in 2007 when we got married. We stopped to watch the Shamu show and Ade went and got them for the kids (the dishes are killer whales). But we hadn't found them again. So we were excited to find them here and bought a couple more, The kids still love those dishes.

 

 

I've used my July Cocoa Daisy Kit, Cabana.

It's now on sale here.

There's a fab free postage offer on right now too for all countries.

 

 

In honor of the 4th of July holiday we are offering
FREE shipping on all US orders of $75 or more and all Canadian/International orders of $1

25 or more. Just use the appropriate code at check out:

Domestic orders: USA4thFREESHIP
Canada/International orders: INT4thFREESHIP

And the best part is that we have a few July kits and add ons still available - in fact this month's kit is perfect for recording your 4th of July (see how we timed that)! Check out the selection: http://bit.ly/14ry4qD

Hurry, this offer is only good now through midnight Eastern
the 4th!

 

xxx