The Rock Collector

Hello and a happy Sunday to you.

I'm feeling rather hungover today after a very good party yesterday at a lovely friends, so todays blogpost shall be kept short.

I loved working with this weeks challenge at The Studio. It's sketch week. The sketch is fab and I shall be using it again. Go and see for yourself here.

Here's my page.


I used mostly Studio Calico products on this page along with JBS paint.
It's about my Louis and his love for rocks.


For the party yesterday I made cupcakes.
Yummy maltesa cupcakes for the kids.



And mochachino for the adults.
I skewered the chocolate cupcakes and drizzled Kalour into the sponge for a moist coffee flavour and the frosting on top is made with the addition of fresh cream with Kalour too with a dusting of cocoa and grated Greens Dark chocolate to finish.
I think I might just go and make some more now as I have some of the frosting left over.
Seems a shame to waste : )


Enjoy your Sunday xxx

No Planning Required

This week at The Studio, we were asked to scrap a page about somthing we love about summer. Not the long days out, but the simple things.

This made me think of the evening walks I love with our little lot.
Last Monday we got home from Louis' golf lesson it was almost 7pm, but it was such a beautiful evening. Instead of getting home and getting into the usual bathtime/bedtime routine on a school night, we went home grabbed the dog and headed out for a walk to the common.
I love these evening walks.

The walks always have lots of silliness and giggles involved and usually a story to remember. This one was the dead bunny. I won't go into detail, it grosses me out. Yuk!!

I used the Cocoa Daisy 'Urban Loft' Kit. Along with some Mister Huey sprays.
If you fancy joining in with this challenge, then play along here.

Another long work day planned for me today. I have a super busy week with loads of deadlines.
Doesn't help that we have sportsday tomorrow and a teacher training day on Friday. *sigh*

Have a lovely day today xxx

And Finally...

(Sorry, I've been struggling with blogger.
Here's my post that I ended up saving as I just haven't been able to post it).

This week at The Studio we've been asked to document what we least like about our jobs.

I love working for myself but it means that working from home and for myself, my work is never done. There's always work to be done and I find it very hard to walk away and close the door.



I've used papers, journal embellishments and chipboard alphas from Fancy Pants - the new Baby Mine collection.

When receiving the latest Fancy Pants line we were also sent some lovely Maya Road goodies which included some of these cute fabric flowers.


If you have something that comes to mind for this challenge, then join in with us at The Studio.

Lots of love xxx

Sew Beautiful

Hello,

I broke into the gorgeous new Fancy Pants collection 'Baby Mine' last week. It is just so pretty and I love all the bits and pieces to go with the gorgeous double sided papers.

I played along with the card designers at The Studio this weekend.
I was dying to play with the new goodies so it was an excuse to make this.



Amanda's card challenge this week is to make a card and include stitching/Sewing/weaving.
I hand stitched around the patterened papers, handmade leaves and weaved the same embroidery floss in and out of the matching doilee. I love these delicate doilees, So Cute!


I also used one of the Baby Mine stickers, buttons, and the 'new arrival' rub on from Baby Mine.
And inside I added this.
If you would like to see the other cards at The Studio, visit here and upload your card too.

It's a rainy day today. One of those days where you take the kids to school and have to change your jeans when you get home as they are so wet around your ankles. I hate that!!

A quiet one today for me. Lots of work to get on with, Louis is out after school, Ade is out watching Peter Kay at the O2 tonight and Hollie wants to make her own pastry after school and make pasties. Baking seems to be her only interest lately. She's going through a phase where she just mopes. It drives me mad.
She refuses to read these days, so last night I gave her a couple of good cook books to take to bed and this seems to have worked. I went up a while later to turn out lights and she'd found a pastie recipe to try and decided this week to give choux pastry a go too.
Maybe I have a little pastry cehf on my hands???
I'm going with it anyway, whilst she has an interest at the moment.

Enjoy your Monday xxx

My Mischievious Pair

Here they are



Full of beans, full of fun, loud, giggly, silly, sometimes annoying, full of love
and they are mine : )
I wouldn't have them any other way.



I've used the Fancy Pants 'To the Moon' collection.
It was those stars that got me started and inspired the whole page.
But initially it was the Studio sketch here.
When I saw that star, I knew I wanted to use those Fancy Pants stars somehow and the whole page evolved from there.



If you want to play along with us at The Studio, click here.

And to finish for today, have you seen the three talanted ladies that made it to the Cocoa Daisy team? See here.
I am so excited to be working with these ladies.

It's brunch time in our house now. A chilled out day with English breakfast for lunch. Yum.

Have a lovely Sunday xxx

Bling Bling

Hello on this blustery day.
I hope you enjoyed the weekend.

We went to stay at Mum's this weekend as it was her birthday.
Ade and I had planned to take our smaller tent and camp out in Mum's big garden. We thought it would be so cozy. We decided against it which I think now was a good idea. I think we would have blown away. It's rather blowy out there.

I joined in with my fellow Studio designers this weekend for their card challenge.
It's a fun one if you fancy playing along too.
Simply add somthing shiny to your card.
See the beautiful creations form the design team here and upload your own blingy card.
Here's my card:



I have a drawer of nik-naks. Bits and pieces that I keep thinking it will come in handy one day. This very blingy heart was in there and just suited this challenge rather well. I decided to use up some older papers. I just love the Making Memories 'passport' collection. It was seeing the matching ribbons that got me inspired for this challenge. They were sat on the top of my drawer of ribbons and reminded me of this particular range.

Thanks for stopping by today xxx

Just a bit Fancy

Hiya!!

Today I am going crazy for Fancy Pants Designs.
I still sit and stroke the beautiful box I received after CHA. The novelty still hasn't worn off.

This month I was asked to design with their Chipboard Banners and this is how I used them:

(click on photos to enlarge)



I decided to document how we as a family watched the recent Royal Wedding at home on the TV eating cream cakes and drinking bucks fizz. (the kids felt terribly grown being able to have their own glass each).

I sanded and distressed the edges of the chipboard banners as well as the stars that came in the same pack. This worked really well as some of the stars were yellow, so by sanding I was able to remove the colour.
I then stitched along to create the banner string.




I also used the matching alphas on which I added glossy accents so they stood out better, some of the matching papers and Fancy Pants doilees too.
You can see my page on the Fancy Pants Blog here.

Next up is my 'Studio' page for this week.
The challenge this week is to add lots of dimention to the page.
I used the 'Beach Babe' collection. From Fancy Pants again.
I heavily embellished the page with the chipboard pieces.



I love the vibrants colours from this collection. Just so fun to work with.
The ribbon and brads are also from 'Beach Babe'.



I've carried on with the same ribbon, papers, chipboard and flowers.
The place we stay in Florida is called 'Bahama Bay' so this chipboard title fitted perfectly. I needed to cut the palm tree trunk though so it would fit in neatly.
I love these photos of Hollie at the resort. The kids are so happy here.



I think I have spent far too long at my desk today. My left elbow really hurts.
Abit of a quieter day here today after 2 very busy ones. Nothing planned after school : ) And the goulash went in the crockpot at 8.30am, so I don't even have dinner to sort now tonight.
I may just have some scrappy time later.
Enjoy your day xxx

Rain or Shine

Happy belated Mothers Day for fellow Mums celebrating yesterday.
We had a lovely day. A visit to a garden centre and a farm when the kids got pecked by chickens : )

The next LO challenge was launched at The Studio yesterday.
This week we are thinking about places that mean something to you:

This weeks challenge is to create a page about a place that is significant to you - What does that place mean to you? Maybe it has great memories or not so great memories. It could be a town, a house or even a whole country.

Here's mine:



Our place we enjoy going to is Mudeford, down near Bournemouth in the UK. It's a little over an hour from us and a place that we go any time of year, rain or shine.
We usually take the camp stove and park up near the grass area. We make bacon rolls whilst the kids play and climb trees. We love the beach here, the boats and the place where we crab. It's lots of fun.

If you have a place that you would like to scrap about, visit the Studio to see what the other members of the DT did with this challenge and link up your page too.

We have a super busy week planned.
We are going on holiday on Saturday so I have everything to plan for that. I have stacks of work to do before too. About 3 DT deadlines, plus Hollie only has school Mon-Wed this week and we have a dress up as a bee day for both kids on Wednesday and a school disco for Louis on Wednesday too.

So without further a-doo, I'd better get back to work.

Lisa xxx

The Story of the 'Sick Bowl'

Good Morning,

As my regular blog readers know, Louis gives me many a story to scrap. Today is no exception.
So for my 'Studio' DT page this week, I have scrapped the story of 'The Sick Bowl'.
Does every family have a sick bowl?
This below was ours. A light weight, melamine bowl. Easy to clean : )
That was until I knocked it down from the top of the cupboard a couple of weeks ago and it shattered. Dropping things from a height onto a tiled floor, isn't good!

(click photo to enlarge)


Louis came into the kitchen, knelt down to the pieces and was devastated.
''Oh no, I loved this sick bowl''. .... ''all the memories''
I had to keep this story. Who else would feel sad at a sick bowl breaking???



I used a piece of MME paper from my Cocoa Daisy Kit along with the corrigated Jillibean alphas. The red paint is Claudine Helmuth. I love the feel of this paint and love how it smooths on so nicely with the side of a credit card. Love this technique. And a water colour black pencil has been used LOTS.



Here is this weeks sketch that inspired me. If it inspires you too, visit the Studio and link up your page : )



I'm fighting off a cold right now. The sore throat started Friday and has now thankfully gone, just left feeling tired, achey and abit 'snotty'.
(love that word!!!!!)
And by the way, for my non UK friends who commented yesterday, the X Factor is the UK's Simon Cowell version of American Idol. Hope that makes more sense now.

Tons to do now. Lots of work and a brand spanking new Cocoa Daisy Kit landed on Friday and hasn't been given the attention it deserves yet. ooohhhh and I forgot to mention the 4 add-ons that came with it too : ) : ) : )
So much to play with and so so many ideas. I need a whole week to scrap, if only!!

Have a happy Monday.
Lots of love xxxx

Turning 36

Hello : )

Firstly, before I start rambling, I would just like to say a big 'thank you' to everyone who joined in with The Studio Blog Hop this weekend. It's the first blog hop that I've been involved in and I have to say, it's been really fun. So thank you to all of you who have blogged and hopped and commented and joined in : )
The blog hop finishes later today (7th March), so I'll announce the winner of my journaling RAK tomorrow and Amanda will announce the overall winner sometime this week.
If you haven't joined in yet and would like to, the details and links are all on the post below this one.

Staying with The Studio for a moment, this weeks challenge is to scrap your age.

Scrap your age! Come on, don't be shy... scrap a few things about you and what it's like to be you at age...whatever.... :)

So, as I'm turing 36 *gasp* this month, I decided to get some thoughts down on paper.



I've been joining in with the 52weeks photo challenge (taking a self portrait each week) and this was the photo I took of myself laid on my bed last week 1st March.
(click images to enlarge)



I used lots of Fancy Pants-Love Birds on this page along with some Teresa Collins.
I keep a couple of vintage handpainted saucers (that I picked up last year in a little store in Eaton, Windsor) on my desk. Any little punches and odd pretty scraps are kept in these and this is what I've pulled out and put onto this page.
The butterfly, flowers, fabric circle and heart were all in the saucer having been used as masks on previous pages.





We had an interesting weekend.
Louis' footy team won their second match, 3-0 : )
I baked Red Velvet Cupcakes, Parmesan Bread and made Baileys Truffles.
We went to friends for dinner which was fun.
They live a couple of miles away, so we walked home with Louis (poor Louis) and a little kitty followed us all the way. We kept thinking, ''she's going to stop now''. But she just kept going. We didn't talk to her or stroke or encourage and had to quickly run into the house when we got home as she came right upto the door.
The next morning she wasn't around thankfully, but yesterday afternoon she was on the back fence.
She was only a kitten and had no collar and we figured she was going to find her way home, so after feeding her we took her to the vets to see if she had been micro chipped, but she hadn't : (
So we took Mrs Spence (Louis named her) back to our friend's where she started following us and let her go.
The vet mentioned if we would keep her on, but I just had in my head that there was a family who had sad kiddies missing their kitty. My friend took a look at her before we let her go and is going to keep an eye out for her. If she see's her looking skinny in a few days, we said we'd go and collect her.
I think the kids really wanted her to stay. I was quite keen until she jumped up on my kitchen work surfaces when we bought her in to box and go to the vets.

So that was our weekend in a nutshell.

I'll be back tomorrow with the announcement of the RAK winner.
Thanks for stopping by xx

In the Frame

I loved this weeks challenge at The Studio and knew immediately what I wanted to do.
It goes like this if you want to join in:

Frames! Use a frame of some kind on your page. Frame your picture or your whole layout, just get a frame or two on there!



I've been keeping this Sassafras paper for quite some time now with this kind of idea in mind. I knew I wanted to cut out these little frames and use them like this.



So I took a piece of greyboard and covered it in this Prima fabric, painted it over with gesso and added my little frames.
Cute!!

So how are you going to add a frame or frames to your project this week?
Pop along to The Studio and see what the other members of the DT did. Don't forget to upload your projects to The Studio.

We are heading for a wander around Chessington Zoo now. Time to wrap up, it feels soooo cold today.
Lots of love xxx

Strictly No Pink or Red!!!

So every Sunday, we have a new challenge at The Studio.
I love the variation of challenges that we have. It's always nice to do something abit different. This week we have been given this colour combo.
I love these colours.
See what the other girls did with this challenge here.
Here's my page. (click on to enlarge if you wish)






Although I've used the colour combo, I've also been completely inspired by a page that my lovely friend Anna made recently. Anna has suddenly gone paint crazy. I'm talking, paints, mixed media, clays and is creating not only stunning pages but take alook at this too.

So, Anna launched a challenge over at Cocoa Daisy recently called 'paint it over'.
Basically, adding things to your page and painting over them. You can see the post here, she has put a small tutorial together.
And that's what I've done to my page. I do love adding different textures, I've added some garden string, tissue paper and some stickers and punched shapes I had sitting in a dish on my desk.
I love how it's come out.
The Cocoa Daisy challenge is running until the 10th Feb if you fancy trying out this technique too. I promise you it's lots of fun : )

Well, enjoy your Sunday. I hope you have nice things planned.
A lazy one for us. I'm starting to feel better again. Louis is going on his first school residential trip tomorrow for 2 sleeps. So we need to get his bag packed. We also have a day planned of Louis' fave foods. So homemade American pancakes late morning and piri piri chicken for dinner. Yum!!
And I think some wii games and 'How to train a dragon' movie later : )

See you soon xxx

Boo!

So, fed up with not feeling good. I decided to take a Cocoa Daisy kit into the lounge last night and try and scrap on the floor. I've missed not scrapping this week : (
I've been meaning to play along with Julie's challenge blog for yonks now.
It's here. A few of my favourite things. This week is games.



I have a cheeky game of hiding and jumping out. Espcially on Ade. It makes me laugh so much. I hide for ages behind doors sometime expecting him to come past. The other day I was hiding in the kitchen, he finally walked through the door, I said 'Boo' he jumped and knocked the door that I was hiding behind and it smacked me in the head : )



This particular day, Ade was trying to get his own back in Windsor. Look at him though. Silly billy. Not so good at hiding though is our Ade. So I still managed to sneak up and make him jump : )



This page really was all about using up scraps. As I wasn't feeling up to it, it was a case of grabbing what was in the kit bag and layering up. Even the circle was already cut in the bag. A change of mind from a previous page.



So today..... not sure what's instore. I would like to wash my hair. And that's it I think. Ade's home this week and has been lovely looking after me. He's a good hair washer and a master at hair brushing too. It's nice to feel looked after sometimes.

Hugs xxx

Who Am I?

A sketch challenge at The Studio this week.
I do love a good sketch and this weeks is so much, plus with the added challenge of adding a homemade embellishment.

Here's mine, all about the game we like to play 'Who Am I?'
Click on the photo to read the rules on how to play.(if you fancy playing of course)





I loved this challenge this week. If you fancy it, visit here to play along.

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday.
I have a full house and a full belly. The sign of a good Sunday I think.

xxx

Goals

Have you seen this weeks challenge at The Studio?

With the new year upon us, a lot of people have been focusing on their resolutions for 2011. With that in mind, we'd like to hear about a LONG TERM goal of yours. Do you have a big ambition? Let's create a layout reflecting on these goals as a reminder of what we one day hope to achieve.




I've used my November Cocoa Daisy kit. I love the photo Ade took of me and how the sun caught the lens.
If you want to join in, visit The Studio here.



Thank you for all the lovely comments re my last post xxx

Pure Passion

Is talking about passion abit too much on a Sunday morning?
Oh well, that's what it's all about over at The Studio today.

What do you feel most passionate about, Scrap it!!



Mine is food : )
I've become abit of a foody over the years. Savoury and sweet, cooking and baking, cook book reading and menu planning. Love it!!



This months Cocoa Daisy kit was perfect for this and I love the October Afternoon recipe paper : )



Fancy joining in?
Come along and see us at The Studio with your page here.

The sun is shining, time for a walk I think.
Enjoy your Sunday xxx