Winter wonderland

Well I've had a very productive morning :) Done the monthly shop, 2 lots of washing, ironing, defrosted the freezer tidied the tip my daughter calls a room. Time for a coffee and a cronut I think!

So while I relax, time to blog :) Saturday we went on a trip down to london to visit Winter Wonderland there. I like to do a Christmas trip each year and as they're a little old for visits to the farm to see Santa I thought this would be a good idea. The kids were certainly excited with Cameron thrilled to wear his new Christmas jumper.
Why he does those hand gestures I have no idea *rolls eyes*

Now I knew it was going to be expencive there, but OMG £5 per child for a fair ride?! No thank you! Luckily there were lots of market stalls, things to see etc so we gave the kids a little spending money and browsed about. They got a couple of little trinkets, had a go on a hoopla game and enjoyed some goodies (chips for kids, mulled wine for Mummy, yum) until it was time to go to the Ice castle.

Now my Mum had gone to this last year and told us it was well worth paying the extra for so I booked tickets a couple of months ago. Glad I did as they were all sold out by the time we got there. We were all wrapped up anyway as it was a chilly day but OMG it was so cold inside!!! Mark doesn't like the cold anyway so he wrapped up as much as he could lol.

Was worth the low tempretures though, the ice sculptures inside were incredible! So much detail to look at.
As we walked in there were pine trees everywhere. It was set out like a huge wood with ice animals, trolls, fairys and various other fantasy creatures dotted about. Getting a picture of them was difficuilt but did my best.

In the center there was a huge ice tower with a slide for the kids and a pretend lake covered in swans. Even Mark was impressed with says it all really!
After the castle we went into London to see the lights and look at the displays in the shop windows. We were lucky as there was a huge toy parade on too so there was loads for the kids to see and do :)

All in all was an amazing day. Don't think I have long left of the kids believing in Santa so trying to make the most of it while I can!

SIPIDI

Ive been meaning to blog this for AGES but never get around to it. Seems to be the story of my life at the moment.
My friend Fiona over at staring at the sea has a monthly meme called See It, Pin It, Do It. I was determined to take part this month and at the start of the month found this layout, which I decided to scraplift.

Ill be honest, my mojo was on holiday, I only used what I had one my desk which was a lot of bits and bobs and I pulled out a seriously old photo to use so I'm less than thrilled with the result; but its another layout done and bits used up so I'll look at it that way. :)

The story behind this layout is when we were in Disneyland, we were in the Alice in wonderland hedge maze; Caitlin asked what that was and Mark said it was a cat. She looked at him like he was insane and said 'Its not a cat, its a bush!'

Well shes not wrong!

Cave lady

Once a month, one of picks something to do as a family; this month was Caitlins turn and she picked a trip to the circus.
Bit different from a movie and I was able to get cheap tickets on Groupon so bonus!
Selfie before it started :)

I knew Caitlin would enjoy it as it was her kind of thing but I was thrilled that Cameron loved it too. Hes going through that 'too cool for school' phase where he isn't very expressive when he's enjoying something unless he really loves it, so to see him laughing along at the clown and gasping at the gymnastic acts was really heartwarming.
Today was Caitlins 'stone age' day at school. That's their topic for this term and they were having someone in to give a talk and let them see fossils so the kids were allowed to dress up for the occasion.
Now I love the internet, google can be a brilliant tool, however when I google 'Stone age dress up ideas for kids' and THIS comes up, I have to wonder if someone is drinking while they work lol.

Luckily I was able to come up with something by myself :) I did have her hair messier and make up on her face to make her look messy but she was having none of that! Think she was the neatest, cleanest cave lady there.

So tonight finds me feeling very blessed and accomplished :) Family time together, crafting and finally finished Christmas shopping aside from one gift (hopefully get that on black friday) what else could I ask for. :)

Christmas rush :)

Hello! I'm back! Its been a busy week but a very fun time too :) AND I've even scrapped! (I'll give you a moment to recover from the shock of that.......all good? Great!)
So last week Jess and I spent a couple of days at Milton Keynes. It's become a yearly event now as all the retreats we like seem to be in March at he start of the year, it left a hole near the end of the year to get away for a bit and be crafty. We did try and arrange a retreat with our usual group but everyone was busy so we decided to just do it ourselves :) Two days of eating, drinking, shopping and crafting, perfect :)
I do fee for the people who clean the rooms after though. We do our best but inevitably some mist, glue and ink usually ends up on the bed sheets. Woops.

Managed 7 layouts too! Which I will share as soon as I remember to photograph them, hopefully some time before Christmas ;)
Back to the C word, I am pretty much done shopping now, eeeekkkkkkk!!!!! So excited! I need to get one more gift for Caitlin and I'm done! Ok so a lot of people are going to be groaning *I haven't even started yet* but I always like to get things done early. When the kids were young and Mark was sick more often if I didn't get prepared early I ran the risk of having nothing for them come Christmas morning. One year they came down to 3 gifts each :( Ok so they were not bothered and loved what they got but I was.
Opps got a bit depressing there :\ Back to Christmas cheer! Yesterday I went to Birmingham German market with my Mum and Granny. I didn't get much but was mainly there to soak up the atmosphere. I love it when it starts to get dark and all the lights come on, the smells of mulled wine and Christmas carols. I'm a big kid really :)

Ended the day with a large slice of very rich chocolate cake. Yum :)

and just because it's my blog and I can....look at this cute jumper!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you tell I'm a little hyper today? :p

New shelf!

This weekend my Mum went to Ikea with her friend, of course I asked her to get me some bits (even though Im going next week lol) including a new shelf for my craft area.
It's amazing how excited I was about a new shelf lol.

However, while the shelf was great and exciting and new, I had to decide what went on it.

That's where it all went wrong.

To decide what to put on it I pulled all my craft bits out of the wardrobe. Decided my old cardboard box of alphas, including some I've had since I started crafting 6 years ago, needed cutting down, so started going through them.
But where to put the alphas I decided to keep?! Well I had a little green box which I had my random embellishments in which I thought would be ideal, but then where to put the random embellishments?! Best to sort them out and put them in with my other ones I thought........
Fast forward to 3 hours later, I'm sitting on my bedroom floor surrounded by half used alphas, chipboard, buttons, pins etc. Mark walked in, looked down, and walked out again lol.
BUT it is now done, sorted and all packed away again. :( Mark recently requested that I start ONE project at a time and not have 3 half finished projects downstairs and more on my desk in the bedroom. Reasonable enough I guess but the kid in me wanted to stamp my feet and say no lol. The adult in me (very small part of me really lol) realised that I doubt I'll get much time to scrap at home on this side of Christmas so I've tidied it all away for now.
It looks a lot neater without sequins, paper and embellishments lying about but even though I wasnt using it I liked looking at it! Anybody else do that with their stash? Or am I the only crazy one? lol.

Two in a row!

Wow look at me blogging two days in a row :) I did actually start this post this morning but have only just had the chance to sit down and actually finish it! Been a super productive day though so thats good. Been a really productive week to be honest, which always makes me happy as feels like I have a purpose I guess.
Anyway, as well as repainting the living room, cleaning the curtains, selling/donating/chucking stuff from the garage and kids rooms, I've managed to finish off a few craft projects.
A HUGE thank you to Julia who very kindly posted me some hama boards s I could finish this door decoration for Cameron.
Well it was supposed to be for his door. Turned out bigger than I thought so had to put it on his wall in the end! Both banners were supposed to be blue, but when the beads I ordered came they turned out to be the wrong colour. By this point though it had been sitting on my desk for almost a month so if they had came in pink he'd have had a pink banner lol, with that in mind bluey grey isnt too bad ;)

Other crafting has been these. A little while ago my Mum messaged me and asked if I had a butterfly punch? Um, I have 5 punches and 3 dies, be more specific, was my answer. Turns out her friend is throwing a Tinkerbell themed party for her daughter and wanted some help making decorations. 'Leave it to me' I said.
Note to self, ban 'Leave it to me' from my volcabulary in the new year.
20 of these later, I still have 4 wall banners to do and I am sick of the sight of butterflies! :\

I'm taking a bit of a break from butterflies before I start the banners so I'm back to making roses for Mums wreath and enjoying a coffee in my new penguin mug from Costa.

In between cleaning and crafting I've been back to the Dr with Caitlin again. Bless my poor wee girl there's always something. Shes been complaining about her foot hurting for a while but she's dreadful for crying wolf with things like that so I didn't pay much attention. I've noticed she walks with her toes pointing in but as I did that as a kid and grew out of it I didn't think much of it. Thursday morning though she wouldnt even put her weight on her heel so I took her Dr and he thinks she has flat foot syndrome, so has been walking funny which has caused inflamed muscle in her foot. Funnily enough my Mum does too and she had suggested it but I ignored it, won't be hearing the end of that one for a while.
Luckily it's nothing serious obviously and a course of meds will sort out the muscle, but we have to go see a foot specilist on the 20th and she has to miss PE for a while. I think she would be dancing about that if she could lol.

No clue

I've no clue what day it is anymore lol. I swear it was October yesterday and now its November 7th!
Obviously I'm a little late posting my Challenge Yourself layout for this month, sorry, but I have done the layout!
This months was a tic tac toe challenge. You had to pic 3 elements from the board, so &, you and a doily, or like I picked, friends, you and gems. :)

The photo is from when Mark and I went to dinner with our neighbours. Its a bit of an odd story really. Gemma and I went to school together (yes gemma, same name as me lol) but then we lost touch. Years later our sons, only a couple of weeks apart ended up in school together! Then guess who moved in next door?

To make it even stranger Marks school friend then moved into the house on the other side, with his son Cameron and his wife.....Gemma!
Gemmas are taking over the world! :p

Wow its november?!

Yey it's November?! I don't know where October went but it's November! I'm now allowed to talk about Christmas and not be looked at like I'm a crazy person lol.
Before that though I did do Halloween. Like I've said before Caitlin decided she wanted to be a rainbow and I admit I was quite pleased with the way her outfit turned out :)

So now its allllll about Christmas. It's a huge deal in my house. I love the lights, the planning, the shopping, all of it. I never used to, funnily enough when I was younger Halloween was my favourite holiday. Since having the kids though the wonder of the Christmas season has fully taken over.
The amount of planning for one day though is crazy. I admit I put a lot of it on myself. I like to spring clean each room, repaint if needed etc so everything is all shiny and new for the big day.
No idea why, not like anybody new comes to my house as all my family live nearby and visit regularly but I'm not one for doing things the normal way :p Past couple of days I've been resorting the kids rooms. Don't know what it is with Caitlin but she seems to hoard every scrap of paper she comes across! She has a large Ikea unit in her room and at least 2 drawers are full of papers, pens which don't work, notebooks etc. No idea WHERE she gets it from!
Did make me giggle when I was clearing it up though, found a sheet saying 'I love jellyfish. But they are not made of jelly, and they don't look like fish'
Cleaning aside I've been back on decoration making too. My list this year is, as usual, longer than last but I've got some new things on it I'm looking forward to making. This rose wreath for my Mum for example.

Think I'll need to make a few more roses.........