The big thaw

What. A. Week!
Well last week started off well, the kids both passed their grading for yellow belts in Jado and were rightfully proud of themselves.

They're both loving their lessons, with other classes like swimming, or beavers, they do it for a few months then the novelty wears off and they get bored. They've been doing this for over a year now though and still come out of each lessons buzzing :)
However it went down hill pretty quick from there :( If you live in the uk, then you'll know this week we had snow, and more snow, and then some more snow.
Usually I'm good with this. I love snow, and sitting inside with hot chocolate watching snowfall is magic, but so much fell it first canceled a trip Cameron was looking forward to going on, then my annual retreat with my scrapping friends got cancelled too :( Then to top it off, Cameron didn't get the school he wanted to go to in September. :(
We've done some research and it's not as bad as we thought, we're still appealing but he's not too worried now. Telling him was heartbreaking though, he had his heart set on his first choice and was devestated not to get it.
So all in all there were lots of tears and sadness last week :(
It's Monday though, and a new start :) Kids went to school this morning and I got stuck into the cleaning etc that didn't get done with them being snowed in most of last week. Cameron found out that quite a few of his friends are going to the same school as him and Caitlin did really well in her archery lesson. I'm saying that this week will be a better week :)
So despite not being able to go on my crafty weekend I managed to get 9 layouts done at home. Not quite the 24 target I'd set myself but better than nothing!
This was a super simple one as I wanted the diecut title to be the main focus. Looking at it now I wish I'd put more underneath it but oh well its done now.

Having two girls in the family is weird for me at times. Even though I'm obviously a girl, I never grew up feeling 'less' because of it. However now I have a daughter and a niece I realise how 'male' focused the world actually is. Luckily they're both very confident girls, but I never want them to feel 'less than' just because of their gender.

If I manage to raise a confident, respectful daughter and son I'll have done alright I think :)

Aims

Look at my happy doggy, look at my pain in the butt, so annoying happy doggy lol.
We gave him this toy this morning, within 5 minutes he'd ripped it open. We sewed it back up, lasted almost 10 before needing repairing again. This time less than 5 before the whole arm came off.
I put it in the bin, Scamp sat beside the bin crying *rolls eyes* He's worse than a baby sometimes!

I think he was still in a mood with me later that day. Mark and I had tried everything to clip his claws but he was growling and snappy and wouldn't stay still. Caitlin comes in and suggests rubbing his tummy, 'I don't think its that simple' I reply. Caitlin rubs his tummy and he lies perfectly still while I clip all the claws.
I could almost hear him thinking 'I like her better than you, you threw away my teddy'

So I said last time I blogged about setting some aims for this year. I've done it the past few years and besides reading aim I dont think I've met any of the others lol. This year though I seem to have a different kind of outlook on things. I honestly don't know why but I feel like I have a new determination this year.
So I have a couple of personal aims (debt and weight) that I won't blog about here, I have apps to help with those, but books I've read and layouts I've done I will. :) Another thing I want to keep track of are freebies/money earned. This might sound like a weird one but I do questionnaires and surveys and test products and Marks asked me to keep track of what I actually get out of it in a year so doing that one too.
Im also going to keep track of the kits I kill. I don't really have an aim for this one, rather I'm just interested in how many I manage to use in a year.
So using up kits leads me nicely to this layout :) One of my kits came with pages of stickers. These were pretty but quite translucent which I always struggle with because you can see whatever patterned paper is behind them, being square I struggled with these even more.
Then I found this photo of us at the Bear hunt last year with my fave bear. This was a huge moasic bear made from all different types of tile and mirror.

A grid layout went perfectly with the photo and I managed to use up almost all of the stickers too. Bonus.

So my aims are to finish 365 layouts this year, read 60 books and keep track of how many kits I use up and how much I earn though questionnaires.
Sounds easy enough lol.

Scapbook layouts - 50/365
Books read - 7/60
Kits - 2
Money earned - £93.68

Half term fun

This month seems to be going sooooo slow, which is weird because we've been really busy and that usually speeds time up.
This week has been half term, and among sleepovers, swimming clubs and friends visiting we've barely stopped. One activity the kids did was 'No limits adventure day' Its run by a local scout group and they spent 4 hours in the woods, foraging for food, building fires and dens and cooking hotdogs and fish over an open fire.

They loved it! The group leader had to actually stop Caitlin from setting all the fires and let someone else have a turn, she also was more than happy to get stuck in gutting fish. She is so my child lol.
As its half term I havent had a huge amount of time to scrap, I've started doing some pocket pages recently to try and use up scraps and all the little bits and bobs I've got. I'm not a huge fan of these but I love using up scraps on die cut pages like this one. It take ages but looks really affective I think.

I love this photo of us, we were just at a playcenter and I took a selfie on my phone. It's usually the only time I get into the photo.

I've decided to set myself some targets this year again, but i'll post more about that tomorrow as the kids are calling for food lol.

A, B, C, D

Well plan A today was to do some ironing in the morning, then meet my Mum for coffee and shopping this afternoon. However my poor Mum is now laid up with a bad bug so plan B was crafting this morning and ironing this afternoon. Then I went out to the garage for some bread (we have a freezer out there) and found some of Camerons Nerf darts on the floor with parts nibbled from them. So plan C was spending the morning pulling out all the stuff dumped the garage, tidying up, chucking bits, making a 'donate' pile, advertising stuff for sale on facebook, and putting traps down.
I've now got an hour left before I need to go get the kids and no ironing done yet lol.
Next week is half term though so plenty of time to chill out I guess, we have a few day trips planned but hopefully a couple of nice and cosy days at home too. Though today is a good example of how well my plans tend to go!
One plan I reallllllly need to get started on is sorting out my layouts. The past few months have been amazingly productive in terms of scrapbooking, to the point where I'm almost up to date with my photos :O However I am very behind when it comes to putting my layouts in albums.
Thing is albums are so expencive and papers are cheaper and so much prettier to buy I just never do it, so layouts end up in a pile which is a shame after the work I put into them.
*sigh* Anybody want to buy me a load of albums then come sort out my layouts? I'll pay you in cookies and coffee?
Im scrapping a lot with white backgrounds recently. My friend Jacqui only uses white backgrounds so she certainly has inspired me with the fresh, clean way it looks. Here I used a mix of old papers and embellishments and some of my Shimelle papers I got for Christmas. I love how bright it is :)

The photo is from when we went to Birmingham in Summer. We took the train down and stayed in a hotel overnight so we could do the 'Great bear hunt' that they were putting on at the time. We've been on trains quite a lot now after going down to London a few times and both kids love it. It always surprises me when I think about how different my childhood was, I dont think I went on a train until the kids were born and we went to London to catch the Eurostar to Disneyland. They are so well travelled compared to me and Mark and I love it :)

Right I better bite the bullet and go and get the ironing done. I'll finish with a conversation that made me giggle yesterday though.
Me - Cam there’s a form in your bag you were supposed to fill out and give to the schools digital ambassador by today.
Cameron - I didn’t know how to find the digital ambassador!
Me *points at his sister who is wearing a badge saying digital ambassador’
Cameron - Oh yeah.

It's still not spring.

Nope, still not spring. If anything it's colder! Weather man says it's going to be like this for the rest of the month. Hopefully this cold winter is a sign we're going to get a nice warm Summer.
Well I can dream.
This weekend I wasn't too bothered about the weather though, as my Mum and I spent Sunday in a hotel with wine, books and food, and Monday at a spa :) We went to the spa back in July for my birthday but they messed up our booking so gave us a voucher to come back free at a later date. We certainly were not going to pass that up!

Was back to earth with a bump though, poor Caitlins been having problems with some girls at school so came out in tears (teachers sorted it now) and the new dogs next door were barking from 4am to 6 am. I was a very grumpy bunny on Tuesday morning let me tell you!
So yesterday we did a bit of shopping, then I had a nap and felt much better lol. Today was cinema day. I was very excited to see this.

It wasn't quite what I expected, more The sixth sense than The others as I thought it would be, but still really good. I may have jumped a few times lol.
Think I'm going to get a hot water bottle, cuddle up under a blanket and craft. Why do humans not hybernate, I think bears have the right idea.

Whens spring?

Its not often I agree with my daughter, but her comment the other day 'We should just have Christmas and then go right to spring' well you can't argue with that!
Its freezing here. It's been a really cold winter all round really. Before this Winter the last time we had 'everything stops' snow was when the kids were in the infants, this year we've had it 3 times. It's lost its novelty now lol.
Scamp is not a big fan of the cold either lol. He is such a marshmallow, unless the heating is on he'll just curl up under a blanket and sulk, so walks at the moment are fun!
He's still his happy self when he's warm though :)

Bad weather does leave lots of time for scrapping though, and I'm so in love with my daylight lamp, no idea how I managed without it :)
I was nearing the end of the Shimelle kit by this layout I think so made this to use up the strips of paper I had left. There were lots of little ice cream stickers in the kit too so good to use them up.

The photo was from a couple of years ago and we had freakshakes at a nearby cafe. They were a huge craze at the time but have died down a bit now. It was basically a huge chocolate/peanutbutter/strawberry milkshake topped in cake or doughnuts or something then covered in cream or sweets or both. Yum, but not a daily food lol.

Kids loved it though :)

My children are weird

So this is Jered, not Jared, Jer-ed. My Mum asked me to pick up a pineapple for her from Asda so like a good daughter I did.

So I bring it home, put it on the counter and the children have now adopted it, named it and talk to it. House FULL of toys and they're playing with a pineapple.

This weeks movie was Wind river. Its an older one but we didn't see it the first time round so went to the senior showing. Really glad I did :) It seems to have had mixed reviews but I really enoyed it.
It was slower than other thrillers these days but it was still worth a watch if you like crime thrillers.

It didn't leave everything all wrapped up in a nice bow, but sometimes that just makes things more realistic I think. Enough was resolved that I didn't feel cheated though :)
My mojo also seems to have come back, yey! I've done 4 layouts so far this week and I love them all which is rare.
This is one I did last year though, I still like it :) I'm working my way through older photos and really making a dent in them.

I'm hoping to scrap more chronologically once I'm more up to date, just for the ease of remembering what stories I've done and also putting them into albums too. While I dont scrap in order I do put them in albums in order which is a bit of a pain when I scrap a 6 year old photo and need to find where it goes in my albums.

This photo isn't too old, it from when we went to Haven a couple of years ago. (It might even have been 2016) There were 4 different Pokemon keyrings in the 2p machines, it took us ages and cost a fortune to get them all for the pokemon obsessed Cameron :) Was great fun though :)

Outside?

Outside? What's that? It's been one of those weeks where unless I was walking the dog, shopping or taking the kids to clubs I don't think I've left the house.
I'm kinda ok about hat though, I've managed to catch up on a lot of jobs, a lot of tv and even managed some scrapping :)
Way back in November I pulled out a kit I'd made using a lot of Shimelle products, in retrospect it was much too large and to be honest by the start of this month I was sick of the sight of it lol. So I gave myself to the end of this weekend to kill it, then pull out another one. Aside from 2 almost untouched 6x6 pads I didn't do too badly :)
I think this was one of the few I managed to use the 6x6 papers. It was a super simple layout and besides the misting in the background (the pink doesn't look very pink imo) I'm pleased with it.

These stickers were really hard to use as they're translucent, so if I put them on coloured paper, or patterned paper they look muddy and not as nice. Most of the time I just cut them out and kept them on the sheet which defeats the point I think but there you go. Here I was able to just stick them down as obviously the background is white anyway.

The photo is a selfie I took when we went to the circus last year. Shock horror, I'm trying to work through some of the super old photos I haven't scrapped yet (think kids first days at school) but sometimes you just need to use the up to date ones to keep the mojo flowing I think.
So as well as scrapping and cleaning this weekend there was family time too. The kids are getting older and like to spend more times doing their own things in their rooms or playing outside with their friends, but they both love board games with us :) Skyjo is one I bought for Christmas and is our current favourite.
Its a really simple concept, you have 12 cards, each card has a number on like -1, -2, -3, 0, 1 etc all the way up to 12. You start with all your cards face down, and choose if you want to change one of your cards for one in the middle. So you could decide to pick up the 3, but as you dont know what you're changing it for you could end up giving away a -2. The aim of the game is to get the lowest score possible.
I think Scamp wanted to play too.

Well today is about lots of washing. I've stripped the beds, cleaned the floors and will tackle the mess that is my kitchen next. At some point I really need to make a shopping list too as I looked in the garage freezer over the weekend and found a load of food I forgot we had! Whoops.

Why is it so cold?!

Before Christmas we had a few days where we were snowed in. Seriously the roads were like ice rinks, I had to use my daughters beach spade to dig my car out as both our neighbours had borrowed our spades and neither were around to return them lol. That said, even with snow everywhere I swear it was warmer than than it was today.
Given the choice I'd have stayed home, in my pjs, under a blanket. Unfortunately I'm a grown up (or so people keep telling me) so I had to take Mark to get a blood test and to a Dr appointment.
While we were out I popped into Pandora, my friend had bought a glass charm in the sale but when she got home she found out it was cracked, her local shop had sold out so I said I would look in mine for her.
We're only looking for Jacqui, I promised Mark, I wont buy anything..........

One of those bags is her charm, the other is one I bought for my daughters birthday, in May lol. Mark just rolls his eyes at me now, lol.
Shopping and bloods done I came home to defrost and tidy up. Hoping to manage a little scrapping tonight using this cut from my Silhouette I backed yesterday. Annoyingly after backing it I wished I had fulled in a few petals and centers with different colours so decided to use my Nuvo drops instead. Quite pleased with the result.

Granted they look a little messy up close, but still nice I think :)

I have the photos for it planned, now just need to find the time and the mojo! I cant clean anymore as my hoover is broken. :( I rung my Dad and asked to borrow theirs, no problem, he says. I go, pick it up, bring it home and go to use it. Oh, this doesn't work right. I ring him up, 'Your hoover doesn't work' 'Oh thats not the hoover I use, thats just been in the cupboard for ages' What, really Dad? Hes hard work. lol

Movie day! :)

Last year we found out that if we bought Mark an Odeon limitless card, I would go for free as his carer. So we could pay £18 a month, and see as many movies as we liked!
We love movies, obviously before we would only see the big ones at the cinema, like Disney, star wars, anything by Marvel etc, but now we go at least once a week.
To be honest its been brilliant as at the time Mark was getting really depressed as weeks would go by with him not leaving the house unless I was going to Asda or he was coming along with the school run, so this gets him out of the house without it costing a fortune.
So today we saw this.

Now I'll admit, Mum and I took the girls to see this Saturday, but I REALLY enjoyed it so convinced Mark to take me again today :D Surprisingly though he liked it too! It really is a great film and the songs are very catchy.
Keeping it a secret from Cait though as she will not be a happy bunny to find out I went to see it without her. :P
Before we went cinema I remembered to take photos of my Hey little magpie sale haul! I went a bit over the top but with 50% off who can blame me.
I did a lot of Christmas scrapping before Christmas last year so used up the majority of my seasonal stash, so bought some bits to replenish this.

Lots of pretty paper:) I love bright paper as you may be able to guess.

A great kit for summer holiday type photos.

I ordered these enamel shapes thinking they were the little sheets, you can imagine how thrilled I was when these showed up!

Lastly some Pebbles Girl squad goodies.

Soooo happy with my new stash!!! Need to use up a bit of old stash first though, lol. Wish me luck :)

Happy mail

At the start of the year I decided to put myself on a stash ban until at least March, before that however I ordered a load of stuff in the Hey little magpie sale lol.
I got lots of embellishments as I'm running low on things like enamel dots etc but somehow a lot of paper managed to fall into my basket too, no idea how these things happen :P

I had planned to take more photos of the contents but by the time I'd gone and got some shopping, did the dinner etc it was pitch black outside so will try again tomorrow.
On that note, does anybody else have kids that seem to think they're morons? Honestly my daughter trusts the dog more than me lol, I could tell her the rain was wet and she'd probably still want to go and check herself before believing me.

Shes only 9! She's going to be a nightmare to live with when she becomes a full blown teenager.

Gave up

Ok so I've given up on Ipad and have stolen Marks PC to blog now lol.
The weather here today has been dreadful, I've had the lights on all day as its just so dark and dreary! Caitlin went to my Mums early this morning to play with Mollie so I took the chance to walk Scamp while the house was still peaceful.
Loving my new trainers! I've got teeny feet (size 4) so often buy my shoes from the kids section. These were in the Next kids sale for £15, Sketchers with memory foam and gel inserts and pretty colours and silver stars! I'm so grown up lol.

Mark spent the day in bed and Cam was happily playing with his friend online so I settled down with my brand new daylight lamp and did some scrapping :)

I think my mojo for this kit has gone but I've still got so much left. Its a kit I made myself and it started out as Shimelle Glitter gril but I've added some Starshine too. I'm giving it until the end of the week and I'm throwing in the towel and putting it away for a while.
How do you guys scrap? Do you use mainly kits or just what you feel like using at the time?

2018

So 2017 ended with very little blogging being done. I'm full of excuses about it, no time, didn't do much, blogging has had its day etc etc. But a big one is that my laptop only works for 5-10 minutes at a time before overheating and dying and I'm dreadful at blogging fro, my iPad which is why this post has no photos.
I have photos on my iPad, but for some reason the blogger thing only recognises photos taken before 2013, which I don't even have on here anymore but there you go 🙄 I'm not the most technical person lol.

So while I didn't blog much last year, when I started to sort out my layouts I found that my blog is usually a huge help, in both ordering them and adding details to the journaling so I'm redoubling my efforts to keep up with it. If you do read my posts forgive if I mess up a bit while getting used to iPad blogging but lots of people do it so there's got to be a better way lol.

Wish me luck and happy new year!