Chocolate!

I have got to show you THE most gorgeous box of chocolates I was lucky enough to receive this Christmas! I didn't know whether to eat it or scrap it!! It was given to me by one of my favourite customers; even the box was juicy and closed with a quiet quality sound. My daughter Aimee took these pictures as I wouldn't let them have a taster until I some pictures. I wondered what the heck she was doing as she built a backdrop and contorted into awkward positions with my camera! She's a real chocoholic and you have to guard your chocolate stash like it was the crown jewels! This box was consumed very very slowly and every mouthful savoured; mostly by me it has to be said, as I shoved the Quality Street's the children's way to keep their insatiable appetite reasonably sated. I think fine chocolate is wasted on the under 20's - under 30's come to that. Let me tell you that the taste was everything I expected, and more. The pictures are really not doing it justice.

Damn fine, yes?

Here is my little thank you note that I sent in return. My daughter proclaimed it to be "too plain" though so I added some "other bits" before sending. Only when she was happy with it did it leave with the postie.

Actually I think this finest of boxes of chocolates deserve a little scrapping. Hang on whilst I go put something together................

....OK, here is my little tribute to my oh so fine box of chocolates.

What is it with us women and our relationship to chocolate? ;-)

Beach Weather?

It's cold! It is so cold that I am sitting enveloped in my trusty blanket as we speak!! It started out alright with sunshine and warm weather this morning, but come lunchtime it was bucketing it down and it was only a warm coat, gloves and scarf that could keep the cold at bay!

Nevertheless my girls ventured to Brighton with their dad today. They didn't seem to have found it cold and even paddled in the sea!! They don't get their stamina from me - although I did use to be able to run about with hardly anything on and not feel the cold.

What is it with Brighton and traffic btw, it took them an hour to get there but almost FIVE hours to get back! Almost two hours of that was going from the car park about 2 miles down the road! Tired and suffering badly from road rage they arrived back at 8pm this evening. I of course snatched the camera our of their cold quivering hands and made up a couple of digi layouts straight away from two great pictures - never mind seeing to their needs; priorities and all that, right girls? ;o)

Another Birthday Card

Now you have got to be impressed!!! I have been very good and blogged almost every day! Getting tired of me yet?

It was time to make another birthday card for a mutual friend of the girls. The glaze is not quite dry on it yet but you get the idea. Actually, looking at it here in the picture you can't even see the glaze! Well it's there, so you just have to take my word for it! Nothing makes a child happier than seeing their name on a card - well probably lots of thing would make the child happier but you know what I mean - I therefore always try to incorporate the name within the design.

I realised this morning that there was a complimentary "almost done" page in with a digi kit by the fabolous GinaHuff so I of course had to try it out. I got the girls to perform their cheesy grin look as I couldn't be arsed to hunt around for another picture. This is it, with a few extra elements added by me for good luck. I just LURVE these colours!

Mozzies!

The mozzies are out to get me again! You may remember that I posted on Charmed Craft Talk forum about some huge mosquito bites I had all over my body, well it's happening again! Over the last two nights some horrible little critter has sunk it's spikey thing into me and sucked out 5 pints of blood! It's a miracle I'm still standing! They are not like your average mozzie bite, these spread and are about 5" across! To add insult to injury the little b**t**d has gotten me twice on the face! Once on the forehead and once on the cheek!! I'm going after it with a shotgun with the lights are out!!

I have gone digi mad, and constantly scouring the Internet for graphics. I'm very much into the grungy look and get a lot of my graphics from Weeds and Wildflowers Design

I had another little play and here are a few more LO's. I love that picture of Diana so used it again here. The picture of the girls is an old old one, but I just love the way their hair form a perfect heart.

A Trip to Godstone Farm

The summer holiday is almost over for the girls so on this final non-working day we trotted off to Godstone Farm - what better place to trot off to? Tom Tom was a tad annoying as it kept trying to direct us the wrong way, it didn't get the better of us and we outsmarted it several times by just ignoring the instructions - much to the annoyance of the lady navigator who kept telling us to turn around. It's one of those gadgets that you either love or loathe! Well sometimes I love it and other times I really do loathe it!

After we had some lunch at the “tea rooms” we roamed around the farm for some hours. Stomach first is a philosophy I always follow! There were lots of newly born animals, much to the delight of the girls. Following the close inspection of all the animals the girls wanted to go into the play barn, which has a multitude of climbing apparatus. All well and good until a little boy decided to have a poo right in the middle of the play area and proceeded to smear it all over everything – ewwwwwww, yuck yuck YUCK!! I pity the poor mother who had to go in and clean it all up in front of loads of horrified parents! We all sat and waited for her to come out of course so we could pin her embarrasment even further with our pityful stares!

We decided on a tractor ride after that, bought the tickets and walked around for a little while whilst waiting for the appropriate time. Ten minutes before the ride was due to start we returned and queued up waiting for the tractor to arrive. Unfortunately there wasn't enough room for us all so we waited another 15 minutes for it to return. Eventually we got on the darn thing and were taken on a ride at a snail’s pace right around where we had walked 30 minutes previously! That was worth queuing up for then......!

Apart from that it was a really good day. A milestone was reached when Amber actually hand-fed some of the animals. Amber is quite a fearful child, as opposed to Aimee who is totally without fear. Letting an animal actually eat from her hand was quite a feat for my little girl! YAY!

Here's a couple of digi LO's from the day.

I had a terrible "moment of truth" today. We had sat down for a little while when the girls decided to race up this rather steep little hill. I jumped up determined to beat them but when I got to the top I struggled so hard to catch my breath that I thought I would pass out! I acted as normal of course and no-one would have guessed the turmoil within! I used to be so fit! What the heck happened?? The realisation that you're as fit as a flat pancake is horrifying!

Digital Scrapping...

Scrapping for me involves several mountains of unorganised stash and continuous hunting for an item I just had seconds ago! It revolves around a table that slowly but surely disappears under piles of paper, fibres, buttons, adhesives, pens, scissors, paper trimmer, Quickutz Silhouette and a ton of other stuff. You only realise the mess exists when you have to carefully push things around to make room for your 10th cup of coffee!! It involves ink on your arms and glue under your fingernails. It involves a considerable amount of swearing when the letters you have carefully cut out refuses to leave your fingers and stay on the paper! It involves ignoring everything else around you for several hours, neglecting the house and the kids, and leaving them to fend for themselves whilst you battle with threading fibre through tiny eyelets! But it also involves a huge amount of satisfaction when you finish the project!


Digi scrapping is sooooooo easy! No mess, very quick, put-your-feet-up and click, drag, drop away until you have a presentable layout in a fraction of the time it would take to thread that fibre through tiny eyelets! Do you get the same satisfaction? No you don't, but it's nevertheless great fun. I spent several hours on a small double layout for a CJ I am in (OK, I'm slow, I know it!). It took me about an hour to create the two digi layouts below..... Spot the difference? It will never take the place of conventional scrapping but as a quick fix it's unbeatable!

This first digi layout really is all about how great it is just to be yourself and chill out, without worrying what you look like.