Christmas order, confirmed!

I did this LO for Scrap365.  Did you see it ?

The local farm shop has these turkeys out front as you drive in. When we first saw them this year, they reminded us to place our order. This was back in October.  A few weeks later, as they flocked up to the fence to look at us, ever curious, we thought their number have swelled.  But no, they have merely been fattened up.  No doubt by now, it being December, they would no longer be there in their enclosure...

I have added pretty feathers to the layout, entirely appropriate, I thought.

The Swarm at Thorpe Park

We went to Thorpe Park a few weeks ago, when the weather was still nice and the sun was still high in the sky.  You needed that, if you were planning on riding the water rides. We got thoroughly soaked on Tidal Wave!

When we got to Thorpe Park, Hamish and I promptly joined the queue for The Swarm. It was a 20 minutes queue at that point. The 20 minutes turned into over an hour.  The queue management was the most shambolic of any rides we have been on. For a start, they had 2 rows of seats on the rides turned backward for extra thrill.  The queue for this was much shorter but when you get to the ride, you can go anywhere you want.  So our "going forward" queue was getting slower and slower. Then they decided to hook on another set of rides so they can have 2 going simultaneously.  That took some time, not sure why they didn't do it before they open.  Then the 2 simultaneous were ran more like one after the other.

Enough about the bad queue.  The ride was awesome.  It was very, very fast, very high, twist and turning that I have ever experienced. And over is less than a minute. The ride went very close to some buildings built as prop for the ride but unlike the dummies in the test runs, there were no close calls. We didn't lose limbs. It was extreme but it was very smooth. It was the best ride on a roller coaster for me, ever!

You want to see the layout as evidence, right ?

Ferry to Yarmouth

I always get excited when I go on a ferry, even if it is just a short trip. I think this harks back to those frequent trips from Butterworth to Penang from my childhood. A ride on the ferry always felt like going over-seas!

We went to the IOW in the summer so I had to do a layout of the crossing.

 

I am loving the plastic stars from Studio Calico.  They will be sprinkling their ways into more layouts very soon!

 

 

This layout was done for Sarah's Cards October Sketch Challenge.  Why don't you join us for a chance to win some spending "money" on loads of lovely stash ?

Jamie's Big Feastival in the Cotswold

We went to the Big Feastival at the end of the summer holidays. It was our first festival. The food aspect was the main draw. Did you notice that it is called Feast - ival rather than Fest-ival ?

Camping out in a field with other festival goers proved to be challenging in the evening especially with kids whining, "I am not comfortable" ( for god sake, check into a five star establishment! ) to "I need a wee" and their indulgent parents who thinks it is ok to shout out in the close quarters of tent living. Incidentally, the new born baby and his parents in next door tent hardly made a sound all weekend! So that was the low point. Even the porta-loos weren't bad.

So this is our field.  The tents were quite close, or so I thought until J pointed out that at the V, the tents are much closer. LOL

 

Checking out the grounds on Friday night, we caught a spectacular sun set over the arena.

 

 

Saturday morning and it's officially opened by Jamie Oliver and Alex James ( of Blur ).  The venue was on Alex James' farm.  He is now a farmer and he makes cheese.

 

 

Inspired by the Weber B-B-Q demo, we had to get the chimney starter.

 

 

The festival goers eating, drinking and enjoying the music.

 

Spotted, Jamie Oliver being photographed with a group of singers.

J claimed A's sunglasses as his own, trying out the PIMM's deckchairs.

 

This wheel turned out quite fast.  Wasn't expecting that.  What's more, because it was not busy we had many, many spins.  "When will it end", was constantly on my mind.

 

So I let the boys ride this one out.  Loved snapping away here!

And you know where this is going! I made a layout of our weekend.

Cake Rota

 

I made this layout last autumn. I have only just had it back from Scrap365 last week, I had forgotten all about it.

 

Now that a new school year has started, the cake rota is a favourite discussion in our house.  J said, "We are trying to get a cake rota started in all our classes". "How many cake rotas is that ?". Well, they have 2 teachers for each subjects so that's six in total. Not all the teachers are popular, so maybe he will end up with three.

 

"The trick is to be placed at the end of the rota", he said. "Then usually the rota petered out". "We had a really nice rainbow muffin today", he added. 

 

"I need to bring in some cakes next Tuesday", said H.  Not a rota, but a birthday cake for everyone in Greek, all six of them!

 

I have joint the cake rota at work too.  Someone brings in cakes or chocolate on Tuesday for our departmental meeting.  I have been sampling the cakes so I felt obliged to join in.  Not sure yet when I am up but these brownies might be making an appearance. Another option is raspberry slices. We will see.

 

ps: I cut out those chevrons by hand.

Right Here...Summer Style with Layers

Hello Gorgeous.  How are you enjoying the UKS Blog Hop so far ?  You should have come from Cal but if you are lost, you can find all the links back on UKS.

Welcome to my blog. I am going to show you how I created a very layered layout. I hope it will inspire you to get creating now that the kids are back at school.

I don't usually have a lot of layers under my photos but on discovering a lot of journaling cards, I thought I had better put some of them to work.  Rather than haphazardly pushing cards and embellishments under, I decided to work at the layers methodically.  A bit too prescriptive ? Maybe!  For me, it helped to think of the layers like this.

 

I started by preparing my base cardstock. I removed approximately 1" from the white cardstock to end up with 11"x11".  I didn't cut it too straight before I framed it with 2 patterned papers. I am intending to machine sew around the edge but I won't do this till the end.

 

 

I added four journaling cards plus the red tag to lift a very neutral card a little.

Next I added two Fancy Pants stencil cards.  The cut out on the card provided me an opportunity to add another layer so underneath them went a piece of patterned paper and some stamps. Later on, you'll see why I used the stamps.

 

I added two photos to the mix.

This is followed by a framed photo in the middle.  The chipboard and a little bit of twine adds another layer.

 

Next I added three clusters of labels in a triangle formation - top right, bottom right and middle left. You probably already know about how a triangle is used in designing a LO so I will not bother you with a lecture today. 

 

I added a wood veneer shape on top of each cluster of labels and that's pretty much my photo area done.

 

I added a title at the bottom of the page. I seem to be doing a lot of titles at the bottom of the page right now. You are probably bored with that.   For this layout, moving to the bottom provided some clear space between two areas of clutter.  I went over the top with some stamps from October Afternoon.

 

 

That space in between provided the perfect area for my journaling. I also sew around the edges at this point.

 

There you go. The photos are from when we visited Mudeford, Dorset  This layout is called Right Here because you don't have to get on a plane to find some lovely place. Do those postage stamps make sense now ?

 

I hope you are inspired to try this yourself.  If you do, please post me a link.  I would love to see.

That's all from me.  Your next stop is Kathy on http://kathyisshopping.blogspot.co.uk/.

Second Day of School Photos

Is first day of school photo a ritual in your household ?  It is in mine but I forgot yesterday morning. I don't even have the excuse of work because I didn't work yesterday.   So these are our Second Day of School photos.

J is in the Upper Sixth.  How did that happen ?

He came downstairs yesterday in a crumpled shirt.  When asked why he was not wearing one of the ironed shirts, his reply was, "This is more stylish".  LOL.  Stylish ?  It is just school uniform for heaven sake!

H joins Year 10 and starts on the thread mill of GCSE.  I guess Year 13 won't be too far off for him either. He was practising, "How much scowling can I get away with ?" in this photo.  He is usually a very cheerful person.

 

We usually have photos by the house number as it provides a height chart of some sort. ps; I think I can fit under it.