Sending warm thank you wishes ...

Friday afternoon as The LOML picks me up from work after playing dad's taxi for the afternoon, his first question is "Who do you know in Spain?".  That had me stumped for a bit and then I remembered an email from the lovely Alison over at Life in the Slow Lane asking for my address so that she could send me some happy mail :-)  And boy was it VERY happy mail!!!!!  Here is my package tied up with string (are you singing the song in your head now????? The one from The Sound of Music???)...

Isn't that the cutest card?  The Princess loved the sentiment, she said the paper looks like sunshine.  And here is what the package contained ... 

I am loving those butterflies.  The Princess has fallen in love with the 'wish' title and I have a feeling that it will end up on one of her layouts :-)  It was a very lovely surprise on a Friday evening ... Thank you Alison!!!!!!!!  It is amazing how much a little package can brighten your day.

Chipper

Sadly there hasn't been any crafting here ...

The last week of the kids school holidays and The Princess and I weren't able to craft together.  That hasn't stopped The Princess from squeezing in some crafting fun, but none for me.  The LOML had a wisdom tooth removed on Wednesday and it didn't come out as easily as hoped.  He is finally getting up and about today and with one thing and another he has been out of action for most of the month.  I was only home one evening this week as each night had its own set of errands that had to get sorted.  I don't know how single parents do it every day.  I am exhausted!!!  It probably doesn't help that I had to do the work of two at the shop either :-)  But the kids are ready for a new school term AND we are ready for our guest to arrive on Tuesday.

A little while ago we agreed to host a Japanese exchange student.  He arrives on Tuesday and is with us for 10 days.  While we are all looking forward to it (and have just finished re-arranging The Extrovert's bedroom to fit a second mattress) I am very happy that it is only for 10 days.  I don't think I could cope if it was much longer after the past month.  The Extrovert learns Japanese at school and he is hoping to be chosen to go on exchange next year.  This will provide him with a great opportunity to get in some practise with a native speaker.  Hiroyuki said that he only speaks a little English in his email to us last week and I am hoping that he is just being modest.  Otherwise it could be interesting :-)  Either way it is going to be a VERY fun two weeks.  (The other two children learn Indonesian and we are blessed to have a native speaker in the family for practise and three others who speak it fluently)

Today we took a brief break and celebrated Nephew 3's 4th birthday.  All the cousins had a fun time and we laughed lots.  The Extrovert entertained everyone with jokes and dramatics.  Nephew 2 & 3 love him for it.  But he really does love little kids.  This morning was his first morning volunteering in the creche at church.  The leader was very impressed with him and the kids all love him already anyway.

Happy 4th Birthday to my monkey!

The sun was shining today and it was lovely to sit in the sun and just soak it up.  The weather was perfect and I would love it to be like today everyday!  I may have even gotten just a teeny bit sun-burnt LOL

Off to write a menu for the week and sort out some groceries.  Counterfeiting will just have to wait for a little bit :-)

Have a safe and wonderful day,

Chipper

July Craft-a-thon

Way back in June (it feels like such a long time ago) we planned a 12hr Craft-a-thon at the shop for the 7th of July.  I really wanted to theme it and do something different so we had a "Stars & Stripes Craft-a-thon" so that I could have lots of fun with the theme.  However, as anti-American sentiment can rear its ugly head here from time to time, we only loosely Americanised it.  I didn't even hang up my flag.

I wanted to share some of my favourite loves with some of my favourite customers.  It was our quietest Craft-a-thon ever but most of my friends were there and we had a great time.  In a way I am glad that it was quieter than normal (only half full) as The LOML had only come out of hospital a few days before and I had to do all the prep myself.

The Princess helped me with the decorations as she finished school a day before the boys.  She cut stars on the Eclips and made the toppers for the candy bags.  Here are the decorations we whipped up together while at the shop ... 

There are streamers everywhere coming down from the centre of the ceiling.

In the week before the Craft-a-thon we baked cookies for the ladies (and some extra to take to the hospital!).  None of them had ever had a Snickerdoodle before ... my all time favourite!  We also made peanut butter cookies.  Both were a huge hit and we had them for afternoon tea.

My cousin in NY kindly went grocery shopping for me and sent me a HUGE box fully of my favs.  I shared some with the ladies in their candy bag.  They had red vines, tootsie rolls, hot tamales, and Hershey's chocolate minis.  It might not seem like much but the box cost more than twice the cost of the candy in postage!

For lunch I made them a "Pot Luck".  Now I know that normally that means that everyone brings a dish to share but I wanted to make things that they probably hadn't had before.  As there wasn't the normal number of people I had to cut back on the choices but we had chilli, corn bread, my Grandma's potato salad, and sweet potato crunch.  It was a huge hit!!!  None of them had even had corn bread before!  I shall have to remember to photograph the sweet potato crunch and share the recipe on here.  It is a family favourite and soooooo yummy.  They were all fighting over the last bit.

But my biggest surprise of the night was supper.  I made a pumpkin pie (which they had never tried either!) and I made a s'more bar!!!!!!  I had seen it on Pinterest and I so wanted to make one.  My cousin also included some graham crackers in the box as you can't get them over here and there isn't anything quite like them.  And so we toasted marshmallows and made s'mores in the store.  Here I am setting up the bar ...

 We had such a great time making s'mores.  Only one or two of them (there were 12 there all up) even knew what a s'more was so I made the first one and 'educated' them all.  I think they are all addicted now!!!  A few of them want to have one at their next party!  I still can't believe we lit flames in a paper craft shop!

Oh, what fun it was and it really helped to have a happy event at the end of those two weeks.  I hope that those of you celebrating the 4th of July had a wonderful day, albeit a bit late :-)

Chipper

Counterfeit Kit July - Three!

I saw that there was a Sketch Challenge over at the CKC site (see link on the right!) using a sketch from PageMaps.  I started out planning to follow it, but as I was using two photos that were different orientations I changed it.  Here is the sketch ...

And here is my version ...

I am so proud of myself - I have now used all THREE Cricut cartridges I put in the kit.  The car is from Summer Vacation.  I even used three swirly metal clips that have been in my stash for what feels like forever!  All of our pre-digital photos have been packed for the past three years and when I had to find a photo of my Grandpa a few weeks ago it gave me the push I needed to FIND the box with the photos (we are still in a 'temporary' rental ... can't wait until we will be one day be settled again in our own house!).  I am so happy to be getting back to these photos.  None of my kids baby photos are scrapped and I really want to get that remedied.  Already printed photos just waiting to be scrapped seems to have given me a boost in morale :-)  I used my most favourite supply at the moment on this layout ... Mr Huey Shine spray!!  I love the stuff and have just had to buy my second bottle.  It jazzes up everything with LOTS of shine and sparkle.  Far more than any other one I have tried.  All of the 'white' marks on the car are actually shiny!

So after completing this layout Saturday night I got engrossed in a Star Trek movie and didn't do anything else even though the TV is right next to my craft space!  So this morning I took stock of what papers are left from my kit and this is what I had left ...

I am quite impressed with what I have used so far.  I have added more card stock as needed, plus a few scraps but still seem to have plenty left!  So here is ANOTHER layout featuring The Thinker's second birthday.  Birthday's when the kids were little were always busy as they have four sets of Grandparents who don't always get along (although they are much better now).  We had lunch at McDonald's with my dad.  This suited the boys just fine as they played in playland and we still had cake :-)

I used the washi tape to created a pleated strip at the bottom.  It is so easy to do this as the tape is already sticky and if you stick it wrong, you just lift it back up!  I then layered two strips of the orange washi tape on top of each other to make it less transparent.  It added a nice bit of texture without making it thick, which ribbon tends to do when you pleat it.  While I don't mind lumps and bumps on my pages, I am more of a flat-ish scrapper as space for albums is limited!  I have a friend who can't usually fit more than 10 layouts in an album LOL  I very rarely go that thick!

I printed the photo that The Princess was waiting for at work on Saturday and here is her final layout from her kit. 

The kids have to come to work with us on Saturday's and in the afternoon I set up The Princess on YouTube to watch some Glitter Girl videos, along with some other ones by Shimelle.  She loves them and last night all I heard was "Did you know ... ?" or "Glitter Girl said ..."!!!  But it was good to see that she was listening and that it has finally encouraged her to write something on her layouts (but only because it wasn't mommy telling her to!).  The Princess has a form of dyslexia that makes it hard for her to get the words she wants to say written down.  She knows exactly what she wants to say, but struggles to get more than four words on the page as her mind draws a blank every time she picks up a pen.  It is very frustrating for her and she is really trying hard using lots of recommended techniques.  Here are her latest creations.

There is only one week left of school holidays and then we won't have this much crafting time together again until the next school holidays.  Thank you for indulging us :-D

Chipper

Counterfeit Kit July - Two!

Yippee!!  I have a Counterfeit Kit TWO post!!!  I haven't had this much fun in ages and I am so glad I am playing along.  The Princess was very excited by all your comments, so thank you for taking the time to mention her.  She still can't believe it.  We both have more to share with this months kit and my first one is a double page.  I don't normally do doubles but there was a series of four photos so a double seemed the way to go.  

I used three more of my pre-cut Cricut cuts - all from Graphically Speaking.  The border of two's at the bottom, "life's little" at the top and the "moments" at the bottom.  Remember that these were all grey to start with.

These are 'bluer' than they should be (all of the photos this time are) ... I really need to find better natural light :-)

There isn't a great deal to this double and so you think it would have been quick ... nope!  Doubles really make my mind hit a brick wall.

After all these boy layouts from the same event I was getting bored so I pulled out the one flowery paper in my kit and found a photo from another event.  This is still a pre-digital print with only one photo from the day.  

I cut a Cricut title and just built layers with scraps.  I did add the flowers and trims to my kit as I hadn't originally put any in.  The background paper for this layout is probably about 5-6 years old.  I am so happy that it has made it into my albums.  I have so many papers ... I think I have a slight addiction ... well maybe a HUGE one LOL ... and now I am using them!!!!!

So the 'girly' layout was done and I could go back to The Thinker's second birthday and get some more of those ones done.  I had fun with this and even turned the washi tape into bunting (flags)!  I also cut MORE stuff on my Cricut (graphically speaking again!) as I wanted an arrow and the word "pure" just leapt out of the handbook screaming "use me!".  You can't really see it here but in the photo The Thinker has the cutest look of joy on his face.

The Princess had only made a little kit and she has made a second layout (but she doesn't want me to photograph it yet as we are waiting for a photo to be printed)  and then from the scraps she made a door hanger that tells the boys that it is a "Girls Room ONLY", and two little cards.

And that was The Princess' kit finished.  We have really enjoyed doing this together and as there is still a week left of the school holidays I took her shopping for a few more bits and pieces.  Now she is busily making more layouts and cards using some of the Papermania Lucy Cromwell range.  I am sure she is going to want me to add them here too when they are done.  

It is my day off tomorrow and I shall be planning more crafting ... I still can't believe how much I have gotten done this week!  And I feel so much more relaxed.

Happy Crafting,

Chipper