Another UKS challenge

Welcome to my bloggy corner of the world how are you?  In this part of the UK the weather is atrocious it is wet and windy and with a poorly son I have had a great excuse to stay in all weekend (well except for celebrating a friend's birthday on Friday night!)

Anyway, this week on UKS the challenge was to scrap the man in your life, using a fabby sketch (I love sketches as I know where I am going and almost what I am doing!) with the additions of paint/ink/mist, different alphas and some rik rak.

Not a great photo of the page, but it is hubby in Antigua reading at the beach.  The upper left corner says 'Relax' and the tag with the heart button says 'with a good book'.  Did you spot my mistake?  I have added the date as 08/2012!  Would be great if we were back in Antigua in August but sadly it isn't going to happen, in fact we haven't even got a holiday booked for this year yet!

I did manage to include everything in this LO.  I have never used paint on a page before and I have used it on the title Relax I painted with crackle paint though it is difficult to see, the rik rak and the man are obvious as is the sketch and I am hoping that my numbers, title and alphas on the tag count as different alphas (plus my handwriting of course!)

Hoping you are having a good weekend wherever you are and whatever the weather xxx

Some scrapping!

Wow what a week!  Nothing terrible has happened don't worry, it has just been a very full on week with lots happening.

Firstly DD has had M her French exchange student staying and my French has not improved, it remains virtually non-existent!  I actually studied German at school and boy does it show!!!  Thank goodness for Google Translate.  It has been interesting to watch 2 French girls versus 2 English girls playing Pictionary and using Google Translate (which didn't always work!).  Who knew that you cannot translate Korma or Nan or Tikka Marsala or any other type of curry (they didn't like what they ordered very much but then who eats prawn korma anyway???)  Seriously I think they have had a great week with days out, parties and fun socialising and today they have been at Thorpe Park.

On the crafting front I have made a serious commitment, I thought about it for a long time and was watching and waiting for the right opportunity to come along.  Finally I jumped in... I have joined a team on UKS!!!  I have been a member of UKS for a while but really go there in isolation and rarely comment.  I was adopted at one point but was then deserted so I never really got involved in anything and just hung around the shopping boards.  Now I have joined the Craftoholics and am really happy that 2 of my blogging buddies also joined.... one co-incidentally and the other with encouragement...can you guess who they are????  So I have gone for it and joined in with a challenge, scrapping a birthday, using an old piece of paper, 4 of something and a colour of the weather

The papers used are all quite old I think, this is DS on his 10th birthday and it isn't the best photo but the only one I have of him blowing out his candles so it also fits Shimelle's challenge 15 and I have used 4 different types of stickers (and 4 patterned papers on the background one! so fits in with challenge 2 mixing up paper collections) and I went for yellow and blue to remind me of the sun in a blue sky.  Yay my first UKS challenge completed!!!

I also made these pages, inspired by Shimelle's online crop last weekend..........

this was made using my own simple sketch for lesson one of just one sketch (such fun!) a monochromatic page that uses SJ's printable for my journalling (completed post photo to keep secret as usual!) so Shimelle's 13th challenge.  Plus it uses up lots of scraps (challenge 16) my favourite being the upper left circle shape that is the offcut from the sticker (half of which is used just above the photo)  I actually love this LO and it really reminds me of the beauty of Antigua.

this page still make me squirm slightly as I went out of my comfort zone to mix up my style (challenge 3).  I don't often use flowers I don't really think I am very girly and I have never used twine across the page (I used my original sketch from the previous page and rotated it to create this one) I normally don't do bright and bold colours but encouraged by the bright bathing suits and challenge 10, I used the bright green and the crazy reddy patterned paper!

Finally I used the March ANFSCD page by Shimelle (challenge 9) and used  new stamps that I have had sitting in a basket for ever (challenge 8) and I actually like how this one came out...just!

Phew what fun I have had this week, hope I get to do some more next week but it looks like another busy one!!!  PS Am I allowed to enter a LO into more than one of Shimelle's challenges???

Family 12x12 blog hop April 2012

Oh dear I am really late to the party this month! I signed up for the blog hop then completely forgot about it! I am just home from work so please forgive me....

Thank you Margie for hosting the family photo blog hops, it really is a great reminder to capture the four of us together and so far this year I have been keeping up yay!

Hopefully you should have arrived here via Patricia's blog, in case you get confused this is the way to hop (very appropriate for Easter ... a hopping bunny!)

Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com

Patricia http://patoliveira.wordpress.com/

Ruth http://www.chattycraftyartypig.blogspot.com

Jo http://www.mrsbeee.blogspot.com (she will post late, so be sure to check back)

In March we visited Denbies Wine Estate, an amazing English vineyard set in the Surrey countryside. The geology is similar to the Champagne region and the estate produces award winning wines of an exceptionally hight standard. We had a wine tasting tour, which was interesting and informative (though the children only had grape juice!) and we bought a few bottles of the wonderful wine to consume at home!

As we left I took a photo of the 4 of us amongst the vines, not a brilliant shot but the best I have for March.

I am now off to catch up with everyone else's March family photos and I hope you do too xxx

Redoing storytelling Sunday April as it is in March on blogger instead of April!

Story Telling Sunday April

It was an ordinary day, just like any other. In fact so indistinguishable from any other day that I cannot tell you the date or even the day now. I was home alone, the children were at school, husband at work, a normal afternoon. The telephone rang and I answered it. I had won a holiday!

Off course I had won holidays before, I was familiar with the cold call announcing an amazing win. The caller always explained the fabulous prize, then explained the catch! Sometimes a compulsory attendance for 2 people at a London based seminar (read sales event) and/ or all flights and taxes had to be paid by me ......... so not really a free holiday at all!!

This caller claimed to be from a travel agent (one I had never heard off),she said I had won a holiday for 2 people to New Zealand (not very believable) and that it was the prize in acompetition I had entered (which I didn't even recall!) I listened intently for the catch to come but it didn't. I gave a few of my details said I would discuss it with my husband and the 'travel agent' would call me again.

I immediately looked up the travel agency online and it seemed to be real. I looked up the competition I had entered and it clearly existed, the prize from an online lingerie company no less... a holiday of a lifetime and rather expensive swimwear. I spoke to my husband and we decided to watch and wait.

I was still in denial when we arrived at the airport, I expected to be told there were no flights, no holiday and no win. But it was all real! I had indeed won an all expenses trip for a week to New

Zealand.

We didn't take many photos, we missed the children dreadfully, we wished we had extended our stay (we did manage 10 days in the end) and we really loved the small part of New Zealand we saw.

Hundreds of dolphins (with a few whales) on a boat trip from Auckland

A vineyard tour on the Island of Waiheke

A rainbow over the Coromandel

This is my second story about winning, last month was all about my mum winning a car, this time it was all about me! I think our winning streak has now run out! Also just in case you are interested I never did get any of the expensive swimwear I was meant to win but it didn't really matter!

Please visit Sian's blog from High in the sky for more story telling Sunday tales from around the globe xxx