Ooooops forgot a photo for Rinda's challenge!!

Here is it

21 A photo of me with lots of 12x12 patterned papers and my paper trimmer two of my favourite craft supplies and use in most LO's (rather blurred and taken earlier today by the 12 year old!!!)

Thank you so much Rinda for another wonderful summertime scavenger hunt as usual there were some tricky subjects and objects but I managed to get all 21 and the 2 bonus items in the end!!

I am going to try and see what everyone else has managed to find as we will all have so many different yet the same items xxx

Rinda's 2013 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt part 2

I have been busy trying to get the last few pics for Rinda's challenge 

So without further ado here are some more photographs.....

11 An animal in a zoo, aquarium, nature reserve..... yay I got an iguana!!

 15 A fire truck or police car.... found next to where I work

 14 a stained glass or mosaic....spotted at a local school see the close up

 1 open air market..... I love these 'honesty stalls' with the pot for money

 12 a cloud in the shape of something..... top one is an alligator head and the bottom one is a rubber duck???

19 a fisherman.....had lotsa options for this but went for the 'crab' fishermen... there were a lot of crabs!

 3 civic building... this is the grand entrance to the council offices in Aberdeen, Scotland

5 a sunset..... taken last night from home!

20 a dinosaur.... discovered on Skye and there was even a dinosaur museum

 2 theatre for performing arts.....taken at 7.30am this morning...cutting it fine again!

bonus items....DS modelling the English flag (that was all he was wearing!) and a sundial from Richard Branson's garden!

Rinda's 2013 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt part 1

Yes I know I am really late joining in with Rinda's fab challenge.....
I have been taking photos throughout the Summer but have not managed to blog one yet!
So here I go with a random selection that, like last years, represents some of the places I have been and people I have seen this Summer.....

 17 Candles...... celebrating DD's birthday in July

 8 A tower.... the pink cooling towers of Ironbridge

 13 A fence.....my cousin lives next to a field

 4 an airplane...... we flew to Scotland on this one

 6 someone or something taking a nap..... kids dozing in the sun on a boat trip

 18 you local tea shop... this is the small and cosy teahouse in Staffin on the Isle of Skye, the best cup of tea I have had for years and all the cakes were fantastic!!

 16 a windmill... one of a scattered few on Skye

 10 A bench that is outside....hand carved and what a view!

 9   A photo with someone or something that is clearly out of place or doesn't belong..... a telephone box in the middle of nowhere almost overgrown with weeds and bushes!

7  A sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny.... well it made me laugh!

so have you managed to join in this year?  I know I have seen a lot of interesting and original interpretations of the list around the web and I think I may be stretching the rules with some of my snaps...in fact I still have a couple to take..... nothing like leaving it to the last minute!

UKS End of Summer Blog Hop

Welcome to my little corner of the world, I am hoping you have come here from the talented Emy and her washi tape jewelry, if not don't worry just pop over to the UKS thread here for a list so you can follow everyone on the blog hop.

I want to talk to you about....

Challenge

A dictionary definition is 

• a call to someone to participate in a competitive situation ie  a task or situation that tests someone’s abilities
• a call to prove or justify something
• or to  invite (someone) to do or say something that one thinks will be difficult or impossible

I love a challenge, especially when it comes to my main hobby, scrapbooking. I only began making pages a few years ago and initially I would never have dreamed of completing a challenge, in fact I did not really join in with UKS until last year when I became part of a team and then started creating layouts for the challenges.I really love them and have only missed a handful since then. As regular readers will know, my new team set the weekly challenge recently which was great fun.......

After making friends online through my hobby I have met several of them in real life and this was my first experience of scrapping with other people.  It gave me the confidence to join a local group (that I found out about on UKS) and recently we had a 14 hour crop, with several challenges.....

I met up with  team mate and friend K in August and set a challenge for us to do together (and anyone else who would like to join us!) just for fun......

There are numerous ways of joining in challenges online, with many sponsors (and other websites) running monthly challenges such as Sarah's Cards monthly sketch challenge.....

(My July Challenge)

Another sponsor who challenges me more than almost anyone else is Shimelle and this month I am challenging myself to join in Learn Something New Every Day.  So far I have taken daily mobile phone pics and written down my 'lesson learned' in a notebook.  I will make up my pages and put them in my album....

made from one of these....

  and this..... (with a few letter stickers)

I am an avid blog follower and will join in whenever possible with blog challenges, even if it just to use up some of my supplies!  Last year for the very first time I joined in with Rinda's Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt (this years can be found here) Rinda challenges you to find items from a list and take a picture.  I am still snapping away and hope to find the last few things in the next 2 weeks before my time is up.  I hope to make an album of all my summer snaps and this is an example of a page I made from last year.....

Do you ever take part in challenges?  Do you like them? I have tried several things that I wouldn't normally do as part of a challenge, many I have loved and a couple I have hated (I think I am going to take apart the Rainbow coloured page I made recently... one you might never see!) but at least I have tried new things.  I have used up more stash, recorded a few more memories and mostly had fun! 
So, I would like to encourage you to take up a challenge.... this blog hop may be a challenge for you, making some of the fab projects featured on the blog hop may end up becoming a challenge, or joining in with the challenges set by online stores or UKS may be new for you.  

I would like you to consider one last challenge..... join in with UKS if you don't already, it is an amazing community jam packed full of inspiration.  It is free and an amazing resource whatever your style or taste, definitely something for everyone. I would also encourage you to join a team as it is a great way of meeting new people and feeling part of UKS. If you are interested in joining a team we are looking for some new members so if you like to scrap, do challenges and chat, get in touch!

Thanks for reading my blog today and please go onto visit Carole's blog here


Once you have visited every blog on the hop, and commented on each one (except where noted) go to the UKS thread here and post a reply. If there were any blog you were unable to comment on make a comment in your reply of the blogs you missed. Don't forget to use your UKS user name when leaving comments. You can comment until 6AM 10th September, at which point the hop will close.


There are some amazing prizes on offer including....
UKS voucher for sponsor of your choice £25
ATDML (voucher)
Angel Crafts - Embellishment kit
Artistic Stamper (stamps of the winner's choice to a value of £15)
Beanpole Books (book and craft goodies) 
Carole Bryson (Hysteri-Cal) (£10 voucher)
Beautiful Impressions (£5 voucher)
Lovely Tapes - Washi tape specialists (£15 voucher)
Sarah Hurley (£10 voucher)

goodbye, good luck and enjoy the blog hop xxx

5 in 5 for August

Sandie started 5 in 5 on her blog last month.  It is just a really simple once a month thing to do, share 5 photos taken  in 5 minutes.  I joined in last month and was really excited and did it the day I saw her post my photos are here.

For August I took all my photographs in my parents garden and although I did this several weeks ago I am a bad blogger and am very late sharing them this month, so late in fact that the linky tool on Sandie's blog has now closed!

Here they are.......

better late than never!!

Our team challenge on UKS

Recently K (from K's crafty corner) and I set up a new team on UK Scrappers  we are the Chatty Scrappers! (If you have ever considered joining a team on UKS I highly recommend it, it has been a great experience and really great for boosting my scrapping mojo and joining in with other scrappers..... we will probably expand our team at some point so let us know if you are interested)

We have joined forces to set the weekly team challenge, there are 4 of us who regularly scrap and join in the challenges so we all decided on what we wanted to do and made example layouts.

Initially we decided on a sketch  (originally found here)

and then we chose to use only scraps (other than the background sheet) and to scrap about a holiday (I have chosen last year's Summer holiday but it could be Christmas or ski-ing or Easter whatever you choose)

It would be fab if you decide to join in with us and if you do please either pop over to UKS and join us or let us know on either K's or my blogs....... thanks xxx

My Meet Up Challenge

On Friday I am meeting up with a crafty friend, someone who started out as an online name in a forum, who became a virtual friend  and after several real life get togethers and regular chatting via Facebook,  I now count as one of my closest friends.  In case you haven't guessed it is K from K's Crafty Corner.

We are going to scrap together on Friday and I decided to set us a challenge, then after discussing it with our new teamies on UKS (we created the Chatty Scrappers in June) we opened it up for them to join in and I thought I would invite everyone else to join in too! Well, if we can't get together in real life let's go for a cyber crop...... we could meet you on Facebook if you want to chat and scrap with us on Friday just let me know if you want to join us.

I have chosen this sketch (as I love sketches sooooo much) from Let's Capture these Sketches

 and challenge you to use something old, something new, something borrowed and some buttons!!

I would love it if you joined us just for fun, come and leave a link in the comments with your page so we can all have a look!