thank you cards

I am not a card maker but inspired by the card making goodies I bought at the NEC I have made my first card.

Ali kindly stamped out a few of this Penny Black stamp image for me to use. I did the colouring and glittering! I quite like the card and I always need thank you cards so may invest in a few Penny Black cards and have a card making day to build up a stock.

photographs are getting organised, but its making me sad.

I spent a constructive evening last night starting to file my photographs in to the new archival binders. I am so pleased with these and it makes it much easier to look at all my photos and store them safely in a tidy chronological order. In their old albums the glue was changing colour so starting to damage these photos, so I am glad I have rescued them in time.

However going through my photos made me quite sad because of the really poor quality of my photos when the children were small. These were taken in the pre-digital days when we had to wait for a week or so after the event to see the photos, so you did not know how good or bad they would turn out until they were developed - ie when we got back from holiday when it was impossible to retake them. Printing was expensive - so we could only take a few and my photo technique was so poor that the children are far away in the distance - no lovely close ups of their beautiful faces.

These are a couple of typical old photos and when you compare these to the type of photos I take now (this one of Liam below), it shows how difficult scrapping with theseold photos is.

When I look at the photos that scrapbookers take of their children today - using digital cameras and much better techniques I am so very envious and wish I was a scrapbooker with a digital camera when they were little.

Look at this layout I have found on 2 peas.

I have 2 distant photos of Eleanor just standing up in her dress up nurses outfit. This scrapper has photographed her daughter playing nurse - so a much better context and the photos are lovely & close up.

I also cannot remember, the finer details of their lives, what silly or special little things they said & did - which I see frequently on today's layouts.

Its obviously too late for me to recreate my children's childhood, but I will try and ensure that I don't make the same mistake with any grandchildren I may have. I am glad I have a scanner so that I can try and crop and enlarge some old photos. I am not confident that this will be the answer as the actual quality of many of the photos is not good and will deteriorate further being scanned & cropped, but I can try and make them a bit more presentable.

scrapbooks etc, Oxford visit & Frasier weekend

This arrived in the post yesterday.

I have still not finished reading it, but so far it is a really good issue. I am so glad I sub to this (direct from Artbase) rather than CK which I have not been so pleased with lately.

Eleanor went back to Oxford for the day on Saturday to meet up with her old chums and she had a wonderful time. It was lovely for her to see Sarah, Charis & LLian (sp?) and go back to visit St Hilda's again. She bumped into loads of people she knew and it made her feel quite homesick and she had a real longing to come back. It would be nice if she was able to settle down there eventually.
They were so lucky with the weather, so they took a boat ride on the river and then went and had a meal together.I have been very lazy watching TV most of the weekend. It was Frasier weekend - loads of series back to back and I have been trying to find an episode I saw many years ago and thought it was hilarious but have never seen it again- so was determined to catch it this weekend. I did find it but in fact it was not as funny as I remembered! It was in Series 5 and called room service where Niles ends up in bed with Lilith.

Our first Geocache!

We have been out and found our first one! This one was at Nescliffe (GCGAXC) and we even managed to use the GPS.
Steven was very non-plused with his present yesterday as he had never even heard of Geocaching and could not understand who hid the treasure etc. But came out this morning and actually quite enjoyed the hunt as he was better at the GPS than me and he found the cache.
Steven & Liam climbed around the barrier to climb the precarious steps to Kynastons cave and persuaded me to have a go as well - bad move as I found it very scary. Fascinating to think that a family of 9 lived in the cave in the eighteenth century - it was tiny.
Liam confidently exploring the cave & steps, but I was a total woss and needed help up and could only come down on my bottom!

This is not a smile it is a grimace!

Steven is keen to find some more now, but working this weekend so will have to wait a while now. I even managed to upload lots of caches into the GPS last night from geocaching.com - which was very easy and better than I thought as I had visions of having to type in all the coordinates etc.

2 walks in one day!

Yes - I have been very active today. First walk was with Thelma up the Stiperstones. Fab weather and glorious views. We went out so she could show me how to use the GPS I have bought Steven for his birthday, as she has one. It looks very complicated!
Shepards Rock

We also tried to find 2 geocaches - Shepard's pie & Winberry pie and could not find either- So I don't hold out much hope for Saturday! I did learn something though - get all the clues you can. I did glance at the photo for winberry pie on the computer and thought it would be easy to find a bit of green in a rock face - Wrong - there were lots of bits of green. And I did not look at the picture clue at all for Shepards pie and needless to say we were looking in completely the wrong place - lesson learnt anyway. Cranberry Rock

Then in the evening Steven wanted to go for a walk around Attingham park - it was very nice and deserted. I was worried we were going to get locked in as it was quite late but we were ok . Took this lovely photo of him. All the family do get fed up with me taking the camera everywhere, but its worth it.
I am now on the second reading of Stacy Julian's Photo freedom and I think I am going to reorganise my photos totally into her system - not just half hearted as I initially thought.

The trouble is finding proper storage for the photos. Thanks to a discussion thread on UKS - started because everyone was having trouble, I have located 2 places to buy storage binders from.


The first is Jessops but they have very limited stock. I have managed to get hold of 2 black albums and 3 packets of the clear archival holders. I have started moving my photos from the old sticky albums into these, but I am going to need a lot more and in different sizes because most of my later photos are 5x7.
The second place is arrowfile - 0nline- and they seem to have a huge choice of albums and archival folders so think I will get more from here.

oh my - I have made my first digi layout

here it is:-

I am not a digi scrapper at all so I am not sure how it happened. I was playing about on the web looking for SVG files to import into my Sure Cuts a Lot programme to use with my Cricut, when I came across this web site. She was extolling the virtues of digi scrapping so I thought I would give it ago.

I did download a load of free digi stuff last year but could not do anything with it so it sat there clogging up my laptop!.

This was a free sketch from Kate Hadfield for one of UKS cybercrops - I just added the photos and here it is.

It was relatively easy - not dead easy! and I did it sitting in bed without making a mess, but it is strange not having anything tangible in my hands. So even though this passed an evening I think I will stick to the mess of cardstock and double sided tape.

Spring walk

A group of 20 of us ventured out to the Shropshire hills yesterday for a 6 mile trek along the Mucklewick Walk. The walk was great - not too steep so not too strenuous and the distance nicely manageable. The only problem was the wind - it was bitter. I had not taken any gloves and my hands were frozen, should have had a woolly hat as well - though my waterproof jacket hood did help.
The views were just gorgeous, I just wish it had not been so cold so that we could have stood still a bit longer to admire them.

We saw lots of new lambs - some only just born as their umbilical cord was still dangling down, some lucky mums had twins! Thema & Molly.

Me, Pat & Trixie

Help me I am out of control!!

This

and this

arrived today!

I have read the geocaching book now and really want to do it. I went for this mid price GPS in case we don't enjoy geocaching . If we do and want to invest in a better one later on at least I will know what to look for.

Thanks Nick for your comment on the last post - it was very helpful - great blog by the way - its gone into my Google reader.

The camera was a split decision on Sunday. Saw it on QVC and it seemed to have everything on it I needed so I ordered it Sunday - it was dispatched Monday, arrived today -Tuesday. At last QVC are getting their deliveries sorted out.

I have a compact Panasonic camera which is brilliant and takes great photos due to the Lecia Lens but it only has a 3x optical zoom which limits its use somewhat.

I also have a Nikon D40 DSLR which also takes great photos but it is a real faff to change the lenses all the time and I must admit I rarely take it off auto. So this bridge has an optical zoom x 18 and a Lecia lens and face recognition so should really suit my needs - just got to find out how to tell hubby!

The GPS and book are going to be his birthday present next week! He also gets presents that he does not want. they are things that I want but cannot justify so he gets them instead! One year he got a gas fire! I am really a terrible wife. I had better get him something else as well - socks perhaps?

I have printed off some easy local Geocaching visits and hope to do them next Saturday - the day after his birthday. I hope he will enjoy it.

Geocaching?

I have been reading a lot about this lately - particularly from Jane Deans blog - so have started to investigate it a bit more.

This book arrived from Amazon Saturday morning - only managed one chapter so far but I am quite excited about the idea of doing it. Its a combination of outdoor expedition and technology. You visit geocaching .com to get the co-ordinates of where some treasure is hidden and then using a GPS you try and find it.

Trouble is I don't have a GPS yet so have been investigating these - some are cheap £60, then going up to different prices £130 & £170. I don't know what features I will need until I start - but I can't start until I have one! Perhaps I should just get a cheap one to see if I like it and then can get a bigger & better one later on?

Just watched the Gadget show and they looked at 3 GPS - the latest one from Garmin the Colorado 300 did really badly and the winner SATMAP active 10 looked great on the telly but had mixed reviews on Amazon and was very expensive - plus the maps on SD cards were also expensive addons.

Looking on the web site - there are lots of caches hidden around here and also Norwich - which is an area we want to explore - what a fun way to do that.

My Scrap Revolution order

This arrived Saturday morning and had some lovely goodies in it.

After trying a good quality trimmer at a crop I gave in and ordered this one from Making Memories. It was expensive, but once I got it out of its packaging - not an easy task!- it seems to be easy to use. My other guillotine was not very good - kept getting uneven lines so I gave up and just used a ruler and knife to cut everything - I am quite good at cutting like this but sometimes my matts are a bit uneven so hopefully this MM trimmer may make my presentation better.

I have been waiting to order this book by Stacy Julian called Photo Freedom for ages. I am half way through it at the moment - it is OK - but not sure if I am going to put into place her whole plan - may takes bits & pieces out of it. I have my photos organised in really useful boxes - one for each child. I still have lots of photos in albums and my plan for scrapping is just to go through the boxes and albums and find some photos that trigger of a nice memory or have a story that I want to tell. Because I have so many old photos to scrap I tend to do some old ones and then scrap some newer digital photos that are on my computer - and that I have fresher memories of.

April's Creating Keepsakes mag - its OK but I was more excited with my Aussie mag.

Acrylic album - this is my first one but not the one I really wanted. I wanted a square one with tabs on to use for my No Place Like Home project but she rang to say she had sold out of these so would I accept this instead - wish I had said no as it will be a nightmare to cut out papers for all these scallops - but perhaps not as the point of these clear albums is to be clear - so I can just add photos?

Autumn Leaves swirl stamp - lovely design but much smaller than I expected - hope I can use it on my large 12x12 layouts without it getting lost.

lovely photos of Jess, Liam & me

Well lovely of the children - I look like the haggared old bag I am - but the children look gorgeous and Liam is actually starting allowing us to take his photo now and even smiling - just typical now I don't need to take them for his year album!

I like the portait one of Jess & Liam so think I might try and scrap this one soon.

My Artbase parcel!

Well I was a naughty girl the other day - despite not having any money and telling myself that I must not buy any more stash - I did - in fact made 2 orders!!! This is the smaller order from Artbase.

I really wanted Jessica Spragues computer tricks 2 - as I had had her first book and found it fab and as I am trying to get more out of Photoshop Elements just had to have this one as well. Found one of my fave Aussie mags on the web site so that slipped in my basket as well - have looked through it already and am amazed at the skill and talent of the Aussie scrapers.

This third thing was an impulse buy! I have seen these journalling notes before so thought I would try them out as I do like to add journalling to my pages and often struggle for something to write on - lets hope these solve my problems!

My bigger order from Scrap Revolution has not arrived - so may come tomorrow Saturday and 
Steven will then spy it! It has the large Making Memories trimmer in it - so I can't hide it easily!

"Go Jess Go" DLO

Layouts 53 & 54 for this year. I am reasonably happy with these
 layoutsas I like the story that it tells.
However  I should have cropped the first photo on the first  to make it a bit more of a focal point.
I have added jewels around her - but stll wish I had done more with the photo really- like I did with her diving in on the second side. I may go back and change it.

In real life there are not black spots on them - these are reflections of the rain drops on the window!