was preparing this for the crop on Saturday but...

got carried away and decided to finish it! Everything was in place so it was silly to take it all the way there on Saturday just to stick them all down. Still have 3 more nearly prepared layouts so I won't be stuck for something to do at the crop.

I am quite pleased with it - just don't like the alphas at the bottom. Wish they had all have been single letters not some of them having lots of the same on each square.

The cards stock is Nana's Kids from DCWV again and so are the silly alphas - this time from the 8x8 stack. The red edging is Bazill 'edges' already cut into the scalloped shapes like this. Journalling spot is from Sceinic Route Blue lined white paper. The rub ons Title are American Crafts 'Jack' on to acetate.

Quite pleased with the photos - obviously they are old pre-digital ones from 1987 - but I have scanned them in - then cropped and photoshopped them - so they look much better than the originals. Though this way does not help me reduce my photo pile!

Had a good news letter from Jessica Sprague - photoshop Friday series on touching up photos - so will have a good read of that this afternoon.

Lovely summer's evening stroll .......

with some deer, a geocache and a new car thrown in!

We had a lovely stroll around Attingham Park this evening and for once the deer were right next to the path so we could see them really close up- usually they are so far in the distance you can only just make them out. Managed to get some really nice photos of them.

Here is Steven just watching the deer.

This one walked right in front of us!

A new geocache has just been placed next door to the park so we popped over and did that one quickly. It was in the church Yard of St Etas Church Atcham,and is part of the Shropshire Church Gems series - we must go and find some more of these. We sat for a while and enjoyed the tranquility of the surroundings.

Steven holding the cache - he is really but it was a small camouflage container and you can't see it!

Then, as we have got to get a car for Jess when she comes home, we walked to Paul Caswells garage just to see what he had for sale and for what price and there was the perfect car for Jess - obviously it was closed at this time of day, so I am going to pop back in the morning and have a better look at it. so all in all an exciting evening!

A return visit to Wales

Steven and I had a fab day out back in Wales again on Sunday. I really wanted him to see the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and he was suitably impressed! Unfortunately we were foxed by the geocache on there (Coin exchange GC19PAP) and it was a DNF! We will have to return again.


We parked the car at Trevor Basin and walked into Llangollen along the tow path. It took us 2 hours but we did stop for a couple more geocaches and Lunch.


This Steven at the first geocache (Ban Rivets GC1(PW7) we left the Poison travel bug I had picked up in Hertfordshire here. He also found (Sir Bors de Granis holy grail from the Knights series GCY1TF) - no pic I am afraid. Next find was the elusive Bridge View GC1B6HV which had foxed us girls last month.


he found it easily! We picked up this beautiful Dolphin Geocoin, which wants to be placed near water. Just need to think where to put it - somewhere by the river Severn or over to the Norfolk coast next week? Llangollen was basking in beautiful sunshine when we arrived and was full of Sunday afternoon tourists - it is a nice place though and we got to see a steam train (my favourite! ) in action.

IIt was getting late but we decided to do a quick geocache as the GPS said we were close. We did** up on Geriant Hill. Well it was not a quick one - the GPS took us up the hill the wrong way and we had to scramble through a Forrest until we reached the right spot! We followed the road back down, which was a much easier route. It was a CD only cache and we were hoping to pick up a nice CD but they were just the ones you get free in Sunday papers! We left A Catatonia CD.

We were quite tired after this jaunt up a hill and fearful of the long walk back to Trevor we stopped for refreshments at the canal cafe. Nice cup of tea for Dad and a Magnum ice lolly for me.

We had a great but tiring day out and in fact it had poured down with rain all day in Shrewsbury and we had a glorious day - just one shower whilst we were searching under the Aquduct.

However for those of you that rushed out and bought a new SD card for your camera - don't do what I did and left it at home stuck in the USB port of my laptop! These photos were taken on the new phone, but they have come out OK I think.

My crop layouts

These are the 3 layouts that I did at the crop yesterday and I am quite pleased with them. I particularly like this first one 'blustery beach'. Thanks to Ali for the journalling idea - this works much better than my cloud idea. The papers are Love Elsie - Toby Clouds fabric paper as card stock. White Bazzill card stock for irregular circle. Love Elsie - Toby alphabet stickers and buttons from my stash. This is no. 65 in this years target of 104.

The second layout '1st Geocache' features the lovely Paper Trunk papers (Jelly bean : Berry Blue - both sides) I bought at the Gogo Getaway (Have hardly got any left now - wish I had bought some more as they are gorgeous) and October Afternoon: Detours - picnic basket - again both sides used. The journalling block is Making Memories - noteworthy. No. 66 layout of the year.

The third layout 'Gone with the wind' is for Liam's album so uses similar photos to the first layout. Plain blue Bazzill cardstock and the circles are cut out of some expensive wrapping paper I found in a shop in Liverpool made by Soul a company based in Oxford (pretty sure it will not be acid free but it was too nice not to use). White journalling with my signo pen and the title is with some purple alphas found in my stash but I have no idea where they came from! I am just umming & ahhing wether or not to fill in the remaining 2 bits of blue cardstock on the right hand side with more circles. No. 67 of my years 104 target

Fab crop today

Spent all day at the Skrapz crop run by Caroline and Anne (see here) at the Radbrook Community Hall in Shrewsbury. This is a brilliant venue for a crop as we have a room which is bright and light and large enough for lots of tables so we all have plenty of room.
They bring along their shop - but today I had to be very restrained as I could not find my purse this morning, so did not have any money to spend. There were some papers I had my eye on so I am hoping they will still be there next time. (still could not find my purse tonight so have rung and cancelled my card so there will be no spending at all this week until the new one arrives.)

All the girls that go are lovely,friendly and very creative - its great to wander round and look at their work. Look at what Sam has created - this super hanging rail for all her ribbons. It only cost £2.99 from Ikea - so I may just have to pop in next week when I drive past on my way to collect Jessica.
I sit next to Ali who is very talented and did a beautiful layout today of her daughter getting ready for school - we have all persuaded her to try and submit it to Scrapbook Inspirations mag it was so good.

I was quite productive - finishing 2 layouts and nearly finished a third and that was just in the afternoon - the morning was a class featuring Prima printables. Will post them tomorrow when I have better light to photograph them and have actually finished the third one.

Buy one of these new SD HC cards now!

After my success with the micro SD card in my mobile phone, I ordered a new SD HC card for my camera and today was the first chance to use it - WOW - it is so fast!

My camera is set to take multiple photos and the shutter just kept whizzing today and then when I came to up load them to the computer all 64 of them were done in a matter of seconds - even before I had had time to type in a name for the folder - usually I am sat waiting twiddling my thumbs - brilliant!

I am so impressed with this card. It cost £15.00 from Amazon and is a huge 4Gb so can fit 1000 photos on. It came with a special SD HC adaptor as some of the older adaptors don't recognise these new faster cards.

I must eat humble pie now though - after moaning about the new LG KF700 mobile phone on a recent post - I actually like it now! I was so frustrated with it that I found some videos about it on You tube and spent 3 hours watching them the other day - they were an idiots guide to the phone - but now I can use it and think its great - I just hope I don't loose it now which is what I tend to do with my mobiles phones because I would really miss it!

I have a new phone .. sort of

Ross's 18 month phone contract was up and he could choose a new phone so he chose this one - LG KF 700 and he hated it! So decided to keep with his old Samsung which was working beautifully - unlike mine - so he said I could have this one.

I can see why he does not like it - it is not very user friendly and is very heavy, but the battery has died on my Samsung and despite buying 2 new ones, can only get up to about 6 hours of the phone on - so can't even go out for the day with it. Therefore I will have to grin & bear this one until my contract is up in December and I can choose a new one - and it won't be an LG one.

The instructions with it were printed on a minute booklet with writing so small you could hardly read it and were minimal and expected an advanced understanding of the phone to begin with (which I don't have) that they were as good as useless. I went to the LG web site to download the user manual but they did not have one for this phone!

It would not transfer all my contacts in my sim over to the new phone so I had to input them all individually and I could not upload any music to it. I put in the disc that came in the box on to my computer - but still no way of doing it, so I have had to invest in a 4Gb micro card. I put all my music on that and inserted it into the phone and Voila there it was but what a drag to do.

I cannot get over the minute size of this card considering it is 4Gb. It is one of the new HC ones and is really fast at transferring the music - I am very impressed and have just ordered a proper HC SD card for my camera. The micro card was £10 and the one for the camera £15 - the prices for these have really come down over the last year and I think are very good value for money.