Spontaneous layout.

I am not meant to be scrapping at the moment - I really do not have the time - I am meant to be cleaning up from all the visitors we have had lately. But as I was tidying the front room and taking down the birthday cards - one of Liam's caught my eye and I thought ' oh all these squares could be useful' - so I abandoned the housework and set about cutting up the card. Once I had done that thought - 'I wonder if these squares would fit onto a 12 x 12 piece of cardstock' - they did perfectly - so of course then I just had to create something with them. So Steven came home from work to find the house still a mess and no tea ready!!

Crikey how young do Steven & I look in these photos. I think Eleanor was about 2 and I remember they were taken on a trip to Ellesmere to feed the ducks.

I quite like the layout, but I don't think the colours are quite right. The squares were muted colours, so I thought I would use some outdoor countryside photos - not sure these are the right ones to use.

I used DCWV Neutrals cardstock, tree & leaves rub ons Hambly screen prints - Mod trees (these are fab rub ons - they actually work! ) Alpha rub ons - October Afternoon (also very good rub ons), journalling tag & fabric brad - Wild Saffron by K & Co. Birthday card was from Pheonix trading.
The answer to the question is CLOTH KITS, but the alpha font does not make it easy to read. The journalling under the photos tells about how most of Eleanor's clothes when she was little were from Cloth kits. The fabric came screen printed with the most beautiful designs and I just had to cut them out and sew them together. I stopped buying from them when a new computer system they installed did not work and caused the company major problems. I thought these problems had caused the company to fold - but I have just checked on the Internet and found it is still going strong - here -selling clothes kits which are still vibrant and different.

Jess & Aaron are back from Milan

They had a wonderful time and looking at all their photos it seems a beautiful place to visit.



They window shopped at the beautiful mall - for millionaires only!



Went to a water theme park and explored the city.



Jess nearly was pick pocketed - but Aaron saw the kid - who was only about 10 -just in time and scared him off - her bag had been opened but she had not been aware of it - this did make them a bit more wary.

Minsterley's Maidens Mystery is solved!

Well perhaps not solved but found anyway. This geocache Maidens Mystery GC10EZ0 has driven us mad for months and we at long last found it on Sunday. It is a 2 part puzzle clue and we found the first part quite easily - it was a note pinned up on the church notice board, from this we gathered it was the capital letters and phone number - but there were 8 capitals and 6 numbers and we could not fathom out how to make 8 into 6. We have tried every combination and walked around the area looking in trees (found a dead bird!) under bridges, under rocks, had to get close to cattle again. So after another failed exploration on Sunday we changed tack and set our GPS's to satellite and walked until we arrived at a cordinate that used the same numbers - low and behold we found it.

Sorry about the rubbish photo - no where really to set the tripod.

We also did another geocache - Leaves on the Line GC10V66 on Sunday, which was much easier. This took us to our 50th cache.

geocaching coins

I have bought our very first trackable geocoins. They were £6 each and it will be great to follow their progress. This one is for Thelma - a get well present. She says she will put it in a cache on the first hill she can climb after her op - she wants to climb up Rodney's Pillar!

The coin is new and was made to celebrate the opening up of even more of the Shropshire Way. This is what the bumph about the coin says:

The Shropshire coin has been designed in conjunction with Shropshire County Council and the Shropshire Way Wardens. It was commissioned to celebrate to 50th anniversary of the opening of the Shropshire Way - a wonderful walk that shows you Shropshires geolocigal roots, its historical importance as a borderland and the heart of Britain's Industrial Revolution. All of which forms the County's character to make it uniquely Shropshire. The motif on the front of the coin is the official symbol of the Shropshire Way.

This second coin is for me & Steven to place. Its to celebrate Liverpool's year as the City of Culture, as Eleanor spent her final year of her PhD here and we visited Liverpool for the first time ever. I have told him he can decide where he wants it to start its journey.

This is what the bumph about the coin says:-

The honour of European Capital of Culture awarded to Liverpool for the year 2008 confirms Liverpool's place among the true cultural giants of the continent. Liverpool is already well known around the world for its maritime heritage, architecture, music, literature, the arts and sport. The Capital of Culture title places the city firmly on the global map.
Liverpool will become the place to be in 2008 !!

my first mini book!

I have made this mini book for Thelma as she is having surgery next week so we won't be out geocaching for a while. Thought she might like to look through this to help her through her recovery period.

I used the K & Co Blue Awning mini book kit from QVC. It was nice to have everything co-ordinated, but while some of the embellishments seemed to suit this book - others were quite twee.

It is a freestanding mini book in a landscape orientation. I am very pleased with it.

I hope she likes it!

The Birthday party

The children had a lovely party on Wednesday. Eleanor was 24, Jessica 20 and Liam 16.

Birthday cakes for 3! Marks & Spencers do gorgeous cakes - there is nothing left!

The photos are a bit rubbish as we were stuck inside due to the rainy showers. Party guests - little Beth & Evieme & Mum

Nanny

It was a shame that Graeme was in Greece and Ross was working so we wern't able to get the traditional cousins line up. Liam is still the tallest - he towers above Ross! but Peter is catching up fast - so it will be interesting to see how ends up the tallest when they have finished growing.

In height order and then age order - the eldest is the shortest!

Sian, Janet & Peter

woah - busy busy week

After the children's party we drove to Oxford as Steven and Lian had tickets to see The Last Shadow Puppets in the evening at the New Theatre. They enjoyed the concert and managed to get hold of an autograph of someone in the band - but not unfortunately Alex Turner's - Liam's hero. He also got his birthday present - an Iphone! We had not been able to get hold of one in Shrewsbury - so he was really chuffed.

Eleanor wanted to go and collect some Journals that were being thrown out of a lab that was closing down. She was lucky enough to get hold of the last 6 years of Journal of Human Reproduction - which is great as she hopes to train as an embryologist when her PhD is finished.

Here she is outside her fave ice cream shop G & D's which is open till midnight!

I had a lovely time just wandering about soaking up the sights while she caught up with friends. These photos were taken with my mobile phone - they are not bad for a phone camera.

A sneaky peak into Magdalan College.The Ahsmolean is coming out from under its renovation wraps and doesn't it look beautiful.

The next day I drove to Liverpool - first to the airport - Jessica and Aaron were off to Milan for her birthday treat. Then into the city centre to take Eleanor back to uni - all I can say is thank goodness for Sat Nav!

And Liam got his GCSE results - he did well to acheive all C grades so he has done well enough to get into 6th form. Steven & I are amazed that he managed these grades as he did absolutely no revision at all and would not be encouraged to try and do any! I am so frustrated that he could have done so well if he had put just a bit of effort in. Thats the difference between the girls and boys in our house. managed to cacth a sneaky picture of Liam smiling on results day!

Craven Arms Geocache

Thelma and I had a lovely day out geocaching around Craven Arms. She chose flat walks due to her knee injury - but luckily she has now been given a date for her surgery at the end of August - so she is hoping we can venture back up the hills soon!

Our first geocache was Forgotten Rails GCJ46N - this took us a lovely little walk along the river - very pretty - and a good cache as well. We left a travel bug in this and all the other caches today.

We then drove to the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre complete with grass roof and parked the car. We then walked the short distance to the next cache at Stokesay church -Stokesay Church and Old Bill GC11TEZ- another lovely cache.

The church is right next to Stokesay castle which looked gorgeous and I would have loved to have had a look around it - but you had to pay to enter, dogs were not allowed and we had quite a tight schedule - so had to leave that for another day - here's a few pics of it taken from the perimeter.

We headed off from the castle to our next cache but were thwarted by a field full of bulls- so we had to take the scenic route - which took ages and we were not completely sure we were on the right track - but we got there in the end. It would have been quite easy had the bulls not been there!! This cache sallow coppice GC12CXM was a bit of a puzzle one and we got the maths right eventually!

The 4th Craven A GCJ46X & 5th Craven Arms Crossroads in Time - Roman Woad GC13EFQ caches were easy finds - though stupidly I decided to take the direct route through the woods rather than following the path and got stuck!

Back to the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre for ice cream then home. Thelma had chosen 12 caches around this area - we managed 5 - but we will be more than happy to return as it is such a beautiful area.