New punch

After seeing this fab punch at the crop on Saturday, I have been able to pick one up at Percy Throwers this morning. It cost me £14.99!! So I hope I can work it as it looks very complicated.

This is the base plate where you line up your paper to make which ever shape you want - apparently! And these are the different shapes you can make.I have got the fireworks shape. They do 4 all together. The only other one in stock this morning was Lace, but as they were so expensive thought I would see how I got on with this one first.

I had hoped to pick up a copy of issue 2 of the Creativity Life magazine when I went today but they did not have one - does anyone know when it is due out?

Ali - we still have not decided whether to keep the camcorder or not yet - as 3 of the children have their birthdays next week thought I would keep it till after then and if we have not used it sufficiently over the birthdays then I will send it back. - Which is a shame because it is a fab machine but a bit pointless if we are not going to use it.

Jessica's new car

Well after weeks of waiting - here is the car we bought for Jess weeks ago. It is a black Luxury Ford Ka. It is so her. It has leather seats and remote locking - a feature I really missed on Ross Ka.

It was delivered yesterday afternoon before she got back from work and she was so excited and pleased. She had no idea we had bought her this car and thought we were going to look for one today - her first day off since our money from the endowment cleared. She approves of our choice! it is a good job we reserved this car as Paul Caswell garage has not had any more Ka's in since then!

We have been out for a drive in it this morning straight after her driving lesson. She is a very UN-confident driver and panics at everything. It is going to be really hard work to get her through her test before she goes back to uni in September - but she needs to be driving by then as she has a placement as soon as she gets back and needs to be able to drive to get there! I see a few stressful weeks ahead - hers and mine - not dads as he refuses to take her out!!

Day out geocaching

Thelma & I had a fab day out geocaching yesterday. We finished off the Shropshire Church Gems series.

First we went to Cheswardine GC1C24B - what a beautiful village! We found the cache quite easily - well Thelma did - I was looking under the wrong tree! Left a travel slug here.

Moved on then to Sambrook GC1BV3V - again a lovely village but nowhere to park - we did eventually find a spot at the church. A short walk took us to the cache - the clue was 'in a pile of logs' and as Thelma is incapacitated with her poorly knee, it was up to me to investigate. Horrors awaited me, as I rummaged through the logs, a huge furry thing came appeared and I screamed like a banshee - I thought it was a rat but it was only a bunny rabbit! Well it made Thelma laugh at my wimpishness. Anyway the cache was not even in THAT pile of logs but another one. We retrieved a travel bug from this one.

I now have 6 travel bugs to move on - must get out and do some more geocaching - think I will have to bribe Liam!

I must say that I am so pleased with my Gorriapod tripod. We used it at every cache today so we could both be in the photos and it clung or was hung around all sorts of rocks & trees and performed brilliantly.

We now had all the clues to find the bonus cache at Peplow GC1BT8F. The lovely & unusual Chapel of the Epiphany here stood by itself but was very close to the Peplow Estate - what a super grand house - I would love to live there. Unfortunately the walk to the cache took us through fields with cattle in - 3 huge bulls in the first one - thankfully they stayed lying down. Lots of cows with calves in the second field - which we did not know about until we reached it and because it we had geodog Mollie with us it was a bit nerve racking. On the way back though there was a huge field full of bulls who clearly could see or smell us because they stared charged and snorting but they were safely behind a gate - it was still scary all the same.

When we left Peplow I spied this unusual tree of horseshoes. I thought it looked so interesting that I made Thelma stop the car just so that I could take a photo of it and the weather vane on top of the Farriers house - I think she thinks that I am really loosing my mind!.

out of this world layout

Well I can't really call this a layout as it took me all of 5 minutes to do - so its a bit of a cheat really. I have just used 1 sheet of the lovely Rough & Tumble paper by K & Co and a few alpha tiles & stickers from the same collection! The random superstar sticker is strategically placed as we had cut Liam's left hand off in the photo and it looked awful - this hopefully kinda disguises it.

We are the proud owners of .....

our house!!!!!

The endowment policy bank transfer eventually went through, so this morning we went to the Building Society and paid off our mortgage!
Its a lovely feeling to know its all ours now. 25 years has whizzed by, but these have been accompanied by a fair amount of stress with the problems within the endowment market - our policy did actually make sufficient to cover the mortgage but we have spent many years worrying that it would not.

I was hoping to show you the deeds to prove its ours, but the Building Society hold onto them as long as we keep £1 in the account. So we did that - its best to know they are kept safely.

2 new layouts

These are the 2 layouts I could not finish at the crop on Saturday. They are just OK. Number 75 & 76 in my 104 total for the year.

The first one again has no PP on it! I just thought these 3 photos together made a nice story about Jaws in the pool! Used plain blue generic cardstock. Just the Edge cardstock strips by Bazzill in Atlantic. Sweet branch chipboard buttons. Distracted school girl alpha chipboard by Buzz & Bloom - painted and glitter glazed. American Crafts Rub on Alphas - Lulu White and American Crafts journalling stickers. Round Journalling cards are by Elles studio from Etsy.

This second layout used photos taken in Liverpool last weekend and shows Liam suddenly remembering its not cool to smile on any photos again - just love that silly expression he is pulling on the second photo. Papers were Tinkering Ink - bought at the crop on Saturday. Thought they were a little plain on their own so added Stickles glue everywhere - but actually I like the look so you may see Stickles appearing on all my layouts from now on! Again used the American Crafts Journalling stickers - this is the 4th layout in a row that I have used them - they were a very good buy.

A new toy - but do we keep it?

Here it is a JVC camcorder. It is a high spec one but was reasonably priced as a TSV on QVC recently and on easy pay!

I was not in the market for a new camcorder. The only one we did have broke when Liam was about 5 - so 10 years ago. I had not really missed it, but when Jess came back from Uni we have been sat watching old video footage of the children when they were little - and it was lovely. We were laughing and crying at how cute and adorable they were.So when I saw this thought it was a good opportunity to invest in a new one. This one runs on SD cards so its easy to transfer to the computer. Is very small & light weight - our old one was one of the very first models and was huge!! It has a 35x zoom.

The trouble is now the kids are not cute and adorable but mean & moody and not in the mood to be video'd - so is it worth keeping?

I will try and post a few clips that we have taken for posterity in case it goes back!