Birthday Celebrations

A still life, Chinese style!
Alex contemplates the mysteries of the universe and his fingers

Well I have had a lovely three day weekend in which to celebrate my birthday. We traditionally go out for a meal to celebrate our birthdays, but evenings are not really an option with Alex so we started the birthday celebrations on Friday with a lunchtime meal at the Hui Wei, a fantastic Chinese in the centre of Sheffield. The food was fantastic. We had spring rolls and Peking Spare ribs, followed by crispy aromatic duck, then sweet and sour chicken and battered cod in sweet soy sauce served with egg fried rice. I have to say the cod wasn't my cup of tea, but the rest was melt in the mouth. The drinks were Tiger Beer, which I have had previously in Singapore, and a chinese beer, which was far too drinkable! Alex was awake and peaceful the whole time...we fed him alongside eating ourselves which worked very well and the advantage of going at lunchtime was that we were able to have a side booth to ourselves which was very cosy. The rest of Friday was much more practical (shopping, cleaning, and looking after Alex) with the exception of the evening, which saw us watching a very silly movie and eating a small amount of nice food (we were still full from lunch!!).

A heap of stamps all ready for playing with
More stamps, inks, powders and pens...what fun I am going to have!
My first ever card from Alex
My birthday card from Tim

My actual birthday was great. I received loads of lovely cards, including some homemade ones from people on the CM&PC forum, which was very special. My favourite cards were the two from my 'boys'. Alex made the one above with a lot of help from Tim and I love what they have done. Tim's card is one of his best yet...he only makes three cards a year (Valentines, Anniversary and Birthday) and I just love the fact that he takes the effort to do this. He also gave me loads of lovely crafting presents...masses of stamps as well as ink pads, pigment powders, embossing powder, sakura stardust pen and watercolour pens. I am going to have so much fun playing with these! Tim's parents gave me a lovely unusual elegant cardigan in brown (matches my linen skirt) and Andy and Nel gave me a purple v-necked jumper which is great. I feel that I have done very well on the pressie front.

A rare pink budgie (possibly) A blue horned pheasant (I think!)One of the famous black swans
A cheeky colourful finch

Part of the massive deer herd

Saturday saw us going out for a day trip to Loughton Hall near Leeds. This is a stately home with formal gardens, a huge deer park, adventure playground, cafe and bird gardens. We spent a happy couple of hours looking round the bird gardens at all the different species of birds. There were over 200 birds there including lots of different species of finches, pigeons, cranes, storks, toucans, parrots, black swans, condors, emus and many many more. I took loads of photos of which these are just a few. I tend to go a bit overboard with photos when I go to these sorts of places and then have to work out how to use multiple photos in a layout. A challenge for the future I feel. Alex was on good form, although he decided that he was hungry part way round and then after we fed him he was tired, but refused to sleep until we got back into the car. He is far too nosey for his own good sometimes. The evening was lovely and relaxed as we had a treat meal of smoked salmon, strawberries and cream and birthday cake while watching another silly movie.

Sunday was a beautiful day, with brilliant blue skies and sunshine so we went out for a little walk. Sadly we didn't go far because overnight I put my back out and was in quite a lot of pain. It didn't stop me from enjoying the day though as Alex was in fine form, wriggling, kicking, bouncing in his chair and door bouncer, giggling, chattering etc. I spent much of the day tidying up my desk and locating places to store my new crafting supplies. I am running out of storage and will need to invest in some more soon! The evening saw us investing in an Indian take away (we haven't had a curry in nearly a year) which was wonderful and tasty and coupled with a romantic comedy was the perfect end to a lovely weekend.

My crafting area now looks neat and tidy (it wont last!) and so I was able to have a play with a few of my new stamps and ink pads and generated this ATC. Not bad for a first attempt with these supplies. The background is the Adirondack Lettuce ink washed across glossy paper with a sponge and then the writing and postage mark stamps (Creative Inspirations) stamped over the top (also in Lettuce). I then stamped a few images in white using a Hero Arts stamp of a flower - these don't show up very clearly on this scan. Finally I finished with the HeroArts leaf stamp coloured in using Pretty colour inks.

Back to work on Monday, so I will try and update this again midweek.

Love,

Caro

x