Finished

I have finished and submitted my grant today! It has been a tough week and I have had to work every evening, but at the end of the day the grant is as good as I can make it and therefore I feel I have submitted the best quality grant that I could. This one is to employ 2 people for 5 years and would really set my career in motion, so I am praying that I get it. The photo above is of the fluorescent experiment I have been running over the past two weeks. The panel on the left is of untreated blood vessel cells (endothelial cells) and the one on the right is of cells treated with a drug I discovered during my PhD. The grant is to investigate the effects of the drug further, using similar experiments. I wont find out whether I have got it or not until July!

Alex has been my therapy this week as I have made sure that I had my usual Mummy time with him each evening and only worked once he had gone to bed. It is his smiles, giggles and achievements that have kept me going. He learnt to stand this week and stood up for the first time on Tuesday. He was so pleased with himself it was great to see. Sitting down again is a challenge...it is more of a semi-controlled fall but he is getting better at it. This evening he decided to invent a new game where he crawled across the floor to give me a cuddle and kiss, then crawled away at top speed and waited for me to come across and do the same to him...we must have done this 20 times! Very cute and great fun.

I also had him in hysterics just by putting a ring on and off its stacking post...the strangest things can tickle his sense of humour.

I did manage to also give myself 10-15 minutes of crafting each evening and have therefore managed to make several simple but effective ATCs which I am really pleased about. Sadly I haven't managed to make any scrapbooking layouts as they take more time! This first set are similar to the ones from before and were started over the weekend. I like the bright, freshness of them.

The vintage butterflies used K&Co background papers, Crafty Individuals images and postage stamp, Hero Arts dragonfly stamps and eyelets from a random set from e-bay. I thought that these were a bit of a different slant on vintage and quite fun!

Someone also requested a vintage ATC as a swap from me and so I made another vintage set, again using K&Co background paper (I love the french writing interspersed with flowers), ribbon, gold peel off hearts, a HeroArts heart stamp and images from Crafty Individuals. I like the feel of this set, slight romantic and dreamy.

Finally, tonight I made some very bright butterfly ATCs, with two different Papermania papers in the background, angel kiss flowers, and making memories flower brads and Woodware dragonfly brads and again, Crafty Individuals images...I just love these images, they have so many versatile uses. Must go now, we are having a takeaway and a movie tonight to celebrate finishing the grant. more soon,

Love,

Caro

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