A midweek visit

Well it has been a very busy week at work so far...I have given a lecture on the concepts of carcinogenesis (cancer formation) to some masters students, edited a thesis chapter (53 pages!), done some lab work, edited a manuscript and started to re-write it, and written one abstract for presentation at the Medical School's research day (two more to go). Even with that little lot, I still haven't managed to complete everything my boss expects me to have done by the time she gets back next week so I am under a fair bit of pressure.

As a pleasant relief from some of the work pressure my parents-in-law came over for the early evening today, which was great fun. Although Alex started out rather grumpy having only just woken up, he soon became his usual lively self and entertained us all well, having a cuddle with Granny and Grandpa Pete and bouncing on them, crawling round at their feet, and walking round on the furniture...he even managed to stand unsupported for about 1/2 a second. He is just disovering about doors and how to open and shut them which was rather loud at times where his whole body weight against a door led to a huge slam, and painful for him on occassions where he trapped his fingers. His latest achievement is that he has learnt to clap which is great fun as he always looks so surprised and pleased with himself when he succeeds!

On the crafting front I have made another layout for Alex's scrapbook based on this weeks pencil lines sketch (#74). I have adapted the sketch somewhat to use three photos instead of two, and it is entitled 'Cuddling In'. The journalling reads 'Ever since learning to roll over Alex is often found sleeping on his side or his tummy - frequently with his head buried in his cuddly toys'. I have been wanting to scrap these photos for ages and this is the first time that I have found inspiration for it, so thanks again to the Pencil lines team.

My only other crafting was this ATC, which has been duplicated, for an organised swap on the CM&PC forum with a theme of 'Getting to know you'. The idea behind the swap was to put as much information on an ATC about you and the things you like, for preference including a picture of yourself. This was quite a challenge as I like so many things so I decided to go for a digital picture as the basis and used Adobe Photoshop Elements to generate this using all my own photos (elephant, snake, waterfall, books, snowdrops, scrapbook layout, lion, cross, myself and Alex, and music in the background) to represent most of the things I liked then stuck this to an ATC and added embellishments (flower, gems, ferrero Rocher sticker) and words. I hope that this will be OK for the swap. More soon,

love,

Caro

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