A mixed bag...

...of experiences and emotions this week. Poor Tim has had it tough with spending a day stuck at the job centre trying to find out about other options, then trying to get an appointment with the Citizens Advice Bureau (like finding hen’s teeth) and spending hours trying to re-submit evidence for a reassessment of his incapacity benefit application. I have been helping him with the latter in the evenings and during my day off (not the best way of spending a day off), spent all of yesterday at a conference in Leeds, and most of today in meetings. It has been a crazy week and I am quite glad it is over. All being well next week will be less bitty and more focussed and I can finally finish some of these many tasks I need to do. Spending time with Alex in the evenings has been a life saver. He is so much fun and yesterday we spent about 20 minutes with him giggling madly over some silly little thing I was doing. I just love that infectious laugh...it makes everything so much better and worthwhile. He is still into playing the ‘Dat’ game; wanting to know what everything is. For some reason me stacking bricks up and counting while pointing at each brick in turn was the funniest thing in the world this evening. It amazes me what he finds entertaining at times and he is now able to explain what he game he wants to play by either a word ‘down’ – which means I have to say ‘up’ in a high voice when he is standing up and then ‘down’ in a low voice when he is crouching down, or by pointing at a particular thing or moving his toys in a particular way. It is great to see him improving in his communication skills in this way. Although helping Tim with the benefits form has taken quite a lot of time this week I have managed to make an ATC for a competition being held on the CM&PC forum. This one was entitled ‘recycled’ and we had to use recycled things on it...I had great fun making mine although I have to say I don’t think that I stand a chance of winning as it looks like something that you would make at school! I also managed to make this quick and easy card for Susie’s wedding. She was my bridesmaid and we are going down to her wedding in Devon next weekend. Having done dry embossing on Tim’s card I liked the effect so much that I gave it a go for Susie’s and combined it with corner punches and peel offs. I have also messed around with my new colour wash inks, this time using them on mulberry paper and stamping and embossing the images as before, then scrunching up the paper and re-opening it before spraying the inks over it and then re-scrunching. Finally I ironed over scrap paper to remove the embossing and was left with the batik looking effect...this is much more like batik material. I then turned these into ATCs. I would love to know what you think. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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