What a lovely birthday!

My Birthday has been and gone and I had a wonderful day starting with presents in bed with Alex helping me to unwrap them...there was paper everywhere! I received loads of gorgeous handmade cards from my forum friends which were beautiful and are proudly on display in the sitting room. Tim and Alex both made me birthday cards which were great...Alex’s is in the photo above, and I received loads of lovely crafting goodies including a Joanna Sheen CD, pressed flowers, various gems and embellishments, a paperartsy stamp, some glimmer mist, some flowersoft images and more! Wonderful! We also went out for a gorgeous Chinese Meal at lunchtime, taking Alex with us. He was so well behaved playing nicely with his crayons and drawing book, drinking from his new non-spill straw cup, and then making collages with his food (see photo above)! We had spring rolls, spare ribs, crispy aromatic duck, sweet and sour chicken and a crispy pork dish (can’t remember the name), all of which was extremely yummy. In the afternoon I got time to craft while everyone else had a nap, and then Alex and I had a go at making collages with some shiny embellishments...it was chaos! He emptied the whole box onto the desk and floor. They went everywhere including down his nappy! He had the greatest of fun and especially enjoyed stirring them all around, taking the lids on and off his pens, and spraying the glimmer mist everywhere (with Mummy very definitely not letting go of the bottle!). The day was finished off with a lovely movie and birthday cake...definitely a wonderful birthday. Alex created these as his first ever ATCs! I also had Tuesday off work and used the opportunity to play a bit crafting wise and to spend more time with Alex, playing games of chase around the house and dashing out to the park between showers. Today I have been officially back at work, although in reality I have been working from home while Alex was at nursery, so that I could read through a PhD thesis that I am going to be viva-ing next week. It has been an interesting read, although I haven’t finished it yet. Alex came back from nursery looking rather pink and red in patches having covered himself in the red paint they were using for potato stamping...it was straight in the bath when he came back home! Having made so many cards recently I decided that it was time to get back to making some ATCs for swapping. These four used images from my Joanna Sheen CD, stamps from Purple Onion and CraftyIndividuals and gems. These three also use images and backgrounds from Joanna Sheen CD and the main image is decoupaged. This months technique swap on CM&PC forum is origami so I spent ages trying to make elephants, but they were so fiddly that although I managed to make one, I decided to make the colour change birds instead. The backgrounds were stamped using my new paperartsy stamp. Have a great week everyone.
Love,
Caro
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