A new toy!

OK, so I normally talk about work and family first before moving onto all things crafting, but I had to share this straight away…Tim has given me a Crop-a-dile. It is bright pink and is very solid and chunky and works like a dream. It has a lovely smooth action both for cutting holes (it is supposed to be able to cut chipboard and tin etc, but I have only tried card so far) and for setting eyelets. I love it and am now looking for any excuse to use eyelets on projects at the moment.
Work has gone well so far this week and I have now submitted the two grants and the studentship that I have been working on for the past few weeks. I have also acted as a referee for a journal called ‘Expert Opinions on Drug Development’ and read through a review article that was submitted to them and given my comments on it. On the whole it was a good article, it just needed a bit more detail in places. It is very strange to be considered an ‘expert’ in anything, but good fun! The rest of today has been spent doing some admin and desk tidying ready for the next lot of work to come my way. In fact I have been so on top of things that I decided to leave work early yesterday and go for a gentle stroll through the woods with Tim and Alex…the autumn colours were wonderful and the weather was perfect, the only sadness was that I went straight from work and didn’t have my camera with me.
Alex has had a slight cough to go alongside his cold in these last few days, but to add to that he has worked out how to do a fake cough which is so cute and so funny. We have had some lovely times together this week playing different games to make him laugh. Bouncing up and down is still his favourite and this morning before work I held him in my arms and then jumped up and down with him which made him laugh out loud. Like me he suffers from huge bouts of hic-ups and today we both had very loud ones at the same time which completely cracked him up, making me laugh and hic-up even louder! This cute photo of him was taken just before I put him to bed tonight.
It is my Gran’s 83rd birthday next week and so I made her a card this week. She loves gardening and therefore I wanted to do a card with flowers on it. In the end I used the stipple brush background effect that Kay showed me on a textured white card background and then mounted a watercolour effect rose stamp onto a pink piece of card onto the background card. This pink card had eyelets (set using the Crop-a-dile) and ribbon on it and the whole thing was finished with a happy birthday stamp in the same colour ink. Tim’s birthday is also next week, the day before Gran’s, and one of his presents this year is a computer game called Crysis. Sadly the game isn’t out until after Tim’s birthday so I made him this surprise waterfall card as a taster of what is to come, a sort of IOU if you like, using screen shots of the game taken from the net. I haven’t tried to make a waterfall card yet and I was thrilled with how well this slightly different surprise version worked.
More soon,
Love,
Caro
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How many different things...

...can you do in one weekend? This weekend the answer is loads. Before Alex was born Tim used to do all the jobs around the house (washing, shopping, washing up and some general tidying), but now he has the full time job of looking after Alex so those things don't get done during the week meaning that we have to do them at the weekend. So we have done the weekly shop, cleaned, cooked, washed, washed up, fed Alex, changed him, bathed him, played with him, generally tidied up the house, collected the rest of the enormous playhouse (and when I say enormous I mean it...we couldn't fit it in the car, we had to attach it to the roof of the car to get it home), sorted out and put away Alex's 0-3 month clothes, organised his current clothes (3-6 months) and got out the next lot of clothes (6-9 months) ready for washing when he needs them and more! We have been given clothes enough to last him until he is 2 years old we think, although there may be a few items that we need to buy we haven't had to buy anything so far which has been fantastic. Long may it continue. Clothes can be expensive and we can't really afford new stuff for him (there doesn't seem any point anyway when he grows out of them so fast).

Alex surprised himself and us this weekend by 'crawling' backwards for the first time...OK it was more of a body shuffle, but it was still movement in one direction rather than spinning in a circle. This means that the stair gates may be needed sooner than originally thought. He has thoroughly entertained us this weekend with the different noises that he has been making the most amusing of which has been a breathy Darth Vader impression. His various toys continue to fascinate him especially the cube and anything noisey, although we tend not to give him the musical toys too often for our own sanity. I have had so much fun this weekend making the most of my time with him playing lots of little games and making him giggle. He is a very physical little boy and the more physical the game the more likely he is to laugh out loud.

On a different note I have finally finished Tim's birthday card. The 3D mandola looks really good since it is shimmery due to the mica pigment powders and it is finished with a green gem. It looks better in real life than it does in this picture, but I am quite pleased with the way the 'spring' card turned out. I have not tried one of these before and with the gold stickers on the base and some green stamping on the folds it seems to have come together well. The background was done using two different ink pads (yellow and green) and then a very stiff round ended paint brush (like a stippling brush) to create the stippled effect. I got the idea from some cards that Kay had made and I fell in love with that way of doing a background...it is really effective.

I also got together with Alex to make his card for Tim...I painted his hand green and let him slap the card with it...I have to say that he wasn't too impressed with that...he didn't really like the sensation of the paint on his hand or the hassle that cleaning him up afterwards entailed. On the other hand he got on much better with the pens than I expected and all the pen work is his own (with the obvious exception for which I guided his hand). For added interest I then added the gold peel offs of the computer (a kind gift from Frances Gale)...Tim's favourite hobby. I think that Tim will like this one.

I received two wonderful ATCs through the post yesterday and when I tell you how old the people are who made these you will see why I was so impressed. This first one, Shaker Vase, is lovely and was made by Kayleigh Wade, aged 7. The shaker is great and I love the edging on this ATC.

This second one was made by Kayleigh's sister, Michaela Wade, aged 8 and I love the attention to detail in the placement of little gems on the necklace as well as the way that she has coloured in the corner peel offs and then cut round them to shape the corners of the ATC. I think you will agree with me that these are two fantastic ATCs.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Heat at last!

Well, we are finally warm again. The boiler is fixed and working properly which is a huge relief as I don’t get icicles on my fingers and toes when going into the kitchen to make a sandwich! Work has been busy again this week as I have finished the wound healing grant, and made significant progress on the breast cancer treatments grant. I only hope that one of these is funded as my research team is desperately short of money for all the chemicals, proteins etc that we use in the lab. Some of our research used to be funded by a Breast Cancer Support group who arranged coffee mornings etc to fundraise, sadly most of these women have now died of their disease and the group has disbanded so there is no more money forthcoming from that source for research. Having mostly finished these two grants I have been editing an article on the development of blood vessels on early cancer (pre-malignant and pre-invasive) which discusses the possibility of treating lesions before they get cancerous thus reducing the risk for patients with these early non-cancerous/benign lesions of developing full cancer. This is an interesting new idea in cancer research and I will be intrigued to see how it develops in the future.
One of my work colleagues, Marie, is going on maternity leave today, so instead of sitting through a lunchtime seminar at which I would have fallen asleep, I joined her and a large group of friends for a celebratory meal at the Hui Wei Chinese restaurant. This is the third time I have been to this restaurant and the food was again superb. This time I had ¼ crispy aromatic duck which was extremely yummy. I am still full now! We gave Marie a great send off and yet again everyone liked my card. This is only the second card of mine that work have really seen and so I may get requests to make some more which will be fun.
We had a lovely surprise yesterday as the family who owned the skip phoned us and have offered us some more things including a tricycle for a 1 year old and a push cart, as well as the most enormous playhouse, which will fit into the top right hand corner of our garden and will be great for Alex for next summer. Isn’t it wonderful how generous people are…as of yet we haven’t had to buy a single item of clothing or toy for Alex. Alex is still snuffly, but doesn’t seem quite as bad with his cold today which is nice. He has started to try and initiate games a lot more including noise games where he makes a noise and I copy it making him giggle. He has also started to clap my hand with one of his much to both of our amusement, although he is still some way off clapping his own hands. In the past week or so, he has started to really enjoy a much more developmentally challenging toy which is a cube that has things to rotate and move up and down and contains beads which make a noise when he shakes it. He can spend ages lying on his tummy playing with this happily as this picture shows (a very thoughtful expression!).
Craftwise, I am still working on Tim’s birthday card, and so there is nothing new to show you. It is coming on well, although I have found that the mica pigment powders can be a bit tricky to use. I have received some lovely ATCs over the past two days and this one from Linda Brunton is great. I just love the sheer number of elements in 'The Potting shed' as it is so true to many garden sheds...such a jumble of forks, spades, seeds, trowels etc.

Kath Wilson and myself made an agreement to swap some ATCs simply ages ago and we have finally got round to it this week. I love all three of these fabulous works of art which are so different from each other and show such attention to detail that is evident in all her craft work. These are cards to be taken out and admired again and again and treasured carefully. The metal leaves have been painted giving them a true Autumn feel that I love as Autumn is one of my favourite seasons. The second one has an acetate background that I am just longing to have a go at as it is so luxurious and sparkly with glitter. The let it snow one has a metal background that has been intricately embossed and them had snowflakes layered under the metal and embellishments on the top. Gorgeous. As a little treat she also very generously sent me some Christmas images and some stamped word art which I will have fun using at a later date.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Its freezing

Yes, completely freezing in our house at the moment and has been for the past week. Our boiler has completely packed up. We have hot water but no heating and so are living in very few rooms with convection heaters and fan heaters to warm us up. I dread to think what the electricity bill is going to be like at the end of the month. The guy should be coming round to diagnose the problem and hopefully fix it this evening.

On a positive note we have had a really blessed time in terms of free stuff for Alex this week. A house a few streets away from us have a skip and they keep throwing out the most amazing kids stuff...it just needs a thorough cleaning and bleaching. We knocked on and asked permission to raid the skip and have walked away with loads including a plastic slide, a tricycle, a small plastic desk with in built bench, a highchair (a really good quality one), a push along car for walks and numerous small toys. They are all a bit old for him at the moment but will come into their own in the fullness of time and saves us quite a lot of money. Who could ask for more!

As far as crafting goes I have started making Tim's birthday card using a medallion stamp heat embossed with black powder and then coloured in with Mica powders and this will be decoupaged. This is taking me ages as I don't get a great deal of crafting time in the evenings and it is a design full of intricate little details. Hence the sneaky peak here of just some of it. I promise to show you when it is complete.

Today I received a wonderful set of three hallowe'en ATCs from Christine Johnson. These are really good fun with three dimensional characters. The 'Boo' one has material as the background and there are little bits of glitter on the word and the spook which adds an extra special luxurious feel to the card. Needless to say I am thrilled with this latest addition to my collection.

More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Shopping and yet more shopping

This weekend has been so busy that I am exhausted before I even start the week! We decided that as my work shoes, a very comfortable pair of black suede slip on trainers, are literally falling apart and leak something awful (I can't go out in them when it is wet or I get wet feet), that we couldn't put off going shoe shopping any longer. Now, unlike many of my female friends I really do not enjoy shopping and get really frustrated with not being able to find what I want quickly. We decided to head for town rather than meadowhall as we couldn't face the weekend crowds in meadowhall. Town was quite busy but we did have a successful trip with me finding a pair of comfortable black trainers, and buying a few crafty bits from The Works. We also got a few bits from Mothercare for Alex and as presents for friends who have recently had babies, as well as four different things from Argos. Alex coped very well although he refused to sleep as there was too much to see. We ended up feeding him partway round while in Argos waiting for our things to turn up. These included a convection heater as our boiler is currently dead and it is a bit too cold to be without a source of heat, especially when getting up in the middle of the night to feed.

Today (Sunday) saw us going to Co-op in Crookes for our weekly shop. This was a bit strange as they have updated the shop so it looks great, but sadly the prices have also been increased and it is no longer as good value as the Somerfield in Broomhill. We picked up some things, and then headed home to do a bit of housework, including washing, washing up, bin emptying, hoovering (which Alex hated) etc.

Alex has been really funny this weekend and it has been great to spend time with him. He is so inquisitive that he will not go to sleep unless he is in a darkened room by himself even when he is totally exhausted. His range of noises is increasing almost daily and he is into chewing absolutely everything from teddy bears, clean nappies, clothes, toys, his thumb, fist and fingers and my hand or arm! He is getting much happier on his tummy and will roll over the moment I put him on the floor and then try to crawl. He still can't move much on his front but can now support himself on one arm while the other is shoved in his mouth or used to pick up toys. He loves his bathtimes and soaks me by splashing vigorously at each one, although it surprises him when the water goes over his face as well!

This afternoon I got the chance to do a bit of crafting in the form of a baby card for a work colleague who is going on maternity leave at the end of the week. I was approached by her boss and asked if I would make the card as she had been impressed by the one I had made for Sheila. It was fun to do, although a bit more challenging as we don't know what sex baby she will have. I brayered the central strip of the card with Adirondack butterscotch, then stamped the teddy bears on top in Ginger ink and coloured the ears and tummy with gold mica pigment powder. This strip was then mounted on pink and blue harlequin background papers from K&Co. As the major embellishment I made a large pram by cutting a segment out of a circle and adding the trim (embossed with hologram sparkle) and handle (coloured with brown mica pigment) on top and finally finishing with the buttons. This was a very loose interpretation of CPS sketch #36 with the pram instead of the circles and moved more to the centre.

Anyway, work for me this week so more when I have the time and energy. In the meantime, happy crafting!

Love,

Caro

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Thank you

Over the past week I have received lots of lovely ATCs, but haven't had the chance to upload them to show you all so thought that I would dedicate one blog entry entirely to that. The ATCs have been many and varied and all are beautiful in different ways, I love them all and am thrilled with them.

These first two are from Doreen Collins (Momiji) and are of an old favourite of mine, Whinney the Pooh and some one who I have only recently been introduced to Mamegoma. On Whineey the Pooh I love the gently calming green background, the little domed stickers and the title 'Stuck, but in a good way!'. Mamegoma is completely different with a very bright pink girly background and the images of Mamegoma mounted on to it...the special touch on this one is the free hanging Mamegoma.

The next two are from Barbara Williams who seems to specialise in beautifully stamped pieces that are perfectly co-ordinated, I just love her style. The one on the left is called 'scents of the Orient' and has subtle touches of layering, gloss, gold glitter and a gold jewel. The one on the right 'Violet' is again beautifully layered and I love the image of the girl and the way she is holding glossy flowers.

I love this one from Joanne Brown (Bubbles) which was a surprise and instead of a Birthday card. The expression on all these babies faces is classic! The colours are wonderfully vintage so it is a great and different addition to my vintage collection.

This cute little decoupaged fairy is from Dawn Martindale and is mounted on a fun painted background matching the fairy beautifully. I just fell in love with the expression on this little ladies face!

And finally here are two from Janet Matthews (Piglet) who has decoupaged the same image that Momiji used and mounted it on glittery green card with butterfly and flower stickers to great effect. Her other card is of the carribean ocean and uses a whole variety of techniques, embellishments and effects to create a fun and vibrant ATC.

All in all I was extremely happy with all of these. Thank you so very much ladies.

Love,

Caro

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How Annoying!

Earlier this week when Tim was driving to fetch me from the hospital someone pulled out of the nearby nursery and straight into the side of our car. Fortunately neither car was travelling fast and no-one was injured in the prang (Alex wasn’t even remotely upset by it), but the damage to our car means that we have had to get the insurance people involved. It has taken the last three days to get things sorted out, and we wont get our car (bent & scratched passenger side front wing and scratched bumper – see photo) fixed until mid November. However, the positive thing is that the other driver admitted guilt and we had all her insurance details so we wont lose our no claims bonus and we are going to be supplied with a hire car for the entire time that our car is in the garage. It just seems to have taken up so much of our time getting it sorted out, leaving less time for playing with Alex or crafting. Most frustrating.

Endothelial (blood vessel) cells grown in the lab forming tubes representing early blood vessel formation.

Work has been hard going the past couple of days; mainly because Alex hasn’t been sleeping well leaving me rather sleep deprived. I have, however, managed to complete the grant application on wound healing and my boss is going to check through it before the submission deadline next Friday. This has left me free to concentrate on a second grant application; focussing on treatment combinations for colon and breast cancer. Avastin is a new FDA approved drug which is now being used in the clinic and my experimental work suggests that treating with a new peptide as well as Avastin may improve the anti-tumour effects of treatment. This work is still at an early stage and the aim is to get a grant to study this further in the hopes that it will improve the health of patients in the long term.
Alex has not been quite his usual happy self in the past few days. He hasn’t been sleeping properly for some unknown reason and is occasionally off his food. Wednesday night was the worst we have had with him in ages, poor little thing, as he didn’t want his night time feed and then wanted to stay awake and play so when he was put in his bed he was really noisey, and didn’t go to sleep for hours. As a result I am shattered. We are not quite sure what is wrong with him, as although he does have a bit of a cold, there are none of the usual signs of teething. Last night he screamed for 10 minutes in the early evening for no apparent reason, and cuddling (the usual cure) didn’t help, although feeding him did calm him eventually. In between his bouts of unhappiness and needing cuddles he has been his usual bright and bouncy self, chattering away to us, rolling over, giggling, and generally being great fun. He is not far off being able to sit up now…he managed it for about 15 seconds the other day. He actually finds it really funny to be put into a sitting position and to try and sit up then topple over…as he topples over (with me catching him) he laughs out loud.
As a result of everything that has been going on I haven’t had the chance to do any crafting over the past few days so hopefully this weekend will see me playing again, especially as I have a card to make by Monday! I will try and upload again over the weekend.
Love,
Caro
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Inchies

Well as the name suggests the time I have for my projects in the evening has been spent playing by making inchies. .If you haven’t come across the word before, these are little works of art, 1x1 inch (as the name suggests). There was a challenge on Wednesday stamper to make Inchies, and of course they had to have stamping on them somewhere. I have never made any of these before so they were a complete experiment and I found them the greatest of fun, although very challenging because of the limited space. There is only room for minimal embellishments or stamps with small areas of interest. In total I made three that were worth while, although some have worked better than others. All three of them used the same background of a wash of Adirondack Lettuce stamped over with a background writing stamp and some postmark stamps from Creative Inspirations.
To this first one, entitled ‘Romantic Letter’ I added some mini roses, tied in a bunch with ribbon and then a heart (free with one of my magazines) to try and create a romantic feel to the card.
This second one followed a similar theme with love and romance at the centre of it, and used a cherub charm that I have had for ages and never found a use for, suspended on a piece of ribbon, then a heart brad was added to the corner. I apologise for the quality of the photo…my camera was having trouble focussing.
The final one used even more stamping in the form of a mini HeroArts oak leaf stamp which I stamped in autumnal colours and then covered with part of a skeleton leaf.
Apart from crafting in the evening, I have spent the time playing with Alex…he is so much fun to be around at the moment as he is experimenting with different things all the time. His recent tricks are strange tongue movements, which is all part of speech development and will enable him to make different consonant sounds eventually. He also rolls onto his tummy more and more now and is more comfortable being there, being content to stay on his tummy while playing with a toy for quite a while, although he does still try and crawl giving a great impression of a stranded fish. We think that teething may also be imminent as although he is not showing all of the signs, he is chewing his fingers, thumb, fist and anything else he can get hold of at nearly every opportunity. I had better go now, as due to unforeseen circumstances I didn’t manage to post this last night and I am now at work! Time to get back to the grant writing. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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Busy weekend

It feels like it has been a busy weekend what with one thing and another. With me being back at work fulltime now I don't have the energy (or time) to do all the chores during the week which means that they get saved up for the weekend...not so much fun! Tim used to do a lot of them during the day while I was at work, but now he has the fulltime job of looking after Alex. Thus it was necessary for us to do loads of washing, washing up, cooking, cleaning, shopping, filing, and letter writing in order to catch up with life a bit. Adding looking after Alex to that little lot, things have been quite busy! Alex has kept us entertained...I had him laughing out loud this evening by trying to get him to clap his hands, and he keeps rolling over onto his tummy and then yelling because he gets frustrated with not being able to crawl. He has been really tired this weekend, mainly because he hasn't been sleeping properly during his nap times or at night. On Friday night he turned through 90 degrees in his cot and got his feet stuck out of the side and then yelled because he couldn't move or get comfortable. This happened three times during the course of the night - I hope he learns about this soon! Baby Chloe Keren Woodward - 15 days old!
Mother and Daughter share some time together

Big brother Robin and Daddy (David) get in on the act.

On Saturday Alex and I went to visit Julia and David. Julia is one of my best friends in Sheffield and I met her 10 years ago. She recently gave birth to a little girl called Chloe who we went to meet. Chloe was very good, wide awake and staring peacefully round the room. She has the most amazing amount of very dark hair. Her brother Robin (nearly 2) was on good form although he was a little shy initially. Sadly Alex became very grumpy part way through the visit due to tiredness and then screamed the place down so we decided that it would be best to come home. He fell asleep in the car on the way back, but then woke up after only 10 minutes although I knew he needed more sleep than that. Oh well the joys of stubborn babies! It was lovely to see them all if only briefly.

I have done a little crafting this weekend as I made this card for Julia using free papers from one of the magazines, ribbon, silver peel offs, holographic sparkle embossing powder, brown mica pigment powder, a template from Papercraft Inspirations and some buttons from my mothers button tin. The overall effect worked quite well and Julia loved it, which was nice as she was the person who got me back into crafting after a 10 year break.

I have also made two ATCs for the Alphabet swap as the next three letters (JKL) are due next weekend. The K is for King and for that I cut up the King of hearts card and mounted him on 3D foam over a gold letter K stuck to a red background embossed round the edge with gold.

The L is for leaves was great fun as it was entirely stamping. The background was stamped using two different mid sized leaf stamps using the Creola Spice Kaleidecolour ink pad and then a lighter colour card was chosen for the letter L and stamped using the same inks with the little HeroArts leaf stamps. Finally a skeleton leaf was mounted over the top. I am quite pleased with the effects of both of these ATCs and they are going in the post tomorrow in the hopes that they will get to Angela (the swap organiser) in time. It is time for Alex's bath so I must go. More soon.

Love,

Caro

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Thank Goodness Its Friday!

I am so pleased that it is Friday, the end of the working week, as I am so in need of a break from thinking! Yes, my brain has officially fried. I have been working on different grants and manuscripts to do with breast cancer, wound healing, angiogeneis (blood vessel formation) and different proteins all week and it is time for a break. The embarassing thing about today was that there was an excellent seminar on hormone treatment of breast cancer (e.g. tamoxifen) and I fell asleep during it...I had to go and apologise to the speaker afterwards...so embarassing!

Although work is exhausting, the evenings are proving to be lovely. We have a great routine that meets all of our needs and wants. I come home and play with Alex for about 45 minutes before he goes into his nighttime routine including feeding before bed. I just love these playtimes...we do all sorts of different things. I sing to him, play the bouncing game, tickle him (he isn't ticklish, but he likes being touched), play the mimic game, pass him different toys and encourage him to try sitting up and rolling over. We also have lots of cuddles and I read stories to him to calm him down just before his bedtime feed. After he has gone to bed I have about an hour to do things for me, whether it is crafting, phoning family members, being on the computer etc before it is time to get our evening meal on. Tim and I then have the rest of the evening as 'our' time eating our dinner, watching television shows that we are both interested in, chatting and reading.

I have only done a little crafting over the past few days as instead I have spent time catching up with friends over the phone and on the forum. I have also put up 4 sets of ATCs for swaps on the CMPC forum, it will be interesting to see how many of them go and which ones are the most popular. I did make a card yesterday evening with one of the floral letter ATCs as the main panel. It worked really well and is a card for my Mother who has severely hurt her back...it was so bad last week that she was in hospital. She is out now thank goodness, but needs to take things easy for a while...easier said than done for a lady who is more active than anyone I know!

What with the postal strikes cards have been backing up in the post and so over the past two days I have received two more birthday cards, both from people on the CM&PC forum and this lovely, unusual ATC entitled 'Texture' from Linda Brunton. This is a very 'touchy feely' sort of ATC with lots of interest in the form of different colours, textures and glitter. Wonderful stuff.

Time for me to put on our tea, More soon,

Love,

Caro

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