Work Madness

Well the working week is really in force with a vengeance. I have so many projects on the go at the moment that it is ridiculous, the first of which is a grant application to do with wound healing. This is of relevance to the medical community as many patients who undergo surgery end up struggling with non-healing wounds, and it costs over £1000m to the NHS each year to treat these patients. The aim of the grant is to investigate the factors involved in normal wound healing with the hope that it may identify potential new treatments for patients undergoing surgery. Let’s hope we get the money, as I heard today that a grant application I made in April wasn’t funded which is very disappointing. The next project I am currently doing is writing an application for a PhD studentship to do with research into non-malignant lesions in the breast and how they develop into breast cancer. Interestingly enough, this actually involves some similar factors to wound healing leading to the suggestion that ‘Cancers can be thought of as non-healing wounds’. Not sure I agree with that statement fully, but I can see where they are coming from. Other on-going projects are reviewing an article on wound healing for the journal ‘Molecular Medicine’, editing a review article written by a member of my research team, and finally I had a two hour meeting today to discuss the final experiments needed for another research paper detailing the discovery of a potential new drug. All this is on top of supervising my research team of 7 people…no rest for the wicked as they say! Alex has been hilarious these past few days and helped to keep me sane. His latest discovery is shouting, not because he is upset or even for attention, although he does try that sometimes, but simply for the joy of it! His repertoire of noises is increasing as well and some of them are so cute and funny that they completely crack me up. He is also trying to sit up and can balance with the help of his arms for a few seconds at a time now. My favourite thing is to try and get him to giggle. There was a time when the same things would make him laugh, but these days you have to do something new and it is often something very unexpected that results in a laugh. Tim was miming eating from a spoon to try and get Alex to eat some more and it completely cracked him up! He has also started to turn around in his bed…last night I went in to find him lying sideways across the cot (as in the photo above), and the night before Tim found him not only sideways, but lying on his tummy!
Despite being totally exhausted in the evenings I have been playing with some of my birthday presents. This set of ATCs was made using the resist technique, by stamping the Chinese writing stamp in versamark ink all over glossy paper, allowing it to dry and then washing across in Adirondack cranberry so that the writing shows through. This was then cut up into ATC sized cards. These were then edged with sparkly gold embossing powder, and the Chinese coin stamped and embossed in copper on it. They were then finished with the Japenese ‘stamp’ images, stamped in black on matt paper and then coloured in using Mica pigment powders with a waterbrush pen. This leaves the images all shimmery.
I have also made a set of ATCs based on the one made over the weekend with the Adirondack Lettuce washed over glossy paper in the background, then writing and postmarks stamped as a background with white and coloured leaves and flower HeroArts images stamped on top. I can’t decide what to call this set of ATCs, but they will be available for swapping.
Time to put Alex to bed, so more soon,
Love,
Caro
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Birthday Celebrations

A still life, Chinese style!
Alex contemplates the mysteries of the universe and his fingers

Well I have had a lovely three day weekend in which to celebrate my birthday. We traditionally go out for a meal to celebrate our birthdays, but evenings are not really an option with Alex so we started the birthday celebrations on Friday with a lunchtime meal at the Hui Wei, a fantastic Chinese in the centre of Sheffield. The food was fantastic. We had spring rolls and Peking Spare ribs, followed by crispy aromatic duck, then sweet and sour chicken and battered cod in sweet soy sauce served with egg fried rice. I have to say the cod wasn't my cup of tea, but the rest was melt in the mouth. The drinks were Tiger Beer, which I have had previously in Singapore, and a chinese beer, which was far too drinkable! Alex was awake and peaceful the whole time...we fed him alongside eating ourselves which worked very well and the advantage of going at lunchtime was that we were able to have a side booth to ourselves which was very cosy. The rest of Friday was much more practical (shopping, cleaning, and looking after Alex) with the exception of the evening, which saw us watching a very silly movie and eating a small amount of nice food (we were still full from lunch!!).

A heap of stamps all ready for playing with
More stamps, inks, powders and pens...what fun I am going to have!
My first ever card from Alex
My birthday card from Tim

My actual birthday was great. I received loads of lovely cards, including some homemade ones from people on the CM&PC forum, which was very special. My favourite cards were the two from my 'boys'. Alex made the one above with a lot of help from Tim and I love what they have done. Tim's card is one of his best yet...he only makes three cards a year (Valentines, Anniversary and Birthday) and I just love the fact that he takes the effort to do this. He also gave me loads of lovely crafting presents...masses of stamps as well as ink pads, pigment powders, embossing powder, sakura stardust pen and watercolour pens. I am going to have so much fun playing with these! Tim's parents gave me a lovely unusual elegant cardigan in brown (matches my linen skirt) and Andy and Nel gave me a purple v-necked jumper which is great. I feel that I have done very well on the pressie front.

A rare pink budgie (possibly) A blue horned pheasant (I think!)One of the famous black swans
A cheeky colourful finch

Part of the massive deer herd

Saturday saw us going out for a day trip to Loughton Hall near Leeds. This is a stately home with formal gardens, a huge deer park, adventure playground, cafe and bird gardens. We spent a happy couple of hours looking round the bird gardens at all the different species of birds. There were over 200 birds there including lots of different species of finches, pigeons, cranes, storks, toucans, parrots, black swans, condors, emus and many many more. I took loads of photos of which these are just a few. I tend to go a bit overboard with photos when I go to these sorts of places and then have to work out how to use multiple photos in a layout. A challenge for the future I feel. Alex was on good form, although he decided that he was hungry part way round and then after we fed him he was tired, but refused to sleep until we got back into the car. He is far too nosey for his own good sometimes. The evening was lovely and relaxed as we had a treat meal of smoked salmon, strawberries and cream and birthday cake while watching another silly movie.

Sunday was a beautiful day, with brilliant blue skies and sunshine so we went out for a little walk. Sadly we didn't go far because overnight I put my back out and was in quite a lot of pain. It didn't stop me from enjoying the day though as Alex was in fine form, wriggling, kicking, bouncing in his chair and door bouncer, giggling, chattering etc. I spent much of the day tidying up my desk and locating places to store my new crafting supplies. I am running out of storage and will need to invest in some more soon! The evening saw us investing in an Indian take away (we haven't had a curry in nearly a year) which was wonderful and tasty and coupled with a romantic comedy was the perfect end to a lovely weekend.

My crafting area now looks neat and tidy (it wont last!) and so I was able to have a play with a few of my new stamps and ink pads and generated this ATC. Not bad for a first attempt with these supplies. The background is the Adirondack Lettuce ink washed across glossy paper with a sponge and then the writing and postage mark stamps (Creative Inspirations) stamped over the top (also in Lettuce). I then stamped a few images in white using a Hero Arts stamp of a flower - these don't show up very clearly on this scan. Finally I finished with the HeroArts leaf stamp coloured in using Pretty colour inks.

Back to work on Monday, so I will try and update this again midweek.

Love,

Caro

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Its over!

My working week that is....I have the day off tomorrow to give me a lovely long weekend in which to celebrate my birthday and the celebrations kick off this evening with a take-away and a movie after we put Alex to bed. The past two work days have been busy with grant applications, studentship applications, catching up with colleagues I haven't seen since going on maternity leave, talking to sales reps (not my idea of fun), e-mailing, phoning and supervising students. In otherwords everything is back to normal, just as if I had never been away! I have to say that I am finding it more tiring, but that is probably because I am getting less sleep due to having to wake and feed Alex in the night. Alex has been so much fun in the evenings getting very excited when he sees me and wanting to play. His favourite game at the moment is the 'standing game' whereby I hold him above my lap and he stands up, taking his own body weight and then bounces while I hold him. It is better than a work out with weights for strenthening the arms and much more fun than a session at the gym. The other latest game is to sit him on the floor and try and get him to support himself in the sitting position...he can manage a few seconds before he begins to topple over, at which point I catch him and put him upright again. The continual theme of these games is to make him laugh as he has such an infectious laugh that just cracks me up. One of my favourite times is just after Alex's bath, when he is in his pyjamas and we have a cuddle and I read him a story before his bedtime feed. It is so lovely to cuddle him close and warm. I have been too tired to find inspiration for crafting in the past couple of days and am very much hoping that the promised 'crafty' birthday presents will provide fresh inspiration over the weekend. Must go now and give Alex his bedtime feed. More soon.

Love,

Caro

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Exhausted

I am totally exhausted this evening. Although the last two days haven't been physically demanding (I have been sat at my desk most of the days) they have been very mentally demanding. It hasn't helped that I haven't slept well for two nights and I can't blame it on Alex - he has been pretty good. I have spent these two days at work trying to draft out a grant application based on wound healing. The idea is to investigate which factors are involved in the process of wound healing following surgery so that we can identify a suitable treatment for patients who are having problems with healing. This grant will be submitted to a committee on 26th October so I have a little while to work on it, although with three people to liase between that time will soon fly by. It has been quite a challenge to get my head around the science of this and to tell it in a way that makes sense and leads up to a testable hypothesis. I think I now have something workable so have to run it past the boss and see what she thinks.

Alex has been in a funny mood these past few days and today has given Tim a bit of a hard time. We are not entirely sure why, whether it is just over tiredness, not feeling well, wanting company, hungry or teething or all of the above! I have to say in the evenings he has been great...yelled for food within 10 minutes of me coming home as expected and then been a joy to play with. Unfortunately he has developed a habit of going completely hyperactive just before he is due to go to bed and it isn't always easy to calm him down. If I hold him, he wants to stand and bounce on my lap; if I put him in his chair he bounces ballistically; and if I put him on the playmat he tries to roll over and crawl (not that he can crawl yet). The only thing to do is to put him in his room by himself and eventually he will calm down enough to sleep, although we may have a few yells along the way.

I have managed to do a little crafting each evening and made a couple of simple cards which are made quite effective by the matching patterned papers. This first one is a Birthday card and the flower was a dirty cream hydranger which I coloured with chalk. The papers all came from Berry range from the English Paper Company and were free with a magazine a long time ago!

This second card can be used for any occassion (appropriate peel off greeting to be added later, in bottom right hand corner) and used the Seafoam and Berry range of papers from the English Paper Company, and the flowers were from hobbycraft (in the bargin bin!). I am quite pleased with the effect of this card the design of which is loosely based on CPS sketch #31.

Work again for me tomorrow so I must go and get some food. More soon.

Love,

Caro

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Peaceful weekend

Isn't it lovely when a weekend becomes truly relaxing with no pressures to achieve anything and no deadlines looming. We have had a lovely two days as a family making the most of the time together. Yesterday saw us heading out for a family shopping trip to do the weekly shop and collect a few other essential bits and pieces. It was lovely to be out with Alex in his baby bjorn and see him wriggling, chatting and gurgling away the whole time. He charmed everyone he met with his big blue eyes and wonderful grin. The rest of the day was an organisation and housework type of day with us catching up on jobs around the house, washing, tidying, cleaning, emptying bins etc. To me the most important part of the day was the time spent with Alex as it was just so much fun playing with him, and watching him try to stand up on my lap and wanting to be tickled. One of his favourite games is when Tim and I make funny noises at him and it makes him laugh out loud. Today we went out for a walk in the woods near Forge Dam and as it was cold we dressed Alex in his 'snowsuit'...he looked like a very cute Michelin man which was a bit of overkill. He wasn't cold though! He is getting more and more vocal and instead of sitting and staring was 'commenting' on things for most of the walk. It was lovely to be out as a family in the fresh Autumn air and walk alongside the stream. The rest of the day has been gentle and lazy, playing on the floor with Alex, chatting to friends on the phone and spending far too much time on Facebook which I have recently joined. I think it is a great way of getting back in touch with people I don't get to see anymore. I think Alex is beginning to struggle with sore gums from teeting as he kept bursting into tears for no apparent reason and was in need of more cuddles than usual, however, for the most part he has retained is usual happy sunny personality and been great fun to be with.

I haven't done very much in the way of crafting this weekend as I have spent the time cooking and doing other things. I did make a start on the next ATCs for the alphabet swap and have made this one, which is entitled 'J is for Jelly'. I just love jelly beans and thought that they made a great background and the jelly itself is decoupaged. I just have to repeat this now for my own records. Back to work tomorrow so I must go and get things organised. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Messy!

Today has been a day of creating mess...the whole family have made different messes one way or another. Alex's lunchtime feed of fruit puree was his messiest feed so far, as was his bath as he got totally over excited and splashed and kicked no end - I was soaked at the end of it! I made mess in my crafting with doing both decoupage (the little squares from the foam stickers go everywhere) and by using flowersoft which also seems to migrate everywhere. Most unusually Tim also made mess, but his was a little more important - he attempted to fix the boiler and therefore got dust everywhere in the process. This brings me onto the other news...our boiler is on the blink. The boiler works for hot water, but the pilot light for the central heating keeps going out. We can light it again, but within an hour or so it has gone out. Tim attempted to fix this today and at time of writing it has been working for 5 hours...we have to wait and see if this is a complete or patial mend. Alex has had a slightly more fractious day than usual and we think that he may be starting to teeth as his level of drool and chewing his fists has increased as well as him having bright red cheeks. Despite that we have had a lot of fun together playing and making him giggle.

I have continued to play with my Christmas card design and have decided on this for the digital image...I may yet decide to put the angels back in, but they are drawn and all the other elements are photographic so they don't fit as well with the overall design.

The aim is to mount the photo on red or green card and then add glitter glue round the edge and to the tree as lights/baubles. This is a rough version of what the final card will look like, although the actual photograph will be brighter as this one was printed in rough on my home printer.

The other bit of crafting I did today was an ATC for Lottie based on one of her own photographs. Many of you will know her as 'The Allotment lady' and know that she loves Bantam hens. This ATC uses a picture of her original two hens called Dilly Dilly and Pumkin which I have mounted onto green card covered with skeleton leaves. I have then used flowersoft over the grass and cut out the chickens mounting them on foam to raise them up so they look like they are acually in the midst of the grass. Finally I added the little metal cockerel embellishment. I hope that she likes it!

On a final note, my mum was on TV today talking about autumn flowering bulbs on Alan Titchmarsh's new ITV show. She did really well, coming across as very enthusiastic and knowledgable and was awarded a 'National Treasure Award 2007'!!!
More soon,

Love,

Caro

x

Phew!

I’m exhausted! It has been a very busy two days, the first two work days I have done back to back. In many ways I can’t complain as they have both gone very well, and Alex and Tim have coped OK, but I am shattered because I haven’t been sleeping very well, and it isn’t really because of Alex either. Yesterday I had a meeting with my boss to discuss our immediate plans for a grant application and spent time with all my students, followed by loads of time internet searching for the information needed for this grant application. It was a lot of brain work to try and remind myself of all the information I knew really well 6 months ago and to catch up on the new facts about wound healing and the different signalling pathways involved in it. One of my students showed me some of her recent work on endothelial cells (blood vessel cells) and fluorescent markers and produced this rather beautiful picture.
Yesterday evening was wonderful, Alex was so happy and chirpy and we spent a merry hour playing before I fed him and put him to bed following which I made a couple of phone calls to family and then played around with my photoshop Christmas card before having some food and collapsing in front of an episode of Crocodile Hunter. Don’t you just love this cheeky grin!
Today was another work day and I have found it much harder going, mainly as a result of lack of sleep. I am still working on the grant and have a rough outline of how this will go now so am feeling happier about it. There is just one major section to complete in terms of new information and then I will have to ensure that the rest is fully up to date. Hopefully, all being well, I should be able to get a good first draft to my boss in time for our meeting on Wednesday next week. The highlight of my working day, however, was going out for a Chinese meal at lunchtime to celebrate Sheila going off on her maternity leave. There were 12 of us in all and we gave her the card (the one I made) and she loved it which was very nice. This was also a breakthrough for us as a family as it was the first time that I didn’t go home at lunchtime to feed Alex. When I phoned Tim he said that Alex had taken 4floz of milk from the bottle (with a cup teat) at lunchtime as well as his morning meal of a banana and an afternoon meal of baby rice. He has done so well and I am so proud of him.

This evening I have played with Alex, fed him, bathed him and put him to bed and am now having a little mooch on the net before collapsing in front of the TV with dinner. I have also had the delight of receiving 5 ATCs in the post in the past few days. These three are from the Alphabet swap that I am involved in on the CM&PC forum. G is for Girly is a wonderful ATC in pinks and purples with handbag, dress and shoes from Dawn Martindale. H is for Helicopter is from Kayleigh (aged 7) and I just love the textured sky and fluffy white clouds. I is for Indian Squaw is from Frances (Kayleigh's mum) and is a beautiful picture.

This ATC is from Lottie Middleton who joined the CM&PC forum at about the same time as me, I love the way the Singer sewing machine advert is mounted over frayed material and is glazed to make it look older.

This final ATC is from Janet Matthews and is my first alcohol ink swap. She has used the alcohol inks over foil into which she has drawn the leaf shape and them embellished with autumnal peel offs. I simply love the colours of autumn so this ATC is made for me. No time or energy for my own crafting today but I have high hopes for tomorrow.

Love to you all,

Caro

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