Tired bumps

It is amazing what you can manage on only 4 hours sleep a night. I don't think I have slept much more than that for the past two weeks and yet I can still sound coherent and manage to do my work (although I think tiredness insanity is setting in). Work is so frantic at the moment that I have to confess to feeling a little stressed about it. So far this week I have edited a paper, analysed some data, edited a grant, answered some comprehensive questions on a grant, written a talk for tomorrow morning, and that is just for starters. Exhausting stuff.

Thank goodness for the evenings when i can have some much needed fun with Alex. He is currently sporting a small bruise on his forehead from a little tumble today while he was playing...it comes of being extremely active and not fully steady on his feet yet. He is also extremely tired as he isn't sleeping at the moment, probably because another tooth is coming through, although it may be the horrendous winds we have been experiencing. We have had great fun playing with cars tonight (it was bricks last night, and rings on Monday) as well as chase,tickles, peekaboo & story time. I just had to take this picture of him in his peruvian cardigan to show Gran (who gave it to him)...the cardigan is still too big , but he loves cuddling into it and I love the way he looks like a little pixie in it!

I have done a little crafting in the evenings and was quite pleased with this Christmas layout (I will finish Christmas soon, I promise!) of my family. We went there just after Christmas and I have managed to include a photo of everyone on this layout, which was a challenge as Dad only appeared in the background of one photo and I was only in the one photo taken on my brothers camera.

I have also made two more fat book pages using K&Co hydrangia paper in the background, vellum butterflies, a small butterfly stamp, and sakura pens. I just love the shimmery effect of the sakura stardust pen and have used it loads on these two, although you can't see that in the photos. I hope people like them. More on Friday.

Love,

Caro

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Wedding weekend

Pat and Andy, the happy coupleMatthew (left) and Reuben (right), the groom's sons, who were ring bearers.

Aysha, my God-daughter and the groom's daughter who was a bridesmaid

I mentioned in my post on Friday that we had been invited to a wedding of a friend. Well the wedding was on Saturday and was the most unusual wedding I have ever been to. It was like a full on worship service with words, prophecies, prayers, a full worship band playing, music writen by the bride and groom, singing by the maid of honour, the church was decorated with trees and willows, gold and copper and the sevice lasted 2 hours! Pat (the bride) was dressed in a coppery brown dress with an alice band with feathers in her hair, Reuben and Matthew (the groom's sons) were ring bearers, Aysha (the groom's daughter) was a bridesmaid, and Andy (the groom) looked the happiest I had seen him in ages. Alex was completely hyperactive with the excitement in the church and I spent the whole time chasing him round the room or trying to get him to sit still...I was exhausted by the end of it!

Alex has been really funny this weekend...I don't think that he is very well still and so he is either completely mad and charging round the place or really grumpy and needing sleep. In the mad bits we have had a lot of fun, while playing with bricks, clapping, rolling on the floor, playing chase, reading, playing peek-a-boo, playing with cars and trains and trying to learn how to post different shapes into the correct holes. We also enjoyed our family shopping trip coupled with a quick trip to the park for some more fun.

However, due to the wedding and Alex needing a little more attention there hasn't been a great deal of time available for crafting this weekend. Although I have made an ATC for Angela, who requested an oriental card in exchange for the wonderful panda she sent me (I forgot to photograph it before posting it!). I have also started making my fat book pages. They are not all going to be the same, but the first three are similar as they use a background by K&Co, butterfly peel offs, glitter pens, pink and purple ink pads, a free flower border stamp, a mini stamp from a kids set, and a butterfly stamp from StampsAway. I am quite pleased with how these three have turned out and I hope that people like them. More soon,

Love,

Caro

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Crafty Thanks

I have so many wonderful ATCs to say thank you for that I thought I had better do a separate entry to show you them all. These first two are from Rhea Bellamy and I love the clean lines of the oriental one and the fun way the hair of the lady becomes part of the trees of the forest in the second one.
The Oriental one in this set is from Mhairi Forsyth and I love the way she has used 3D on the card and the funny face in the bottom corner. The fairy is from Barbara Hackleton, some who I haven’t swapped with before, and I love the use of the gold peel offs and green gems on this one. The deckchair is from Gabi and is such a fun and vibrant ATC really capturing the sense of summer.
The next four are from the February techniques swap which was stamping. They are all so lovely and varied. The top one is from Christine Johnson and I love the use of different stamps on this one. The rainbow is by Kath Wilson and makes great use of three different stamps. The flowers beside it are by Linda Brunton and I especially like the background on this, as well as the use of glittery ink. The very cute PB hedgehog is from Jan Matthews and I love the way she has coloured him in and added a stipple background.
Finally, these three were fun ATCs offered for swaps by individuals and I couldn’t resist them. The leopard is from Linda Brunton again and I just love big cats, The elegant lady in pink is by Jan Mathews and I love the ladies shimmery dress, and finally the Oriental panda is by Angela Clerehugh and is wonderful.
And on a different note I have joined a ‘fat book’ swap with a theme of butterflies. For those who don’t know a fat book is a book made up of 4x4 inch pages where each person makes a page on the same theme. This is the first fat book page I have received, and is by Rhea Bellamy, and is great fun with the embellishments. With thick embellishments on each page a real possibility I can now understand where the name ‘Fat book’ came from. Needless to say I am very happy with this little lot! Thank you all so very much.
Love,
Caro
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Busy but fun

The end of this week has been very busy at work still, but home life has been the greatest of fun. At work I managed to complete the three abstracts (summaries of work in progress) for the University of Sheffield School of Medicine Research Day, write a talk that I am giving next week, and run my experiment (I don't know yet if the results are any good!). So to say I have been busy is to put it mildly, but it is good. The past two evenings have been hillarious as Alex and I have played different games. Yesterday he decided that this chair was the best toy ever and spent about 15 minutes pushing and pulling it around the room, standing up and leaning against it, crawling under it and generally enjoying himself to my amusement. Today we have played with stacking bricks and knocking them down, posting things into holes, he has had another go at clapping, had some stories read to him and lots of cuddles! Wonderful stuff.

Crafting wise I have had a good couple of days as I have completed this layout of Alex and Daniel at Christmas. I just had to scrap this sequence of photos where Alex has one of his Christmas presents in his hand and then Daniel decides that he likes it and so grabs it leaving Alex upset. The words beside each picture read 'You have it; I want it; therefore its mine!'. The papers used were Bazzil cardstock and the patterned papers are from the Papercompany with stickers from Papermania.

I have also made some oriental ATCs for a swap I have joined and for Angela, who requested one in exchange for one of hers. The background of all of these was made with alcohol inks (butterscotch, wild plum and gold) swirled around to generate the effect. I have then used peel offs, brads, stamps and glitter gel pens to decorate them. I am quite pleased with how they have turned out and hope that people like them.



We are due to go to a wedding tomorrow of a friend of ours who got divorced just over a year ago after his wife ran off with another man leaving him and the three kids behind. We are thrilled that he is happy again, and so this card was made for him and his fiance. More soon, with news about the wedding.
Love,
Caro
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P.S. Sorry about the wierd layout of this post...Blogger had a complete fit which I didn't have time to fix.

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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Mothers Day

My first Mothers Day as a Mum. Alex (with Tim's help) had made me a card...his first attempt at stamping. Tim thought that he would get on OK with it as he likes hitting things. Apparently he even chose the colours. Alex gave me two Hero Arts stamps...baby feet and hands, which will be of great use in my scrapbooking, and a box of chocolates (yummy!).

We went out for a lovely walk in the valley beside the stream this morning and Tim took these lovely photos of Alex and me so that i can scrapbook the day at some point in the future. The wind, which has been so vicious over the past two days had died down so the walk was much better than expected and it seemed like the whole of Sheffield was out! We followed the walk with a pub lunch and enjoyed Lasagne (me), fish and chips (Tim), mashed up hotpot (Alex), the food wasn't amazing but perfectly adequate and it was nice not to cook for a change.

Unfortunately Alex hasn't been quite himself this weekend, he has been great when we were out and about but at home he has been crying much more than normal...we think that he is teething as his cheeks are bright red and he has been chewing his tongue a lot. He has needed a lot more distraction than normal so he has spent a lot of the weekend sat on my lap drawing, crawling round my feet in the kitchen or with me rolling around on the floor playing with him.

This means that crafting has been very limited although I have managed to do a little in the form of this ATC...V is for vintage for the Alphabet swap. All the papers for this are K&Co.

While Alex had his afternoon nap today, I did manage to complete one scrapbook page using my new feet stamp, entitled 'Fascinating Feet'. The cardstock is Bazzil and the patterned paper is Sandylion. I love the cute little feet brads and have been waiting for the right layout to use them on. The journalling reads 'Alex became fascinated with his feet from the moment he realised that they were part of him. He was often to be found holding one or both feet while lying on his back!' I hope to get a little crafting done this evening after Alex goes to bed, but we will have to see. More soon,

Love,

Caro

x

Exhaustion

Yes, it is the end of the week and I still haven’t recovered from going to London…it was only a day trip and I wasn’t up any earlier than normal, but it still has left me totally wiped out. Work has been going OK, although due to tiredness I have found it hard to concentrate…I even fell asleep at my desk yesterday (Oops!). I am currently working on a manuscript which we hope to get published this year. The first draft of the manuscript is written, but the discussion needs a lot of work and it has been hard going. Apart from that my talk for next week on ‘Concepts of Cancer’ is complete…found lots of pretty pictures from the web to liven it up a bit so hopefully I can keep the students interested.
On the home front life has been pretty good…Alex is eating again so must be feeling a little better, and he has been great fun to play with. I just wish he would sleep…he was awake at 3.30 this morning (Aargh!). The range of sounds and noises he makes has gone up and he is definitely developing his own sense of humour and methods of inventive play. One of the latest games that he finds amusing is to put a book on the floor, put his hands on the book and then crawl while sliding the book across the floor into the wall to make a loud banging noise! The range of cuddly games has also gone up which is very cute and I get lots of very wet open mouthed sloppy kisses (with the occasional, not quite so nice lick!).
My time for crafting has been slightly limited, although I have managed to complete the digital scrapbook layout for my Mum. In the end I have decided to get it printed at 6x6 size and turn it into a card and then if she likes it we can print it out bigger for her. The photos are all representative of different aspects of her life, the central one is one of the most recent ones of her and the others are of her as daughter (with her Mother, Father and brother), wife (her wedding photo), Mother (with Dad, Me and Andy outside Buckingham palace) and Grandma (with Alex and Daniel). The daffodils surrounding the central photo are taken from some of her own photos and are representative of how much daffodils feature in her life (she grows them and lectures on them). I hope she likes it.
Finally I have managed to make some ATCs for the Alphabet swap…we are not too far from the end of this now and I have found the inspiration a little slow in coming. S is for shoes used a background image from the web, a shiny letter S and a 3D sticker freebie from one of the magazines. T is for train reflects my love of steam trains…I replicated the photo in the background and printed it in greyscale on parchment coloured paper to give it a vintage feel and then cut the letter T out of some old train tickets andmounted the image of the train on foam squares. Finally U is for Underwater used my alcohol inks (Denim and stream) to generate the watery background, a piece of blue watery patterned paper for the letter and a hologram sticker of a dolphin underwater for the centre. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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