Another huge thank you

I have received loads of crafty post over the past week or so and wanted to share the beautiful creations that were sent to me. This first one is a fantastic card from Julie Hancock which was my 'send a smile' for March. I love the detail in this and think it is so pretty.

This new page for my butterfly fat book is from Angela Clerehugh and is stunning with its use of glitter and gems and I love the quote.

This second page is from Lindsey Prince and what makes this one so special is the poem attached on the back, which I think may have been written by her. I also love the 3D nature of her butterflies.

This gorgeous Egyptian ATC is from Christine Johnson and I just love the shear amount of detail in it...wonderful!

These two ATCs are from the Easter themed swap on CM&PC forum and are both great fun. The silver Easter basket on a yellow background is simple and elegant from Sandra McKeever, and the bright eggs, lettering, and spotted chicken on a straw background is the greatest of fun from Linda Brunton.

I have also received the Oriental swap back and just love all of them. The blue Kimono is from Claire Saytch and I love the detail in the silver stitching on this - it must have taken hours. The red and black 'dragon fan' is from Rhea Bellamy and is a beautifully rich ATC with texture and colour. And last but not least is the blue and silver 'Oriental Spice' by Kerry Knowles which is beautifully elegant.

I have also received a 'send a smile' card for April from Kerry Knowles which is very cute...I love the layout of this card and may have to adapt it for some of my own cards.

Finally, today I received this lovely little angel ATC from Nicola Meek, who I have not swapped with before and I look forward to swapping with her again as her work is beautiful. Needless to say I am thrilled with all of these. Thank you all so very much. More of my own crafty work soon.

Love,

Caro

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Birthday Celebrations!

I cannot believe that Alex is one already. This year seems to have flown past and yet I can no longer imagine life without him. The biggest event since my last post has been Alex’s Birthday party and so I am just going to share some of that with you here. The day started with snow… not what you expect for April! Fortunately it didn’t last although the hail storms and rain meant that going outside at all was not really an option.

The birthday boy with his first ever balloon.

We spent the day with Tim’s family and everyone went to his parents’ new rented house in Worksop for lunch. It was so lovely to see the whole family and we had the greatest of fun watching the three boys play together. This was the first time that Alex had seen his cousins since Christmas and he was interacting a lot more with them.
Alex with Auntie Jenny

Alex (with a lot of help from me!) opened his cards and presents before lunch while being closely watched by everyone, especially his cousins who wanted to play with Alex’s new toys! Alex enjoyed his cards as much as his presents and it was hard to persuade him to let go of the first card to open the next one.
The three boys enjoyed bouncing round the sitting room on the cushions and clambering through the coloured tunnel…Alex thought this was wonderful and went through it with huge amounts of giggles and smiles, so I think that we will have to get him one for home.
Tom with Grandpa, trying to balance on the cushions

Sam crawling through the tunnel

Alex takes his turn...

...while Uncle Ben decides to wear it instead!
The main party was lunchtime so instead of having his usual lunchtime nap Alex stayed awake…he coped remarkably well but it extremely tired today as a result. I had cooked the main course and the Birthday cake and Kath cooked the rest of the food, and there was sooo much, we were all stuffed! We all sang Happy Birthday with the traditional candle lit on the Birthday cake. Alex grinned like mad and kept trying to grab the cake with his fingers.
I did give him a bit of chocolate cake, but by that stage he wasn’t very hungry and just made a HUGE amount of mess with it. After lunch we relaxed in the sitting room while the boys played with different toys, including all three of them having a go on the piano.
Alex played with some of his new toys while Tom and Sam played with their aquadraw mat and the rest of us watched the Grand National…no-ones horse won! Sadly Alex slipped and bumped his head and scratched himself on the face on the way down, so although he recovered fairly quickly from the fall he is currently sporting war wounds as shown in the final photos of the day.
Granny and Grandpa Pete with their three grandchildren.

Alex having a cuddle with his big cousin Sam.

We attempted to get all three boys together for a photo shoot, which was only partially successful as Tom wasn’t really playing ball, but it was a lovely end to a wonderful first birthday for Alex.

More soon,
Love,
Caro
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Busy week

Sorry it has been so long since I last updated, but this week has been crazy! It all started with lecturing to 250+ medical students on Monday and with running several experiments to try and understand how Betastatin, a novel drug for stopping blood supply to tumours, actually works. Things weren’t improved by the fact that I had to get up at 4am yesterday morning in order to get down to London in time for a conference at which I was presenting two posters. Although the conference was very good with some excellent presentations and some interesting chats about my research I didn’t get back until 8.30 by which stage I was cream crackered. Alex coped remarkably well and actually managed to go to bed without me being there for the first time, which was good. It was, however, the longest we have been apart which I didn’t like much.
As a result I took today off to try and recover and to spend some time with Alex having barely seen him yesterday. Alex and I have had a great day with him crawling round the kitchen and dining room and generally getting into trouble while I cooked his birthday cake and the food for his party this weekend. I can’t believe that he is going to be one already…the time has gone so fast. Thinking about how much he has developed and grown is amazing…he has now learnt to drink by himself from a beaker, and is very good at it, although he also likes to spray himself and us with the water too!
This afternoon we went out to the park and had a great time on the swings, slide and climbing frame…the tube is still a firm favourite which had me running round from one end to the other to make sure he didn’t try and go down the steps or slide by himself. Alex has also had his first ever shower (with his Dad) which he seemed to enjoy judging by the giggles and smiles.
I have managed to do a little crafting over this week and have finally managed to finish the Alphabet swap. W is for wine, X is for X-ray, Y is for Yo-Yo and Z is for Zoo have completed the set. They all use a mixture of images from the web and peeloffs and stickers to create the effect, with the majority of them having a raised element using foam sticky pads.
I have also made Alex’s birthday card…his nickname is ‘little monster’ for many reasons, especially the wonderful growls that he makes and so I wanted to make him a card to reflect that, and thought that the Monsters Inc character was appropriate. I layered the image on some Nana’s kids card and then printed out the message and added the balloon embellishments.

Finally I wanted to show you the card that Alex has made for his Granny (my mother-in-law), he even did the stickers (although I had to help a little). All I did was cut out his drawing and stick it to a blue card blank. I think that Kath will like this! More soon,
Love,
Caro
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A lovely weekend

The weather has been very kind to us this weekend…although it was revolting on Saturday afternoon it has been lovely and sunny the rest of the time. Our weekly family shopping trip was a great success, with us buying a set of wicker baskets to store Alex’s toys in. He has since had great fun taking things out of them…I have yet to get him to put them back in! Alex enjoys the weekends when I am around because then he has greater freedom and we spent much of yesterday afternoon with him crawling at great speed around the whole house to his great satisfaction.
Today Alex spent time drawing whilst sat on my lap (with me trying to prevent him from drawing on my desk!). He loves having a go when he is in the right mood, although his first experiment with stickers wasn’t quite as successful…they stuck to him and me, and it took a lot to get them to stick to the paper. All good fun. His artwork will be turned into a Birthday card for his Granny which I will show when I have the chance to do it.
This afternoon saw us heading out to the park where we met several friends, which was lovely. Alex wasn’t so keen on the swings today, but loved going down the slide and into the metal tube as this grin shows.
I have managed to do a little crafting as well which is nice. This scrapbook page is entitled ‘Bounce’ and is based on the fact that one of Alex’s favourite games is bouncing and then watching us bounce as well. This photo was taken last August when he was still quite little and the images and phrases of Tigger are from Sandylion paper. The orange springs are hand drawn onto the Bazzil cardstock. The journaling reads ‘Alex resembles Tigger in the fact that ever since he could support his head he has liked to bounce; in our arms, on our laps etc, which is why he loved his door bouncer’.
Finally I have made three Egyptian ATCs for the organised swap on the CM&PC forum. These all used stamps from the Tanda range, and a brayered butterscotch Adirondack ink background. The freeze was stamped in Adirondack Ginger and the central images in each case were stamped with StazOn black. I have never stamped onto metal before so was pleased with the royal vulture stamp. The gold cartouche was made by stamping into three layers of ‘metal magic’, and was a new technique to me, but one I am very pleased with. The final ATC does have a stamped verticle cartouche on it, but it hasn't come out in this picture sadly. I hope everyone else has had a nice weekend. More soon,
Love,
Caro
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A massive thank you.

Don’t you just love getting crafty post? I have had a fair bit over the past week or so and would like to say thank you to all the lovely ladies out there who have sent me these beautiful pieces of artwork. Firstly thanks go to Lindsay Prince (aka Potter) who organised the ‘all about me’ swap. I received these two lovely ATCs from her (the bright pink one which opens up to reveal details inside as shown in the second photo) and from Linda Brunton. The two ATCs couldn’t be more different and yet both tell me so much about the wonderful people who have made them. Fabulous.
I have also been the lucky recipient of three more fat book pages. This enchanting one is from Dorothy Wilmott and I love the parchment butterflies and the saying which comes from a Hans Christian Anderson story.
The second one is from Kerry Knowles, and I just love the sentiment ‘Beauty surrounds us’, it is so true of nature and of this lovely page. I like the way that Kerry has hand drawn the swirl and the little bells are really cute.
This final one is from Isobel Waite and uses the K&Co background paper to great effect. I love the unusual addition of the copper corners and the cut out butterflies are very effective. Thank you once again all of you. This book is going to be beautiful when it is finished.
Love,
Caro
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Sorting out and catching up

It always seems to take me ages to get back on top of things after being away and being really busy at work hasn’t helped. I have therefore spent the past few days (when not at work) sorting out the house and trying to re-organise my crafting things which have got out of hand again. I haven’t yet finished but hope to this weekend. Work has been completely mad and I have finished and printed two A0 sized posters ready for the conference next week. As well as that I have submitted another grant application to Yorkshire Cancer Research for a years worth of funding. Fingers crossed that one of these grants comes through.
As part of the great tidy up I ordered some more pockets for my trading cards which were sitting in a pile on my desk and have now filed them all away. The complete collection looks stunning and I love seeing ATCs added to it from the different swaps. I have also sent off all the cards I owe including all the fat book pages and this months ‘send a smile’. The picture above was generated using one of my photos adapted with Adobe Photoshop and was used on the back of all my fat book pages.
Alex has been a bit off colour this week, alternately happy and grumpy with no apparent cause, as well as being off his food and not sleeping properly. There is no evidence of teething so we can only assume that he has the same virus that Tim and I have which leaves you feeling achy (especially headachy) and not able to sleep well. Poor little chap, I hope he feels better soon. We have had a lot of fun though playing with new toys etc.
The only crafting I have managed to do this week was this card, which is for my mother-in-laws Birthday. The flowers are from Scrapping Angels and I am pleased with how the card has come together. Anyway, off to do some more catching up and sorting out. More soon I hope,
Love,
Caro
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