Check out the chunky thighs

Maria posted a lovely 70's pic of herself on her blog, dressed in a divine mini dress and I promised I would share a pic of me and my chunky thighs. This is me, on holiday in May 1973 (aged about 18 mths). I wish I could say that I lost the chubby look but it'd be a big whopper of a lie lol. Don't laugh too hard!!



Still a bit miffed about the school uniform, but will just have to suffer. It might not sound a great deal of money but it's cash that I'd rather be spending on something else. Casey also needs to wear proper shoes (she's a trainers girl); she's found a pair she likes online - prices range from £38 to £43 depending on the size she'd need. Hmmmmmm, I think not lol.

A little Monday moan

It was actually a little moan that started on Friday, but I'm still a teeny bit peeved. We got a letter from the secondary school Casey will be attending in September. They have an open day in about 3 weeks, so that we can buy uniform but the prices left my jaw on the floor. A PE top is about £8 (for the smallest size), they need 2 aprons, lots of various sports gear; the majority of which NEEDS to have the school crest on (and so can only be bought from the school shop). Don't get me wrong, I fully support the need to wear school uniform but I don't like the way that the school seem to have written their uniform policy so that they can make a ton of money out of us as well. For example, for the price of that one PE top, I could buy a pack of 3 plain white polo shirts. What difference does it really make if the top has the school emblem on, really? And that's just for starters. Still, what can I do? We'll just have to do a bank job on the way to the school.

Sneaky peek

My class for the Design Collective went live at midnight; hopefully, people like it. I tried to write it so that everybody could take at least something from it, even if they didn't want to follow the whole class. I'm going to share a little snippet from just one of the LO's I did for it.



The kids are due back from my Mum's at around 11.30, so I need to get my backside off the chair and get to the Post Office. I've been saying I'll post something for 3 days in a row now and I never end up getting there, lol, but today's the day.

Have a good Bank Holiday weekend!!

Dare #55

Just a quick post to share my LO for this week's dare on the CY blog. This week's theme was multi photo LO's. I tend to do a lot of single photo pages, but am forcing myself to try and use more photos on the page, so I loved this one. Pics are of Charlie earlier in the week, and a couple of them I shared on here a couple of days ago.


The papers are SR Metropolis - I distressed the right hand edge of both strips with an MM edge scraper.

Title ~ AC felt thickers and Doodlebug rub ons;
Photo corners, credit card slide (off limits) and chipboard stars ~ HS;
AL Journaling stamp;
Bazzill brads.

Not much else to add, apart from that we went to TGI Fridays this evening and had a huge meal (for the bargain price of £10.99 each) and, without a word of a lie, I swear I rolled out of the restaurant, I was that stuffed. I'm off to bed soon to sleep it off *nudge nudge wink wink*

11 years.............

.....and, as John so kindly pointed out yesterday "You'd get less for murder". He was joking............I think. Yes, 11 years ago today, we got married. With Casey as bridesmaid, at the ripe old age of exactly 6 months old. Sadly (haha), I have no photos of the event on my hard drive to share with you right now.

The kids are sleeping round my Mum's tonight, so we get to have an evening of peace - our first since my birthday (just before Christmas). Can't wait!!

I'll leave you with this photo. I've been stalking Charlie for days, trying to catch a snap of him hitching his shorts up (inspired completely by the photo Gertie took of Lana and her knicker problem). He does it constantly when the camera's not on, and it looks hilarious, but it took me about an hour of waiting to grab this one and even that doesn't really show what he was doing. I WILL get it on camera one day if it kills me.



Oooh, I forgot to say that we have a challenge over on the Design Collective blog for the bank holiday weekend. Go, have a look. :)

No more taking photos, Mummy!

Sometimes, my poor kids get annoyed with having a camera constantly thrust under their noses lol. Look at the moody face on this boy on Tuesday.

Coalhouse Fort

Yesterday afternoon, we took a ride over to Coalhouse Fort. It only opens certain days a year, for special events but the kids enjoy the walk around the grounds outside, playing in the park and, of course, the ice cream from the van in the car park.




We found a pine tree and the kids had to pick up every single pine cone they could find on the floor and stuff them all in the pushchair. We 'lost' them all before we got back to the car though.


I got no photos of the fort itself because there's very little to see from outside but they have a couple of open days next weekend, so I think a return visit to see the inside might be in order.

What year do you belong in?

3 posts from me in less than 12 hours - that's got to be a record, lol.I just saw this over on Eleni's blog and had to do it. I love silly quizzes. According to this, I'm stuck in 1993 and I think it's probably uncannily true. That was the year I met John and so a lot of the music/memories from that time are still very prominent in my mind. The picture looks a lot like me too.....I wished!

You Belong in 1993

With you anything goes! You're grunge one day, ghetto fabulous the next. It's all good!

What Year Do You Belong In?

If you're bored, give it a go and don't forget to tell me your results. :)

Photos

The weather was against me for Module One of Cheryl's photo workshop, but I managed a couple of pics that fitted the brief. The first was taken from Charlie's bedroom window and is the chimney of the house opposite. I'd liked to have zoomed in a bit closer, but the camera had zoomed as far as it could on optical zoom, and digital zoom is pants. I couldn't hang around for long because I didn't want the neighbours over the road to see me lol.



Our house backs on to farmer's fields, and we have more fields to the right of the house, at the end of the road. I wanted to take the pic from our back bedroom window, because there's a great view of pylons going all the way across the field and on and on into the distance. But the sun was never in the right place when I was awake lol. So, I settled for this shot, taken at around 8pm last Sunday night and it meant me walking along the path at the edge of the farmer's field. It doesn't sound like much of a hardship, I know, but the path was really muddy thanks to all the rain we'd had and I was wearing Crocs. I can still feel the mud squidging between my toes. Ack!


Not the greatest of photos, but I'm learning and I'm aready starting to think more about my photos before I take them.

#54

The lavish use of..................... a circle punch! Using lots of scraps from some of my fave papers, past and present. The list includes:

K&Co Amy Butler Belle
Scenic Route Laurel
Provocraft Christina Cole
Fancy Pants Chi Chi
AL French Twist

Here is a little sneaky peek. Full pic is on the Collectively Yours blog along with all the other wonderfully inspiring interpretations. :)


The words are a quote I came across ages ago on 2Peas. I thought they fitted Casey's personality perfectly - she's not a conventional girly girl; she's a tomboy and would much rather be kicking a football with the boys than talking make up with the girls. We've always supported her in that, and the quote is to remind her that she doesn't need to conform to other people's expectations, and she should just do her own thing.

Have a good weekend!

ETA: I'm not sure what happened (and I doubt anybody even noticed lol) but for some reason there was no way to leave comments on this post last night so I've had to repost.

Dare #53

This week's theme was transparent, which coincidentally is very similar to the 2Peas challenge for this week, which is to Go Clear. Great minds think alike, eh...... I decided to go the whole hog and my whole page is clear. The papers and photos are sandwiched inside a laminated sheet, with the title & chipboard corners added on top. I've added 3 photos, none of which look totally like the real thing lol. It was so hard to photograph but if you imagine that it really looks something like a cross between these 3 pics, you'll be somewhere close. The papers are from the new yummy K&Co Amy Butler Belle pad.

Don't forget to check the rest on the Collectively Yours blog. I am in awe of these ladies every single week.

Toot for me!!

I was absolutely delighted to be asked by Bev from Banana Frog to have a play with some of their yummy clear stamps, and you can see what I came up with on the Banana Frog blog. My most fave is the last LO, with the white background and brightly coloured stars. It was one of those ideas that trned out even better on paper than I imagined in my head. And that doesn't happen often lol.

The first module of Cheryl's photography workshop is up and my brain's ticking. Today, I was playing with my mum's new camera - only a cheap little point and shoot digi but it has a few auto settings (night time, portrait, fireworks etc). Well, one of them was self portrait, so I thought "what the heck", selected the setting and snapped a pic of myself. Wouldn't you know it? That one pic was better than the 200 shots I took of myself last week for the workshop lol. I shall have to borrow my mum's camera and steal the pic from her.

New Toy

I've been playing with some yummy new papers from K&Co; I never thought I'd actually be buying any of their stuff but the new Amy Butler ranges (based on her gorgeous fabric lines) are to die for.

The photos were taken on Saturday while I was trying to get some practice in for a photography workshop I've enrolled in, run by the talented Cheryl Johnson of Feel Good Photos. As you can see, I've got a way to go lol but hopefully there'll be an improvement by the end of the course. If nothing else, I actually took some photos OFF auto (yes you read that right!) yesterday.

Preschool is shut all this week, due to more mindless vandalism, so I have the unenviable task of keeping 2 bored children entertained, when they'd much rather be playing with their preschool friends. Wish me luck!

Dare #52

The Speshal Dares are on their 52nd week and, to celebrate its first birthday, it's had a revamp. More details and all this week's fabulous work here. You can see my layout on the blog; all the yummy goodies on the page are AL French Twist, mostly from Craft Obsessions. Do check out the blog because we've got some giveaways for you, just for leaving a comment. :)

I've been tagged

About a hundred years ago now by the lovely Tracey. I've finally got round to doing it; I just hope she doesn't drop dead with shock when I tell her that I've finally answered lol.

Ok, so I need to list 7 random facts/habits about myself. I'll try to avoid the really weird ones because I did those in a different tag a while ago and I sounded very scary.

Random fact 1. My first car was a peach coloured VW Beetle. It was made sometime in 1971, which was the same year that I was born.

Random fact 2. I once lived next door to Melvyn Hayes (yes, very random I know!)

Random fact 3. I was born at home and lived there for the first 23 years of my life.

Random fact 4. Since leaving my first home (12 years ago), I've moved house 5 times in the space of 8 years.

Random fact 5. I once won a competition run by Walkers Crisps, which was to design a mythical monster. This was around the time of the release of the film Clash of the Titans (you know - that film with the film with the awesome special effects). I won a model Pegasus and Perseus; my brother hated me because he also entered and didn't win lol.

Random fact 6. I was once stuck on an underground train for about 4 hours (I've never been so bored or sweaty in my entire life) and we ended up having to walk down the tracks to the previous station.

Random fact 7. I've been struggling for 10 minutes now trying to think of a 7th fact so I'll leave it there lol.

I'm not sure who's already been tagged; probably most of the people I would have tagged have already been done by Tracey. So, I'll tag Maria, Gertie & Eleni and anybody else who's bored enough to have read this far)