Things I've been making...

... some with help from a certain three-year-old!

I promised a post with a catch up of some of the things I've been creating the last couple of months. I haven't, shock horror, made a single scrapbook page. The urge deserted me for a while, but I have one in my mind now that I just need to find time to put together! Instead I've been art journaling / card making along with other bits and pieces. Here's a few things for you to see.

First up is an art journal spread I created about some of my pregnancy thoughts. I included a scan photo, and my daughter helped me out by printing a hand print onto the bottom right corner:

Then at the end of March it was my dad's birthday, and we also sent cards to my mum for mother's day at the beginning of April, so me and my daughter made these (see if you can guess which ones I made!):

For my dad:

For my mum:

At the beginning of April it was my friend Rosie's birthday, I don't have photos of the cards we made her, but I also made her this bib style necklace. It ended up a bit bigger than I intended because I kept finding more bits and pieces I wanted to add to it (the large buttons and flowers were made by me too):

And then, last Friday me and little miss sat down to an afternoon of creating. As it was Earth Day 2011 I set my daughter making this:

It sort of looks like the world! I know it's not a very accurate depiction but hey, she's three, and it was still useful, as it helped me to talk to her about countries and seas, etc.

While she was making that, and in between me having to wash blue paint off her fingers and glue from her hair, I was making this:

Nothing to do with Earth Day, but it was inspired by something I'd seen a couple of days before on Julie Kirk's blog, about how to use stamps to make a cute photo-booth strip. You can see her post about it here, or the tutorial on how to make one is here on the 'it's a creative world' blog, so check them out - Julie's examples are so sweet and fun!

I don't have a huge array of stamps with characters on, most of my stamps are twirly backgrounds or phrases, but I managed to find this frog and bird, who I think had a little romance going on in the photo-booth! It was fun to make but now I want more cute stamps to create with. I was thinking you could also use the same technique to create a simple comic strip, so I want to try that out too.

That's all for now, but hopefully I'll be back soon with a scrapbook page. Especially now my study is all tidied and organised since it was swapped around with my daughter's room. She keeps telling everyone with pride how she's now got the BIG bedroom. I sulk a little bit at having my stash depleted and squeezed into small spaces, but I know I'm lucky to have a separate room to work in at all, even if it's a small one. Next year I'll probably have to give this one up too, when the new baby (due in July) moves out of our room. Until then I'm going to try and appreciate having my own space! x

Tweet

Family trip to London

Those of you who read my blog regularly might remember that back in October I made this 3D mini-book about how much I wanted to go to London for a short break:

We got to go at the end of March for 3 nights. We booked into a Travelodge, getting a good deal on an advance booking. We had booked to stay at the new Ealing hotel, due to open at the beginning of March, but they put back the opening - so they transferred us to London Southwark Travelodge for no extra cost. We were lucky - this one was much more central!

It also had a convenience store right next door, so we were able to pop and buy milk each morning to eat cereals in our room with the plastic bowls and spoons we'd taken - saved us some money!

Our first day we spent at London Zoo (ZSL), as we had a voucher for 2for1 entry because we travelled into London by train. I was excited to take my daughter there as she hadn't been to a zoo yet, but though she enjoyed certain animals (especially the tigers) she did spend a lot of the day chasing around the pigeons and asking to go in the playpark! Oh well, she had a good time I think!

Butterfly landed on hubby in this one:

The next day we went to do some sightseeing. First we went to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace, but it was super busy so we couldn't see much - I only managed to get this photo by being pushy and shoving my way through to the front for a minute:

After that we went to see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey (from the outside - we couldn't afford to go in!)

And we had a yummy lunch in a Yates restaurant. We saved money on lunches and dinners for the week by getting hold of a TasteCard free trial - it's a card that allows you to get 50% off food or 2for1 meals in loads of different restaurants. You have to pay if you want to have the card for a year, but the month free trial was perfect for us for now! We also converted some Tesco clubcard vouchers (supermarket reward scheme) into restaurant vouchers so we used those for a couple of meals too.

And that afternoon we went to Hamleys toy store and spent almost two hours watching all the demos and playing with the toys!

We also had a short wander in Covent Garden - but by that time we were all getting very tired! (We were back in our hotel room by 8pm each night - utterly exhausted!)

The next day we spent all day at the Natural History Museum which was fantastic. None of us had ever been there, so me and hubby enjoyed it as much as little madam! She especially loved the dinosaurs, she kept asking to go back and see the roaring T-Rex again!

This was in another tastecard restaurant, GBK, where my daughter had her first strawberry milkshake - she was very excited about it:

And finally the train journey home:

We kept little one amused on the train with a sticker book and some sweeties. Otherwise she just want to run up and down the aisles!

It was a lovely, though very tiring, trip. I don't think we shall be going to London again for quite a while though so I enjoyed it! And I kept a diary for my daughter, sticking in bits of memorabilia and leaving space for photos, and she did a few drawings and stuck her stickers in too. So even when the memory fades she'll always have a record of it.

Sorry this was such a long post - though I assure you I could have added a lot more photos! I will make sure my next post is full of some crafty items I promise! x

Tweet

how time flies...

I can't believe it's been two months since my last post, 2011 seems to be going by in a flash! I've been busy visiting people, having people to visit us, going away for a few days to London (yay!), arranging my daughter's 3rd birthday party, and re-organising the house. Oh, all at the same time as being pregnant of course! I'm tired a lot of the time right now!

Anyway, here's some snaps from the last two months. I'll do a separate post with pics from our London trip, and another to show a few bits and pieces I've been creating, though there hasn't been too much of that with everything else I've had to get done!

I'll start with a few pics from the week I went to visit my mum, step-dad and sister up in Kent, at the end of February. We went to the farm:

Shopping:

And played some games! (This is my teddy bear. He's called Spencer):

Then on the 19th of March it was my daughter's 3rd Birthday. Unfortunately I was working that day, but my sister was down for a week long visit, so her and my husband gave the little princess all the attention she deserved:

This is the same day, at a veg plot we've recently acquired as part of a free local scheme to get parents gardening with their kids. It's a lovely community place to go and my daughter loves planting seeds and watering, it's great for us as we only have a small patio/courtyard style garden so it's nice to go and play in the mud:

And it also helps that the play park is right next door!:

We had her birthday party in a chuch hall the weekend after, with 12 of her friends coming for princess games and a clown show. My mum is a clown (you can see her website here if you're intrigued), so she had offered long ago to do a show at little one's 3rd birthday! My daughter loved it!

And my mother-in-law made this fantastic princess castle cake:

Isn't it just what every little girl dreams of? Aren't I lucky with my parents? I hope they realise how much I appreciated all their help! (And my sister's help too, her and my mum helped me make paper chains and paper bunting, we put all the party bags and pass-the-parcel together, and mum even made the big castle picture that's behind her and my daughter in the above pic. I have the best family ever!)

Okay, that's probably enough for one post. I've already sorted out the London photos so hopefully it won't take me too long to post them. I hope everyone out there in blogland is doing okay, I have some major catching up to do on my blog-reader. And I'm going away again tonight for a week, back to my mum's - as my sister is leaving to go travelling for a year on Monday so we're going to say 'bon voyage'!

Bye for now, x

Tweet