Elf Your Christmas - Day 6

Alf was excited to see so many cars, as you don't get any in the North Pole because of all the snow.  He decided he'd like to see what life was like in the fast lane but didn't get far as it was gridlocked!

Elf Your Christmas - Day 5

Alf enjoyed watching the boys decorated their newly adopted tree yesterday.  Certainly lots of baubles to look at to while away the day..... and he couldn't resist taking a quick photo of himself posing on the top.

He must have been pretty disappointed that the tree in the living room was up but bare as we don't have lights for it yet.  Obviously he took inspiration from yesterday's book and decorated it for us....

...... with pants!

Lets hope his legs don't lock in the spread-eagled position from sitting like that all day!

P.S.  You'll have to excuse the lights around the picture rail, they were put up by a male and his little assistant who were trying to be helpful.  They will be tweaked by a female so all the wires are hidden.........

Elf Your Christmas - Day 4

Well after yesterday's events, things were nice and calm this morning.  Alf was sitting nicely in the dining room with a present to say sorry to us all. 

We have 2 of the other books in this collection, so it was nice to have a Christmas related one.  They are about pants and of course this means quite humorous.

Elf Your Christmas - Day 3

The boys were very pleased that Alf took the pictures they had drawn for Santa last night, I think the big man is going to need to get a folder to store them all so he can keep them in the loft or somewhere as they are just too cute to throw away.....

Bit of a surprise this morning when the boys couldn't find Alf.  It was 7.45am so should have been plenty of time for him to get to the North Pole and back....  We convinced them to have their breakfast first so we would have energy for a wider search and would you believe it - Alf and Monkey were in the cupboard and........

Had. Eaten. All. My. Pringles.   I was not a happy bunny.

Would appear they had 'stumbled' across the sausage and crispy bacon pringles (in a shut cupboard but I should have known that Monkey would remember where we keep the sweets and crisps when we get them!).  What started off as a couple each, quickly turned into the whole tube.  Guess it proves the advert saying of 'once you pop you can't stop'.

After laughing hysterically when they found him and realising what they had done, Senior was then mortified that the whole packet of pringles had gone.  Alf had got to the line in the sand and it was 50-50 whether he was welcome in our house, and we were worried Senior may not be able forgive him, as he wanted to try that flavour.

Thankfully though they have nagged him through the pringles tube at every opportunity today, and I'm sure he gets the message that he must not eat our food again - either through those 'naughty elf' chats or the fact he has spent all day upside down in a tube inside a cupboard.  As punishment, Senior has captured the evidence in a picture with a tell-tale note in true 7-year-old fashion for him to take to Santa tonight.

Monkey looks a bit like a fox, and Senior's football kit looks strangely like a leotard, but I'm sure Santa will get the drift.

Elf Your Christmas - Day 2

Well it didn't take long for news of our elf's arrival to spread.  The boys came downstairs this morning to find the 'inner circle' all huddled around hearing tales from the North Pole.

Liam was very pleased that Alf took his Dr Who picture with a note saying thank you for the advent calendars to Santa last night.  In return Alf has been formly registered as our adopted elf, and he brought back an adoption certificate and a letter from Santa thanking them for looking after one of his best helpers.  And a reminder to be extra good (can't say it too often!).

It's nice that Alf has made lots of friends already, however I don't like the way he's looking at Monkey.  That boy needs no encouragement on the mischief front, and unless I am mistaken I think he is smirking slightly in a 'ohhh this is going to be fun!' type of way.......  Oh dear.

Christmas cupcakes

Just thought I'd share a photo of the Christmas tree cupcakes I made for the PTA bazaar today, since I wasn't quick enough with the trial batch and they all got eaten before I had the chance to say "where's my camera?".  We tasted one of the extras when we got home, and apparently they scored 10 out of 10.  Senior did end up with green icing up his nose though.....

 

Might make another batch for the staff room last week of term.... that's if we I manage not to eat the remaining magic stars before then.

Elf Your Christmas - Day 1

Well our visitor arrived overnight... meet Alf the elf :-)  He's all the way from the North Pole and has come to stay with us until Christmas.  According to the useful book that he brought with him, he will watch the children of the house and each night use Christmas magic to fly back and report to Santa whether they've been naughty or nice.

The boys were in awe, especially as he had brought the advent calendars!  They've read the book 3 times already.....

Apparently today he has been hiding behind the classroom doors at school, seeing what they are up to lol.  He must sneak about quietly as I have been in all day working, and whenever I went downstairs I saw this....

He looks pretty innocent but his eyes make me wonder what is he thinking, or more importantly what has he been up to.  Watch this space.

Another mini book finished

I'm on  a mission to finish all the mini books and layouts I have sitting half finished on my shelf.  So here's the maze book I started for the UKS Red Ribbon cyber crop back in September  - I've made it into a little address book for my 365 buddies, complete with their photo etc. The tags have the birthdays each month.

And here's the layout I did for last week's challenge on UKS.  The criteria was to use a greeting as a title, your oldest piece of paper/stash and stamp using something that is not a stamp.

It's scanned a bit lopsided but you get the drift.  Was quite pleased to finally use that cork sheet that has been sitting in my paper box for the last 6 years.......

In other news, I hear on the grapevine that we are having a visitor come to stay from 1st December, and there's likely to be some mischief.  I hope my man flu has gone by then so I can cope with it all!

Mini books

I've had a nice day playing with paper while waiting in for a delivery (which came at 5pm!), and managed to finish a couple of mini books.

The first one is the 2012 accordian book that was posted on the Project12 website, I followed the tutorial completely, including using the same paper range - which I will say is probably my favourite of all the papers I have used in the past.  The colours are fab, and it's a really good weight to use for mini books.

 

I changed the question prompts a little so they fitted more with us, so I have doing, enjoying, thinking, wanting, weather and highlight on each card. Looking forward to adding the answers and a photo each month to give a record of 2012.

The second mini book is one I started back in the summer using the tutorial Debbie posted on the AMAM thread.  I wasn't too sure of the apertures in each page to start with as it's not something I have done before, but I'm really pleased with the finished book.

I finished my Sept kit layout last night too, so it's been all go on the scrapping front this week - at last my mojo seems to have returned!  I even enjoyed doing all the hand sewing on this page, was going to use my machine but then thought I'd probably mess it up as it's quite intricate and my machine seems to only have 2 speeds - stopped and supersonic lol.

Project 12 - October

I didn't use the sketch on the Project 12 blog for the October pages as would you believe it, it was the one I chose to use in August as I wanted more photos than the sketch allowed that month!  So this month I have used a sketch Shirley was using at our retreat last month.

The album is filling up nicely now - only 2 more layouts to go.  I've decided on my yearly documentation for next year and it will be an accordian mini book.  I've almost finished making it, will post when it's done.

Catching up

It's been a busy couple of weeks with half term and then Halloween etc. Half term was great. Him indoors had the week off too, so we were out and about the whole week. I love autumn, especially when it's mild and dry! We visited a couple of NT places - we've used our membership quite a lot this year as most of the places have lovely grounds for the kids to explore and they also like looking round the big houses and castles which are full of old 'stuff'.  It's a good back up for rainy days too, as we found out when camping over the August bank holiday weekend!!

This is Tyntesfield House..... wouldn't you just love to live in a place like this? (if you had staff to clean it etc of course!)

They had a great display of all the pumpkins they had grown in their kitchen garden too.  Just as well they had the rope there, as the boys were keen to 'acquire' the big ones for carving at home.

And this is Dyrham Park.  I love the the way the road leads all the way down the house, and it has all that open land around it.  We didn't think we would see any of the resident deer as it was quite busy, but on the way back up the hill (and it's a pretty big hill!) to the car park, we saw them all in the distance.  There were two having a little rutt a bit closer, and I have to admit I didn't realise that deer kind of snorted like pigs.  Loud pigs.
 

We had our annual pumpkin carving afternoon and I actually had a go this year.  Usually I make cookies and take photos.  Very pleased with my effort, even if I did cheat and use a template downloaded from Tescos lol.

And here's all our pumpkins lit up.  I think this is our best display to date, and the kids liked to look at them when they came round treat or tricking.

And talking of trick or treating, our boys didn't go out but we did give face painting a go for the first time and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Pretty scary huh?!

Scrapping weekend

I've just come back from a fantastic scrapping weekend in Selborne with my 365 buddies. Can't believe this is the 4th year we have met up for a retreat, time flies!

As well as lots of chat and laughter, I was very productive in the scrapping front. It was so windy today I had to take photos of my LOs indoors this afternoon so they're not the best colours and some look a bit crooked but they are all straight honest!

I did my September pages for Project 12

and a couple of my Total Papercraft kits

I did the UKS weekly challenge from last week which was set by my teamie Suze, and combined it with our team sketch for this month too. The criteria was 3 lots of 3 things (3 people in the photos, 3 patterned papers, 3 brads), use blue not pink and include an everyday item (book page)

This LO was the blind/speed scrap challenge that Barbara kindly set for us on Sunday - was a bit scary cutting papers etc not knowing where the bits would go or how the finished LO would look!

and this is a LO for one of the sketch challenges

I've also done most of the LO for the UKS house challenge but need to add a title. It will need to wait though, as all those late nights chatting have caught up with me and I'm too tired to do it tonight!

I also had a go at making these sock snowmen.... they are so cute aren't they? Mine are the 2 blue ones - I need to get more white socks so I can make one for each of us to have on the fireplace over Christmas etc because they look cute as a family I think....

and this is the fab altered matchbox that Shirley taught us on Saturday - thanks so much Shirley, it's something I would never had done normally but I love it! Mine's the red one

Thanks to Paula for organising the retreat and for everyone making it such a great weekend. Can't wait til the next one!

Red Ribbons CyberCrop

Over on UKS, Sandra and Jo kindly put together a cybercrop for the Red Ribbons House. Loads of great challenges over the weekend, and you get this week to upload which is a big bonus as I didn't have time to do much over the weekend.

Here's the LOs I have done so far:

Challenge 2 - Shimelle's starting point (combined with the weekly challenge too)

I'd seen these starting point challenges on Shimelle's blog but hadn't really paid much attention. Will need to go back and have another look though, as it's a great way to get inspiration for a LO.... I combined this with the weekly challenge too - anticipation theme (our honeymoon), use clock or clock hands (sticker by flower), include something from the event (Disney entry ticket), use horrible stash (patterned chipboard letters that don't match anything, painted pink). Thanks for a great challenge Nerlly :)

Challenge 6 - speed scrap

LOL anyone who knows me will think this was impossible for me as I am such a faffer!! But I took the scraps left over from a kit and just added 2 matching flowers and 3 buttons to it. The result is this - a very simple LO but I like it that way as I love the photo and wanted the focus on that. And the LO was done in 30 mins - unbelievable and unlikely to be repeated!.

Mandy's challenge

I went with the Indian takeaway, so used rich colours and added some stickles to the branch for a bit of bling.

I've printed a few more of the challenges out and hope to have a go at some this week. Need to get time to look at everyone else's LO too, as lots of fab work being uploaded from my fellow ribbons.

Crop LOs

We had an all day crop last weekend and for once I was actually quite productive! We all had a kit with gorgeous papers from MME, and here's the LO I did with that:

I took inspiration from a LO I found on an American lady's blog, but I can't find it again now :( Her LO was a bit more girly, but I like the way she had cut the glittered swirls from the paper and so I went with that.

I also managed to do my Project 12 August pages so up to date with that now - yay!

(shame the background has come out looking blue, it's actually white....)

and to do a LO based on one of my UKS team's sketches. Many thanks to zaraandmax for sharing the tractor template in the Robo section on UKS.... I cut it from different colours and layered it up - I think it looks pretty cute!