My weekend challenge

Joe came home with a little challenge for me on Friday.... to cut some lettering for a display and to make a 3D spaceship for it.  Well I can assure you that is a challenge when all you have is a selection of backing paper and a piece of black card.  I managed to buy a cloche in Wilkos for the dome, and after what seemed like hours (because it actually was hours!), this....

... became this

 

 

I guess the squeal of delight when I took it into school this morning means they like it ;-)  Hopefully the little black border I have left will be enough to staple it to the black space background on the display board and the whole thing doesn't fall apart - it shouldn't as there is plenty of DST holding that lot together!

I'm also hoping they don't decide to do any more big displays anytime soon!!

A couple more LOs

Forgot to upload this when I did it, but this is my LO for the weekly challenge over on UKS for Feb week 1.  The criteria was to make the subject an important person(s) in your life (could include pets), use a monogram embellishment and journal and title about their character, your relationship or information about them.

This is Clyde on his 1st birthday.  We all survived the first year, woo hoo!  I used our crop sketch from September for this one.... still a few more to catch up on but I will get there eventually.

I've managed to do another crop sketch too - this layout is based on the November sketch and using one of the Total Papercrafts kits from last year:

They are both straight in real life, but I can't seem to get them squared up properly from the photos!

UKS January week 4 challenge

For this week's challenge on UKS the criteria was to use a holiday theme, something food or cooking related, bling and/or red, and lots of journaling.  Didn't think the ice cream bribe to get them off the beach would count, but the lovely team leader who set the challenge said it does - result!

I've combined the challenge criteria with the October sketch from my crop - I'm a bit behind!  I'm still trying to use up some of the kits I have, and I have to admit this was not one of my favourites... but it's good to get out of your comfort zone.  Never thought I would use gold butterflies on a LO, but I didn't have enough 'g's left in the alpha so had to cover the missing bits on the 'y's somehow ;-) Fits the theme though eh lol.

My month in numbers - January

I saw this idea on UKScrappers and thought it would be good to try and give it a go this year, so here goes:

20 = the number of hours a week I now work

3 = the number of days at the company kick off on the River Danube, celebrating 25 years of trading

1 = the number of passwords 'put somewhere safe' for the boys' online homework

1 = the number of front teeth Joe has finally coming through after having 'the gap' for almost 6 months

10cm = the amount of snow we had in our back garden (that stayed for 1 week and 2 days)

70 = the number of minutes it took me to drive back home from dropping the boys at school the day the snow came (usually 5 minutes!)

too many to count = the number of snowballs thrown followed by shrieks of laughter

1 = the number of new work laptops I received, that took 8 days to get everything loaded onto it correctly

16 = the number of DVDs we have given to the charity shop after a good sort out (still have about a zillion, most of them Dave's)

1 = the number of recipes tried from the Hairy Dieters cookbook

0 = the number of times I have used the Wii Fit this month - must try harder next month!

6 = the number of LOs I have finished/done this month

30 = the level on Candy Crush I was stuck on for ages, so long I can't even remember the number of days... about 3 weeks I think.

1 = the number of dogs we have that sleep in the funniest of positions...

 

So that's January, can't believe how fast the month went!

Race for Life

Not sure if I am insane or not, but I've decided to sign up for Race for Life again this year.  I've basically not done any exercise since I managed to drag myself out of the chair to complete it 4 years ago.  That time I did it to celebrate mum only having a few months to go until the 5 year all clear.  How things can change though, as we lost her 3 years ago last week, from a combination of cancer/heart failure/dementia.  So this time I will run (and I mean run, the whole way rather than half of it) in her memory and raise money to help fund more research into this cruel disease.

If you would like to sponsor me (and I would be very happy if you did!), then my Just Giving page can be found here.  Thanks in advance for donating to such a good cause.

More LOs

I'm trying to keep the pace up on finishing my LOs, so here's another one....

At long last I have finished a DLO I started at our Crumblies retreat in October!  It's using another sketch from sketchsupport - this time using photos of Liam's school trip to Sandbanks.  I'd never been before and it's a really lovely beach - will have to go there again.  Obviously Liam had to be the first one to fall into the sea fully clothed (he ALWAYS does that when near water - apparently he takes after his Gramps in that respect).

I've also been trying to do the weekly challenges on UKS, so here's January week 2, criteria was to use the sketch, new stash and 5 of something....

and week 3 - which was again to use the sketch, sewing, paints and/or inks, and a line/quote/title of a poem. 

Quite pleased with how this one turned out, nice and bright.  Did hash up the chicken wire stamping but as most of it is covered, it's OK ;-)  This is why I hate stamping, but I do love that set of stamps that I got for Christmas, must practise more!

Cruising the Danube

It was my work's kick off meeting again last weekend, only seems like yesterday that I was in Venice!  This year to mark their 25th year since founding the company, we had a 3 days cruise on the River Danube from Vienna to Linz (and back again) on MS Mozart.  I think in the (almost) 15 years I have been working there, this was the best kick off I have been to.... so much more relaxed than the usual long coach journeys and strict schedule to make sure we were are the different venues at the right times.  We arrived in Vienna and had a taxi take us to the boat and then the weekend began because we were already all together.  The weather was pretty drab, cold but not a lot of snow or sunshine, but the traditional architecture along the river bank was nice. 

 

And the locks were pretty impressive, when you think that we were on a boat 23m wide and 120m long!  There was only about a foot clearance either side....

We had a fancy dress evening on the Friday night and a free bar all weekend as it was a special celebration :-) 

We visited Melk monastery on the way back on Sunday which was really interesting and the abbey was simply amazing.  I took a few more photos but the outside ones are better on their website as you can see more of it in one shot.

Back to reality now and rushing around like a headless chicken again this week with meetings and catching up on other stuff.  Hoping to get some scrapping done this weekend as haven't had the chance to do any since my initial surge at the start of the year.