Sarahs Cards May Kit.....little peek!

Every month I say the same I know but I can't help myself! Next months Sarahs Cards kit is just gorgeous, it is my favourite one to work with so far, very much up my street. The kit features Road Show papers by Fancy Pants plus of course some yummy embellishments and a whole pack of thickers! Hopefully the kit image will be up on Sarahs Cards shop soon for you all to see what I have been drooling over. Anyway until then I thought you might like to see a little peek of what I have been up to over the last few days with the kit.




















TFL
xx

Home is definitley where the heart is.

Last Saturday we decided to walk down off the top of the Island to "The Boat That Rocks" a relatively new restaurant at the marina named after the film that was shot just off Portland. It was a glorious day and actually quite hot. Every time I walk on the Island I am struck with just how beautiful it is and although I am not a "true" Portlander as I was born over on the mainland of Weymouth I absolutley love living here and just couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Of course the walk gave me some good photo opportunitites as well!
We decided that Rebecca did like butter doing the buttercup test.

How could we not love living here with views like this all around us and only 5 minutes from our front door. You can just see the fleet in this photo stretching around to Abbotsbury.

The coastline of Portland is so rugged and unspoilt, you won't find any ice cream kiosks over here!

Sarah sent me some gorgeous Pink Paislee 365 degrees stash last week to create some layouts to post on the blog, I had looked at this range online but have to say it is so much nicer in real life. I love this photo of my Grandma taken at their beach hut on Bournemouth beach back in the 70's, she is pretending to eat our sticks of rock, hence the title. All the details of how to put this page together are over on Sarahs cards blog.

TFL

Wedding fever!

My sister is getting married in October so today we went dress shopping, something that we had been looking forward to doing for a long time. There were some absolutley gorgeous dresses to choose from, luckily for me they didn't have this dress in my sisters size so the assistant suggested that I tried it on so she could see what it should look like. I jumped at the chance to try on such a stunning dress and I have to say I felt a million dollars in it! My sister loved this dress but I am quite safe in showing you because she has ended up ordering something totally different.





















I have been really busy scapping over the last few weeks but this is the first layout that I can share with you. At the beginning of the Easter holidays Emily bought me this little teddy to say sorry for being stroppy. I was so touched, it was such a lovely surprise and I wanted to record the event. I didn't want to put the journalling on view so I added an envelope where the full story is recorded.
I have used more gorgeous MME papers which are one of my favourite manufacturers, I just love the texture and thickness of the papers.











































TFL
xxx

Little Holiday

We decided to have a few days away just the four of us, life gets so busy and unless we make the effort to go away we spend very little time all together. So we booked a couple of night in Bath, I wanted to take the girls to the Roman Baths and of course shopping!
We stopped in Wells on the way up and had a lovely lunch in the Italian restaurant there, Rebecca ordered what looked like a pasty but was a pizza base filled with leeks, tomatoe, cheese and chicken and then folded in half. She wasn't expecting it to be quite this big!! She managed to eat about half of it so she didn't do too badly.




















Bath is a beautiful city with some lovely old Bath stone buildings. This is the famous Pulteney Bridge.




















We had lunch on our second day at the Sally Lunn Tea Room, it is in the oldest house in Bath built in 1482. It was a fabulous house so full of character, the floor was so uneven! Sally Lunn lived there in 1680 and her buns became famous, we had them as toasted sandwiches and I have to say they were absolutley gorgeous!

The Roman Baths were the highlight of our little trip for me and even the girls were surprised at how interesting it was. Justin was in his element and could have spent a lot longer wandering around. There are some amazing artifacts on display and we were lucky enough to get a free guided tour of the main baths. It is amazing how the Romans created things that we think of as quite modern inventions such as the hot tub and jacuzzi!

We got to try the spring water at the end of our tour, Rebecca wasn't impressed.

Bath has got some lovely shops but it is very tiring being on your feet all day, Emily and Justin found a little resting place while I was in a shop with Rebecca.

We decided that we desperatley needed to sit down for a bit so we went on a boat trip down the river Avon, it was so relaxing and gave our feet chance to recover before the next round of shops!

The girls chose our tea time restaruant and so we ended up in TGI Fridays, which we all enjoyed.

We had a great time, I have to get on and scrap the photos now!

TFL

xx

Ally Pally

I have been looking forward to going to Ally Pally for months, we usually combine it with a romantic weekend in London but this year we decided to drive up and back in a day which at the time seemed like a good idea. Rebecca wanted to come and we took Mum as well. We were up at 5.30 and left to go and pick Mum up in Weymouth at 6. The journey up was great, hardly any traffic and we arrived a few minutes before the doors opened.
Rebecca has been really enjoying making cards and a few smaller scrapbook pages so she went armed with a small list of stash that she wanted to buy, let me rephrase that....stash she wanted me to buy her! Both Mum and Rebecca were really overwhelmed with the amount of stash there was to choose from.

Last year I met up with Angie at Ally Pally for the first time which was great, this year she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to go but she managed to persuade her lovely hubby to bring her. Her daughter Emily came too and it was lovely too meet her after seeing so many layout featuring her and her brother Adam. We just had to photograph the moment.

I too went armed with a list of stash that I needed, although surprisingly it wasn't very long, and I managed to get everything that I wanted.

Last year I bought some chipboard templates and I have found them so useful that I wanted to see if I could get some different shapes. I managed to find these all on one stall!

Here is the rest of my stash purchases, I wanted some more distress inks and got five new colours. Talking of distress inks I met PennyK at one of the stands (she introduced me to the blending tool) it was lovely to see her again.

Don't you just love this dotty paper by Bo Bunny! It is a bit like dotted swiss but even more yummy, there were loads of colours but I was quite retrained and only bought five sheets.

I managed to find some more bling although not the pearl swirls that I really wanted, I will have to trawl on line to find those I think. I did find some gorgeous prima bling with tiny flowers attached which I just had to buy. Rebecca was really good and kept finding lovely little bits for me, she knows what I like all too well! Mum did really well and came away with some lovely packs of paper, bling, card blanks, ink, stamps and lots more.

Our journey home wasn't too good, it took up ages to get out of London and onto the M4, the traffic was nose to tail. From there is was ok until we hit the New Forest and then the dual carriageway was at a standstill we thougth it must have been an accident. Thankfully we had stopped very near a turn off which lots of cars were taking so Justin decided it would be better to be moving and lost than sat still in traffic!! It was actually a really lovely detour all through the New Forest and he didn't get us lost although it made for a very long journey home. We finally got back at about 6.15 so a long day but very worth it.

TFL

xx

Busy Busy.

I have been really busy scrapping over the last few weeks but nothing that I can share yet so I thought I would show you a layout that I created for Sarahs Cards. These papers by My Little Shoebox called "Whoo loves you?" aren't what I would usually choose but I really enjoyed working with them and the die cuts were fab. I know I have scrapped so many photos from our photo shoot last December but there were so many that I really loved I just have to scrap them. It is getting harder and harder to catch those candid shots now the girls are older, I am hoping that I can catch them un awares in the summer with my lovely zoom lens!















I am really excited as we are going to Ally Pally next Sunday, Justin has very kindly agreed to drive us up and wait in the sports bar whilst we shop! Rebecca is coming and we are taking Mum too, hopefully we will be able to get there for when it opens....as long as we get up early! I know Mum has a long list of stash that she wants to look for, I would like to get some more distress inks. I bought some a few weeks ago after the lovely Penny (PennyK) over on UKS gave me a distress ink tool at Sarahs Cards retreat. I had a play yesterday and absolutly loved them, very messy but very effective.
TFL
xx