365 - Catching up

Day 14 - One reason I am very glad our tea making station is higher than a normal work-surface, which would be about the height of the dresser on the right !Day 15 - a 'tent' with compter access of course....and then a moment later attack of the baby !
This last weekend I went away for the first time since Treestump was born without him. I think I found it harder than he did as he was very ably looked after by Jon and my mum. It was a good weekend even if I did go down with a cold halfway through.

Day 16 - A puppet show at the Havockstan player event - The Compt and Dubious.
Day 17 - Two Millen Ladies, dressed for dinner. Peacock feather eyelashes and all.
Day 18 - The aftermath of the event.. Sunday morning clear up. The lass on the left hand side is the one in the wig in the previous picture.

RIP Tony Hart

Tony Hart has died he was an inspiration to all children of my generation and made art seem vibrent and interesting. He was also largely influential in shaping the way childrens programs are today, the best ones anyway and I think the first to have British sign language in a program with Vision On which was so good most of us didn't take in it was a sign language program as the way the signs were used was so natural and well incorporated something newer programs have struggled to do till Something Special came along..


Probably the best known prop he worked with was Morph a little animated figure made of plasticine who kept us all entertained with his antics.

Here is another link with more details about his life and work.

Tony has been retired a few years now and lived to a good age but his passing is the end of an era. Goodbye Tony.

365 - days 11 to 13

Day 11 - Bath-time fun.Day 12 - What do you mean my cup of tea shouldn't be half the size of my computer !.. Now if I could only get the eeepc support people to give me a full answer on how to load gimp onto the eeepc it would be much better.
Day 13 - My monthly treat !

365 - day 10

Today's picture is a puzzle or is that doing a puzzle?Done a quick layout with the picture too.

New Blogwear

Done by me using a kit by Ladybug which she made for this month's miracle gro challenge on DSG. The cream paper is from the dec petals kit by Karen Wallace also on DSG.

a few layouts

Just done this one of the moon. Very simple as it is basically just the photograph a couple of times but I think it works.
Then there is this one from our holiday to the grandparents this summer. I made the background papers myself from bits of the photograph and various effects in GIMP which i could do more of. It was partly inspired by the technique challenge on DSG called Follow Us Down the Garden Path w/Liz & Elaine. They explained how to make papers from photos and suggest using ones that are good but a little out of focus and similar. The elements are from the seaside splendour kit put together last summer by Tempus Fugit and nbk.
Finally the first of this month's Miracle gro challenges again at DSG. I think this months kit is one of my favorite yet.

Day 9 - project 365

Day 9 saw me trying out my new camera and taking it on the school run. I was hoping to take a picture of our lollypop man and he suggested I took one of him and Noodles as soon as he saw the camera. Taken on the central island of the main road between our house and school.

365 - Day 8

Technically I didn't take this one, Tom did but I thought it was wonderful. I was planning to do something else other than Treestump today but hey.

I did adjust it in GIMP to take the background out of focus.

Shows his two teeth wonderfully, I hope they will soon be joined by the top ones because they are defiantly trying to come through currently.

New Camera

Happy Dance !!!

I had resigned myself to not having a new camera for a while as it looked like to get the specs I wanted was going to cost too much money and I didn't want to spend less on something that didn't do what I wanted. We weren't camera less as I had Tom's camera to use though it has a irritating happen of sitting there saying processing while you miss the shot you wanted and burnt out anything close with the flash so I turn it off and end up with lots of blurred shots.

However a few days ago I saw QVC had a photo hour on and decided to watch i to see if they had any good tips. Well the tips were things I know though Tom learnt the rule of thirds however they had a camera that seemed to do most of what I wanted and at a lower price than I expected. After some internet searching the reviews looked good. So we decided as QVC has a thirty day trial period on all their goods it was worth a try as unlike most places if it didn't do what i wanted I can send it back!.

So yesterday a Fujifilm FinePix S5800 turned up with a nice case and extra rechargeable batteries and charger.
So far I am very happy with it. It's basically a bridge camera which is what I wanted, in that it has a proper optical lens like a DSLR but it doesn't detach. It has various modes up to and including fully manual as I grew up using a traditional SLR one of the things that has been gripping me is times when I know I could get a better picture if I had more control over focus, aperture etc.

The camera light but sturdy feeling. The screen is big and clear and the controls are fairly easy to learn. You have auto, anti shake mode, natural light, natural/flash (where it takes two photos back to back one with and one without flash), and two settings where you can define them out of a set of pre-programmed modes ie portrait, landscape, snow.. that sort of thing. On top of that it has four modes for if you want to adjust aperture, shutter speed etc P,A, S and M.

It also does video.

It is what they call a super zoom as it has a 10x optical zoom and it also as a super macro setting so will do macro as close as 1cm and it is much better than our current camera on such things and that one wasn't bad. Great for photographing minis, food etc.
Macro shot of boar badge which is a bit over an inch long and shiny.
It has what they call an intelligent flash which they hype quite a lot and claim doesn't wash out close subjects.. so i did a test.

Photo of small ones trying to climb on my lap with old camera

Photo of small ones trying to climb on my lap with new camera..
Pretty good .. having taken a bunch more pictures the flash is much better and the flash/natural double shot option means you can do both very easily and decide which you prefer.

Probably the only thing I'm wary about is the cover over the usb port as it is quite hard to open and feels like it will die of wear, considering I want to down-load daily it may not last but that isn't critical.

Obviously compared to some other cameras it has downsides as things like having such a wide range on a single len can give problems but for the cost the quality is fantastic and unless you are used to much more expensive equipment you will not notice. If you want to try out more DSLR style photography without breaking the bank I think it's a pretty good choice. I used to use a film SLR and I think I will be able to get back to more technical photography not just snaps with this.

365 - day 7

Treestump is very mobile now. Yesterday he was apparently standing well unaided at nursery though he refuses to do so for me. He did however spend ages walking back and forth pushing the brick trolley.

365 - days 5 and 6.

Day 5 is what happens when you turn your back on a small person having put down a bag of recycling for a moment ! It's a ginger beer bottle and he is blowing into it having realised that trying to drink it didn't get him anywhere.

Day 6 - Let me introduce you to Giraffy or Raff the one toy that Noodles always has with him to sleep. He has had him since he was very small but wasn't at all attached to any items till about a year ago. He still isn't to bad but Raff definitely helps and always goes away with us. At home he is helped by other toys like ratty, mouse and Cuddly Cathulu ! Our naming of toys isn't very inspired as you can see but it works for him.

Word for the year

This has been going round a few blogs the idea of picking a word for the year and the one that keeps coming to mind is Finish.

So that is my word for the year.

Why so? Well I'm very bad at finishing things. Very good at being enthusiastic about new things and taking on to much and I need to get the balance a bit better so this year is about finishing projects or sticking with long-term ones like the allotment rather than getting swayed by new stuff. It should help me spend less too as I have a LOT of bits bought to try this or that which have never been used.

Something to aspire to

Jennifer Wodbury did the 365 challenge last year and has a wonderful set of photos to show for it. Makes me wish I'd done it last year as her youngest is about the same age as Treestump and it's lovely to see her grow almost daily at times. Do wonder how she gets her pictures so well lit though one of the things I can see she does very well is to tightly crop a skill I need to learn more.. less distracting backgrounds.. that and having less mess in the house !

365 - Day 4

Today's photo would have been Treestump looking up at my trying to get on my lap as he does a lot BUT if I use a flash it washes his face right out and without a flash I just get blur, it's times like this I really miss a more adjustable camera. Oh well can't justify one till I get the finances better sorted which is a good incentive at least.

So instead I present you with our wood burning stove.
The rest of the downstairs now has lovely toasty underfloor heating but the front room is last on the list to get it as it has the stove.. does mean the floor is rather cold though when you come in from the rest of the house particularly as the rest is also insulated and this room will not be till we put the heating in as it would be doing the same job twice..

Above the fire are the pine branches I used to hold Christmas cards and baubles.. tempted to keep them a while and make them a more winter decoration somehow.. suggestions welcome. They are quite full and go a couple of foot above the mantelpiece. The grid in front is a fire guard we don't normally have one but till Treestump gets over his fascination with fire we need the guard. A fascination which he gets in no way from his mother... honest would I lie to you?.

As tomorrow is Monday and the first day of school I think I will count this as the end of the first week so should probably start thinking how I'm going to scrap them..

365 - Day 3

Yesterday, as I failed to post then, I took the tree and other decorations down as Noodles is back to school on Monday and I want to get the decoration boxes back in storage. I want to slim down our decoration hoard before next year but that is another story for another day.

Today's picture is of some of the decorations on the tree. I have taken some close ups of individual decorations but this is just a general one. It only shows one special decoration, of which we have several, but it is a good representation of the general decorations and the red lights Noodles decided we should have on the tree this year. The lights are really exterior lights but I still need to put up some fixings so they go up easily outside and as the tree went in front of the main door out the back it didn't seem to be a priority to have lights out there or to highlight the rather untidy state the garden is in.

The one special decoration visible is a hand made lace angel I got several years ago from an on-line lace-making friend, which I cherish as i am well aware how long I took to make.. That said I do love my big white feather balls and the glass one to the left of the angel.

A couple of layouts

These two are both using A little bit of me, a little bit of Yule by Magick scraps which you can find at DSG. It is an upbeat and vibrant kit designed to scrap the holidays whatever you celebrate.

My first one is my first attempt at a silhouette, I want to do all mum's grandsons, being me I picked one of the harder ones to cut out to do first but I also think it is probably easier to recognise for those who know him than some of the younger ones will be.
The second is a snap of Noddles in his new hat which Himself said made him look like an elf. Noddles agreed and didn't mind at all.

Day 2 - project 365

Over night we had the first snow of the year. Not much but we don't get it very often so even a bit is worth note so I took a picture of it on the wall on my way to taking Treestump to nursery.

Of course snow on a wall is not a hugely interesting picture but it does have good contrast in it so I thought I'd play with it in Gimp a bit.

So I have not one but three versions of it for you.
The first is the standard picture just lightened a little as the snow confused the cameras levels rather.
The second is a black and white version made by desaturating the picture.
The final one is a result of playing with curves which I've done very little of before and then polarising the result. I think it's quite fun in a heavily adjusted photo sort of a way. I remember playing with colourising kits and so forth in a traditional dark room setting and getting all sorts of weird effects but this is much faster and a lot less messy :)

Project 365

I've thought about doing this before but never at a good time to start. As several people have mentioned it on forums and blogs I though this time I'd give it a go as the start of the year is about the best start point i can think of..

Basically you take a picture a day of something, anything really. It could be something special about that day or just something everyday but over the year you get a sort of montage of things about you and for me I hope it will get me back into taking more than just snaps of the boys as I used to do 'proper photography' years ago.

I may well make use of some of the templates on offer to scrap each week's photos as well but for now I will try and post them here.. If I manage more than a week or two I may set up a blog just for the 265 photos but I know me and most of the time I only manage something like this for a couple of weeks so lets see if it lasts first :)

Today's Photograph is just a snap really and is to record the one of the most popular christmas presents with both boys and indeed all the children that have been here.. a pop up ball pit, den thing which was a last min purchase from Lidl as it was on their specials poster for the last few days before christmas. We then promptly forgot to give them it christmas day.. we got it out when Noodles, on being told we were going shopping in Lidls, said Oh we could get one of those ballpits.. dur.... well there were a lot of presents to get out christmas eve by the time we had all ours and the grandparents, aunts etc :)

Resolutions

I don't normally do New Years resolutions I figure why set myself up to fail BUT this year I decided to log goals I plan to aim for as much as a reminder to myself as anything.

So this year I plan to .....

1) Keep doing weekly menus and try and do some more long term planning with batch cooking and so forth.

2) Get our finances on a more even keel and sort out proper budgets as we have been doing to much random spending and while our income is good we have slipped into bad habits.

3) Get the allotment up and running properly.. long term aim to visits regularly enough I can consider getting chickens which I will not do unless one of us is going up most days anyway.

4) Get my fitness levels up another notch.

5) Get the bikes sorted and a space to keep them that is easily accessible so we start riding again (plus a child seat and/or trailer) which indirectly should help with aims 3 and 4.

6) Learn to drive the bigger manual car.. I have a manual licence but have only driven automatics since and need to relearn how to use a clutch !

7) Declutter some more - I do think we are very slowly starting to do this but with a house full of squirrels it is hard work.. in line with 2 I want to rapidly cut down the amount we spend on storage by getting rid of things we are just not going to use particularly spare furniture and so forth.

8) Move the industrial sewing machine to the workshop so Mark can use it and I have somewhere to go and work that doesn't have outstanding housework and a hundred and one other distractions !

I think thse are the main ones. I'll add to this if I think of anything else later.

Crochet doll is a hit.

I recently made this doll form a pattern in Let's Knit, though it is crocheted not knitted. He is called Dude in the magazine and I thought he would make a good present for my 15 month old nephew. One each obviously. I finished him just before Aunty Jane's party and showed him to their mum who thought he was wonderful so planned to make a second one and give them to them in January as they are in South Africa for christmas as her mum lives there.

However Treestump saw him and made a grab for him and ever since has tried to get him when he has seen him so I have given in and let him have it. After all he seems more interested in him than most toys so go with the flow. Does mean I need to make two for late January... and probaly one for Christmas as big brother wants one, wel maybe two more as he thinks the other young cousins needs one.. and then there is our friend's baby boy.. I could be making quite a few !!

Luckly he is easy to make even over a sleeping babay as all the parts are made separately and joined together so expect to see various versions of this over the next few weeks,

2 versions in one

I have two versions of the same layout for you today. Tell me which you like the most and why if you don't mind it will help me work out what works and what doesn't.

The first one is using a lovely kit by Ladybug at Digital Scrap Garden it is the second free kit this month for the Miracle gro challenge. If you like the kit she is bringing out a much bigger version soon.

The only change I made.. I always seem to make at least one, is that I re-coloured the flower to give me several shades but I tried to stay in the same colours as the kit. I like this and think the flowers give it a lovely soft feel.

The second layout uses Ladybugs paper but the elements are from Digital Scrapbook Artisan Guild who I only found this weekend. They have a digital magazine every month which just looked too good not to try and it came with several free items to use including the elements I used here. If you join as a guild member there is a monthly kit on top of that which goes with the magazine.. so far i am quite impressed as the kits are delicate and complicated and I want to do some layouts that are less bold and simplistic. I did adjust one of the frames on the bottom line to make it slanted and added the third above to give a similar layout to my first one. I also like this one and I chose the elements as they have some complicated clustering done for me but they are also harder edged,

Tell me what you think ?

Two layouts using Full Abalone

As I mentioned I've had the Full Abalone by Magick Scraps to play with for a few days and here are a couple of layouts using it.

I hope my Freeport friends don't take it too badly that I've called them pirates as I'm sure they are all upright citizens really.. For those not in on these things they are live roleplay characters who spend much time talking like pirates, drinking and being silly.. and of course wearing sunday best on important occasions !

The other layout is photos from our trip to Ireland a couple of years ago.

All in all it has been a fun kit to play with and there are many more elements and papers I haven't used. In particular there are some great metal jewellery pieces which I love and I'm sure I'll find the right photos to put them with soon.

Tell All Tuesday

so this weeks question is

When do you put your Christmas decorations up and how long do they stay up?

My answer is it depends on when we are visiting grandparents and so on, we have three sets plus various brothers and sisters to fit in so weekends before Christmas can be a bit full. The said we try to leave it to quite close to Christmas otherwise I feel it starts to get a bit old before the actual holiday.

This year the plan is at the beginning of the week Christmas is actually in as we are away for the weekends before that and Noodles will have finished school. The Tree is bought and keeping fresh outside.

They will stay up till after new year, normally as close to 12th night as possible, while making sure they come down for it ends..

Pop over to Jellybelly Jellybrain to see what everyone else says.

I've joined a Creatve team !

Mojo from Magick Scraps asked me to join her creative team which bowled me over than someone thought my layouts were good enough to showcase their kits. After a little though I said yes. I am aware that I don't have unending time but I think what she asks of her CT is very reasonable and do-able, so expect to see layouts using her kits very soon.

The first one I will be working with is her newest one Full Abalone which has some very fun elements and a lovely colour scheme. If you like the look of it then pop over to Digital Scrap Garden and buy it as it is currently 50% off.

One of the reasons I said yes to Mojo is that the DSG forum is such a friendly place and I have enjoyed doing their challenges so much that if I was going to join a CT one of their designers seemed a good idea rather than on a site I would be making an effort to be active on.

A great family get together

Last weekend was my aunts 60th birthday party. She arranged to get as many of her family and her hubbies family together in one place as possible, normally we don't met up like this. We had a great couple of days and a fantastic group meal to finish up at which there were about 80 people. At the meal she mentioned she had 11 grand nephews at the party (no girls) and 6 of those are mine and my siblings so mum wanted to try and get a photograph of them all together. Considering that includes an 8 month old, 15 month old twins and a 2 year old it was 'interesting' .

The following layout is a one of the better ones with some cut out shots from others so here is a good shot of everyone. It is scraplifted (based on) this layout.

The kit is True Blue, the papers from an add-on by Sara and the alpha from Vicki who has done the main kit.. it's a great one for boy related layouts so you may well see it again here and best of all free..

The second layout is of my mum and aunt and uses as the kit from Dee's secret garden challenge at Digital scrap garden, great colours which I thought really suited these two ladies who have always been some of the most vibrant and wonderful people I know.

Christmas Look

I've got a new blog look for christmas.

Another great layout from Allie Brown using a kit by Vicki who's blog I follow anyway.

Hope you all like it and I'm tempted to try and do one myself or possibly a header at least so watch this space.

Oh and the fish pool got paler for the winter. You can get one too from here along with various other silly but fun things.

Pefume Bottles

As some will know I have a bit of a weakness for perfume oils and essential oils. I have a modest collection of bpal perfumes, only something over 100, mostly just imps which are the sample vials and I rcenlty started getting a few bits from Nocturne Alchemy who specialise in Egyptian inspired perfume and have a love of Amber.

For thier second birthday they brought out two special limited editions which are 10ml rather than the normal 5ml and came with decorative bottles.. I sucommed and got both and they along with a few others turned up today. The two bottles above are the ones for the birthday oils. They are triangular which is why one looks a funny shape it is symetrical really.

The silver and blue is for Amber 46, a blend of 46 Ambers. yes 46 different ambers! They did 23 for thier first birthday so the mind boggles as to what they have planned for next year!

The red and gold is for Amber Kyphi (Sweet Flag, Wine Soaked Raisins, Egyptian aged Red Wine, Camel Grass, Storax Bark, Mastic, Benzoin, Juniper Berries, Mint, Cinnamon, Aspalathos, Egyptian Frankincense, Myrrh, Honey, Calamus, Rose Wood, Orris, Galangal, White Wine, Henna, Rhizomes of Cyperus, a drop of Dragon Blood and Amber Resin).

The great thing is the pretty bottles come empty with the perfume in a separate well sealed bottle and they even send pipets to decant with. So heaverns forbid and i don't like either of them i could use one of the bottles for something different.

Tell all tuesday

Emma at Jellybelly Jellybrain has started a weekly question slot which is quite fun so I thought I'd join in.

The question for today's Tell All Tuesday is :
.

Were you named after anybody?

I wasn't named after the Esther in the bible even though mum is a vicar ( well a retired one now) and both my brother and sister also have biblical names. In fact I was named after Esther Summerson the heroine of Bleak House.

I suppose at some point I should read the book but I'll have to get over my dislike of Dickens to do that.

and one more

A quick and fairly simple one using another kit by June of Cen's Loft I think you can probably guess it's name if I tell you she is doing nursery rhymes at the moment.

I like the kit very much and thought it would be just right for these photos. I was more looking to lay them out nicely for Noodles to show them at school rather than do anything complicated with them.

recent layouts

Some more layouts done as various challenges on forums. Have you got that I like challenges to give me a head start yet? Using one specific kit has a similar restriction which can help to cut things down enough to know where to start.

First one is another miracle gro on digital scrap garden, this is where we get given papers etc then some elements then some more elements and build up the layout as we go. This kit has similar autumnal colours to the last one or at least the parts I used did though they were fairly different when you looked at the two kits side by side. The photo was taken by himself when we went to the woods for a picnic recently and I though it was wonderful.

The next two were for challenges on snap and scrap, both for the weekend cyber crop. The first one was a progressive scrap which was were we went round a blog list collecting items to then use them in a layout. We got a very nice selection of items on a purple theme which went perfectly with photos of a hat I recently made Treestump as you will have seen in a previous post.

The other one was the All The Same To Me Challenge where again we were given a kit and had to use it, I only used the blue parts of the kit but it had similar elements in pink and yellow too. The layout is about a trip to the London Eye this half term and all the photos are ones I took while we were up there.

Finally I used the wonderful new Wee willy Winkie kit from Cen's Loft to scrap a layout for a challenge from Cottage Scrapbooks to do one with something to do with music. That was easy because we sing a lot in our house and Noodles is dead sweet trying to lull Treestump to sleep singing twinkle twinkle little star. June was even kind enough to re-do one of the frames with the alternative wording for me to change nursery rhymes.

Blog award

I got given a blog award ! Thanks to Doris from Tempus Fugit . She does great scrapbooking freebies on her blog.

The rules of the award are
1. The winner can put the logo on her blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the girls you've nominated.

so the blogs I'm nominating are

1) Emma from jellybelly*jellybrain because she regularly makes me laugh.

2) June from Cen's Loft while I have only been reading her blog a short while I love her kits and her encorraging comments.

3) Katy from I'm a ginger monkey because I still owe her a swap.. which I will finish soon honest ! and because she loves shoes and fabric so she must be cool :)

4) Tea rose at needle and clay for her great doll site.

5) Nikki at Ninny Noodle Noo cos she sells wonderful toys and I love hearing how the kids are doing.