Scrolling Gallery Now Added

Thanks to Clare I have now added a ticker gallery along the top of my blog. I have got a selection of my Isabelle Layouts on there for the moment but I will try to change it or add to it regularly!

Hope you like it and it isn't too annoying scrolling across the top!

Love My New Family Photos

Back in February we had a session with Enigma Photographic - my photos were ready a while a go and I finally managed to get over there and collect them and I LOVE THEM! The whole point of going was that we felt it was a shame that there were tonnes of photos of Belle on her own, lots with her and Darren (cos I like to take them) a few with her and me but hardly any of all of us.
But... when it came to choosing the pics we wanted we got two of the three of us but couldn't resist these two of her on her own. Darren just loves the crazy face she makes sometimes and so the colour picture really sums up her slightly mad personality - she can often be found grinning madly and sticking her tongue out as far as it goes (note to self must stop her doing that one day as it won't be cute when she is 15!)

I adore the one with her sucking her thumb and the one of her crawling was so great because it was the day after she started crawling so it really captured a moment!

I absolutely hate having my photo taken but although I don't *love* seeing me in these photos I do feel that it was definitely worthwhile. We will probably go back and have more done when she is older (but don't tell Darren that!) PS I did check with the photographers that it was ok to put these up in my blog and they were fine so not breaching their copyright terms!

My First Mothers Day As A Mum

Darren got Belle up this morning and gave her breakfast and then brought her to bed to wake me up with my card! Darren took her down again and when I got downstairs this is what I saw...
I have spent a nice morning playing with Isabelle, surfing the net when she had a morning sleep and updating my blog and now I am off out to take my Mum out for a Mothers Day lunch. We are off to Zizzis - an Italian restaurant in town. Hopefully it will be nice!

I have some gorgeous photos back that I had taken so I will upload them later and make you hungry with details of our meal!

Little Girl Blue

One of Darrens work colleagues had two free tickets going begging for the football today and since we had Belle we haven't had the time or money to go to many matches (we used to be Season Ticket Holders in the "Rowdy" stand at Ipswich) We were going to drop Belle with Mum for the afternoon but decided we would take her for her first ever football match! It started so well - she got out of the car and dutifully wore the scarf I put on her. She smiled at all the passing fans including the older ladies who stopped to coo over her and ask if it was her first match! We thankfully had tickets in a quieter section and found a block of empty seats so we wouldn't disturb everyone else if she cried. She was great for the first 20 minutes but she was chewing her fingers like mad and she started to whinge because her new teeth that are coming through were hurting.

Unfortunately when we scored a goal she didn't appreciate the noise :o( Poor child cried so I took her down to the concourse where the refreshments stalls are until she calmed down. She was pretty good for the rest of the match (Hull fans didn't make much noise when they scored their equaliser so she didn't mind!

You may well think "What on earth were you thinking taking a baby to a noisy football ground?!" but usually noise doesn't bother her - I often find her rocking out with Darren to his heavy metal DVDs and music and she grins when he plays his drums - I think today the teeth didn't help and she was a bit grouchy. I did get two cute photos to scrap...

So we may wait a while to take her again but one day she will like it - she has no choice!!! In the meantime I got a cute girly pink Ipswich Top for her - I did draw the line at £24 for a replica kit which she would grow out of dead quick - plus it wasn't pink!

Finished On Time... Just!

Remember the leaving album - the party was on Thursday evening and I had to leave at 6:40pm to collect some friends and get there in time to be ready to jump out and shout "Surprise!" At 6:20pm I stuck the last bit of paper. My dining room looked like a bomb site. Now I am *not* a tidy person by any stretch of the imagination and even I looked at the mess in horror! I then had 10mins to run upstairs, shower and make myself presentable - I still managed to get there on time although the pages weren't in the album.

Hannah loved the album, I even managed to get a couple of friends interested in scrapping by asking them to help out a bit with journalling some events I wasn't at. My only big regret is because time was so tight I didn't scan any of the pages. A lot were definitely simple - I liked them all but because of the time limit I just didn't have the time to faff about in the way I usually do. In some ways I hope it might make me a bit more decisive and quicker with my own layouts! I did enjoy it but I was very pleased to hand it over all finished, it might be a while before I take on another!

Forgetful As Always

I am always forgetting things - not everything just certain things. I took the camera to Hoveton but forgot to use it to photograph our stall, my beautifully priced up products or the first class I ever taught (should have photographed that for posterity!) I forget half the shopping when I go to the supermarket, I forget that I am supposed to be eating dinner at my frineds house until I am an hour late and half way through a meal I cooked for me and Darren, I forget soooooo much stuff. And yet on the other hand I went to a wedding a few weeks ago and met up with someone who was on my uni course. We weren't particularly good friends but it was nice to catch up and we agreed to meet up sometime - then I shocked them by reeling off their phone number which I still remembered three and a half years since I last used it. My brain is officially weird.

Remember i told you I was going to do an album for one of our friends who is leaving the area... Well I finally got all the photos and the album on Friday - I spent all day Saturday pricing and packing for the craft fair (til 2a.m.) got up at 6a.m. to drive up to Norfolk, spent all day there and got home at 9pm having stopped off to help Mum unload the cars. So on Monday it dawned on me I had 4 days to do the album, except I work Wednesdays so that became three days. Factor in the fact that Belle is awake and needing me to play with her and take her out, feed her and generally do Mummy things for most of the day I really only had 3 evenings and a couple of nap time hours to get it done. Well I am about a third of the way through it now - which is why I am going to quit wasting precious Isabelle asleep time updating my blog and go and get on with it! Ta ta for now. xx

Clickety Click

Little things please little minds... So we are getting ready for a craft show and as we hope to do these a bit more regularly we invested in a bit more display equipment. Well it arrived today, not much but a couple of those mesh panel stands you hang hooks and stuff on and my bestest new toy - a pricing gun. OK OK I know I am totally sad but I had so much fun playing shop! I will try and remember to take some photos at this show so you can see my lovely new stands and maybe even an exciting close up of my pricing labels... LOL yes yes I know the men in white coats are coming for me soon!

ARGH

Feeling a little peeved as we were due to get some lovely new goodies in either last week or this week and now the manufacturer has told our UK supplier that they will be delayed, given us a provisional date and then said that any US customers who place orders now will jump ahead of us in the queue even though we ordered last month - AARRRGGGHHHH!

I was sooooo poorly sick yesterday it was untrue. I felt sick all morning (no I am not) and then in the afternoon I had flu like aches pains and generally feeling terrible. Couldn't eat (I may have used up a half millimetre of fat reserves so that is something I guess) and just moped on my bed sketching ideas for an album and flicking through catalogues. Thank goodness I feel much better today.

Hmmmm thats it for now. I have changed the music - much as I love Norah I fancied a change already so it is Keane now.

So this is me...
I uploaded a picture of me so I could get a pic in my profile. I actually should use a more recent one. I have MUCH less hair now but I hate pics of myself and this is one which I like - amazing that I can have a tonne of pics taken at home and hate the lot but stick me in a white room with a photographer and suddenly I can cope with seeing myself on camera film...

We have some more recent pics due back from a shoot Darren and I had done with Belle in Feb - will use one of those as my little profile thingy when I get them.

Playing About With My Blog

OK so I got fed up of having a boring basic Blog so I have tried to add a little music video at the bottom. It works when I preview the blog but not sure if it works when I just load up... That lovely little Jaffa Cake munching crazy whirlwind Kirsty gave me a few pointers - til then I was being a lazy girl and hadn't really made much effort - big thanks to her if I can get it to work, if I can't then I might just sulk and cry...

Busy day today again. Spent the afternoon reducing quantities of various items from the website ready for the Craft fair at Hoveton next Sunday. I like doing the craft fairs - it is nice to actually meet some of our customers in real life but I hate it when you get home and have orders for stuff and find that you sold it at the craft fair so in preparation we have to work out what we are taking and knock it off the website - problem solved hopefully!

Still have to make my examples for my workshop - I am doing "quick mini books" which should be errrm, interesting!

Ta ta for now. Enjoy the music video if it works!

Woo Hoo!

Happy girl here today because our first Design Team Gallery went live today :) The five girls on the team plus our guest scrapper created some gorgeous pages and within a few minute of it beng uploaded I was already fielding enquiries about the kit that was used.

The day started off badly as next door woke me up slamming their door. Belle was awake for what seemed like half the night and that is so unusual for her that I am not used to trying to function with naff all sleep!

But it brightened up as I had two nice phone calls this morning, one from Anam discussing a couple of albums she is making for me and one from Kirsty who was getting ready to send her DT layouts to me and needed the e mail address. Both are lovely ladies and it was great to sit and chat for a bit. Darren is off work with man flu but he managed to look after Belle for a few minutes and put her down for her nap so that I could chat :)

Then I worked on uploading all the DT submissions and their mini biographies and pictures. You totally have to go and see them at www.atripdownmemorylane.co.uk/catalog there is a sneak peek with one from each designer on the front page and a link to see all their work.

I'm going out in a bit to meet up with a group of girls who have worked at the school where I teach at some point or another in the last few years. We meet up monthly and eat yummy food and catch up. So that should be fun.

Oh and I forgot to say yesterday I am working on a commission at the moment. A friend has asked me to do a simple ish scrapbook from our group of friends as a leaving gift for one of our friends who is leaving the area. Everyone is going to be providing photos and bits of journalling and they are going to chip in for the materials. I just hope they give me the photos soon rather than thinking it will be a day or so job!!!

So you like the new Primas then?!

After spending Saturday morning uploading the new Prima goodies we gathered that they are quite popular! The pre orders are coming in left right and centre - it's a good job we took them because we wouldn't have ordered nearly enough if we hadn't had pre orders!

I LOVE the daisy racks - I have a little prima dream of a wall covered with mounted racks of Prima flowers - a bit like this but much better than my pathetic attempt at a PSP PRima Dream picture!

Oooohhh urgh horrid pic of me I know but I don't like having my picture taken and it was the only one I could find that would do - I have much less hair now!


I went to Bury today to meet up with Nicki who runs a crop there to catch up and talk about some new ideas she has planned and browse some catalogues. That was fun except I got half way home and realised my hand bag was still in the coffee shopw here we met! ARGGGHHHHH I went back and it was still there and they had looked for ID in the bag and found my pass from Stitches still in there, so to check I was the rightful owner of the bag I had to tell them what company I was the owner of (co-owner actually but the badge says owner!) The rather snotty manageress did look at me in disbelief as I sloped in wearing my tatty trousers and trainers - I clearly didn't look much like a business owner!

I had hoped to go to a shop recommended by Anne Haferman - she got lots of embellishment storage jars in a shop in Bury and I had dreams of solving all my storage issues in one fell swoop but sadly time and Isabelle conspired against me.

How did I find out about Anne and her shopping in Bury St Edmunds?!?!?! Well since starting my own little blog land I seem to have developed an obsession for ambling round other peoples blogs. I am so nosey I *LOVE* reading about other peoples lives! It's like being an invited stalker and reading diaries without being a complete deviant weirdo (I hope!)

I did try reading one of the random blogs that the blogger home page brings up but as a non scrap related blog I wasn't interested in some girl whose neighbours were bothering her by holding drunken drug fuelled parties and whose boyfriend was actually going to make it big in Hollywood this year (she hoped)

Hmmm ok so now I have mad myself sound extremely weird I think I had better stop talking about stalking and diary reading...

Today was quite alarming as Belle decided to vomit like mad. We are talking the exorcist here except it wasn't green. I was feeling slightly neurotic (so would you if you had seen the state of her AND darren so I called NHS direct (ok I am not being over dramatic there was LOTS of sick) and they said she should be fine so long as it didn't happen again. 5 minutes from Mums house after my meet up with Nicki and the phone rings (I answeed it - I am such a bad person as I was driving...) and she had done it again at Mums. So we went off to the docs when we got home. Diagnosis - must be a bug, feed as normal and if it carries on bring her back tomorrow. Joy oh joy. PLEASE let her be better tomorrow, she was giving me such sad looks "Make me feel better Mummy..." *sniff*

Right enough talk of stalking prima dreams and sick.
Cheerio xx

Just A Quickie!

I am supposed to be tidying up my scrap space which has the nerve to call itself the Dining room table. Mother in law and her partner are coming over tomorrow and so rather unfairly Darren thinks it is important to have somewhere to eat!!!

Busy day today uploading new Primas for pre order this morning, needed to get them on before everyone pre ordered them elsewhere! LOL I have been at Mums getting together the second ATDML Design Team Kit which was fun, man I love filling pizza boxes with scrap stuff - it is like wrapping Christmas pressies!

I got an invite to a little forum with some online friends I already "know" and am setting about meeting a few more so that was lovely - the internet is a great place. I also took the opportunity to take a stroll round a few blogs - I love reading other peoples blogs, it's like reading their diary but without feeling terrible for doing it! God I am so nosey.

Anyway, somewhere from under a pile of Basic Grey a dining room table is calling me. The search and rescue teams are alerted but I don't know how long the table will survive without a good oxygen supply. Tootle Pip peoples of cyber land.