Paper chains!!!

Me and Amy had great fun this afternoon making paper chains. I brought out a pile of printer paper and shiny card, and let her go mad with pens and crayons on it. Looks pretty good, think I'll put it up in her room. Here she is hard at work using my lovely pens, though I barely use them so I'm not fussed. I think it tired her out as she had a long nap on the sofa later!

Otherwise today we had toddlers. After being so cold yesterday I heard it raining last night. It must have hailed or snowed (or both) too as the road was white when I looked out this morning. The pavements were awful, but having the buggy seemed to help. It hadn't got much better by this evening. I'm just hoping it'll all thaw overnight as I'm meant to drop Peter off in town tomorrow morning for the 6 o'clock train to Edinburgh!

It's December!!!

Yay, though in common with most people I'm a bit behind where I'd like to be now. I meant to do the Ali Edwards Daily December album, but haven't made it yet, so I'll try to use this blog as a daily diary instead for December.

So today's photo for the goings-on in the S household is

This year we want to get our decorations up early so I've spent the morning sorting through Amy's toys and taking most of them upstairs so there'll be plenty of space for the tree.

Over on Jessica Sprague.com there's been a discussion about taking a photo a day for December. I know I don't know as much about photography as a lot of the people on there, but I did go out this morning in the frost to take some photos of the garden. I even had my camera on manual for some of them. Now I can't decide which of these to put up as my photo for the day.

Now I'm just waiting for Amy to wake up so we can nip to the post office to post a circle journal. Our plan after that - paper chains!!

Digi scrapping a-go-go

Well, after enjoying the Stories in Hand class over at Jessica Sprague.com, I decided to go ahead and take the Up and Running class to learn Photoshop. I've just finished lesson 1, here's the result.

It's a self-paced class, which is great, though I'm missing the busyness of the SIH message board. I definitely think I could get to like digi scrapping, though I may need a faster computer.

Our last assignment in the SIH class was to create a LO from a template, here's mine.

Paper chain swap

Wow, two posts in a day, it'll never last! I've been meaning for a few days now to upload pictures of the paper chains I made for a swap on UKS. I love the variety of swaps that appear, the recent message in a bottle one being a particular highlight, and loved the sound of making paper chains to swap. I joined all three group - red/gold/green; frosty; freestyle.

I'm so looking forward to receiving some back!

Assignment 3b

Well, poor Amy has not been well this morning, so she's asleep on the sofa and I got the chance to work on todays assignment. This was to write up a story from the 'self' section in full, then trim it to 2-3 paragraphs. I found this quite hard, being a scientist I tend not to waffle so I've been really working at adding details and feelings etc. Then to be told to strip it right down again! Anyway, here it is.

I'm really enjoying this course. I’m loving reading through the prompts and sparking memories. However, it’s not always easy during the day to get 10 minutes to think about them in peace. On Monday the assignment was to read through the family prompts. I knew that Amy rarely has a nap nowadays, so was resigned to working on it in the evening, when really I prefer to spend time with Peter.

In the morning we’d been at toddlers, so in the afternoon we set out to do some errands. The weather wasn’t great, and I knew it would be getting dark before we got back so we took the buggy, though Amy insisted on walking. By the time we turned into Avenue Street, Amy was getting tired. We negotiated a settlement by which she’d willingly go into the buggy, namely being allowed to keep her mu-mu (dummy), and the going was much quicker after that. After a trip to Somerfield for milk I visited the post office to post my parcels and collect one too. 

I realised that Amy had fallen asleep in Somerfield, and it’s always nice to let her get a good nap, so I made the decision to stop off at Thirst for a coffee to work on my assignment. It’s always lovely and welcoming in there, with friendly staff and good cakes. The décor is soothing, all dark brick and paintings on the wall, and there’s an interesting selection of music in the background. I ordered a latte and a cake and set to work looking through the prompts. I seemed to find this assignment a bit harder than the equivalent one for ‘roots’. I think it’s because I started scrapping after Amy was born, so I’ve covered a lot of the fun stories in LOs already. Also there are many more memories to cover from our past. Anyway, I jotted down a few notes, and just generally drank in the atmosphere. It was wonderfully relaxing. 

When I’d finished my coffee I thought about heading home, though Amy hadn’t woken up yet. Then I thought: “No, I’ll have another coffee”. I deserve the time to myself, and you have to take every opportunity to have 5 minutes ‘me time’ when you have kids. So I ordered another latte and savoured it. When I reached the end of this coffee it was getting towards 5 o’clock. I’d handily bought a small packet of fruit pieces to keep Amy occupied on the journey so she was content to stay in the buggy on the way home. We arrived home in time to prepare tea for Peter getting in, and I felt so relaxed for having chosen to spend time on myself.

Finally started christmas shopping!

Well, at least I've bought the cards and wrapping paper. Though at this rate I might just be buying vouchers for everyone. I'm soooooo looking forward to Christmas, but I think it's the sparkly 'Magic Of Christmas' side of it, not the presents. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Amy makes of it all. 

The Stories in Hand class influenced me again today too. I'd been doing yesterday's assignment - to flip through the family prompts and note down ones that sparked. I started writing about how much Amy loves Kelvingrove. Then I realised we hadn't actually been for about 6 months, so we went today. And she still loved it. Especially the giraffe, and the hands-on areas. It's been so well renovated. There's loads for little kids to do, like looking into a bee hive to watch the bees or trying on HUGE shoes to see how they look. We only got round half the ground floor, so I'll need to arrange a return trip sometime soon.

Evening:),

Today's assignment in the Stories in Hand class was to skim through the family section of the prompts and see what sparked. I found this a bit harder, but I think that's because I'm doing layouts about Amy all the time so there's less untapped memories. I've barely done any LOs about my childhood  and of course there's so many more years to think about.

I'm loving the class though. The forums great too, we're all sparking off each other remembering toys/ programs/ games. There's some differences as the majority of the class are American, but it's surprising how many of the hand-clapping/ skipping games were similar.

The sparks are working both ways too. I made a note of how much Amy loves Kelvingrove then realised we hadn't been for a while so I'll take her tomorrow. It's a great place, with lots of hands-on exhibits for kids.