LittleBirdyScraps

WOYWW erm......

Yes, okay, I've lost count again.  There are so many things to keep track of!  Youngest has flown off to Barthelona, which entailed me getting up at 3.45am and although I didn't do the airport run I wasn't able to get back to sleep.  Blurgh.  And Daughter has just texted me to ask for some money to be transferred into her account so that she can buy her travel card.  Blurgh.

Anyway, without further ado, here's what's on my desk today.  This very morning.

It's relatively tidy, because I have tidied it.  And there are hardly any scissors left because the children have stolen them all.  It's a computer desk, so here is the pull-out bit with a double LO on it:

I expect if I did more of these I would be better at them.  And here's another page I have completed

Not one I've done this week, but it's been sitting in the 'holding area' next to my desk and I don't think I've shown it on here before. 

If this has left you drooling in anticipation of more desky loveliness, then nip over to Julia's for more! 

Still Making It...

Gosh, I'm impressing myself here.  Getting lots of LOs done.  None of them filed away in albums, though, but never mind.  I will do it at the weekend; the main problem is that I haven't labelled all my albums.  Once that's done and all the full ones put somewhere else, I'll be able to get the 'filing' pile under control.  Don't want a repeat of that situation last year....oh hang on, I've just remembered the big pile in the cupboard.  Sigh...

So.  Here is a LO of my son sitting on the beach about six years ago:

This is, yet again, the favourite beach at Trebarwith Strand.  Maybe I should have a couple of albums dedicated just to that.  I wouldn't have any trouble filling them.

The title says 'I wish I could remember what you were doing'.  He appears to be blowing the sand out of something but I can't for the life of me see what it is.  I do believe that the three figures just visible on the sand behind him are more of my family, which is rather nice.

Then there's this one of my mother and her little brother which I've had sitting around for ages waiting to be scrapped:

For both of these pages I've used quite a bit of old stash, which is great.  I even dived into the 'oddments' bag to make the punched flowers on the second layout, and all the paper is old, old stuff.  Stash-busting me!

WOYWW

Here at the top end of Surrey it is very damp.  Fortunately none of it is on my workdesk but I'll tell you about it anyway.  It was PE this afternoon, a change to the timetable, and since I have a split lunch-hour the classroom was empty when I came back.  I finally worked out where they all were when the screaming started, and hurried over there.

The heavens had opened half way through the PE lesson and everyone was huddled under a tree (not a tall one!).  At first there was mostly laughter, but they're only 9 and pretty soon the screaming increased.  After a particularly violent crash of thunder which coincided with a huge bang of lightning, the child I support started screaming continuously.  'What's the matter?' I yelled, as everyone else legged it back to the classroom.  'I'm freaking out!' he shrieked.  Poor boy, he was really very upset, it took ages to calm him down.

Anyway.  All in all it has been a crap day.  This morning we were told that none of the teaching assistants would be able to take time off in lieu again, and that if we work extra hours ('if'!) we'll have to be paid.  This isn't very convenient for some of us, who have a small pension or claim tax credits or housing benefit.  It means that those people will have to fill in loads of forms and present documents to prove how much overtime they have received, and at the end of it all the money will be taken back from them anyway.  Pooh, it stinks.  Much tension and carping and a senior TA lashing out, as she does when cornered.  Ugly stuff.

So, on to the frippery!  On my desk today was this (I've had to photograph it upstairs cos the light is appalling in Scrappy Corner):

This is me using up some Jenny Bowlin goodies that I received in a kit back in the Bad Girls days!  I was very pleased with the flowers, which were a bit sticky to make because I couldn't find my wide double-sided tape, grrr.

The scallop-edged crepe paper ribbon was particularly effective, I thought.  It would be extremely easy to make either of these strips with decorative scissors, although my scallop scissors are too small really.

Also on my desk today, some stash I received in the post:

This is my prize for the challenge I uploaded for the cybercrop at A Trip Down Memory Lane.  These lovely ribbons and trims - and to think that just ten minutes before I opened it I was looking at that Websters Pages brown ribbon and wondering whether to buy some! :D  Thanks Mel and Jill, I'll be putting them to good use!

I got these today, too: some Sizzix Letterpress plates:

I got these on a bit of a whim after I saw the results here.  They look fab, all nice and chunky!  I hope I've got some paper thick enough to use with them - have a look at that link and you'll see where they've been used very effectively with felt.

Finally, something that IS still on my desk - a layout I'm working on.  I'm doing the sneaky peek thing because I should have finished it by now, but sadly one of two images I painstakingly fussy-cut from the patterned paper, has disappeared.  Outrageous!  I simply can't find it anywhere, and my desk is pretty tidy just now.  (I promise I'll show some pics next week!).

If this is all new to you, pop over to Julia's blog where all will be revealed, and where there is a great big sod-off list of other blogs for you to have a jolly good nose around! :D

 

More Layouts

I'm doing some catching up here, since I decided that photographing my LOs instead of scanning them probably wouldn't result in some sort of lightning bolt coming to get me.

This is for Pencillines Sketch 243 which you can see here.  I've used an old photo of my cousin and my uncle, who weren't very far apart in age, taken in the back garden of the house I used to live in.  This house had a rich family history, having been let to my father's parents many years before I was born.  They moved there from Pimlico, and by the time I was born, living in the house were my mother and father, my father's sister and her husband, their three children and my father's mother.

My grandmother died when I was young, by which time my little brother had been born.  Eventually my aunt and uncle moved out with their three children when they were given a council house, and for a while another aunt and uncle, who had lived there before with their two daughters - one of whom is in the photo - moved back in.

In the end we had the house all to ourselves.  It was a very nice house, with four bedrooms including a master bedroom with its own balcony, and we had a playroom in one of the three reception rooms.  One day the owner decided to sell it as she was getting old, and offered it to my parents for £16,000.  (I should mention here that the house was in Fulham, which if you live in London will mean something to you.  If you don't live in London, it's next to Chelsea, lol.)

My father was a gambling man, as the song goes, and was unable to get a mortgage from any bank because of his appalling lack of savings/money generally.  So my mother spent weeks trailing round all the banks pleading for help, as she had always dreamed of owning her own house.  In the end she was forced to give up, and the owner said that instead of buying the house themselves, if my parents dealt with the selling of it, she would give them half the proceeds.  The estate agent who came to see the house immediately bought it himself, and our half of the money was enough to buy a three-bedroomed house in Wimbledon.

Looking at the price of houses in that area now, they're around three quarters of a million.  No wonder my mum wasn't very impressed with my dad.......:(

Now, I was going to find another LO with old photos on it but I haven't done one recently so here are some very new ones!  I took these last night, as it was Midsummers Day and when we were driving home I saw that the trees were casting very nice shadows on the grass over the road!

I saw a layout by Jessica which included some lovely flowers made from Lily Bee papers, and as I had some in my stash I thought I'd have a go too.  Hope you can see the LO from that link, by the way, as I can't make that particular post come up by itself!  It's in the June section, anyway.