What a weekend!

On Friday Eric set sail, well actually he rode his motorbike to Wales. A surprise visit to sister and BIL with tickets to watch Cardiff v Ipswich. Eric isn't a footie fan but his BIL has always supported Ipswich since being stationed at Wattisham many moons ago. Apart from almost giving his sister heart failure with the shock he had a fab weekend and a much needed break.

I on the other hand was left with 6 miserable dogs and 4 hens LOL. Ranger spent two hours howling for his Dad Friday night and sounded like a flippin donkey. Saturday night I gave him one of Eric's sweatshirts and that seemed to help and we all managed to get a bit more sleep than the previous night.

I had though i would spend the entire weekend scrapping but in the end just managed one layout but I did get lots of other chores out of the way.

Photo is of Vikki taken in 1983, when she was just 3 years old.




Papers are from Imaginisce "Fairest of the all"

My layout for the sketch collection is in SI this month, and considering I had almost no use of my left hand at the time with the nerve damage it looks ok.





Hens are now giving us 3 eggs a day and look so much better now that they have new feathers arriving thick and fast.

Proud to admit

Yet another failure on the fostering front!

Ranger is now a fully paid up member of the Taylor six pack. After months of trials and tribulations with him everything suddenley just clicked into place and he feels such a part of the pack, how coduld I send him on his way both he and Eric would have heartbroken to be parted LOL.

Yes I know I'm useless at fostering!

The girlies are getting incrediably tame and we now get 3 eggs a day, haven't figured which one isn't laying yet. Hope to get some photo's of them seperatley so I can show and name for you. And no I'm not using Eric's suggestions of Bob and Scratch.



layout off Ben when he was 11 1/2 months old. papers are from Basic Grey Archaic. The journaling says

" Ben at 11 1/2 months old is almost one and almost walking. No longer a baby almost a toddler."

Another lovely weekend

Super weather crop and a day out doesn't get any better!

Saturday Dawn and I went to papermaze crop had a super day, I got to spend my wages (got paid from SI mag for upcoming layout) all on paper and got to talk chickens with Vanessa's DH and discovered he sells chicken feed etc right next door to Vanessa's shop. How lucky is that LOL.



Actually started and finished a layout at crop, photo's are of Marc aged 11 months on his first of many wonderful holidays at Clippesby. The original photo's were polaroids so I was chuffed that they scanned well enough to use.

Sunday Eric had decided he wanted to go to a country show at Stonham barns as the group he has been meeting up with for greyhound walks were doing a greyhound obedience display, well we had to see that! greyhounds and obedience don't normally come in the same sentence but they were really good and only two dogs ran off. So we took Ben with us and had a really good time. The weather was perfect and there was so much to see not only in the main ring but loads of stalls etc.

Some of the beautiful Suffolk punches, Ben was a bit scared of them at first and hid behind me but eventually came out to watch LOL.


A few photo's of the day, plenty of scrapping matterial LOL

Happy hens!

What a difference a week makes, the girls are now much more relaxed and run towards us when we go it to feed them. Their combs have started to darken in colour and there is signs of new feathers growing. We have been giving them a tonic in their food and will worm them this weekend. I love watching them but getting them to bed is an issue like No we're not going LOL as fast as I catch one and pop her in the hut turn round for the next the first has come back out again EXCEPT last night when it was raining and they took themselves in CLEVER girlies! AND have been digging the ground and eating grubs. Amazing how they start to adapt. Two eggs everyday !!! and they're getting bigger.




Dawn has asked me to announce the arrival of Grandson number two, Ollie born Saturday weighing 7lbs 9ozs and totally gorgeous, I've already had cuddles with him and Dawn is floating around on cloud 9.

Did this layout for the UKS weekly challenge set by the Urban Faeries.



Challenge was to use a monogram
Use a foreign element which I didn't manage
Use your favourite or complimentary colours
Tear or distress the paper
and scraplift a layout from the gallery.

My layout is scraplifted from Butterbee My hero.

The photo is of Marc taken in 1990 when he was 12, have used Basic Grey papers Archaic, BG buttons,title cut on Cricut, lots of sewing and the grid was made on PC and printed onto acetate.

Off to Papermaze crop tomorrow.

cluck cluck cluck

We collected the hens at 2pm Friday, brought them home and popped them straight into the hen house as advised, so it wasn't really until Saturday that I got my first good look at them. I thought I was prepared but was actually really quite shocked and upset at the state of them. The little hen rescue volunteers only release healthy hens and as it turned out all people expecting to collect their hens on Saturday would have been disappointed as there was not enough healthy hens left and the adoption day was postponed a week to give the hens time to recover.





My four hens are short on feathers and what they have are prickly they are also very skinny! but we did get our first two eggs on Saturday LOL followed by another two on Sunday.



Today the hens came out without us turfing them out and look much more relaxed and provided us with another two eggs LOL.. Going to start them on a hen tonic and vitamins in the next few days. Have so far plucked (oops) the courage to hold one but they are still a bit scared of us and me of them...

Happy Easter

Today we are going to collect the hens wooohooo!



This is the hen house Eric is making, he's just adding a window now (seriously) and then we'll take it round to their enclosed area. When we collect them we have to make a donation of £1.50 per hen and then buy the following recommended supplies

- Feeder
- Drinker/s
- Layers Mash
- Bedding
- Grit
- Purple spray
- Wormers
- Vitamin tonic

Luckily they will be selling all the stuff at the collection point. We've been told to expect the hens to be very upset for several days as they will have come from being crammed in with hundreds of other battery hens and suddenly having space will scare them. Have to keep an eye out to make sure they drink as when they're stressed they don't and may need to give water with sugar direct from a syringe. Steep learning curve coming up I thing.

Did this layout of Ben yesterday, quite pleased I've managed to leave white space LOL, better put it in the album before I give in and add stuff to it.



Journalling says

Is now a little boy with
his own likes and dislikes
his favourite colour is RED
his favourite television programme
is THE SIMPSONS
favourite food is SPAGHETTI
BOLONAISE with GARLIC BREAD
And the latest saying is
“I didn’t do it, it wasn’t me!



Papers, buttons and letters are all Basic Grey.

What a lovely weekend

Sun was shining and a crop to go to, sometimes life is just perfect!!!

Had a great day at Bramford crop on Saturday and managed to spend to much as there was a Stampin Up demo. Didn't even finish one layout, how come everyone else seems to manage at least two!! anyway I finished it off yesterday when Eric went out for a bike ride for a couple of hours. He had a text from his friend and they both decided to down tools and take advantage of the lovely weather. Then in the evening we watched world superbikes so a great weekend.

This is the layout I finally finished, a school photo of Marc and Vikki in 1986, another one for Vikki's album. I had decided to scrap a photo of Ben at crop but as I was getting it ready I noticed this photo went perfectly with the scraps laying on my desk from the previous layout (okI hadn't tidied up)so ditched plan A and went to plan B LOL. Dawn had lent me her Scrapbooking mag and in it was a gorgeous LO by Stephanie Garbett with some lacing up on it, so I used that as the starting point and came up with this.




Papers are Daisy Bucket "Under the Boardwalk". I've used a Hambly screen print frame over the photo, the little letters are done on the PC inked and chalked (so much cheaper than buying them), lots of sewing, some rub ons from October After and 7 gypsies, basic grey buttons, a piece of green gingham ribbon I found when I was walking Gangley which (yes I washed it) was the exact colour of Vikki's school dresses so I pleated that and stuck buttons on it and finally I used the backing from a voila strip which I cut up (yes I know it's lifted on the photo) and added to the right hand bottom corner and above the photo.

Hen house is almost finished and we collect the girlies Friday afternoon woohoo....

Good news

Both Sandy and Jim have been to the vets and after a couple of weeks of sheer terror the vet is confident Sandy's lump is arthritic and not the bone cancer we had feared. Having lost both Dill and Mac to the bone cancer we are only to aware that once the lump appears there is really nothing that can be done and we were fearing the worst although Jim who seems to smell the cancer never once sniffed her lump so that gave us a tiny bit of hope. Anyway Sandy is on meds and restricted exercise for 10 days along with Jim who the vet thinks has a trapped nerve in his back. Poor Jim is a bit spaced out as he's on painkillers and DIAZEPAM LOL.

Made these little flowers on Monday to send to a friend for her birthday. Cut the flowers on the cricut using coredinations card stock then embossed them with the cuttlebug and then sanded them down.



This layout was done for the UKS weekly challenge set by Charli's angels. The challenge was

A - Any new stash - 5 points
N - Notes or journalling - 5 points
G - Glitter or Glitz - 5 points
E - Embellishments - 5 points
L - Lace - 5 points
S - Sewing of any kind - 5 points

The photo is of Marc aged 1 in 1979, I had booked a photographer to come to the house, poor chap was tearing his hair out trying to get a smile from Marc, so after 90 minutes of me and Mum leaping around like loonies waving his toys we finally got this sort of smile LOL. Papers are from Daisy Bucket "under the boardwalk" American thickers for the title and the journal shape, apple and love were cut on the cricut, other bits made on the PC.



Ben made me smile this week, he came in with me to get my blood test and sat very quiet taking it all in, when we came out he gently touched my arm and said "Nanny I love you you're so clever" Vikki called him a creep LOL but it made me smile all day.

Off to crop tomorrow woohoo!!!