'Twas the night before Christmas ...

... and the family were gathering for the annual Christmas group photo.  The children were keen, overjoyed, excited reluctant to go through the ritual but I had my stern face on and they knew I would give them no peace until it was done and the sooner we all sat down together and got it over and done with, the sooner they could go out with their friends. 
So when Denise returned from the crop that I had missed last weekend with a little goodie bag of bits and pieces, I immediately noticed this lovely Websters paper and just knew it would be perfect for the 2010 Christmas family photo page.

Waiting for inspiration

A friend of mine has recently become interested in scrapbooking and for Christmas I bought her a little mini-kit of Christmas embellishments so she could do some special Christmas pages.  When I got to the checkout page of the purchase, my index finger quivered over the 'quantity' box.  I knew that I wanted one for her but felt there may be a chance that I would want  need one too.  There were some very pretty things in there.  Some really special little bits and pieces that I would never find locally.  And then in my imagination I fast-forwarded to the future, popping round to her house for a coffee and her showing me the album she had made out of all the things.  Marvelling at the beauty of the pages and me wishing I had taken the chance to get a kit for myself too.  I don't know what happened after that, I must have been overtaken by a naughty fairy or something but next thing I knew I was on the payment page and I had 'accidently' {ahem} ordered two.  Let this be a warning to you, sometimes gremlins get in the machine and MAKE you order stuff you don't intend to ;-)
So today is my day off from work and I am planning to actually make something out of the stuff I inadvertantly ordered :

New classes

Still going with that little word 'learn', I have signed up for a new class over at Big Picture Classes.
It's called 'Embrace Imperfection' - it's free and you can read more about it by clicking here
And just to demonstrate how ideal it is for me, I signed up for it today, got all excited, couldn't work out why I couldn't access any of the information about the class and then saw that it didn't start on January 10th, it starts on February 10th.  How imperfect can one little scrapper be????  It sounds like it will be good and hopefully by then I will be back fighting fit and raring to go.
Wish that I could shake off these germs, it's not a good way to start the year but at least it all started after the festivities and not before!  Always looking for the positive spin on things!
Must be time for another lemsip .......

Black (& white) and blue

Well today has not been quite the day I had planned.  I am supposed to be in the middle of the 10 hour crop extravaganza that was rescheduled after the snow in December but instead I am sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, sneezing and coughing and popping cold and flu capsules on a four hourly basis.  Stupid germs.
So instead, I will post the second of  my black and white pictures and with a nod to my intention to 'Learn' more new things, I am posting this:

My sister gave me these little tea light holders, all in slightly different shades of blue.  They look so pretty when lit (although not so easy to photograph!)

I love the idea of having a photo in black and white but picking out one coloured element to keep in the picture.  So I downloaded an app onto my iphone (how on earth did I manage without that phone?) where you take a photo, it automatically changes it to black and white and then you zoom in and pick out the bits that you want to restore to the original colour.  Clever - huh?  I thought I would experiment on something that was a reasonable size to work on but intend to try this on a smaller element within a black and white print. 

So that's me done, must be time for another nap.  Hope you kept a safe distance away while reading this, I'd hate to spread these germs around blogland.

Happy Saturday! 



Necessity is the mother of invention

As part of our Christmas gifts, the kids had got us a combined present from them both.  The main part of the present was a canvas print of a picture they had taken at our anniversary party.

Looks good on the wall of the study.  It is such a nice relaxed pose and none of us are blinking or pulling a funny face!  With this, they had also had a selection of other black and white photos printed off for us to put in an album.  But I had a bit of an idea that they would look good in the album that I had used for the pages I had scrapbooked of our trip to Bath and the party.  I remembered seeing some divided page protectors and set about trying to find them on the internet.  Seems they are easy to buy in the US, but all out of stock in the UK.  I wanted the ones that had a variety of landscape/portrait pouches. 

Then I remembered something from Shimelle's class that was all about making things out of stuff you already have and I set to work on some plain 12 x 12 page protectors and the sewing machine.  Ta Da!!! 

For some reason Blogger wants to keep turning this picture on it's side and I can't put it up the right way but you get the idea!

Something different

I'm going to try and make 2011 the year that I take the opportunity to learn whatever new things are offered to me.  So that's my word for the year - 'Learn'.  {Kind of appropriate for someone who works in a school eh?}
I have been doing a bit of blog hopping today and came across the idea for taking one photo a week in black and white.  I've not done too much in B&W previously so this is a fine opportunity for me to put good intentions to the test.  I also took the opportunity of downloading an app for my phone that allows me to do a bit more editing.  So - Week One and photo one:

Aren't you pleased you aren't a duck?  Their little feet must be frozen on the ice.  This photo was taken at a lake that is about half a mile from our house.  The snow has now gone from everywhere but bits of the lake are still frozen.  Silly ducks are still congregating on this iced bit because it's close to the path and that's where all the kids like to come down with their bags of bread to feed the ducks.  If they weren't quite so greedy, they could walk across a bit and find where the ice had melted!

Back to school for me tomorrow.  When we broke up and had 2 weeks holiday, it seemed a nice long time.  Suddenly it seems like only yesterday that I was last there.  Got to feel a bit sorry for our year 11 girls though, first day back and they are straight in for GCSE Mock exams!   

Off to a good start

Reunited with friends who moved to Belgium

Good food, fine wine, in the company of good friends

Seeing in another new year with the husband!

So far - so good!  Hope you had a good New Year's Eve too!