still here

Yes, I'm still here...! Nothing much to report, aside from running around non-stop after a baby and a dog. I've managed to find some time to do a few scrapbook pages, though, including this one. My tactic is to stay up very late at night and get no sleep, but that way I find time to craft! (OK... I didn't say it was sensible). I've used a lime green Maya Road mist with a mask made from an old scrap of scalloped square cardstock found in the midden-ous pile on my desk; I love these mists and I find I'm using them a lot at the moment. The new colours have a bit of shimmer in them - just the right amount and not as much as the Tattered Angel glimmer mists (which I don't like quite so much). The photo of my page isn't the best, I'm afraid, primarily because the lighting at 2am isn't particularly good!

I also seem to be making (and eating) a lot of cherry scones. Why? I don't know. All I know is that I make the scones and then they disappear. Marley quite likes them, as does Ian. I've scoffed a fair few myself.

The other thing I seem to be doing a lot of is washing/laundry; whatever you want to call it, it's the same - time-consuming and there seems to be lots of it. What really gets my goat is finding a pair of socks (or two or three) on the floor once I've got the stuff in the machine and the machine is running. Do men ever pick up socks? I need a better sock radar.

Erin is being a good wee soul. Lots of fun and she's smiling and laughing all the time. Yesterday morning she tried to sit up on her own, which is amazing (to me, at least - I wasn't expecting that quite so soon) and she tried twice more last night and once again this morning... a determined and persistent wee girl!

Marley's birthday book

No sunshine today thus far, but no rain either... so I'm fine with that. It feels like a nice autumnal day. Autumn is by miles my favourite season, but preferably not with torrential rain and gale force winds that we've had over the past few weeks! This is another of the mini books I managed to complete over the course of the "summer". It contains a bunch of photos I took to celebrate Marley's first birthday. I've used black, white and silver, lots of white gel pen and little circular distressed embellishments made from punched circles. The back cover is stamped on the right hand side (see below) with one of the stamps from the Stampin' Up! Fresh Cuts stamp set. I think the chipboard album was a Cosmo Cricket one, but can't quite recall as I'd had it lying in a cupboard for ages crying out to be used!

I've been up since 5am this morning (not with Erin... she slept until much, much later!) as I've got a billion things to do... so I'm off to do them! If I'm lucky, I might manage to find time to do something creative later (ok... much later)!

ice cream and cherries

Well... some sunshine at last! It was sunny yesterday and it's the same again today. After all the rain, it seems incredible that we've had a few days of sunshine in a row. The weather encouraged me to make this ice cream card for a friend. The stamps are by Unity Stamp Co and the cardstock is SU. The ribbon and patterned paper were bits and pieces from boxes on my desk, so I'm not sure about the manufacturers.

I was very bad yesterday when I went shopping, as I bought more baby clothes... there are such nice clothes for babies and I didn't realise H&M sold baby clothes - a friend told me they had some nice things and it's not a shop that I've ever shopped in, really. They had a whole range of Hello Kitty and Bambi things and I had to buy a few, notwithstanding the fact that the last thing Erin needs is more clothes. My tactic now is to buy bigger sizes with a view to justifying purchases and saving money in future.... Seems logical to me!

mini books

Aside from thank you cards in spades, I've been working on quite a few mini books over the last few months.

This one uses a template from the Cocoa Daisy web-site (created by the talented scrapper who owns this blog; a link to the template is here). It's a book covering the months of June, July and August and, in retrospect, the "warm days of summer" front cover was probably tempting fate (or, perhaps, just being rather too optimistic for the west coast of Scotland). I haven't quite finished it, but the front cover is shown above and the inside front cover is shown below. I managed to bind it today using my bind-it-all (which always takes me forever - I seem to have a mental block with it).

... another (easy) thank you card

Another easy card. I've used stamps from Unity Stamp Co for this one (and, once again, Stampin' Up! oval punches).   The cardstock is SU Regal Rose and Whisper White and the patterned paper is also by SU.

Bizarrely, it hasn't been raining for two days out of the last four.... that's the first two days in about six weeks that we've had no rain. Everywhere is like a swamp and Shrek has taken up residence at the bottom of my garden.

thank you cards

Some fairly quick and easy thank you cards I've been making over the last few months... I've made loads of each (and I don't usually make more than one of the same card)! I've been using them for baby gifts and a number of other things and I made the first batch of 20 or so for a card swap I was involved in back in June.

I've use the Stampin' Up! oval and scallop oval punches on both cards (and there's Dazzling Diamonds glitter around the scalloped sections). I've also used the Oval All stamp set and I've used the Paisley background stamp for the Regal Rose card and the Pocket Silhouette stamp set for the Real Red card.

Alive!

Alive! Yes, I'm still alive (notwithstanding three days of labour... they call it "labour" for a reason). Baby Erin is now part of my world and she's two months old. Time has flown and everything - including this blog - ground to a halt for a while, but I'm back in the land of the living once again (well... sort of). Erin is brilliant... I don't remember what life was like without her and I feel very privileged indeed to have her. She is truly a little miracle. I think she thinks I'm her personal stalker, as the first thing she sees in the morning is my face peering at her and it's the same last thing at night! She hasn't learned how to use a rubber stamp yet, but it won't be long.