Margaret & George's wedding card

My hubby's Aunt Margaret is due to get married to George on Saturday 31st. I thought I'd make a wee personalised card to send to them. Unfortunately we are unable to join them in their celebrations but wish them all the best for the future.

Testing your reflexes! [ just a bit of fun!]

Getting old, are we? Reflexes slowing down?

As I remember, the automobile driving manual says the average driver's reaction time is: .75 seconds -or- 1 car length for every 10 mph...

Test your reaction time with this special test. Click here:

Morven's doing the "Race for Life"

This is Morven, my friend Suzanne's daughter. She is taking part in the Race for Life raising monies for cancer research on behalf of a wee local Tranent girl, Iona McMurdoch who sadly lost her battle to cancer last year.

Iona is a wee girl who wasn't on our earth for very long and she had such an impact on lots of people even those who hadn't been honoured to meet her. In particular, Iona's friends who now attend Sanderson's Wynd Primary School miss her very much.

Please help Morven raise as much as she can for this fantastic charity - she is doing a wonderful job! Any monetary donation can me made here

Olivia's birthday

Better late than never - we'll get to the birthday BBQ eventually! Here's a wee snippet of what her birthday card looks like! I eventually got round to using my Sizzix quilting die to cut out the flower petals.

Elsie's Photo shoot

I thought I would share a small amount of images from Elsie's family photo shoot taken place at the end of April. *waves* hello to Chelle, Paul & Elsie! I was really chuffed with the outcome of the photos and the large sized images that Chelle wanted to be printed, I had ordered from Photobox arrived within a day of uploading and paying for them. The 12"x10" matt images were just fab!

Denise's Birthday BBQ

Last weekend we went to Denise's [my chum from high school days] birthday BBQ. The morning started off not too great with rain, overcast and then thankfully the rain kept off. It was great to bump into another chum from high school days, Dianne. We exchanged email addies and a promise from me to send her a copy of some photos from our leaving school do in Edinburgh's Minto Hotel. I hope she got them okay as I haven't yet heard from her! We had a lovely time at Denise's - her grandad is a very sweet man and we had the honour of meeting him. A wee blether to Sandra [Denise's mum] and a few other peeps I knew. Before we knew it, it was time to make tracks to get home for the kids.

Beautiful flowers

Towards the end of the school Health Week, I had a horrible unsavoury person from our neighbourhood approach me with eventual verbal obscenities. That was on my way to school to pick up my children at the end of the day. I was kinda shaken up and upset by the time I had arrived at school. Luckily, Sharon and Suzanne my chums and fellow organisers, greeted me at the door and calmed me down before I went on my way home with the kids. Later that evening, Sharon stopped by and kindly presented me with a hug and a beautiful display of flowers! That really made my day as no-one has ever done that for me – the flowers were really beautiful and the colours very much in abundance! So ‘thank you‘ Sharon for my gorgeous flowers – I took some time to photograph them of course! :o)

School Health Week Promotion 12-16th May

Shocking!!! For 2 whole weeks I haven’t had time to update my blog due to being very busy indeed!

Week of 12-16th May was particularly busy being involved in the promotion of ‘Health Week’ at my kids’ primary school. I was one the 3 parent members of our kids’ school fundraising/ parent council involved in 4 activities for the kids to try out. Most days we arrived at school with our own children at around 8 am. We organised “swop a snack” and had to produce 300 healthy snacks per day – with every day being different! That was really the biggest part of tasks we had planned. The swop a snack challenge involved offering pupils a healthy alternative snack instead of eating the sweets or crisps their parents sent them to school with. The 1st day being Monday, we had arranged cereals as their alternative – choc minibix, weetos and shreddies. Did you know that there is less sugar in choc minibix compared to branflakes?! Tuesday we had to prepare fresh vegetables, Wednesday was whole fruit, Thursday was tropical fruit salad and Friday was a variety of crackers and cheese. They were all very popular and it was great to see the kids ‘buzz’ with the excitement at what was going to be their snack each day! That was 1 of our tasks.

The 2nd task was the “what’s in your lunchbox?” We put together a few items most parents would assume would be healthy and others perhaps easy options to pop into their lunch boxes. The children and some staff were shocked to see how much fat, sugar and salt were in these items! It was really an awareness/education for the kids to let them know that a little of these items are okay for now and again moments but not ideal for every day. In some items, the children would have had at least ½ the daily advised amount of fat, sugar or salt at lunchtime alone! A real eye opener!

Our 3rd task was the celebrity diet. We chose a healthy celeb, very slim celeb and an undesirably fat celeb. Devised some breakfast, lunch and dinner menus according to each celeb, mixed them up and got the older kids in groups to discuss who is healthy, who is almost healthy and who isn’t healthy and what could be done to amend this. The children’s participation and response was just awesome!

Our 4th task was ‘blind tasting’. We prepared blind folds cut out of a cheap fleece blanket – enough for a class. Prepared white and wholemeal pitta bread, bread and wraps and some fresh veg such as halved cherry tomatoes, cubed baby corn, peapods. A lot of the middle school kids just did not like some/most of the items tried. We had once class whom the majority put their hands up to show they did not like brown or wholemeal bread etc. Those same children were surprised to see that they had actually enjoyed the wholemeal items over the white food items! The best response to say they had enjoyed all or most of the items were in primary 2!

Sharon, our ‘mentor’ managed to pop round the school to film a few activities going on in school that week and put together a little movie. We finished off the week by holding a parents’ drop in morning on the Friday as it was ‘Jog Scotland’ and the classes took their turns jogging round the measured pitch a few times in the school grounds. As we were parent helpers, we were invited to join the school in their assembly and watched the video Sharon put together and then the slideshow with 2 school pupil narrators – quite emotional. Afterwards we [parent helpers] were presented with gift tokens for a local beauticians – which was very unexpected and appreciated!

So all in all that week was very busy!

Baby Jayden

Congratulations to Tracy, Steven and Kelsey!

Alwynne's chum's mum recently had a wee baby boy whom they named Jayden. It's great to see an influx of baby boys being born as for a while it was lots of little girlies! As I only know Tracy and Steven to talk to in the school playground or in the 'passing', and I know Kelsey [Alwynne's chum], I thought I would make up a little 'minding' for the baby's arrival.

Firstly, I made up a Sizzix die cut baby album using various accents and embellishments. And also using the Stamping Up stamp and the Stamping Up Spiral punch for the insert with poem in the mini album plus fibres and ribbon on the book-ring hinges. I had bought a couple of white wicker baskets at the end of April when I saw them I thought they would come in handy! They already had their own cotton lining and all I added was the blue ribbon and used the Stamping Up retired "Sweet One" stamp with embossing powder and the heat gun and used the SU scallop punch to punch that out. I did a couple of the punchouts so that the basket, card and mini album all corresponded. The basket I filled with about 8 newborn baby nappies, baby shampoo, baby bath, a ramer sponge, travel pack of baby wipes, anti-bac hand gel and a bar of baby soap along with a mini Winnie the Pooh! I then cellophane wrapped the mini album and added the personalised label. I punched a hole in this label so that I could feed the curling ribbon through it so that it joined with the ribbon bow I made for the finished cellophane wrapped basket.

Spider web dew

Yesterday [Wednesday] we awoke to a misty morning. Nothing unusual in that for some peeps! I go about my usual tasks of quickly tidying up and vacuuming the living areas etc, wake the kids up for school, go for my shower etc. I eventually get round to hanging up the laundry on the washing lines when I realise I disturbed a spider web! Again, nothing unusual about that! I was amazed to see not 1 but 2 webs coated with early morning dew and what an awesome site that was. Oh the simplicities eh? LOL At this point I realise I have disturbed 1 of the webs but at the same point relieved to see the other web had survived. I rush back in the house to get the camera only to realise that no matter where I aimed the camera to capture that image, the backgrounds would just be too busy and clearly show up on the photo. So not like me, I have a 'light bulb moment' to go and find a piece of card stock for my background to take the shot and this was the end result:

Photography course - Yay I reached the top 10 favourites!

For the 2nd week running I discover that 2 of my images have each been chosen as one the top 10 favourites! :o) I cant tell you how much that made my day! The 1st image of mine, I didn't think was too startling or even that good to be honest but it just goes to show, images whether photographic or artistic, can be appreciated with a different interpretation by the person viewing the image.

The module this image was submitted for was for 'framing'. You had to look around you and and open your eyes to what could naturally 'frame' the image within your frame. This is one of the images that I came up with which is one of the many lanes in and around Tranent:

This is another image I submitted but didn't reach the top 10 but I was happy with it as it was my son at the park!

This was the 2nd image of my brother-in-law's car [previously shown on my blog] which reached top 10 and top 5 of the favourites for the module for 'tilt and turn' your camera to give more interest to your shots. Usually my shots consist of portrait and landscape images so this module was good practice for me!

My other 2 submissions for the 'tilt and turn' module were these 2 images - one of which I have already published on this blog and the other - 3 generations - I am very proud of the finished items!