Dinosaur Cake

I think Rainbow Delicious is safe from me nicking any of their customers as my cake modelling skills isnt all that great, lol.

My Triceratops looks more like a fat chameleon or something ....

...but Kai recognised what it was, and was very happy with it, that was the main thing.

Whats on Your Workdesk Wednesday #95

Today is Kai's 4th birthday so my table had to have a bit of a tidy, along with the rest of downstairs, ready for any visitors. It, however, is a lovely spot to start making Kai's cake .... he wants a dinosaur cake, eep! pop by tomorrow to see how I got on :)

In the backfround you can see my usual bowl of fruit, still in its bags .... I find it gets less bruises like this, but I must at somepoint invest in a new fruit bowl as the bars on this one really isnt practical.

You can also see good ol' vick! Poor Kai has got an awful cough & cold, which turned into a fever yesterday. Thankfully the fever broke & hes a lot chirpier today.

Finally theres also 3 frames for a little, simple project I'm working on, my moms old photos to scan (photos of her as a baby, my grandparents wedding photo etc), as well as a few scrapbooking bits, any pages I'm in the process of constructing go in the "pizza box".

Hows about joining in with WOYWW and link up over at Stamping Ground, I'm #90

Father like Son

This page came from an idea I got from Ruths Scrapinspire sketch

I'm sure Ry wont be a happy bunny with me putting this on here but its such a cute photo of him & Kai, and I'm very happy how the page turned out.

Banana Fritters

One of my families favourite puddings is banana fritters. They are simple to make, cheap & get the goodness in bananas down their throats :) This is even a good way to get rid of over ripe bananas.

Ingredients
Bananas
2oz Flour
1 egg
1/4pt milk
1/4tsp baking powder
Veg oil for deep frying
syrup or sugar

Method
Put the oil on to heat, keeping a close eye on it

Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Make a well in the center and crack the egg into it. Combine a bit of flour with the egg & then add a small quantity of milk and stir. Continue adding the milk gradually, stirring all the while, until all the milk is added and the batter is of a smooth consistency. Beat for about 5 minutes, cover and set aside.


Cut the bananas in half and cover them throughly in the batter mix. Add to the oil & fry until golden. Drain & place onto kitchen roll. Serve warm with either syrup or sugar sprinkled on top.

Black(berry) Beauty

I find it quite hard to think of titles at times so Ryan came up wit this one for me.

I'm not happy with where the journalling is, I think it needs to be higher, and written in brown .... a brown acid free fine line is on my shopping list, actually I only have 2 whispers pens & they are fab for journalling so whisper markers in general are on my wanted list.

I wanted to leave this page very simple as I think it makes the main photo stand out more that way.

Train Journey

As you've seen I'm currently doing a few more detailed pages on our summer hols, this latest one is about our train journey to Brum, Kai's first ever train journey. I used 4 tickets from the journey to add details to the journalling such as the date we went.

I made a card!!!!

First one this year.

Rocking My World Friday

Well these past few weeks have been very up and down so lets sift through for the good stuff!

I have received an AWESOME epilator/razor combi thats rrps for £169.99 :-O & I got it for free (double ;-O ) to try out and give my honest opinion about, having never used an epilator before its an eye opening (& watering) experience (my first post on it is HERE if you want a nosey/giggle at my pain)

My lil sis & I went for a wonderful clothes shopping trip, shopping for clothes for ME! this is a very rare occassion but was definately necessary & therapeutic, especially as she had a 40% off voucher for peacocks (the shop, not the bird!) which could be used on sale items - there was a lovely £30 maxi dress reduced to £8, & then with 40% off!!!! Yay!!!  In total I bought 2 hats, 3 pairs of trousers, 2 cardi's, 2 blouses, 1 T-shirt, 1 skirt, 1 dress & a pair of shoes, original price about £150, with discount etc £50 ..... I do love a good bargain - though I must admit 1/4 that lot ended up being for the kids, well they are still growing whereas its usually only my waistband that grows ;-)

The weather has cheered up, flowers are showing, greenery is sprouting everywhere, birds are singing & their are signs of new life everywhere.

My other half passed his managerial course & is now the 1st and only senior assistant manager is his area (which covers at least 1/2 the west midlands), this unfortuantely doesnt come with a pay rise but does mean his job is a lot more secure & is a step closer to getting his own store.

I recently had blood taken for testing & all is clear which is both good & bad. Its good that I have nothing physically wrong with me but not so good as I am on a waiting list of unknown length to seek help on my worsening agoraphobia, I also think that my drs kind of at a loss what to do with me in the mean time. But at least I found the strength to go ask for help in the first place! Its also shown me that there are some wonderful friends out there who are very supportive (& others who just dont "get it", but we'll just leave them be)

I have some lovely photos to scrap of my youngest from his learning journey book, and ideas from recent events, such as him crying at "walking with dinosaurs" as the dinos kept dying & one couldnt fly at the end, was so sweet, & then laughing as the one dino marked its territory (it pee'd everywhere, a really "I'm desperate for the loo" type gush) .... its also an insentive for me to save up for a little while to get some new scrapbooking goodies, such as some dino papers and embellishments.

Need some more heartwarming stories, or are just plain nosey (like me) go check out Virginia's blog

Whats on Your Workdesk Wednesday #93

Today I was allowed to borrow Kai's "Learning Journey" book to look through, its like a scrapbook to show what they can do and have learnt. Its filled with artwork he's done that show certain skills, photos taken on days out, special occassions etc. With so many prescious memories in it I took this opportunity to scan some of the pages ... we may be given the book when he leaves pre-school but some have to be sent to off as proof of what the children do, so I am being prepared! You can therefore see on the table (notice I have a much nicer black tablecloth on, woohoo!! wipe clean as well ;-) my laptop and scanner. While they were out I also fished out any photos I had that needed scanning as I hate using the original photos with scrapbooking incase I make a mistake.It also means I can play with the contrast, colours, share & print out as many as I want. These are the first pile you can see. The next pile is a scrapbooking page I am preparing, then behind that is some cardboard recycling I have sorted out ready to pop outside for collection ..... please ignore that pile :)

The blue tub at the back is my beads & jewellery making items that I want to play with this week as well as my craft robo. I've barely played with it since getting it & I am really going to make the effort to learn the tricks of the trade to get some amazing effects. Anyone know of any sites to get ideas & tips from?

Hows about going over to Julias site to have a look around some more Workdesks, mine is #142

Flying Free

I simply cut around the edge of the cloud page, & made the photos into cloud shapes as well. Once on I added the title & found embellishments of a flying nature to add on.

The journalling reads...

"We got the camera out and timed it so that the photo was of Zack & Kai in mid-air, as if they were flying"

Summer 2010

I'm upto summer with my 2010 scrapping, which is probably the time I take most of my photos. As theres several pages to do I decided to start with a summary page.

I simply put a sample of photos from each activity onto Microsoft Publisher & printed them off. 2 A4 sheets worth, & 2 rows of 4. I stuck them onto a white background, added the title, thickers, and wrote short, sharp descriptions of what we got upto for the journalling.

I didnt want to add too much detail as the individual pages I do on each event will have this on.

Team Work

Remember the Skinny Choc & Cranberry Muffins from last month? Here is me scrapping about it not only to save the memory but to also save the recipe. I want to do more recipe pages like this, may need a whole new album for them :)

By the way, if theres any scrapbook paper manufacturers readng this .... some other coloured cupcakes on paper would be nice rather than pink or yellow, they dont go with everything, and though I dont tie colour to gender I would appreciate more choice.

12th Birthday

On this layout I am forgiving myself for taking awful photos! I have no idea what happened, when I can to look at the photos I'd taken they all seemed AWFUL! However, I think they show the main idea and feeling, and I would hope will spark memories for the kids when they are older.

Brown Sugar Meringues

I grew up with having brown sugar meringues made for us by my Mom. They are easy to make and are far superior in taste to the usual plain meringues.

these are all thats left out of a batch of 24 after 3 days :-O (yes, I did eat most of them **blushes**)

Heres how to make them...

Ingredients:-
3 egg whites
3oz caster sugar
4oz brown sugar

Whisk the egg whites until it forms stiff peaks (when turn the whisk off & lift up it creates a "peak" in the egg whites that stay up & pointy)
Whisk in Caster sugar gradually until it forms firm peaks (when turn the whisk off & lift up it creates a "peak" in the egg whites that stay up & but the points curve under)
Sprinkle brown sugar over the mix and fold in carefully.
Place a tablespoon of the mix onto a baking sheet covered in baking paper.
Preheat oven to 140oC, bake for 1&1/2 hours.
When cooked turn the oven off & do not remove until completely cool.
Use a fish slice to remove.

Whats On Your Workdesk Wednesday?

This week I'm sewing!! As part of my "becoming a lady" Lesson C (heres the info behind it) I have sorted through my wardrobe & found a bunch of clothes I need to alter to fit, repair or totally revamp.
At the front of the table you can see my leather coat that needed a few minor repairs & rehemming .... while sewing it my needle broke, grrrr, so sewing is now on hiatus until I can get to the shops tomorrow & buy a new needle.
On the pile are mainly trousers to shorten & big baggy T-shirts to restyle. When these are done I'll move onto larger jobs such as making bags & dresses.

So whats on YOUR workdesk wednesday, hows about joining in HERE, I'm #105

Introducing SCRAPINSPIRE !!!

Remember last week when I mention something exciting ... well here it is!!! Scrapinspire.
Its a little idea that Ruth & I came up with to hopefully inspire each other to craft. It may have started as a little idea but we'd love you guys to join in & make it a HUGE project :)
Each month we're going to take it in turns to blog an idea to inspire, this month Ruth has put up a wonderful sketch, please hop on over to take a look & give your support.
If you do decide to join in please take our logo (one above) & link back, it would make our month!

When Scrapping, the hardest part for me is the title, have you any favourite quotes from books, songs, films, people etc that would work on a scrapbook page?

Spiderman

The Haunted collection paper covered in spiders was perfect for a spiderman layout. If my brain had thought of it before I would have done it more comic book style but I'm sure there will be plenty of other photo ops I can do like that.

A very simple page but I think it works nicely :)