Alphanumeric Blog Hop

Welcome to the first Alphanumeric blog hop! If you've just dived in please hop on over to our Alpha leaders blog 'I Speak Melsh' to start from the very beginning, a very good place to start ...ooops, sorry, off track already, this is a blog hop about letters and numbers, not scales :-)
Its well worth joining us on the hop as Mel has a little competition over on her blog along with a prize .. do go & take a look.

You should have come over from 'Just Jim Jams' but if your a bit lost along the way there is a list at the end of this post with links to all participants.

So without further a do todays Blog post is brought to you by the letter 'U'

I decided to choose my usual choice of medium & go with scrapbooking. An easy task I thought, so many U words flowing through my mind & probably driving Mel a bit scatty with my odd emails full of U words - for example .....

"....I shall undertake the task of using u and utilize it to my utmost. I understand and shall wait upon your uttering’s of the upcoming unison of all our blogs when we shall unite in unison, a utopia of uncials
Until then, I bid you an unabashed, unceremonial, upbeat
aU revoir"

But then my brain blew a fuse & refused to work, it took me quite a time looking through photos before I came up with anything. When I finally did the synapses sparked quickly & I knew exactly what I wanted to do; And so I present to 'U'

"Everything Is Fun With 'U'"

Its the first kind of grunge style I've tried (is that what its called? or do the cool scrap cats have another name for it?) and something I want to do more of while playing with different techniques.

I started off with the photos and the idea of corrugated card to reflect the boxes, then I found the brown sheet to back it onto & decided to get the paints out & do some textures. These were simply done with lace, a cut out border & that holey plastic stuff (see, I'm full of technical terms, lol), a thick brush to stipple with and a piece of card.

I added letters for the title from various sets to keep up the messy feel but drew round them in black pen to not only make them stand out more, to conform them a little more to each other and the page.
To finish I mounted it all on a green sheet to again make the letters a bit more uniform.
 
Thank you for joining me in working with the letter U, your next stop is 'Life....as I see it'
 
I Speak Melsh
BE Glorious
Captured On Film
Chatty Crafty Arty Pig
Creating Room
Curiouser and Curiouser
Daily Life - Bits and Pieces
Deb's World
Den's Crafty Diary
From High In The Sky
Gallo Organico
Ginger's Life Of Spice
Handmade By Kirsty
Havoc and Mayhem
Heather's Scraps
Helena's Creative Maven
Holaday's Happy Hearts
Jeant-Jinnag
Just Jimjams
K's Crafty Corner <- U are here
Life...As I See It
{Life Behind The Purple Door}
Lisa E Design Blog
Living Life One Blessing At A Time
Mary's Musings
Michelle Loves...
Obstinate Pursuit
Over At Our Place
Paper Turtle
Peonies and Pennies
Random Reflections
Rosalind Revival
Scrap Dreams
Scrappyjacky
Scrapworthy Lives
Staring At The Sea
Surefiredaisy Says
This Kalil Life
This Little Life Of Mine
Xnomads' Blog

Rocking MY World Friday

I have to say I am Much happier this week, its amazing how down I can get when feeling ill. I'm not fully better yet, I have some rather painful, swollen lymph nodes in my throat, & am coughing a lot at night, but it has made me so greatful for the little things that I have been missing out on last week. I would like to say I'll never take breathing through my nose for granted again, though I'm sure I will, but it is WONDERFUL to be able to breath through my nose! I hate eating with my mouth open, and look really thick walking round with my mouth open (even a little bit) to breath.

Hooray for taste! I can taste again!! I had been smearing my food with grainy mustard, eating very salty or very sweet foods just to get a reaction from my taste buds when I eat, but now I can taste and am enjoying foods again, I even broke into my easter eggs ..... ooops, guess whose got to replace her cadburys creme eggs!!!

Hoorah for people who invented Paracetamol & ibrufen! These are really helping me keep going & remain chirpy :)

Its the Holidays, yay!!! I have been able to have the odd lie in & use my children as servants to fetch & carry my every whim .... well, no, my children are too strong willed for that but they have helped out upon occassion.

I am totally ROCKING my prize I won from Gauche Alchemy, & the speed that it arrived.

It was wrapped beautifully in part of a sewing pattern and lace. I spent about 15mins shaking the bags & peeking at the "treasure" before actually opening the bags to get a proper look & used one part immediately (see 2 birthdays, the material circle behind the little title button on the pink page).

Finally, & the ultimate ROCK of the week, my other half has done it again!!! He sold his xbox 360 to get me an ipad :-O He borrowed one from work to play with for the night, & bought it me the next day as I liked it so much. Its an early birthday present as he couldnt wait until the 6th May to give it to me. Its great to slip in my bag & take with me, to watch programmes on, play games etc etc etc. Anyone recommend any good apps? (these can be for the ipad or iphone as it accepts both).

2 birthdays

Kai & his cousins birthday are only 3 days apart, so I decided to do a double page that also works as single pages as well.

Layla's was pink, & cupcakey, Kai's is blue & dotty.

I used the Scrapinspire layout

Chinese red envelopes

Kai made chinese red envelopes to celebrate Chinese new Year at Pre-school; He also tried some chinese food as well.

My sister received an order where they used an oriental newspaper to wrap it in (There was no way I could tell if it was Chinese or Japanese), and let me have it. With a bit of aging it was perfect for this layout. Might look a bit weird to anyone who can actually read it though.

I downloaded a chinese looking font to do the journalling in & had a few oriental characters that I used on the red card. I scruffed up the page a little with some gold ink, and added black lines I'd cut off some left over peel off sheets.

Having made this I began to wonder what other countries might use for "British" pages, what stereotypes they might use or newspapers/books etc.

Rocking MY World Friday

Click on the piccy above to link up :)

I have to admit that when I'm feeling sooooooo ill, and getting limited help at home, its very hard to feel positive about anything. Its been a week now & though I know I'm a bit better I really am not getting my energy back, look appalling (yes, that is an issue for me), and manners have gone totally out the window, mainly so I can breath. So I'm digging deep here .....

My 1st point I didnt have to dig for though - My eldest, Zack, has been attending a club almost since he started secondary school last September, the club has split itself into 3 groups, his group sells cards and gift tags they make themselves, as well as stationary. They have to work out costs, their profit margin, target audience etc. They have won several awards in the area for this innitiative. At the end of the school year 1/2 the profit goes to charity, the rest is divide between everyone who attends the club. As the woman running the club is passing on the reins she decided to share the money out this week at a little party she organised for them  - they each got £7.50p, theres 14 club members making a total of £105 to charity.
They learn so much about business & handling money at the club, & to actually EARN the money is a huge boost to them, even if it is below minimum wage they all have so much fun doing it. I am so proud how he has stuck to this club and enjoys it.

Ooooooo, Competitions are DEFINATELY rocking my world, I won a prize over at Gauche Alchemy! Cant wait for it to arrive so I have new goodies to play with.

Mothers day, I was given a set of 36 papermania pens so I can write my journalling on my scrapbook pages without moaning that the colour doesnt go with the page, lol. I had a LOVELY Lamb roats cooked me, I love lamb, yum yum! Zack was sent out for supplies to the local shops but when he found they didnt have my fav drink (Pepsi) he took it upon himself to walk 20mins further in each direction to go to the shopping centre to get it. This is something he definately would not normally do.

Oooo, my Mom for buying me my flu meds & dropping them off with my other half while he was at work (its a half way between our houses) as he couldnt get out to get them.... & she got me Pepsi as well, :-D

Kai for making me laugh with his funny ways and comments, such as today he told me he wanted circles for lunch! I obliged by slicing up cucumbers, carrots and an apple, putting it with round crackers... then I had to do triangles for his cuddly toy cat, lol.

Finally whats Rocking MY World is Pepsi!!! I probably would have been a heap on the sofa if it wasnt for its lovely caffeineness, & the house would have fallen down around me.

Gone Fishing!

As some of my regular readers know we took the kiddies to Sealife for Kai's birthday treat ... and its quite shocking that seeing it was only a week ago today that I have actually scrapped it!

I was totally inspired when I saw THIS sketch from Creative Craft World, and knew exactly what I wanted to do.

In our house we all have digital cameras, even Kai has a Tomy one, but only I remembered to take one with us ... but found I'd forgotten my SD card for it. Only I had remembered my camera phone, but had forgotten to charge it the night before, DOH!!! So I only managed to get 6 photos, all 6 used on these pages.

I cut circles out of some gorgeous blue, shiny paper that looked like it had waves on it, glued along the bottom of them & dipped into flaked shells ... nothing like being authentic!! lol.

I raised the photos up on double sided foam to make them stand out more, the centre photos having 2 layers.

I cut the swirls out of patterened card, raising the ends with foam pads at different heights, then finishing off with crystals, puff paint and 1/2 pearls.

I added a journalling sticker to the right page and wrote
"We went to Sealife, Birmingham, as part of Kai's 4th Birthday , with "Nemo", sharks, seahorses, and more"

At the bottom I glued a few real, tiny shells. I also stuck a peel off shell outline to some double sided plastic & shook over tiny, tiny, tiny, gold balls before applying to the page

I added a few stickers at the bottom of "bottom dwellers" such as water snails, lobsters etc

I finished off by adding fish, and other sea creatures across the circle before applying to a sheet of pale blue paper, which you may just about be able to make out whale pictures on.

Whats On Your Workdesk Wednesday

Normally you get to see my table all organised after I have stsrted crafting, or am about to as I do try & tidy it and reorganise once I've come to an end ... this end can be finishing a project or just part if it.
Today you get to see it just after I've completed 2 layouts that took 2days on & off.

So what can we see (apart from a mess)?
At the front is my layout I've just finished (more details at the weekend), which is balancing upon a dictionary, a set of papermania pens, a tub of embellishments, & oh yes, a loo roll!! I have a bad case of the flu so tissues are ESSENTIAL to have at hand. Either side are leaflets & memorabelia to gather ideas from, my BIG notebook for jotting any ideas, crafty stuffs & quite a pile of the plastic strips off double sided tape, and foam tabs (well, I have only just finished!)

The chair at the front right that you can just about see is sideways on so I can lean back on the radiator :)

In the centre is my lappy as usual, and my "layouts in progress" box, if I'm gathering items for a particular layout, or have to put an unfinished one away this is where it goes. Underneath are more little craft tubs.

Then theres my washing out of the tumble dryer, waiting to be put away (I was not going to stop crafting for something that could be done later ;-), my usual bagged fruit, green wallet of photos that need scanning, my external harddrive another ESSENTIAL piece of equipment for backing up all my precious photos on, & finally the other layout I was working on (shall be posting it here tomorrow).

Some of you may be wondering where my obligatory glass of Pepsi is ... can you see the top of the bottle to the left of the table? My glass is next to that, no need for me to get up for a refill :)

I got another Xmas photo...

...that needed to be scrapped :)

The photo was very dark but its a precious one I got from the Pre-school of Kai meeting Father Christmas for the first time.

I used the March sketch from Scrapology, making the circle into Santa's over flowing bag with all the presents (& the photo) tumbling out.

I originally wanted to do the journalling on the sack but my pens wouldnt work on its slippy surface so used the space underneath.

I THINK I've only got one more christmas layout left to do for last year, Kai dressed as a sheep in the school nativity play, and the frosty walk we took afterwards.

Rocking MY World Friday

Its Friday again, yay!! I've never grown out of that friday feeling, even when the weekend hasnt started on a friday night for me. So I'm linking up with Virginia at Celtic House again for Rocking Your World Friday.

This week started off with a kiddie party at my SILs for my niece, close family only and it was an utter scream, so much fun. Pass the parcel, pinata, musical statues, and a right royal feast.

I made a computer desk for the kids out of an old kitchen worktop and a fish tank stand/cabinet, it tidied up our back hallway, gave the kids somewhere to use the computer, and I'm very proud of how it turned out.

Kai has been ill this week with a v.bad cough & cold. Each day, at around 3, he's gone very tired, had a nap, and woken up with a high temperature - strange thing, I know, to put in a list of positives, but when he's like this all he wants is me, which makes me feel very special. (I've tried giving him calpol before hand but this wakes him up and he takes the nap later, so calpol when he wakes it is :)

Wednesday was Kai's birthday & not only did he have a good day but we also seem to have got it right with all the things we got him, woohoo!!

As part of Kai's birthday we all took a trip to Sealife Birmingham.... not only was it a fun day for all of us but I'm also quite proud of myself for being able to get around Brum town centre. As a college student I'd go up about once a month shopping or just hanging round with friends so in a way its still a fairly familiar place.

& finally, Ryan, my other half, took this week off, & though he has spent time playing games and watching movies as usual, he has also spent more time than usual helping me out & playing with the kids. I feel we have reconnected a bit, we're a good couple normally but as many of you can probably relate to, over time (almost 9 years) we can take each other a bit for granted at times and have lost a bit of the romance.

Scrapinspire #2

So its our second scrapinspire month & its my turn to try & give a lil scrapbooking inspiration, so heres my offering, a layout sketch...

I havent labelled the sketch with title, journalling, photos etc as I want you to decide on which box should be which. Maybe it looks better to you flipped? Maybe rotated, maybe adding flowers instead of the 3 squares.

Feel free to join in and leave a link to your blog in the comments so we can come nosey, & if you want to see last months sketch pop on over to my scrapinspire partner in crime, Furrypigs blog, Chatty Crafty Arty Pig.