Altered Frame and wall art!

I have been having lots of fun playing around with some things for the home!  Firstly I have had a few frames sitting around for the last couple of weeks waiting to be altered and I finally did one this weekend.

I used K & Company papers, Maya road chipboard pieces and my Cuttlebug butterfly dies, and made the flowers using 6 petal flower punches, I also made my own text paper by printing some Twilight quotes onto canvas!  I picked the frame up on sale from Tesco's and it is actually a box type frame so is really fab to work with as you can have plenty of  height to your elements and still have the glass on to protect it all!

I have also been playing around in my bedroom with my Cuttlebug butterflies and embossing folders!  This was above my bed before...

We were a bit bored with the old bedding so we went out and bought a couple of new sets last weekend and then I started playing.  I originally saw this idea on Heather Ruwe's Scrapbook Bakery Blog and just loved it.  I have not been as brave as her and where her butterflies were cut out of wallpaper, mine are just paper and stuck on with blue tack!  So this is what behind my bed looks like now with my one of the new bedding's and the butterflies!

You can't  see it is the photo but this bedding is actually gorgeous and has lovely beading on it and it just feels very luxurious, hence we only got this one because it was marked down! ;)

What poor Paul has to put up with!  He is very good though and pretty much lets me do whatever I want to decorate the house!   I just love those framed photos above the bed, they are the most gorgeous frames that I got from The Range.  They were not the cheapest frames I could have bought but they are really deep and beautiful, I have the same ones in one of the hallways downstairs.  I actually have quite a few frames up with enlargements of some of my favourite photos of the kids.   I will put some photos of the others up some time, Hubby is not all that sure about some of my photo choices as I suppose some of them are a bit more arty than your standard photos that most people would use, but they all photos I love and have something special about them! 

Oh yes, this is the other bedding that we bought.  I think it is gorgeous and I just love it!  A similar colour to the other bedding but a lot darker and more vibrant so it will just depend what mood I am in as to what goes on!  My walls are actually a soft stone colour that I have in quite a few rooms of the house because it goes with everything and I think these colours go really well with it.

Hope everyone has had a good weekend!  Tfl! :)

Dinosaur mini book

My youngest son has had a serious Dinosaur obsession from when he was tiny and he is still obsessive about them and can tell you all sorts of interesting facts, in fact he has even shouted out a whole story to the tour guide we saw at the Wookie hole caves much to everyone on the tours amusement!  I have been wanting to scrapbook his obsession for a while and bought some My Minds Eye Abbey road which was perfect for it.  I  decided to do a mini book as I had quite a few photos and he will enjoy always knowing exactly where it is so he can grab it anytime to look at!

I had to leave the one page blank because I decided I wanted to add some photos of all the dinosaur pictures he has drawn.  He loves to draw and is actually really good at it and he draws constantly so needless to say I have mountains of his drawings that I can't bear to get rid of, including some gorgeous detailed dinosaur ones right down to the bones buried in the ground under the dinosaurs and volcano's!

Just including my recipe for Banana Muffins for Amanda :).  Well it is my mothers recipe that she always made for us as kids, except that she used to make Banana bread and I just changed it to muffins and added apple for my kids.  Sorry I use the metric system so have no idea what the conversions are for the Imperial system!

Banana Muffins

1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
4-6 mashed bananas
1 apple peeled and grated (optional)
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt

•  Cream butter and sugar and add vanilla.
• Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Sift dry ingredients and add.
• Lastly add the mashed banana and apple and combine.  Spoon into greased muffin pan and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for + - 30 to 40 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of one comes out clean.
• The instructions for the banana bread in a loaf tin say bake for an hour.
• Makes 12 large muffins

Very yummy and I am so addicted to them as are the kids!  Talking of yummy food this is a picture of the most divine Warm Feta and spring onion cheese cake that I made for supper last night.

It is topped with a tomato, spring onion and balsamic vinegar salad and all I can say is WOW!  Totally scrumptious, I had it again for lunch today :):).  I got the recipe out of a Summerfields magazine and will definitely be making it again!  If anyone wants the recipe for that one just let me know!

Tfl!

My Scrap Room!

I haven't blogged my scraproom yet and as I have not had much time to scrapbook over the last couple of days I figured I would share that instead!  This is pretty picture heavy!

I am lucky enough to have a separate dining room that we don't use all that often (to eat anyway!) so I have been able to mostly take it over for scrapbooking!

Up until recently I used to scrapbook on the table but as the kids got a games table for Christmas and as we didn't really have anywhere else sensible to put it my husband took the top off our dinning room table and used the games table as a base so they can just take the top off and play.  So anyway I am a very messy scrapbooker so with me using it the table was permanently covered and the kids never got to use their games table so I moved to the desk and I am actually finding that I like it better there!  Everything is in easy reach so I don't have to get up as often and I keep everything neater because the space isn't there to spread out onto!

Two of these drawers are filled with the kids craft things and one holds my cuttlebug dies and the couple of punches I own and the other has all my Bind-it-all stuff in.  The basket on top that I just love holds my mini albums.

This is my little CD player to pay the obligatory music, the rest of my favourite Cd's are up on the shelf and of course my New Moon calendar! :)

This fab paper storage was made for me by one of my friends husbands for my birthday a few years ago and I just love it, one of the nicest presents I have ever received! :)  Most of the pizza boxes are empty or have projects in progress in so they are handy to keep!

One of my wonderful Expidit units that I got last year, I wanted these for so long and was so thrilled when they had them half price last year and I could get them!  Those black boxes on top are wonderful things, I keep my photos to be scrapped in there, they pull out like books and you are supposed to store DVDs in them.

I just love these green boxes from Ikea ( I am just loving all things green recently!)  I keep my paints in one and my embossing powders and heat gun in the other.  One of the little accordion folders holds my clear stamps and the other has made and bought cards in to be used over the year.  The clear box in the top left hand corner is where I store my ribbons at the moment wound around thread cards but I want to change that when I get time!

These are some plain white magazine boxes also from Ikea that I have covered in some Chatterbox papers to hold my.......... magazines!

This is my desk where I work, my wonderful hubby bought me the TV and DVD player and speaker system so I could watch TV while I scrapped, isn't he just the sweetest!   I must admit I can see the small TV much better now that I scrap at the desk lol!  It is actually really handy having all those little cubby holes around and I usually have whatever my last layout was on top of the desk on a little easel so I can see it for a while before it goes into an album.

The drawers have stamps and foam sheets in and one for my patterned paper scraps and one for my cardstock scraps.  I just love those little pink drawers and store my buttons by colours in them.  The jars and little pots in the back hold my blossoms and brads/eyelets.  The small drawers hold my ink pads, tags and journaling spots.

I just totally adore that green plant pot holder!  I use it to keep all of my everyday small tools.  I actually bought 3 of them on a sale for about £1.50 each and gave one to my mom and have another waiting for me to find a use for it.

Oh yes, the top of my drawers is used to keep all the little things that I love that have been given to me or have special meaning so I can see them on a regular basis and they can make me smile!

I used an old pizza box covered in wall paper to make storage for my cardstock and yes that is all of my cardstock!   The basket holds all of my stickers, chipboard sheets, alphabets and thickers (I know I really need some more thickers!). Oh yes those are some frames I just bought to alter,  can't wait to get stuck into those!

My other Expidit unit which holds various things from chipboard in the little cases and all my foam alphabets to all my albums and some of my other craft things.  I love the material drawer at the end (also from Ikea), it holds all the stuff you just don't know what to do with and makes it look neat! ;)

Of course this is just one of my most favourite places (another drawer from Ikea!) as it holds all of my yummy kits from when I was getting them from The Scraproom.  Just look at all of that yummy papery goodness!

So that is my scraproom as it stands at the moment, I have all sorts I want to do in there as I do like to be organised and things to look pretty but every time I go in there to do it I get sidetracked by scrapping! :)

Anyway I am busy working on a mini album and a house project both of which I hope to finish today, time allowing so I will blog those tomorrow and I will leave you with another food photo as I am still baking all sorts of things!  These are banana muffins (although I add apple too!)  I make these quite often as the kids are always requesting them, they are really yummy and moist and even work well with wheat free flour which I have tried before as all the fruit keeps them moist!  I had one of those, a bowl of yoghurt and some fresh pineapple for breakfast this morning, yummy!

Fathers day Card and Layout....

I went on Wednesday to make a fathers day card for Paul and pulled out some Crate paper Hampton that I had left over from some old layouts thinking it would be perfect for a fathers day card but ended up getting completely distracted by how nicely it went with a photo of Paul that I had on my desk!  So of course I couldn't resist and ended up doing a layout instead.....

It also made it tie in with the weekly challenge on UKS which was to...

• Scrap someone you love (PAUL!)
• Use 2 of the following something old/new/borrowed/blue (Crate paper, an oldie but a classic and it has blue!)
• Paint or ink on your layout (done both)
• Journal (that counts as journalling to me!)

Ahem...so anyway I only got around to actually making the fathers day card today (Nothing like leaving things to the last minute!) and used some of the same elements from the layout ;)    This is just from me to Paul as the kids have made their own cards at school already and they also chose one at the shops for him.

Just had to show you the beautiful little bracelet that I bought the other day from Asda, it was on sale so was only £2.  I generally don't wear much jewellery but couldn't resist this as it was just so pretty!

I also have to share my new nail colour that I got!  Hmmm I am normally pretty conservative with my colours but have just been loving all the strange colours that have been around for a while so this was on sale so I had to get it....I am not sure if I love it or hate it lol!  Actually it is really pretty in real life and makes me feel very summery and that can only be a good thing so I would say I like it!

Lastly let me leave you with a photo of the totally yummy peanut butter cookies I made on Thursday, that I can't stop eating!.  I am making all sorts at the moment as I am trying to eat healthy (not that peanut butter cookies are necessarily all that healthy but at least there are no additives!).  There are 2 different colours as some of us like them crispier and some of us like them chewier!   Tonight I made the most divine sweetcorn and red onion cakes with and Avocado salsa on top,  I will definitely be making those again as they were fab and I have some over for my lunch tomorrow!

Girly layout!

I don't often get to do a very girly layout so I had lots of fun playing yesterday with some of the gorgeous Bo Bunny papers Debbie sent me!  I used the following challenge from the ATDML blog where you choose one line off  the grid. I used the 3rd line across.

The fab photo is of my mom as a little girl. :)  Oh and although I love purple it is not a colour I use very often so that was fun too!

Yes, I did hand cut all those flowers, it has been a while since I did that much hand cutting!

I used my new Cuttlebug butterfly die again (just loving those!) as you can never have too many butterflies...I am planning on cutting a whole lot out and sticking them up our wall in the bedroom, I wonder what Paul will think about that!  Oh and I just had to include a little bit of glitter ;)

I have a few more photos of my mom when she was younger as well as some old ones of me from my teens and childhood years so I will have to scrap some of those to get some more of my girly fix!

Tfl!

Pencil Lines and fun in the park!

This is my layout for this weeks Pencil Lines sketch below

I had loads of fun doing this layout with all the distressing!  Generally I think most of my layouts are quite clean but I do enjoy doing the more grungy distressed types sometimes.  I enjoyed playing around with this one so much I think I will do some more soon!  I used Cosmo Cricket Get Happy.

It was the last official school holiday today and the sun actually came out a couple of times today so me an the kids went down to the park for a couple of hours of and took advantage of it actually being dry today!

Of course I took hundreds of photos as usual and got some really nice ones, especially of Kieran playing football (this was while I had to rest after playing football with him for a while because I am getting old!).  That child is always happiest when he has any form of ball to play with. :)

This is for Lisa, because she wanted to see them!  Flowers that were delivered today from my husband. :)

Gerberas are one of my favourites as is pink!  That nesty thing underneath the flowers is actually all attached to a wire rig thing so once the flowers are finished I will have to see what I can make with it! :)

 Thanks for looking! :)