BY2010 Blog Hop

This month we are starting at K's Crafty Corner

This is the sketch

I dug out some Basic Grey June Bug papers for this together with some Primaflowers and Heidi Swapp butterflies.

Here are the rest of the blogs taking part in this blog hop so please, if you have the time, visit all of them to see what they have done with the sketch.

http://kscraftycorner.blogspot.com/


http://chattycraftyartypig.blogspot.com/

http://cardsbyjones.blogspot.com/

http://libertycottage.blogspot.com/

http://socksandscrapbooks.blogspot.com/

http://clearingthebrambles.blogspot.com/

New Additions To The Family BUT..........

.....there is a price to pay.

These two cuties arrived in the post yesterday at a cost of less than £4 for the pair including postage thanks to ebay.

Their purpose is to be friends to my youngest child but only when he has reached the top of these charts.


One is for mornings and the other for evenings.  If his angry little self can behave until school time then he moves up a place and the same from coming home from school to bedtime.  So far we have one morning moved up.  It might be a long slog to get there but I thought if he could actually see the reward at the end then he might have more incentive to work harder towards it.  He loves the PG Tips monkey on the adverts and eats Muller Rice in great abundance so I thought they would be ideal rewards. 

These charts have worked before with him so I am pretty hopeful.  They can be downloaded free from http://www.supernanny.com/.  They come in two halves and there is another sheet with the character and she does girls ones too.  I then got the two halves plus the characters laminated so it keeps it nice and clean.

Skywatch & 5 Things

Skywatch for this week

I found a 5 things post on this blog so thought I would have a go.

5 Things

5 things I am looking forward to: loft conversion, spring, scrapbook time, the end of the football season, autism course

5 things I did yesterday: school run, went to town, caught up on Holby City, read my book while football was on, saw my aunty by chance for the first time in years

5 things I wish I could do: find a cure for autism, stop spending so much time on facebook, willpower to lose weight, make scrapbook pages like the better scrappers, win the lottery (not a massive win but enough to do up the house)

5 places I wish I could travel:  driving around america, australia, france, weston super mare (love it), scotland

5 things I've found online lately:

Clapotis Pattern

Cute dog collar

Knited cloths

Little Hearts SAL

Basic Grey fabric

Round Up Of The D Words

The D Words

For a recap of what the A-Z year long challenge is please see this site

For D we did a few things

First of all double d which is Daisy Dog having a sniff at the remains of a snowman

Driving in dense fog

Looking around the 'dorms' at uni

We had quite a few desserts.  This one is Key Lime Pie from the Hairy Bikers recipe made with Oreos on the base.

Diggers from the roadworks the other day

Daffodils

and  I dyed my hair much darker than it was before

We also ate double chocolate icecream, donuts, watched Dancing on Ice, daddy got drunk, had Dr Pepper (yuk), my dad joined facebook.

My poor little man had a trip to the doctors yet again for poorly ears and ended up with double strength medicine.

Leeds United players with D words are Michael Doyle and Davide Somme.

Now onto music - as always Red Hot Chili Peppers and the tracks I have picked for D are

Dani California and

Desecration Smile.  This is my favourite video they have ever made (well maybe with the exception of Road Trippin) and definitely in my top 5 of their songs.

Scrapping Content At Last

I haven't done a great deal lately apart from the first two pages from my A to Z album that I shared during the C words post.

I did this earlier in the week and it made me feel all spring like.  NO not enough to do the spring cleaning so don't even ask. 

The picture was taken when we went to Center Parcs in December and the cygnets still had their baby feathers even though they were huge so I'm guessing come springtime they will be lovely and white.  Actually, you know what, there is nothing lovely about swans.  I can't abide them.  I think it might be because we have had some bad experiences with them in the past when we have been on holiday but anyway that is another story.

The weather was actually quite spring like when we went to Center Parcs even though it was December.  The following few days it decided to snow so I guess we were lucky.

Something Different

Quite by accident I happened upon this project (mostly in German but hey so what - I'll use a translator) whilst I was on a blog cruise.  You know the sort of thing where you click on a link which leads to another link and another and then you find yourself completely inspired and lose a couple of hours in the process.

I haven't done any cross stich for a number of years.  My youngest child is 6 and I still haven't done his birth sampler despite starting it a long time ago.  I bet it is well over 5 years since I touched any of it.  Anyway I love how this is in 12 parts spread throughout the year.  Our house is *fingers crossed* going to see a lot of work over the coming year due to a loft conversion which needs all kinds of other things doing to meet building regulations.  Anyway I thought that it would be nice on a wall somewhere in one of the altered rooms to mark the year and a small section once a month is probably something I can keep up with.

Here are January and February and part of the border.

Walks 7 and 8

Double walk update.

I took the camera on the walk to football training on saturday morning.

On the way I took these shots of the civic centre (town hall) as we walked by.

I went on walk 8 this morning with the pooches and found they were finally digging up a local road that has been plagued by pot holes for months.

I also found this little cutie hiding in a bush.  We usually only see birds flying away when the dogs are around so this one must have some guts to hang around.

Giveaway

Hand.Made Heart.Felted is a fab inspirational blog and Kate is having a giveaway once she has 100 followers.  For your chance to win please head over there.

Skywatch

This week we had to drive in some very dense fog to the applicants day at Hull University where my daughter is hoping to attend in september.  She took some photos while we were travelling along the M62 so this weeks Skywatch is foggy sky not that you can actually see it lol.  This shot was actually a clearer patch than some we drove through.  Can't believe how many vehicles didn't have any form of light switched on.

and then again when we got on the A63 nearing the Humber Bridge.  This was a tricky one for her to capture on camera because the trees kept getting in the way not to mention the lorries on the other carriageway.  We ended up with a lamp post in the centre of the shot but that doesn't matter.  The next section of the bridge just past where the bare tree is was under cloud cover but that was impossible to shoot.

For more skies from around the world please visit Skywatch

Walks 5 and 6

I'm cheating a little bit with the aim of catching up with 52 walks in a year with my camera.  This morning the dogs went on separate walks and I took the camera both times so these are walks 5 and 6.

Daisy's turn was first. There were no other dogs around so she came off the lead for a run and a play with her ball.  The ball was OK for a while but she soon preferred rolling in the mud.

Check out the ears - I'm sure she thinks she's Dumbo

We dropped her off at home and picked up Charlie.  Unfortunately between us leaving the park and getting back there a few minutes later 4 dogs had arrived including one quite scary looking one which meant Charlie was staying on his lead and the very muddy ball had to stay in it's poop bag.

We had a walk around though and he messed in the puddles.

Skywatch Friday & Oops

My picture for Skywatch Friday this week is one I took on the way back from the supermarket this morning whilst stuck in a traffic jam.  The wheel is a reminder that we live in an ex mining town.  At night it lights up with changing colours.  Looks like they were doing some maintenance on it today.

Now I have an oopsie from my C words.  How I forgot I really don't know but

C is for CAT

The C Words

First of all are my layouts for A and B.  I have a 6x12 album for this project.  It's the first time I've done anything this size and really enjoyed experimenting.

I found lots of things for C. 

My reading was The C Words by Mark Mason.  I didn't get enough time to finish it so I think I will skip reading a book for D and get this one done instead.

I found a fab blog called Country Heart &  Home where I tried Country Cottage Pie, Cherry & Coconut Bake and tonight I am going to try Vegetable Cobbler.  I managed to get a piccie of the Cherry & Coconut Bake.

I made a variation of it a few days later but without the chocolate base and used white caster sugar instead of brown and it was a lot lighter and not as rich.

We had chillis, carrot & coriander soup and my son made a cake at school

Leeds played Carlisle in the Cup where Casper Ankergren was a key part when the game went to penalties.

I also discovered another very inspiring blog written by an exremely talented lady - KrisKnits.  She designs patterns for knitted cloths.  Now this isn't something I really need or would want to use for cleaning BUT she is kindly organising a Knit A Long each month where she releases a pattern for free.  Each cloth will feature a design relevant to the month and I thought I would make them and stitch them together to make either a blanket or wall hanging or whatever I decide come December.  The first one was a snowman.  I don't know if you can make out the design. 

and my Red Hot Chili Peppers C words are Chad Smith and Californication (aswell as Charlie from yesterday).

Walk 4

Still playing catch up but remembering to take the camera is something I keep forgetting.

Anyway walk 4 today was just an ordinary dog walk that I do every so often when I want exercise rather than letting them off their leads.  As you can see we went past a football/soccer field.  It is actually owned by a school and there are notices all over saying  KEEP YOUR DOG ON A LEASH.  Some of the local football teams use it so I think it is only respectful to not let the dogs on it.  I wouldn't like to think I was washing anything unsavoury off my son from an irresponsible dog owner.

This picture shows just how much of a problem litter is near the field.  That big thing is a for sale sign from a house just dumped in the undergrowth.

Departing from that particular area is via these steps up to the busy main road.  I wish I had thought to video the dogs going up them.  One very elegant male dog and one very ungainly female dog. 

This was them pushing one another to see who could get there first.

Just after I took that photo it started snowing so we were rather wet by the time we got home.

Tomorrow I'll be doing my A to Z round up of the C words plus my scrapbook layouts of A and B.

In honor of Charlie in the picture just above here is Charlie by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  This song plus Charlie from Lost are where his name came from.

Skywatch Friday & Lots of Goodies

Skies are very grey and miserable here today. Thankfully I took a picture with my phone during the week while I was out and about.

More skies from around the world can be spotted over here

Yesterday I got my new release order from Prima which can be found in the shop.  So many lovely flowers this time around in the essentials range.  I love the Shabby Chic ones and the Strawberry Kisses are just divine - very Cath Kidston looking.  Each of the new ranges comes in patterned or solid so I have kept them as separates.