Fathers Day

So it's Father's Day today and my hubby's first. Compared to the father's day of 2 years ago this has been fantastic, 2 years ago we miscarried our first baby. So I thought I would make it extra special and have made his gift for him.

Deciding what to do was difficult. But I noticed on a friends wall that they had a picture frame with a mount saying Family in and some pics of them all. So I decided I would do Daddy with some pictures of Jake and Jake and Jeremy.

I had a spare photoframe (well it wasn't spare but I will find new frames for those photos) and some lovelly quality pearlescent card. So using a large bold font I printed off a template that was 3 x 5inches for each letter and then drew them onto the card, cut them out and then started the fun of finding suitable pictures for the letters. Y was by far the hardest to find. I then cropped them and produced them how I wanted and then printed them off...... That lead to SO many printer problems that today it has virtually gone out of the window and I will be getting a new one in the week.

However, Jeremy is thrilled with his pressie and we now have another picture on our walls.

Computer work

Been experimenting in Photoshop again. Have discovered the water colour brushes. Oh they work really well so with some work in layers and the brushes I have come up with a couple of Name Canvases. In the Range I managed to find some lovelly Canvas ink jet paper so will be printing and framing them.

Jacob's one I've already got a frame in mind for it. A lovelly oak one with a pale blue mount... just got to find them from somewhere. For Faith's (a friends daughter that this is a christening gift for) I'm really not sure I think either a cream mount or a pale lilac would be good with a wood frame of some description. But we will have to see what is available.

Knited cube

So I have finally finished a project - well a third of a way through finishing a project as there are 3 cubes. But I have done one.

I finished it off yesterday whilst my mum visited and so far it has been an unbelievable success both with Jake and his little girlfriend Ronya.

Now to just finish off the other 2 of them.

Out on the deck.....

Well the garden development continues - it appears we are working from the front garden round. So next step was the patio.... This was a mess, uneven, never dryed properly in the autumn/winter so was covered in slime and algae. There were slabs missing and it was surrounded by a fake stone wall. The pond was to one side and the dinning room to the other.


Well you know that the pond went - it was filled in thanks to the front garden, my family and their friends but what to do with it now.......

The original plan was a new patio and a deck where the pond was, but that worked out more expensive than decking both areas. So instead of a patio and deck we decided to do a split level deck.

The original patio area was re-enforced with railway sleepers as a retaining wall, then the patio was removed all 60+ slabs and the hardcore underneath (they will be recycled elsewhere in the garden) and then the frame was put down. Instead of 1 frame as the area is so big it's made out of 4 separate frames. Then steps were added it and a "seat" placed around the edge.

It's amazing - so different and for the first time in almost 3 years of living here feel comfortable sitting out in the garden if only the rest was done..... Next job "Jake patio/play area".

Exploding Photo Box

I have been seening loads of ladies creating exploding photo boxes on Crafty Bums so I thought I would have a try at one for my mother-in-law.

First hurdle was all of the tutorials I found were in inches... and for some reason I don't have a single tape measure, or ruler in the house that has inches on apart from our huge 7m one for use in the garden. So after trying to adjust all of the measurements for cms I got started.

I haven't done the decoration or added the pictures yet (minor issue with the printer running out of ink) but that is next weeks project. I really like them. In the end I used a recommended tutorial on Glitter Adventures it's an old one but it works.

Clearance project

A couple of weekends ago we had a "garden party" but with a difference. The gardens were getting over run with the plants, you couldn't see a path and the patio which I was lead to believe was black, green and pink slabs was green with algae. So relatives were mobalised from around the South East of England and on a lovelly April Saturday the work began.

It quickly became obvious that our garden would never be the same again - and what a joy that was. First to go was the over grown area between the veggie patch and the lane...... From not seeing the greenhouse to a few fruit trees left in an afternoon.

The lane was attacked at the same time and from a mess that was over hanging and difficult to get pass if you needed to go a wide open space soon became visible.

The veg garden was transformed from a prime weed growning spot into a bonfire pile and raised beds made from decking boards. The path infront of the greenhouses needs to be widdened although I think that is a project for another post.

The last part that was tackled was the pond...... Gone are the waterfalls, gone is the 5ft 6+ hole that was the pond in it's place will be.... A DECK but that is another post as well

Digital Scrapbooking

Well I have finally got around to doing some digital scrapbook pages for Jake's book. I'm making them in 12 x 12 size and then will be printing them out with Shutterfly.

After sourcing everything that I wanted for the pages I managed to find an amazing Summer themed blog train going on in May which is perfect for the pages that I have coming up.

It's now 38weeks and 5 days since I gave birth at 38 weeks and 5 days so Jake has been born the same amount of time that I was pregnant. But these last almost 9 months have gone so quickly compared to being pregnant.