Doc2010: November focus page

I had a fab time at a crop this afternoon with my friends although I was rather lacking in productivity only finishing one layout in an afternoon. I guess that's the price you pay for laughing til your sides hurt, comparing the 'benefits' of Philip Schofield to Gary Linekar and being advised on 'fat pants', Gok Wan style! lol!

This was the focus page for November 2010 in my Doc2010 album.

A close up of some hand cutting (perhaps don't look too hard at that bit) ;)

A lift up page so that I could fit 2 rather large pictures (both 7x5) onto one 12x12 page:

So, I'd like to know 'Would you rather roll in crisps with Gary Linekar or on the ice with Philip Schofield?!' LOL!

Something for a dreary day...

It's cold, wet and miserable here so I thought I'd post a few quick cards that I've made in the last few days using up old scraps of paper that I had lying around and some pastel coloured cards. Hopefully, their bright colour will cheer up the day!

This one uses some echo park papers, some stitching using my WRMK sew easy tool and some punched butterflies. It was for my SIL's 25th birthday hence the 25 on the bunting.

Some old crate paper papers (I love those little trees, squirrels and owls- too cute!) and some more WRMK sew easy stitches.

And another card with the same Crate Paper papers and some Cosmo Cricket elements and chipboard.

Hope it's not so miserable where you are. :)

I'm such a sap!

Almost cried at the end of watching Toy Story3 just now. Gotta get a grip. Gotta get a grip! Lol!

She walks!

On the anniversary of her 13months, she's taken 10-12 steps towards a tub of raisins. That's my girl! I reckon she'd have ran today had I produced chocolate! ;-)

One Little Word 2011: Balance

As a part time working, mum of 2 with a husband who commutes to London each day, I definitely feel that my life is in need of balance. I spend a good majority of the working week alone with 2 toddlers and waiting (sometimes not so patiently) for daddy to get home and relieve me. Part of that week is spent having some adult time at work (yes, some days teaching 30 six year olds feels like a breeze compared with being at home plus I get to eat lunch and have a hot drink- bonus!) and the remainder is spent between playgroups, play dates, housework and other chores. Occasionally, I may get a few minutes to myself to do nice things by myself (such as go to the toilet, have a shower, drink a cup of coffee, read a magazine or simply blog!) but these are simply snippets in my day and are often interrupted before I've had time to truly savour them. As a result, once the terrible two are asleep, I try and make the most of what time I have left of an evening although I'm then aware I need to eat, finish off work for school, try and be a good wife (*not necessarily in that order!) etc etc as well as find the time for the things I enjoy. Often it feels like my life is just a rush from one activity to another with no time to simply slow down and enjoy what's going on in that particular moment.

From this situation, I decided that Ali Edwards 'One Little Word' class was definitely for me and that the word that was calling me was BALANCE.

My life NEEDS balance. I need to find a balance between my roles as mum, wife, teacher and just plain, Lou. I need balance between work and home. Balance between chores and play (both with my kids and doing things I enjoy such as scrapping). Balance in my diet- no more high sugar, high caffeine living. Balance between making time for myself and making time for my husband. The list could go on.


When defining what I mean by balance, the following seems the most appropriate:

• Balance noun mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behaviour, judgement etc.
• Balance verb to be equal or proportinate to and to estimate the weight or relative importance of (How I love this one! Relative importance could be a real mind opener for me)

Looking for synonyms (words that have a similar meaning) I want to invite equity, harmony (love this word too!), poise, self control and composure into my life.

I want to feel more in control, more relaxed and I'm really looking forward to the opportunities that BALANCE could bring to my life. Bring it on!!

What word have you chosen/could you choose as your word for 2011? Come and join me on this journey. More details at http://www.aliedwards.com/ :)

Word album mini book tutorial

In the Autumn, I finally completed an 8x8 holiday album but as I was cutting down 12x12 cardstock to make the pages I had a lot of co-ordinating cardstock offcuts that I didn't really want to throw away but likewise, couldn't really see a use for. As I was collating them together though it came to me that these would make a really good mini album and as I'd been looking at 'word albums' in various shops, I could actually use these off cuts to make my own.

1. As you can see, the offcuts were mainly of 2 sizes: 12"x4" and 8"x4". As my word was 4 letters long I decided to cut each of these piles into 2 different sizes to make my album so that each pile of cardstock gradually got longer. I didn't cut anything at this stage.
2. Using the storybook cartridge I cut my letters at 4" high using the Cricut machine.

3. I laid the letters on the cardstock to check they'd fit. I slightly overlapped each letter.

4. Then using the longer pile of cardstock, I laid the last two letters down and marked with pencil where I was going to cut half of that pile so that some pieces of cardstock were longer than others. I made sure the letter C just slightly overlapped the letter K and marked the cardstock at the bottom.

5. I then cut half of the pile of longer cardstock so that I had one pile that was a letters width longer than the other:

6. With the offcuts from above, I realised that I didn't need to cut much off of the shorter cardstock as those offcuts were short enough to hold the letter J. I stuck all the letters down onto the first piece of cardstock from each of the four lengths. To make things co-ordinate I used the dotted swiss cardstock as the first piece in each section but the remaining cardstock pages were just placed randomly according to shade.

7. Using a cropdile, I added holes where I wanted my bookrings to go.

A close up of how my pages look when layered.

This was really simple to do and looks great as well as using up all those odd pieces of cardstock.
I'll definitely be making more of these minibooks but I might scallop the edges in different ways rather than using letters each time. It'd work equally well with more pages assuming that you just measured out the pages to different sizes.

If you use this tutorial to make your own mini word album, I'd love to see what you do- please leave me a link in the comments section.

Happy New Year..

.. and welcome to 2011!

I love the start of a New Year. I love the optimism, the chance to clear out the old and start again. I love reflecting on where we've been and planning for where we want to go. Whilst packing away from Christmas (and having a jolly good clear out at the same time) I've been pondering on what life has in store for our family and what our intentions should be for the new year.

2010 was fairly uneventful for us (not necessarily a bad thing) and we saw lots of 'firsts' in Emmas first year as well as my return to work. We finished off lots of jobs in our house as well as taking our first foreign holiday as a family of 4. At the end of the year we purchased some family bikes to help us in our efforts to spend more quality time together.

2011 will (hopefully) be a year of change for us, both large and small. The biggest intention we have is to move house. We've been talking about this for a while now as we think about the fact that Jack will be starting school in 2012. We love our current home but the neighbourhood isn't really where we want our children to live as they get older. The area we'd like to move to is the same area as I work so it would make life easier in several ways as well as being closer to lots more of our friends. We've been looking at properties there for months so I'm just praying hard that 2011 is our year to move and that we're making the right decision. We've done all we can do to make our house saleable so I just hope and pray that it sells fast at a suitable price to allow us to move. Likewise, I hope that suitable properties appear in our desired area. I sense that 2011 could be quite stressful. lol.

Linked to moving house, I'd like to make sure we're able to do this without stressing ourselves out too much financially so I'm aiming to try and tighten our financial belts a bit this year. I'm thinking about reviewing our food bills, planning meals more and trying to reduce food waste. All good for our waistlines, the environment and the bank balance!

My final intention for the year is linked to the above and that is to be more organised. As most mums of 2 young children will know, life is extremely busy! Trying to juggle both Jack and Emma (who can be very demanding!), work and running a home whilst K commutes to London is really difficult and I found that by the end of last year, things like meals etc were really erratic . However, I'm thinking a bit of planning and fore thought might help me here, even if it means making the next days meals the night before whilst the children are asleep or getting my slow cooker out more. All easy changes that can be made but will hopefully have a big impact on our family.

Unrealistically, I'd like to return to running again and challenge myself to run 50miles in Jan (as well as loisng that Christmas weight gain!) but knowing how busy my life is, I can't really see that happening. Aw well, I can always dream!

What resolutions have you made this year? I'd love to know.