DYL Week 2 Sketch 2

I'd been looking forward to getting the Week 2 handout for Cathy's Design Your Life class but knew I had a few errands to run in town before I could even sit down to read it. Funny how things can change! Emily came down this morning complaining that her back was sore and she was getting shooting pains in it. She was absolutely fine when she went to bed last night and didn't know of anything that might have caused this to happen. I gave her some Calpol and we waited to see how she felt but by the time she was due to go to school she was still in pain and a bit weepy. I kept her off and phoned the Doctors to get an appointment. It seems the muscles in her back were going into spasm but it's not localised pain and the Doctor has recommended giving her Neurofen to keep the discomfort down. She's been told she's not allowed to do dance next week and not allowed to play netball for the next two weeks. I don't know that she's too upset at being told that ;o). This means that I've been home most of the day and I've managed to get my first layout for this week finished. I knew straight away that I wanted to use the photos from my Dad's 79th birthday for the second sketch so that's the one I've done first. For those doing this class that read this blog; I swopped the layout around because of the direction people were facing in the photos. I didn't have the yellow I wanted for this layout so I used a text box with the yellow as the fill colour. I then just added Heidi Swapp chipboard alphabet letters for the title. In the text box for the journaling I just typed as normal with the yellow as the fill colour again. Journaling reads: We invited the local family members round to our house for afternoon tea on Dad/Grandpa's 79th birthday. It was a beautiful sunny day so we sat outside and Mum/Grandma and Claire had fun blowing the bubbles that Debbie had put in Dad's birthday package. Tyler had great fun trying to catch them. It was a relaxing and very enjoyable afternoon. The little circle on the right hand page has the date in it. Hope you like it Dad! Love you lots. xx

Before and After

This is what my table looked like after a few days of scrapbooking ;o)

I decided if I wanted to do any more layouts it might help if I could find things so I had a quick tidy up yesterday and it's now looking like this :o)

I must be one of the messiest scrappers around but it's just the way I work. Always enjoy it when it's tidy again and ready for me to mess up once more!

xx

I never know what to call these posts!

One thing I don't enjoy about blogging is trying to decide what title to give the posts! I certainly don't come up with catchy ones and I'm sure everyone would soon get bored if I put Monday, Tuesday, etc every week. Maybe I should just put the date? I'll persevere and see how I go!

So, today I've taken a few photos while we were out and about. As you know, Emily had the day off so we didn't have to rush in the morning. This photo was taken soon after I came downstairs this morning. Lovely and sunny and not too cold, just the way I like to start the day.

We went into town just after 10am to get a few bits. I had a contact lens check up to go to for the new lenses I was trying out. They seem to have settled well so I was able to sort out my reading glasses to wear with them. Hope to pick them up in a week or so.

A photo of London Road, East Grinstead (unfortunately, the truck blocks off a bit of the shop frontage!) We have a lot of history in the town and some lovely Tudor buildings.

Emily had art homework, which involved going to the local community centre (Chequer Mead) to see an exhibition of art work done by the GCSE and A Level students from her school. We picked Jake up on our way and went and had lunch at Chequer Mead before going into the exhibition. What a fun lunch, I love how Emily and her friends are at an age now where they quite enjoy having more "adult" conversations with us and they bring a fun element into them as well. We were joined towards the end of lunch by Elliott and his mum, Carol. Emily, Jake and Elliott have been friends since they started school together and they still get on really well. I hope Emily will keep both of them as friends as she goes through Senior School.

As for the art exhibition, there was some impressive work on show. These children obviously have to put a lot of time and effort into their coursework. I took a few photos so you could also have a peek.

Emily enjoys drawing Manga and she liked this collage.

The long picture at the bottom had some interesting detail added to it. The water in this picture of the pier is brilliant. It was one of the pictures that caught my eye when we went in. Another one that I kept being drawn back to.

Ceramics

As we were leaving, a photo of Elliott, Emily, Carol and Jake. Not sure how Jake thought he wouldn't be in the photo :o)

Finally my photo of the bonus layout for Cathy's class which I said I would post today. For this we were given a colour palette to try and use. I used most of the colours - think the yellow was the only one left out.

That's all for now.

xx

Sunday

We've had a good Sunday, nothing terribly exciting but good none-the-less. Got to chat to Norma on MSN which was good. Hoping she'll get Broadband soon and we'll be able to chat more often. I miss not being able to talk to her! If everything had gone according to plan, Norma would have moved to the UK this weekend but, unfortunately, that wasn't to be. Mum, Claire, Emily and I went to Cafe Nero for a coffee/hot chocolate this morning. It was pouring and quite miserable so it seemed a good way to spend the morning. We also popped in to Blockbuster to see Hugh and give him something to eat as he was doing the 9.30am - 4.00pm shift on his own and wouldn't be able to get out to get something. This afternoon I did a bit more scrapbooking. I don't usually do 8.5" x 11" layouts so it was good to do something out of my comfort zone. I quite like the way this one turned out. This is the second assignment for the first week of the Design Your Life class. I also managed to complete the bonus layout but when I tried to take a photo of it, the lighting wasn't very good and it didn't turn out clearly. I'll take another photo tomorrow and post it then. This evening we watched The X Factor results, Hairspray the School Musical and Strictly Come Dancing results. Fun way to wind down at the end of the weekend. Fortunately, tomorrow is the second of Emily's inset days so we won't be rushing around in the morning :o) All for now. xx PS> Looking at the photo of the lo, I'm not sure that I like the label tab on the left of the photos, may have to look at changing that tomorrow.