Mulberry Cove

 

I thought I would do a catch up over the next fews days, with the layouts I have done recently for Nuts About Sketches. This layout is from week 231, and you can find the sketch and the rest of the DT's pages here

 

 

These are photos from an afternoon's kayaking at the Naval Air Station's marina - Mulberry Cove. On a Thursday, kayak rental is free to all service personnel and their dependants, and an opportunity too good to pass up!

I used up some scraps on this 2 pager - mainly My Mind's Eye - plus some Studio Calico thrown in. I used my "dripping goo" border punch from Martha Stewart - one of my bargain finds at TJ Maxx - as I thought it looked like dripping water.... A smattering of buttons finished it all off :)

Winter is coming...

.... even to Florida. (BTW love the Game of Thrones, although prefer the books to the TV series...)

I knew I would acclimatise to the North Florida weather, but I didn't think I would do it so quickly! The experience of living in the Mediterranean for 4 years put me in good stead for this move, as I'd done the whole living in a tropical climate thing before. I think my body has gone back into Gibraltar mode, I quickly adjusted to the heat when we arrived, and now I am starting to feel the chill of November... My Scottish buddies will scoff at me, when I say it has only been 20 degrees C today - and I am sat here in jeans and a hoodie and socks.... One of the other families who moved across with us has not brought any winter clothing with them at all, thinking they would not need it. Eh? Now, I know I can be a bit daft sometimes, but even I know that when your body gets used to 35 - 40 degree C in the summer, when it drops by 20 degrees it feels cold.... Unless you are my husband, who is determined to wear shorts all year round regardless of the temperature. And I am totally justified for buying those 3 pairs of boots in the Target summer sale back in July....

Anyhow, when we moved, I didn't pack any of my knitting stuff, thinking I wouldn't want to do any. Now, you can guess what happened, can't you. Yep, I got the urge to pick up some needles and yarn and make stuff lol. So this is what I made....

...fingerless gloves. Lovely long gloves, that come up to my elbows lol. And they have cable on them. I love, love, love doing cable.

The pattern is a free pattern that you can get here. There are lots and lots of other free patterns for both knitting and crochet, and I now have a collection printed out for future projects....

And it also helped that Michael's had a sale on all their yarn last week....

Current project - legwarmers. Yep. Kids from Fame, eat your heart out....

NAS sketch 240 - Oct '12

This is my layout using this week's sketch over at Nuts About Sketches.

We finally made it down to Orlando in October - when it started to cool down a bit. We spent the weekend at the Universal theme parks - Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios. We had a blast. The kids are both tall enough to ride the big rollercoasters now, so we did the lot. Well, they did the lot. I sat a few out.... This is us beside the huge revolving globe outside Universal Studios.

I used Echo Park Everday Eclectic for this layout. I love the muted colours of it. The title is American Craft Thickers (which have once again become an obsession). I layered a couple of buttons and tied them with baker's twine as a small embellishment.

I will be back soon!!!!

Ummm, yeah.

Sorta fell off the face of the Earth again, didn't I?

How can it be November already? It was just my birthday last week, right? It is scary how fast time is going this year. And before we know it, it'll be December 2015 and time for us to return to the UK. I am trying so hard to enjoy the new experiences, but they are whizzing past me at a million miles an hour, sometimes I forget.  Now the initial excitement has worn off, and we are into the school routines and after school clubs, it feels like we have been here forever. I still have pangs of homesickness, and flashes of "OMG we live here", but I am more settled than I thought I would be. The weather has cooled down - it has dropped in temperature over 20 degrees C since we arrived. Yes, it is still in the high teens and low 20's which is positively tropical for the UK, but it feels cold to us now.  I am happy to be able to wear my jeans and jumpers again, and I have justified my "crazy" boot purchases in the summer by wearing all 3 pairs!

I started the Couch to 5K running program at the beginning of September, and can now proudly say that I can run 3 miles non stop without collapsing :) It has been hard work, but well worth it, I feel so much better for it, and the visits to IHOP are less of a guilt trip ;)

I am going to try really hard to keep up to date.  I have a few DT layouts I want to share, and a few other crafty projects that I have been working on too.  I have a nice list of Christmas crafts I want to make, starting with a wreath for the front door.... I am thinking of doing a December Daily of sorts too - my local Target has 8x8 We R Memory Keeper albums and divided page protectors... I have plenty of Christmas papers in my stash, and now with my trusty iPhone, I am never short of a photo or twenty....

Speaking of which, I'll leave you with a shot from our recent trip to Orlando.

Life is good :)

Nuts About Sketches 230 - Life begins

There is a great new sketch up at Nuts About Sketches today, I really enjoyed working with this one!

This past Friday (7th) was my birthday. My 40th birthday. The saying goes "Life begins at 40", and for me right now that is very true. A whole new life, in a new country, meeting new people, doing new things and having new adventures. I have started to exercise more - I started the Couch to 5K program, and although the first couple of days almost killed me, I am starting to get into it.

The photographs were taken at a photoshoot I was given as a Mother's Day present, by the extremely talented Mandy Hunter.  She has mad PhotoShop skills too ;). I usually hate any photo of me, but these ones, I kinda like lol. The purple one is just so cool - I actually have this framed on the wall lol.

I took the purple colours from the main photo as a starter for my colour scheme, and I found some Bo Bunny papers to match - they are actually a Christmas collection called "Winter Joy". But the purple was perfect and the shade of green is one of my favourite colours just now. So I went with it :)

The day of my birthday I was taken to a Bosnian coffee shop for cake and coffee by some friends, and then in the evening we went for a family meal out at Chili's - their Sparkling Pomegranate Margarita is to die for ;) The kids got me a huge cookie and ice-cream cake from Publix, and spoiled me with some chocolate, flowers and some new workout clothes :) I don't like a big fuss, so my day was just about perfect for me. Age is only a number after all....

Nuts About Sketches 229 - Abe by night

I am so excited to be back on the Nuts About Sketches Design Team! Shawn designs the most fantastic sketches, and I love working with them. I have missed them so much!

So, this weeks sketch is a two-pager. The original sketch called for three 5x7 inch photos, but I had way more photos, so I got a little creative...

So, this is the layout. All about our night-time visit to see Abraham Lincoln when we were in Washington, D.C in June. Tom said the one thing he would like to see on our trip was the man that sat in the big chair. Anyone who has seen "Night at the Museum 2" will remember President Lincoln coming to life at night, but if he was the night we went, he was sitting very, very still lol.

It was an amazing experience. The Lincoln memorial is truly one of the most reverent places I have ever been to. The atmosphere inside was undescribable - the respect the US has for this man is enormous. The night we went, there were plenty of other visitors. I even saw girls in prom dresses, posing on the steps with their dates.

I made little mini foldout books and added my extra photos. I wanted to add the photos of the engraved speeches, especially as Tom sat down and read every single word of them. He was sat, cross legged on the floor with people swarming about him, and he didn't move until he had finished reading all of it.

I also had more journalling than I had space for, so I made that into a mini book too :)

I used the scraps I had left over from my Scrapbook Generation kit - Echo Park 4th July papers - and added some Basic grey (red) and Chatterbox (blue) for the circles. The title I cut using my Cricut, and added some Frosted Lace Stickles for a bit of dimension. The red, white and blue dots are from Craftwork Cards.

The rest of the team have done a great job with the sketch, head on over to the blog, and have a look!

Let Freedom Ring

We were pleased that we were going to be in the US for 4th July. It is obviously a big thing for them, being Independence Day and all. The neighbourhood turned into a wash of red, white and blue, with the Stars and Stripes proudly flying outside many homes. We were interested to see how the day was celebrated.
Being the "enemy" in the whole Independence thing, we tried to fit in as much as we could. The theme of the day was red, white and blue, but we made sure we didn't go out in anything Union Jack, as that really wouldn't be a good thing to do, ya think? Jemma and I donned our red, white and blue and headed down to Eagle Harbor Parkway - the main thoroughfare of the neighbourhood - to watch the annual parade. There were fire trucks, and other emergency vehicles, with sirens and lights blaring. There were also floats, with Girl Scouts on, throwing bead necklaces and candy to the spectators. There were also members of the community - in cars, in golf carts, in boats (on trailers) and on bikes. All decorated with the stars and stripes and all things red, white and blue. It was a great little parade. And they threw candy. Lots of candy. We didn't go prepared, unlike some other kids who had huge bags to collect candy in, so any bits Jemma picked up ended up in my camera bag! We then went home, to share it with Tom, who was feeling a bit under the weather.

Later, we went to the community pool and had BBQ - pulled pork sandwiches, yum! - and enjoyed the sunny afternoon hopping in and out of the water. We were invited to an evening BBQ too, at Jorge's house. Jorge is a Chilean exchange pilot at NAS Jax. He invited other exchange families - from Chile, Equador and Argentina - and his neighbours who are American and Canadian. There was definitely an International flavour to the evening. There was also a bit of a British element to the evening, as just as Jorge was ready to start cooking on the BBQ, the heavens opened. So he cooked with an umbrella in one hand. We told him that was how we always BBQ'd back in the UK... Later on, when the rain had stopped the men got a large box of fireworks out and let them off in the front yard. They had great fun. After a while, some of us ladies went inside to watch the huge firework display that happened downtown on the TV lol.

This is my layout for the 4th :) I used another layout kit from my Scrapbook Generation Super Saver Club Kit - the Echo Park papers were just perfect!!! This was a Debbie Sanders sketch.

 

 

I loved the banners on this sketch. I know I will use the sketch again. And again. LOL. I love, love, LOVE the gals at SG :)