Blogtoberfest 2014

It is almost time to start Blogtoberfest 2014.  This will be my third year of joining in

Blogtoberfest is an annual blogging festival, to challenge yourself to blog daily for 31 days and to meet other bloggers.  You can find out more about it here, where Michelle is hosting the event again.

So for the next 31 days I will be hoping to post a daily post so I hope you will be able to pop along each day and read my offerings xx   And if you fancy it why don't you join in too, you can blog about anything you like!!

My Month in Numbers - August 2014

Gosh look at me, rushing in at the last minute as always with my numbers for Julie Kirk's Month in Numbers.

August was a special month where I celebrated my 50th birthday whilst on a 14 night cruise to the Baltics.  We were homeward bound on my birthday and was on our last port call in Copenhagen before the 2 at sea days to get back to Southampton.  We spent the morning joining in with all the deck games and in the afternoon went to Tivoli Gardens, before a little sailaway party on our balcony.

(And don't worry those Thickers were not wasted, they will be appearing on a layout soon!!)

That evening we had dinner and many glasses of champagne before I was treated to a birthday cake - I only had 1 candle to blow out but after all that champagne I was struggling LOL - it took me 2 attempts!!

We had 4 ports of call on the 14 night cruise - Tallin, St Petersburg, Helsinki and Copenhagen.  It was our first time in Helsinki and it was lovely, the 2 days there was just too short.  One of my favourite sights was a new sculpture in the harbour, a statue that stands 8.5 metres high and is called Bad Bad Boy by Tommi Toija, apparently the Finnish aren't very keen on him, but I was greatly amused!!

Other notable numbers for the cruise were we travelled a distance of 2,846 nautical miles, there were 1,350 guests on board and 510 crew.  The Balmoral has 710 cabins, 11 decks and weighs 43,537 tonnes.  There were 93 chefs making sure we didn't go hungry and apparently 891 kg cheese, 5,700 litres of milk, 29,100 portions of butter, 3,500 kg potatoes, 3,364 kg poultry and 1,192 kg of beef were consumed.  I am glad they didn't reveal how much alcohol was consumed!!

 Of course when we got home I came down to earth with a bump with 8 machine loads of washing and 15 hours of ironing to get caught back up with the laundry!!

Mum also had a special birthday in August so we did a small family party for her 70th Birthday.

 My regular countdowns - only 173 days to the Marillion convention in The Netherlands and 194 days to UK Marillion convention.

Crafting was fairly quiet this month - 1 layout, 11 Christmas cards, 4 other cards and 1 memory wire bracelet with matching earrings.

Well I had better get on, I need to plan 31 blog posts for Blogtoberfest 2014

If you would like to start sharing your monthly numbers then you can find out how to join in right here

Beat the Christmas Rush - September

I really don't use my distress inks enough.  I am not really a fan of messy crafting and whenever I try to make lovely backgrounds well they always look messy because I just don't get on with the blending tool.  I have tried all the tricks of starting the blending on my craft mat and then moving onto the card but I still end up with lines and an utter mess.  The lovely Wendy who I sit next to at crops uses ink dusters and always gets lovely results, so I took the plunge and bought a set of three.  Wow what a difference using a different tool makes, I love using them, they are so easy!!

I made the backgrounds with some new (to me) Stampendous Nativity scene stamps that I have had in my 'waiting to get them inky' pile for some time.  I am going to be entering these cards into Sue's Beat the Christmas Rush and I think these are my favourite 'production line' cards that I have made this year.

 

Both the sentiments used are from Personal Impressions set 'Many Greetings'.  

Final round up for the summertime photography scavenger hunt

  My third and final post as today is the last day of Rinda's Summer Scavenger Hunt

1.  A sign welcoming people to your hometown.   Poor Mr P - there is no footpath here so he got quite muddy getting this shot for me - one half of the Gates of Pole!!

2.  A garden gnome - I have various garden ornaments but sadly no gnomes, but whilst in Russia exploring the Gulf of Finland we found these lovely garden ornaments in a church garden - I think they are far nicer than gnomes

3.  Birds on a wire - well this one was proving as difficult as the juggler to find, on one of our coach trips out I had virtually our whole coach party trying to find wires with birds on.  In the end we found two lone birds perched on wire.

The first at the harbour side market in Helsinki -

 And the second at the fountain by the English church in Copenhagen

10.  A photo bomb - Mr P was trying to take a photo of me in front of the fountain - a huge crowd of tourists had just moved out of the way but after he had taken it, he realised that my Mum had walked into the photo!!

 11.  A Horn - we found this wee fellow in Copenhagen -

 

12.  A Mascot - not sure if she really qualifies as a mascot, but The Little Mermaid is an iconic image in Copenhagen and is used on lots of advertising for Denmark.

13.  A Sunrise - another one we struggled with - most mornings on the cruise it was really cloudy, this was the best Mr P could get (he was tasked with this one as I am not a morning person!!)

19.  A Public Garden - one of the lovely gardens that are on the waterside walk from the cruise terminal in Copenhagen into the city.

20.  A bus with a picture painted on its side

21.  A photograph of you with something representing the season - sunglasses and paddling

 I wasn't able to get 9. A bakery, so instead I got alternative a - kite, hot air balloon or blimp.

This lovely car was in the Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen

So my first scavenger hunt is over, it was great fun and Mr P and my parents enjoyed joining in whilst we were on the cruise.  Thank you Rinda for organising the hunt, I look forward to joining in again next year.

 

1. A sign welcoming people to your home town (or a nearby town)
2. A garden gnome
3. Birds on a wire
4. A group of tourists
5. A rack of post cards
6. An urban street scene
7. A rural landscape
8. A tattoo on a person
9. A bakery
10. A photo bomb (someone found lurking in the background of photo; the lurker may have intended to disrupt the picture or may be doing it unintentionally, but the background lurker is a surprise to the photographer)
11. A horn
12. A mascot
13. A sunrise
14. A parade
15. A juggler
16. A sign in a language other than English
17. A lamp post
18. A water fall
19. A public garden
20. A bus (not a car, truck, lorry, camper or RV) with a picture painted on its sides.
21. A photograph of you with something representing the season (recognizing that the season will be Winter for our friends in the southern hemisphere). Note: you may not use a substitute for this item.

Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt - Part 2

Some more photos that I managed to get whilst on our cruise for Rinda's Summer Scavenger Hunt

5.  A rack of postcards - taken in Helsinki in the market by the harbour

6.  Urban Street Scene - again taken in Helsinki

8.  Tattoo on a person - I completely forgot when my Swedish friends were in July to take pictures of their Marillion tattoos so had to get my sister to oblige at the weekend with a photo of hers

15.  A Juggler - really struggled with this one, wherever we have been this summer there has been a distinct lack of street entertainers so my Mum obliged by juggling oranges in our cabin one day - sadly the light was all wrong so it isn't a very good photo

18.  A Waterfall - I knew exactly what I was going to photograph for this one!!  I had remembered that there was a beautiful fountain near the English Church in Copenhagen which had a waterfall effect, so we made sure when we walked from the ship into the city that we walked that way.

I still have some more photographs to share but I need to nag Mr P as they are on his phone at the moment.  Sadly I haven't been able to get all of them but have had a very good stab at my first year of doing this - next year I will do better!!

1. A sign welcoming people to your home town (or a nearby town)
2. A garden gnome
3. Birds on a wire
4. A group of tourists
5. A rack of post cards
6. An urban street scene
7. A rural landscape
8. A tattoo on a person
9. A bakery
10. A photo bomb (someone found lurking in the background of photo; the lurker may have intended to disrupt the picture or may be doing it unintentionally, but the background lurker is a surprise to the photographer)
11. A horn
12. A mascot
13. A sunrise
14. A parade
15. A juggler
16. A sign in a language other than English
17. A lamp post
18. A water fall
19. A public garden
20. A bus (not a car, truck, lorry, camper or RV) with a picture painted on its sides.
21. A photograph of you with something representing the season (recognizing that the season will be Winter for our friends in the southern hemisphere). Note: you may not use a substitute for this item.

If you find something on the list too difficult, you may substitute one of the following items for anything on the list, except for Item #21:
Alternative A: A kite, hot air balloon or blimp
Alternative B: A bird house

Happy Birthday Lee

It is my dear crafty friend Lee's birthday today and as soon as I saw this new Penny Black stamp, I knew it would be perfect for a card for her.

It is called 'A Little Bird' and the sentiment is included with the image, which I coloured with Promarkers.  The other sentiment is by Personal Impressions.

I hope you have a lovely day Lee xxx

I am entering this card into this month's Scrapology card challenge - Anything Goes

Crazy Golf

This is the August sketch by My Creative Sketches

I used a mixture of Basic Grey 'Serenade' and Simple Stories 'Handmade Holiday' and some photographs from last year's holiday to Guernsey.

Our first full day of the holiday was a Sunday and not many visitor attractions were open but we did find a small retail complex that included a craft shop (surprise surprise), a lovely restaurant and an 18 hole crazy golf course - it took us a good couple of hours to get round the course and I was the winner by one shot!!

The butterflies were cut with a Cheery Lynn die and the smaller butterfly is punched.  I have had that doily sat in my doily bag for ages - I coloured it with chalk ink for another layout but the colour was all wrong so I never used it, it was the perfect match for this layout.

One Photo & 20 words

Time to join in with Abi from Creating Paper Dreams and her monthly meme One Photo and 20 words.

Standard dress at my evening class, you never know when your neighbour is going to attack you with PVA glue!!

Anitas August class - Formal Night

This was the lovely class that we did with Anita in August - there was lots of lovely fussy cutting to do.

We used papers from My Mind's Eye 'Lucky in Love' and cut our title using Sizzlet alphabet Roundabout from felt.

The photograph is from the cruise that my niece did in 2011 with my parents for her 21st birthday.

I raised up the hand cut flowers with pinflair gel and then added a bit of bling to the centres.

Thank you Anita for another lovely monthly class x

All Creatures Great and Small

The prompt for week 15 of the 52 card challenge was All Creatures Great and Small.

I used some Penny Black critter stamps.  The hedgie in the car is from T for transparent set 'Joy to the World' and this is the first time I have used this stamp.

I love Christmas cows - this one is called Bessie Wishes -

The udderly perfect sentiment was computer generated, the other two sentiments are from Personal Impressions and Stamps Away.  The papers are all from an unbranded pad given away with a magazine.