one about the girl, one about the boy

I don't much use youtube, but definitely it has its use. My daughter wanted her hair braided into french plaits. Which I didn't know how to. After watching a couple of tutorial in youtube, I managed  to have her hair done.

This one is missing the title - I meant to superimpose "Tiddler" over "thing" on the die cut but didn't come round to do it.

The journaling says:

"Because you like to tell tales, I bought you a book about a little fish called Tiddler who always told tall lates. I think it backfired on me because you saw it as an encouragement.You told your teacher that I met President Obama when he visited Ireland.
You didn't think you'd get caught but you were.
Don't tell tales, Luke!"

I love it, not because of the design, but because it records something about my son, a historical event and also has my son's handwriting on it, I copied his school work and added to the layout. Sadly his grammar is not the best and I didn't think of asking him what he meant to wrote."

Two layouts, finally!

Only now that I uploaded these two I noticed how similar they are - kraft paper background with white mist. Same letter stickers in the title and the colours on the papers more or less the same.

The first one is about my daughter and a friend. She's the daughter of friends of ours and only met twice but they bonded over a shared liking of Dr. Who. We stayed with them in London and I was amazed on how well they got along. Of course, at some stage, they had to sit in the sofa and watch Dr. Who.

The next one is my April summary layout. I started with some chipboard leftovers. They came from a game we got for our children and once we removed smalls square chips for the game, we were left with this little pretty windows which I used in this layout.

Food

I should add a mid-year resolution to my new year ones. Take photos of "mission accomplished" tasks.

Last week I made a oven baked risotto. I had it first at a friend's house and it is so much easier than the traditional method. I googled and found this recipe. The photo is by MollyMesnik too.

I made a couple of mistakes. One, I let  it bake for too long so it was a bit too soggy, two, I didn't have enough parmesan cheese so it tasted a bit bland.  I'll definitely try it again (halving the ingredients).

New Year's Resolutions, 6 months on...

The problem with New Year's Resolutions is that, after a month or so,  I forget about them. Honestly, at this point I don't even remember all of them.

So I came up with this cunning plan to shame me to stick to them. After all, it is only June, I still have more than 6 months to get some results. Maybe if make a plan to blog weekly about my progress (or lack of) it will help me to keep focused?

I'll list my resolutions as I get them started again.

Resolution 1 - Meals: Every week try to cook something new. It doesn't have to be anything big, a side dish, a dessert is fine.

I got a subscription to Easy Food with my Tesco vouchers and I've tried a few recipes from that. Now I started to save interesting recipes I find online with Pinterest, that way, I can keep track of I want to try and write down if I liked it or not afterwards.

Today I tried Hasselback Potatoes, Donal Skehan's version. It was a bit dry, but rereading it, I made a mistake and didn't melt the butter. I'll make it again.

This is a foto from Donal's blog, mine didn't turn out as pretty, but nice enough.

Resolution 2 - Home and Garden. Let's say they're not looking good. Prunning, cleaning, weeding in the garden. Home needs decluttering, repainting. And lots of imagination, it is so bland.

My husband got a multiple picture frame like this one for this birthday in February. It is a tricky one because you need lots of photos that go well together. I printed some photos but didn't like the final result then had a brainwave and went for mirrors instead.

It is temporarily sitting on top of my mantelpiece.

Tooth, Apple, Fairy

  Last September, a few weeks after my son started school, he lost his first tooth. Finally I got to scrap it.

The apples in the layout are not random, they have something to do with the story.

The journaling says

"Once upon a time there was a boy with a wobbly tooth. 
One day, his mum gave him an shiny red apple.
The boy ate the apple.
Then he said ouch, I’am bleeding in my mouth!
Turned out the tooth had gone and it was never found.
But the tooth fairy left him a few coins under his pillow anyway.

THE END "

My little reader and March Summary

She loved that we read stories to her every night before going to bed. Since both her parents love to read too, I assumed that as soon as she became a proficient reader, she'd read books too.

But it wasn't the case, we'd buy books for her, go to the library with her. And occasionally, if we insisted, she'd read a book. One of the thin, silly ones, about fairies and the likes. It drove me insane, how could a girl with a pile of books to read say she was bored and had nothing to do? Surely, you have a BOOK??!!!

Then I found some books I thought she'd like, her goodmother gave her one. And she liked them. Then I bought her a book, the first from a series, to bring with her for our Easter break. She devoured it and we had to go to a bookshop to get the next one from the series. She finished it in one evening so the following day my husband got more 3. During the 5 day break she finished the whole series  but one which we couldn't find .

Going from one extreme to the other in a matter of months.

March's summary layout - I misted the border, I seem to be in a border phase. I think all of my recent layouts have a border, even if it is only implied like the one above, where I left a thin white border around the whole layout.

The pen sketched grid is a digi by Ali Edwards - very simple, one of the things I like about Ali Edwards is that most of what she does are simple and anyone could easily replicate (apart from her fabulous handwriting) but she has an eye to put things together that makes them special and original. I haven't put the list of supplies because I've been  lazy, but Ali's digi is available at Designer Digitals.

Have a good weekend!

Numbers!

When he started school in September, he discovered an interest for numbers. On occasions he'd actually ask for "sums", that is, easy addition and subtraction questions. And he says his favourite number is 199. He thinks it is hilarious to start counting 1, 2, 3.. and then to drop 199 in the middle of it. I am not implying that he is gifted or anything like that, just that he likes numbers. And that's cool.

Also cool is that 199 is a prime number.

Done for a Studio Calico challenge.