I have been creating today :) I am really happy with how this one turned out. Charlotte was a real juice monster when she was smaller and it was all she wanted, all the time!

Mark and I are going out tonight to a restaurant on the Barbican called Cuisine Spontanee. We used to go there a lot before we left Plymouth and I can't wait to go back tonight.

I must, I must try not to drink too much red wine!

I have just finished sorting out a load of paperwork! I have been meaning to do it for about a week but I have just not had the time. I have been soo busy. Not bad busy, nice busy.

On Sunday we decided the kids needed a day out so we just went onto Plymouth Barbican and The Hoe. We had a great time and Mark even took the kids up to the top of Smeaton's Tower. Actually, they weren't really that impressed and Ben really didn't want to walk out onto the balcony to look at the view. The kids enjoyed stuffing themselves with chips and ice cream, in fact, Mark and I enjoyed stuffing ourselves with chips and ice cream as well.

Having fun on Plymouth Hoe

They are at the top - honest!

On Monday I went to a coffee morning at the kids school. That was a bit of a wash out! I don't really like things like that but I thought I would make an effort. I wish I hadn't bothered, I am getting very fed up at the moment with a miserable, ignorant 'friend' and I have decided life is too short and I really can't be bothered with her playground mentality! Does that sound harsh? Good! I am sick of it.

I had a MUCH better time on Tuesday as I went to Fiona Beckmans house, my god, she makes the best coffee and her chocolate cupcakes (secret recipe) are divine!! I am going again lol. Bee (bertiebaby on UKS) was there too. I was soo happy to be able to have a nice chat with some genuinely nice, intelligent and friendly people. Mum picked Charlotte up from nursery for me so I had a good amount of time there. Usually I am rushing around picking kids up and dropping them off every two hours of the day lol.

Wednesday was also good :) Terrie (terriefarrell on UKS) came over to my house and we had a good old natter and looked through scrapbooking albums, stash etc. Great. I had to pick Charlotte up from nursery whilst Terrie was here, she and Ben had dressed up as pirates as part of a sea themed dress up day at their school - they both looked gorgeous! I can feel another layout coming on....

Charlotte the Pirate Princess

Messing around on Photo Booth

Ben the Mean Pirate

'What?' I hear you say. Well I don't really know myself but one of my friends has a new found love for tattoos and she loves this programme not least because of the gorgeous (her opinion - not mine!) Ami James. Well it is her birthday today so I have obliged and made her a card featuring the man himself. I hope she likes it!

Just a quick post to show you the layout I created today. Actually, I don't like it in the scan but in real life I love it. It is funny but sometimes I find scans just don't do layouts justice, this one really looks 'carpenter like' (if that's an expression) but you can't see the texture properly.



Mum and I had a good time this evening, not a lot of scrapping was done (I had almost finished this layout before she arrived), but we spent loads of time looking at and stroking stash. Most of the time was spent with Mum trawling through my photographs of the kids and trying to steal them!!

A new pic with my new hairstyle! I was playing around with photobooth and being very vain the other morning lol.

Mum is coming around in a minute for a cropping evening - yippeeeeee!

I am feeling very stressed so hopefully a bit of scrapping will cheer me up.

It was Ben's birthday on Monday and he had a great day even though he had to go to school and his Daddy was away at work. He had loads of nice presents and spent most of the day (when he was at home) jumping around in his new Power Rangers outfit :0) Mark and I had taken Ben to Pizza Hut and the large Playzone type place on Sunday and he and Charlotte really liked that!

We bought him a telescope and an Evel Knievel toy (which Mark HAD to get him because he loved his when he was little!) and some other stuff. He was a very happy little boy on Monday morning.


We also bought him Spiderman Operation, the quality of this toy is diabolical! How they can charge 15 pounds for what amounts to a sheet of card, a sheet of metal and some plastic bits and packaging I don't know - it is truely rubbish!

I don't really know where the rest of the week has gone, it has just passed me by lol. I went into town on Tuesday morning and had a lovely haircut at Toni & Guy, they always do it really nice so I am very pleased with it.

I did a little scrapping this morning and finished a layout that I began at the last crop I went to. I love the picture of Charlotte with her sunglasses on even though half of her head is missing.

I had yesterday!

We all got up as normal and went out for the school run. Ben and Charlotte messed around in the playground as usual waiting for the bell to go and when it went they both ran away from me - as usual! I called to Ben to go and line up with his class and ... wallop! I don't know what happened as it all went so quickly but he fell on the floor - on his head! As soon as he got up screaming he had a massive lump on his forhead, a swollen eye and nose with stones stuck all over the side of his face. I have to say the headmaster was fantastic and ushered me in to the school nurse immediately. Needless to say I spent all morning at casualty with my ever patient step-dad who jumped out of bed to take me there. Luckily he and my Mum live across the road from me as Mark had taken the car to work.

Anyway, Ben is fine now and spent all yesterday afternoon playing me up which was a sure sign that he was fine :D

I have just dropped them at school this morning and Ben spent the whole time in the playground hugging me and crying because I wouldn't let him run around like a lunatic. Bless him.

I still haven't got around to sorting out my craft cupboard because I was going to do it yesterday morning so that is my job right now, I just have to print some card inserts so that I can post dh's Mums card to her today and then I am on a mission with my craft stuff!!! I bought a few more Really Useful Boxes on Wednesday so they are ready to be filled and stash sorted.

Ben is settling into his new school really well which is great but I have noticed that his reading is terrible!! I went to speak to his teacher yesterday and she assured me that he is just playing me up and that at school his reading is exactly at the level it should be for his age, if not a little better. I was very relieved but I am still not happy with his progress at home so I searched the net for the Peter and Jane books that I used when I was a kid. I found them on Amazon and have order the first 12 to see how he gets on. Mark and I often laugh and say that we are like a victorian Mum and Dad and we don't agree with all this new fangled phonics rubbish, we think the teacher should point to the letters with a stick and say 'a', 'b' etc lol. Well we are going to try it at home :o) and see how Ben gets on with it. We can use them with Charlotte next year from the start so it is a good investment. I want to buy them all, there are loads of them. The Peter and Jane books and the Key Word Reading Scheme taught 100 million of us to read so I don't think you can go far wrong with them, if anything it will just reinforce what Ben is learning at school!

Well I would say that the unpacking and house sorting is all done now. All I have left to do is organise my craft stuff and that is my job for today so I had better get on with it and stop talking rubbish on here. I am determined to do some scrapping tonight and to do that my craft stuff needs to be organised, I don't know where anything is at the moment except for the things that are in my fab AMM tote that Mum got for me.

Just thought I would post to let you know that I feel fine now. I felt awful for a day and then it passed off - luckily.

Unfortunately I then went out on Friday night and drank far too many glasses of wine and spent Saturday feeling worse that I did when I was genuinely ill!

Will update properly later :o)