Happy Halloween everyone.

Here are some pictures from our day :)


Carving the pumpkin

Ben Skeleton

Charlotte Witch









We have had great fun this evening going around all the family and scaring them into giving Ben and Charlotte some treats! They are now fast asleep in their beds after a very long day.

Bless them!

Ok , I am a bad Mummy! I got up this morning and got the kids ready for school, this involved the usual amount of rushing around making pack lunches, ironing, sorting hair, doing breakfast - you know the drill. I even managed to get my contact lense in and put on a bit of make-up in order to not scare the other Mum's in the playground. We shot out of the door with five minutes to go and ran down the road. Guess what, the gate was padlocked! It's non-pupil day apparently - well I didn't have a letter about it and the list I have stuck inside a kitchen cupboard showing term dates for the year definitely shows the children go back today! There I was really looking forward to a nice peaceful morning!

So I brought the kids back home and got them out of their uniforms and into some other clothes. I have spent the rest of the morning building one of those marble tower things. I hate doing it, it always falls down and takes ages to put together. Hence, I spent about an hour and a half 'playing' with Ben and Charlotte so I could catch the pieces every two minutes as it fell down! Oh well, it was a good opportunity to take some pics.









As soon as I walked away the whole thing collapsed and Ben has just had a major strop because HE is fed up building it!! Ummmm, I don't actually remember him buiding it yet. So they are now in the kitchen eating their packed lunch. That's one advantage of thinking they had school, lunch was already made :o)

I updated the All About Eve challenge blog this morning with Challenge #10, it's to scrap your idol but this means anyone you admire really whether they are famous, infamous or just your best mate! Who is YOUR idol - pop over and have a look to see what the fab DT girls have created - they are just so talented it knocks my socks off!

Here is mine, obviously it had to be Marilyn Monroe for me.



My online name is monroegirl for a reason, I have always admired Marilyn Monroe - I even had an award winning Marilyn Monroe website a few years ago which I stopped when I changed ISP's and just didn't have the time to be involved in anymore. I visited Hollywood in 2001 for the celebration of Marilyn's 75th birthday and I had such a fantastic time. I met some wonderful people and even got to stay in the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel which is where the very first oscars were held!



And WOW! How lucky am I? Look what my Mum brought back for me from Tenerife....



I love it!

Saturday mornings usually mean ballet class these days but as it is half term there is no class on today. Instead Ben and Charlotte have been playing around with my scrapbooking stuff!!! Actually, it is not as bad as it seems I have been making flowers and they have been cutting up the remnants of the patterned paper - when I say cutting up I mean into weany little pieces that are now all over the kitchen floor :o)

I went to Tesco the other day to buy some potatoes but as it is half term the little monsters were with me and the potatoes cost £25! That is because I decided to get sorted for halloween. Charlotte has already got her outfit but I bought her some tights to go with it and got Ben a skeleton outfit and a couple of glow in the dark swords, a fairy wand, some glow in the dark teeth, a large bowl to put sweets in and some sweets. I can't wait for Wednesday to get them all dressed up for their halloween party! i think I am more excited than they are.

Here are some photographs from our trip to the park the other day.









I have been scrapping this week when I get a chance. I have done my layout for Mojo (which went up last night), I am not going to put it here because I am not very happy with it. It was just one of those times when I just couldn't get into the groove! However, the original layout and the other girls efforts are amazing so please do pop over there and grab some inspiration.

I have also done my layout for next weeks All About Eve challenge - it's a good one and it goes live on Monday. Here is a sneak peak of mine.



I also completed this layout which I started at the Plymouth crop a couple of weeks ago. Again, it was one that I just couldn't fathom but I am happy with how it turned out in the end.



I did a layout this morning and I love it - so I am obviously getting my groove back lol. I can't share it though :o(

I am. of course, talking about Ben and Charlotte who seem to have developed some kind of Half Term Nutter illness, I haven't heard of it before but I seem to remember them suffering from it during the summer holidays!!

They are currently outside in the garden allowing me 2 minute bursts of peace in between smacking each other and kicking each other in the face resulting in much screaming.

On top of that next door decided to power wash the front of their house yesterday and the front door, step and wall of our house are now filthy. Today they are painting the front of their house and our door, wall and step are now covered in dots of cream paint!!

To top it ALL off Ben had been outside the back gate earlier going up and down the back lane on his scooter and he had forgotten to close the garden gate when he came back in; I just went out in the garden to hang out the washing and stood on a huge dog poo! Arggh, not only that, I have long trousers on and it went on my shoes, my trousers and some washing I dropped. I looked around and there was dog poo everywhere and I had to clean it all up!! I don't have a dog, this was not my mess. I am NOT a happy bunny.

Well, enough of that!

I haven't blogged for ages - where do the days go, I sure as hell don't know. It seems as soon as I get out of bed it is nearly time to get back in it and I haven't got much done! Friday was Mojoholder day and this week we scraplifted a beautiful layout by Fiona Beckman, actually, mine does not resemble Fiona's much but I did use the placement of her elements as a guide. The mojo girls have produced some goooooorgeous layouts so pop over and have a look. This was my version:



My Mum is on her hols at the moment, sunning herself in Tenerife and I miss having her across the road to go and have a coffee and chuck the kids in the garden when they are behaving like they are today. As I said, they are in our garden at the moment but we only have a little courtyard with a postage stamp of grass whereas at Mum's there is a driveway and a proper garden so the kids can have races and mess around on scooters and bikes.

My Mum is psychic! She just phoned me lol. I am happier now that I have had a moan to her :o) Carol, how could you be out when I tried to phone you earlier???

Mark and I had a fab night out on Saturday :) His mum babysat for us and we actually went out and had some fun on our own, it was great. We had a few too many drinks and a lovely Italian meal :o) I felt really nice for a change in my knitted (above the knee!!) dress and knee high boots :) I wish it didn't cost so much because it would be so lovely to have the chance to get dressed up and go out like that more often!

Well I have been knitting dolls clothes :) Great fun and Charlotte loves watching me make them too!

Over at Mojoholder this week we scraplifted Emine Palaand it was a lovely layout to lift. I had a photo of Ben dressed up as a pirate and some gorgeous Rusty Pickle pirate papers to use so I created this:



It actually looks much better in real life. Emine left a lovely comment on the blog which we all appreciated, it is so nice when you do a scraplift and the orginal creator takes the trouble to leave a comment.

On Saturday morning my class for the UKS cyber crop went live and it seems to have been well received which I am relieved about! It wasn't really a layout class as such I just wanted to teach a few techniques for using paint which may or may not be new to people. One was how to make your own mask using card and spray adhesive and the other was paint flicking - very messy but so much fun lol. Here was my layout:



As soon as my class went live at 9am on Saturday I was rushing around the house like a loony getting ready for the first all day Plymouth crop which started at 10! I was still sat at the computer trying to print a photo when Terrie turned up to give me a lift! So, ultimately I didn't really get anything done at the crop as I wasn't organised. It didn't matter though. I had a brilliant day just chatting and moving bits of paper around in front of me :o) It was great to spend the day with Terrie as I haven't seen her for a while and to top it all off Tracie came down to join us - we had good fun which is what crops are all about anyway. Actually, Terrie was quite industrious on Saturday, which makes a change she usually just yaps :P I mean that in the nicest way because I love listening to her yap, she is so funny! I wish I had taken some photographs to share with you but I forgot to check that my camera battery was charged and (as usual) it wasn't.

I also want to say congratulations to Terrie because she has made it on to a design team - pop over to Papercraft Junkies to see her work.

On Sunday night I had a message from Jakey to contact her as she had a proposition for me - well I was intrigued and did so immediately. Guess what! She was only inviting me to join the All About Eve design team!!!! I was (and still am) in shock. I love the work they do over at All About Eve. This is an inspiration blog that I genuinely admire so I am very proud to say that I accepted the offer, in fact I had to complete my first challenge today as it went live this evening. The biggest thing for me was that I was invited, I didn't have to enter a contest to get the place, apparently they wanted ME to be on the design team - I am amazed but I feel oh so HAPPY. Here is the layout that I did for the challenge to scrap a secret about yourself - please don't judge me for my drunken behaviour - it was about 12 years ago now. Please go and check out the work of the rest of the DT because it is international fabulous-ness!

I was at my Mum's the other day and she was going through so really old baby knitting patterns and I found loads of patterns for knitting dolls clothes. I was so excited as I remember playing with these clothes when I was little because my Mum had knitted them for me! Soooo, I nicked them lol.



I have made one of the dresses already for Charlotte's Barbie and she loves it so guess what I am going to be doing when I am watching the tv tonight.

I will leave you with a sneaky peak of my DT layout for the Mojoholder challenge which goes live at about 11pm tonight.

I just couldn't resist doing the Ali Edwards Pencil Lines sketch because these photographs were perfect for it!



I have been really busy in the house for a few days so I thought I deserved a day off today :o)

I am still smiling following my visit to Tracie's this weekend. I had a lovely time!

I arrived there on Friday evening and went back to Tracies where we had a great evening chatting, computering and sorting out stuff for Saturday's crop until the early hours of the morning!! Tracie is just great and we found out that we had something quite major in common which was fantastic! It's one of those things that it is just so amazing to know someone else in the same situation and believe me Tracie will be getting lots of phone calls on this subject in the future lol. Anyway, I think I managed to just about polish of a bottle of Tracie's red wine so when I crawled up the stairs to bed it didn't take me very long to fall to sleep.

Saturday morning came and we got up and packed up to go to the crop. It was quite a cosy affair this time but that was quite nice actually. We were busy all day! Tracie and I each taught a layout class and then it was time to grab our camera's. Everyone had to have photographs taken of themselves for a challenge Tracie was setting them to scrap them immediately afterwards - with only an hour until the crop was over! Actually, I think she was giving me a challenge as I had to upload everyone's photo's, get them to choose 4 favourites, carry out some photo editing on them and get them printed in time for the class. Now, that would have been fine but Tracies laptop decided to go potty and I had to do a system restore in the end and re-install the drivers etc - nightmare! Luckily it all worked out and everyone got their photographs and the layouts they produced were stunning!

Tracie took some photo's of me posing by a tree and I returned the favour. We also took photo's of each other taking a photo of each other, if you know what I mean!



Tracie also gave me some gorgeous stash to use when I get home so I need to make sure I get some scrapping done with that this week. She even gave me some bits for my Mum who was absolutely over the moon - thanks Tracie :o)

I came back on the train on Saturday and I have just been vegging out really. I cooked a nice roast lamb today that Mark won in a meat raffle. I did a layout this afternoon using some gorgeous Heidi Grace papers - I love this photo of me and the kids this summer!



We have someone coming to view the house on Tuesday evening so I am going to get some stuff done tomorrow but wait until Tuesday to do a proper clean through - I may get some scrapping done!

Friday saw Mojoholder's new scraplift challenge go live and this weeks guest was none other than Karen Leahy (Scrapdolly), pop over and have a look at the design teams work. This was my interpretation of Karen's layout.



Even more exciting is that I have another all day crop next Saturday. This time it is in Plymouth and Tracie is going to come down and join us! Hopefully, she is going to stay with me on Friday night so Tracie, Terrie and I can get together the night before the crop :o) So happy!!

I have got a challenge up on the mojoholder blog today to scrap your idol! Come and have a look :o)

If you link your creation to the comments section you could be in with a chance of winning the monthly RAK so come on, you know you want to.

Here is my layout, I did a digi one this time :o)

click to enlarge

Well, as I expected, I was kicked out of the Bad Girls contest last week. I don't blame them really lol! Anyway, the class this week was to create a layout utilising 'whitespace' so I had a go anyway and this is what I came up with. I love this photograph of Charlotte engrossed in her drawing.





I have been busy scrapping this last week. I am teaching a class at Tracie Hudson's crop on Saturday so I had to get that sorted. I also created a cute little mini book with the left over supplies - but I am not showing you yet because I don't want anyone to see it just yet!

Here are a couple of layouts I have done of Ben.





I am going down to the local primary school tomorrow to make an appointment with the Head Teacher about volunteering to help in the classrooms. I used to do this years ago so I am really looking forward to the chance to do it again.