My Life Most Ordinary: November 2011

I have Things 1 and 3 at home feeling all poorly sick and sorry for themselves, so whilst they are asleep on the sofa I thought I might actually update my blog. Well it was either that, or do some ironing, and when it comes down to it, blogging beats ironing hands down!

What's been happening since I last blogged way back in September? Well, to be honest, nothing worth writing about. Life has pretty much gone on the same way it usually does for us... school/back from school/after school activities/busy weekends trying to complete unrealistic to do lists... lol!

One thing that is worth writing about is the 3rd Sarah's Cards Ltd retreat that took place in Warrington at the beginning of November. It was another fun weekend with lots of laughs, too much food, and in my case very little scrapping!

You can see a post about the retreat on the blog here. I can't believe it's only 4 months until the next retreat in March!!! There are still a few places left and you can grab yourself one of them here. There were 6 fab LO classes, and the LOs can be seen here. My mum came to the retreat this time as a late birthday/early Christmas present. She was really nervous about going as she didn't know anybody (apart from me obviously), but she was soon befriended and chatting away like she'd known everyone for years... and she soon got a 'fresh air' buddy too! She loved it and had a fab time, making lots of new friends. Here she is with 2 of her table friends, Dr Eileen and Trina.

Now it's bad enough having to have the DT photo at the end of the retreat, but this year I was forced into having a small group photo too... lol! It's been printed out and stuck to the treat cupboard door so I don't go in there... look at that tummy!!! Oh dear!

Like I say I got very little scrapping done... I only completed 1 LO!!! As it happens it was a LO for the November challenge on the Sarah's Cards blog, set by Nat. The theme is to think NEGATIVE. I went down the using the negative space in my alphas to create the eyes design feature.

I bought the Pink Paislee Phantom range, including stamps, stickers and transparencies as soon as they came out, because I just knew they'd be perfect for the Halloween photos I have yet to scrap from previous years... but of course I started with photos from this year first! As well as the challenge LO, I also did this LO of Drew studying 'little Oliver' dressed as Harry Potter. I don't know if it was the glasses or the scar, or just how incredibly cute he looked, but Drew was fascinated with him. The photos were taken at the 'First Annual' Garratt Halloween Party... there you go Jen, it's out there now, you HAVE to have another party next year! There will be lots of LOs appearing from the fantastic afternoon, so watch this space, this space and this space.

I used the chalkboard stickers to make the spider embellishment, the very cute Halloween stamp set from American Crafts and a strip of gorgeous Amy Tangerine mix tape., the background grid paper was also by Amy Tan.

I can share a few more LOs that were created using the September kit. This was a gorgeous kit to work with, and even though at first glance it looks like a 'girly' kit, it was really easy to use on boys LOs. There are a couple left to buy.

My blog post goes up on the 1st of each month, and this month I decided to use a mix of papers by Lily Bee and Studio Calico. Here are my LOs, and you can see the blog post here with a tutorial on how to create perfect stitched titles, and the flower embellishment using a circle punch here and here.