Scrapping Crop

I went to my first all day crop last Saturday and managed to complete a couple of pages! One of them was for the kit which was provided. It was using Tim Holtz Distress Inks but it didn't quite work out for any of us! I have been able to make the inks bleed at home so I think maybe the card we were given was too absorbant, or even the inkpads could have been too dry. As I have a few of these myself in my small amount of stash (LOL) I will probably have another go at this technique sometime. The rest of it worked ok though! We had to cut around images to make them go over the border and I chose to do the same over the photo. The photograph I used was of Frank, sitting on the terrace at Hotel Sipan in Croatia.




The other layouts I did were of our trip to DLP last October.

This first layout used some paper that I was sent from US. It has ghosts on it, so I thought it was ideal for Halloween. I thought the grey was a good background for these photos and the orange pumpkin was a die cut that another lady in US sent me. One of the ladies at the crop gave me the orange ribbon/fibre which seemed to really go well with this layout.





At Coleman's Warehouse I found some other Halloween paper and also some embellishments - these are what I have used on the layouts showing the Halloween Parade.





The next crop is Thursday evening! Watch this space to see if I finish anything else!

Back at College

Term has now been started for one week. It is good to be back and see all the students again, but I do miss being at home and being able to do some scrapbooking, crafting, messing around etc..

The students are, as usual, lovely, but it has been very hectic trying to get them the options they want. I am in charge of all the AS students (year 12 to the folk in UK and aged about 17/18 to those of you not in UK!). The college I work at gives them a free choice of subjects and we construct an individual timetable for each student. When they arrive at college they have already chosen what subjects they want, but often these are not exactly what they thought they were! Sometimes their English skills are just not up to what they have chosen so they want to change to a different subject (We have students from 22 different countries!). Needless to say the first couple of weeks is a bit of a nightmare, but then things settle down and it all runs smoothly.

After these AS students are settled, then I have to start on the UCAS references. The Vice Principal writes all the references for the Oxbridge entries (those wanting to apply to Oxford or Cambridge) and all the medical applicants as these have to be completed within 4 weeks of us returning. There are usually about 25 of these and then the rest are divided mainly between myself and the lady in charge of A2 students (those one year older than mine!). We usually write about 35 of them each and it takes up most of our time between now and December 7th when college closes for Christmas.

Hopefully, this will still leave me time for some fun!

Disneyland Paris

We had a great time as usual! We decided to go into Paris for two evenings and eat there rather than in Disney, so that was good. The first evening we were there we ate at a Mexican restaurant near our hotel (in a small place called Torcy) and that was very pleasant. Our first meal in Paris was at Le Petit Bofinger (at Bastille) and I had exactly the same meal as I had last year on our anniversary. It was SO delicious. Calf's liver served in a raspberry sauce and Rum Baba for dessert. The dessert is huge and overflowing with rum! Lizzie and Frank both had snails for starters and then their main course was Duck served in a peach sauce. The following evening we went to a restaurant that specialised in mussels. This was also at Bastille! As I am allergic to fish I went for steak but Frank and Lizzie tucked into a bucket of Moules each. French food is wonderful!

At Disney we were able to get into the park early with our Annual Pass, so were able to ride all the Fantasyland rides before the park opened to the public. It was really lovely with hardly any people there. Needless to say at 10am when it opened properly it got much busier. We still didn't have to queue for very long. We have been so often now, we have it off to a fine art. The only time we did queue was in the Disney Studios, for the new ride Crush's Coaster. There is no fast pass so we had no choice but to join the queue if we wanted to go on it! 90 minutes we queued! It was a good ride and I would go on it again, but not until the queue has got to a reasonable length.

There is a small show based on High School Musical at the Studios Park and Lizzie managed to tape most of it on her camera. We knew there was a girl from Northampton in this show and since getting home we have discovered that it was a girl who used to dance with Katie and Lizzie. She went to Kilburn School of Dancing in Wellingborough. Apparently, before joining this show she has been several of the characters at DLP!

We had to come home on my birthday which was a shame, but it was an enjoyable trip.

Longer time no blog!

It is ages since I wrote anything on here!

Since my last entry, Lizzie and I have booked tickets to see the first night of Hairspray in London, and we have also got tickets for the three of us (Frank, Lizzie and me) to see a play at the Derngate and Royal in Northampton in about 10 days time. It apparently takes place in the whole theatre. I believe the audience moves around - the Derngate, the Royal and the bar! Should be interesting!

Katie has finally got her computer and is now able to update her blog on Life in Purdue, so if anyone reading this wants to read what she is up to, the follow the link on the right!

We (F, L and me) are off to Paris tomorrow and will spend some of Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Disneyland and then we will return home on Monday. Hopefully there will be an update on that when we get home!

Long time no blog!

I cannot believe it is almost two weeks since I wrote on here! Where does the time go?

A lot has happened since my last entry. Katie, Lizzie and I went to see Hairspray, which was a very funny film. We want to go and see the stage version which has Ben from the Joseph show on BBC playing the lead role and Michael Ball playing the mother!

Katie flew out to Purdue on Monday 13th August and arrived safely at the university on Tuesday. We are having great problems buying her the laptop she needs as there is a problem with the Apple website not accepting UK credit cards, but this is a long story which I will not go into!

Lizzie got her A level results today and she is thrilled with them. She had been told she would fail her Geography but she got a D and that included a B in one of the papers! Her other A levels were both grade C - one was Drama and the other was Philosophy and Ethics. Her AS Music was a grade D too (another long story as the Music teacher was new to A level teaching and didn't prepare them properly for the written paper!). She is really pleased with all her results as she now has 3 A levels grades C, C and D and 3 AS levels, also grades C, C and D. She will now start applying to universities for next September to study Performing Arts. She is especially pleased with her performance grade in her Drama exam as she was given 83 marks out of a possible 90.

Tonight I went to a scrapbooking crop for the second time. Last time I managed to stick 3 photos on a sheet of paper in 3 hours and that was all. At least tonight I managed to complete one page which was an achievement!


I have also completed the second page of my journal (I know - I am VERY slow) - Things I love. Now to decide which prompt to follow next!

Name page

I finished my name page in the sketchbook today! I decided I didn't want to do much too it as the lettering took up quite a lot of the page.



Now to think about the next page!

Anniversary

Yesterday was our 23rd Wedding Anniversary. Frank bought me some wonderful earring and I bought him some binoculars. Katie and Lizzie have something coming by mail but it has been held up with the strikes - so we get a second day of pressies so that will be good!

We went to London in the afternoon as we had tickets to see Lord of the Rings and before the show we ate in Carluccio's restaurant at Canary Wharf. Really lovely Italian food!

If anyone gets the chance to see Lord of the Rings on stage in London, it is brilliant. It has had mixed reviews but we thought it was excellent. Get there early because there is pre-show entertainment by all the hobbits and at several points in the show the cast intermingle with the audience. Naturally most of this happens in the stalls, but a couple of the cast did go up into the circle.

The way the stage moves is very clever with different levels rising and falling and rotating. The guy who plays Golum is also really good. A really good evening's entertainment.