Been to the Sea....

We're back from a week in Northumberland with my folks - the weather wasn't too bad and we were able to get out and about for at least part of every day.  It's just lovely to spend time in my "home" village with my Aunt and Uncle really - that it's less than a five minute walk to the prom from their house is a bonus!

 The photos haven't even been put onto the pc yet so if you want to see where I was, scroll down a couple of posts to Friday's Daring Cardmakers "Wish You Were Here?" challenge and there's a photo of the bay there!

The excitement I had while I was away was hearing that the latest issue of "Simply Cards and Papercraft" magazine was out along with it's "Best of British supplement - exciting because the card I made using Funky Hand products is in there - and it's on the cover too.

The card template and all papers are by Funky Hand and the instructions on how I made it are in the magazine

As my Aunt always comes to visit armed with boxes of home-made goodies, we decided to do a bit of baking ourselves so we could return the favour.  We made another batch of those wonderful Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes and also tried out a new recipe for Chocolate Chip Woopie Pies.  Sorry about this rubbish photo but you'll get the idea, I'm sure!

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of crafting, blogging and blog-hopping soon, but now I must get back into "cooking dinner" routine - I'd forgotten that food wasn't just going to appear in front of me courtesy of Aunt and Uncle or via a waiter/waitress today.  Oh the shock of being home!

Thanks for visiting

So Much for My Big Idea

My "big idea" was to try and make/blog "A Card A Day in May" and see if anyone would like to play along with me.... well it was already the 3rd before I remembered this so maybe next year, eh?

It's a shame really as I've been crafting like mad as we have so many family and friends with birthdays in May - if on;y I'd remembered to blog in time.

Ah well, never mind.

Three of our nephews have birthdays in may, and there's one of my BIL's too.  I really don't like making "boy" cards so this month is always causes me a headache.

Anyway, here's the card for the footie-loving 17 year old:

A while back I used my Craft Robo to cut a load of silhouette cricketer figures - I made a couple of cards, one for my cousin and the other I put away ready for my BiLs birthday later in May  - sneaky ha?

They worked out pretty well, so I thought I'd do some footballer ones for this card and cut them in coloured card for a change.

I used:

Footballer silhouettes cut with Craft Robo, Bazzill card, football paper (made using my graphics package), spotty paper (Cosmo Cricket), 
Footballs were made using clipart images, resized to cut with circle punches, 
sentiment; home-made decal sticker

A few days ago my lovely blogging/FB friend Lisa mentioned she'd been making Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes the other day so I went a-begging for the recipe.  We started growing rhubarb in the garden a couple of years back and I'm trying to gather a few recipes for using it.

I didn't quite get the frosting right - it was too soft to pipe, but boy! these taste good.

Often when I bake a boxful of the goodies get sent in to the office - that way I still get to do baking, but it saves us from pigging out on the lot!  When Hubby said "shall I take a few to work with me? this time I said "no!"

Thanks Lisa, you're a star!

Baby Girl

Well, it's not raining atm, but oh boy! did it rain in the night, all night.  So much for all that "Oh is this going to be as good a Summer as that of '76?" yakka on the radio that I was sick of hearing a month or so back!  We have flippin' mushrooms growing all over the back lawn!  Even the courgettes have slowed down, they could do with a bit of sunshine like the rest of us - mind you, according the running count I keep on the kitchen whiteboard, we've already had at least 39 (probably more as we don't always remember to add them!).  We've had loads of runner beans too and I've been trimming, slicing and blanching some of those for the freezer over the last few days.  The blackberries seem happy with the weather too - I've already picked almost a kilo just from the 1 bush we have in the garden.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty full-on what with one thing and another, and with visitors over the next couple of weeks it's not going to ease up anytime soon.  On Saturday hubby was in London doing some "hand-holding" one of their big clients was installing new software  so I thought I'd give myself a day off and do something different.

I did some baking and made a cake (now in the freezer ready for next week) and some cupcakes/fairy cakes.  With the garden glut at this time of the year I'm always on the lookout for tempting new recipes and I found one somewhere for this Chocolate and Courgette Cake.  The mix was huge - that'll teach me to check through the ingredient quantities before I start - so I did half the mixture in a cake tin and used the rest in muffin cases.  We've been "sampling" the little cakes over the weekend and those in the photo are all that remain. Have to say, they are delicious!

One of my recent commissions was for a card to celebrate the arrival of anew baby girl

I used:

"Wishful Thinking" papers by Fancy Pants

Ruffled Ribbon and Stripy Cotton Twine from The Ribbon Girl

Pram. Large Background circle and Scalloped circle were all Robo cut with templates I made in PSP

"Welcome" sentiment made with Rub-on Decal paper from Crafty Computer Paper

Brads and ribbon from stash, MS edging punch, pc generated message

Thanks for looking in today, please come back soon