Harry Potty!

So obviously it was Halloween yesterday and when you've got munchkins, you can't just turn off all the lights and hide upstairs from the trick or treaters (er, no, never used to do that, honest!). There seems to be a lot more made of Halloween these days so we embraced it and did a bit of decorating:

So the kids knew that they could come knocking at our door (for that read, I took the kids out and Rob had to answer the door to the little horrors!):

This was the first year Xander had really got what Halloween was, so after much debate in the middle of the costume aisle in Sainsburys (no Xander, Ben 10 isn't a scary Halloween monster!) we ended up making him a wizard costume. But obviously Xander being Xander, we had to bring it down a peg or 2. Harry Potty anyone?!

Emily went to town this year, managing to freak her daddy out by dressing up as one of his ex-girlfriends!

So, kids all dressed up and ready to go out and scare the neighbours:

This year we went around with Emily's friends Anna and Miranda. The girls looked gorgeous:

And Anna's little brother Count Tomula came along to keep Xander company:

Awww bless them, even my old 'I hate kids begging on doorsteps' self started to melt away.

So, that's over for another year. The kids now have enough sugar to last them til Easter egg time and we're now on official countdown to Bonfire night. Yay, parkin, pie and peas, bonfire toffee and fireworks!

We're Back!

Finally, after what seemed like a decade, I have my pooter back! Hurray! Brand new hard drive is now installed and we're just going through the task of reloading all the program files. Luckily the PC guy managed to save all my photos and documents. Phew!

So, what's been happening? Well, Rob has gone back to work and is doing better. He's seeing the surgeon again in 2 weeks so hopefully we'll then find out if the 2nd op is going to be pre or post Xmas. Just in case it's pre I'm busy getting Xmas stuff done so I have December free for hospital visits, making him cups of tea etc etc. I have the majority of presents bought (and wrapped!) so we're making good progress. The kids have written to Santa! OK, so that's more to do with me not being able to keep up with 'I want that' in every advert break on kids' tv so needed to get this stuff written down than being organised.

I've finally got a job that I officially start this week. Already been in to do some cover work but don't properly start until Wednesday. So it's going to be all go round here!

The kids are the usual (won't elaborate on 'usual', they're doing my head in this morning!). We seem to hardly see Em with her hectic social life. Xander won Star Of The Week at school before half term and is loving going full days.

Right, better fly. Busy Sunday what with Halloween but hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with spooky pics!

Missed you all! x

Normal Service Shall Resume Shortly...

We're having a few technical issues over here at the Garlics. In short, the computer's kaput! Off to see a man about a hard drive tomorrow but for now we'd like to apoloise for the loss of service and hope to resume normal bloging shortly...

For the Love of Paper!

Been a bit of a naughty scrapbooker lately and, er, not really been scrapping! I'm afraid all things woolly/wooly (seriously, I have an English degree and still don't know how to spell it!) have taken over a bit, especially since I discovered the crochet, and my patterened papers have laid untouched for a few weeks. Plus, coming up to the colder weather, it's so much nicer sat with something warm and woolly/wooly on your knee infront of the telly than sitting in a cold dark conservatory with paper.

However, this last weekend, my house over at UKS, The Green Buttons, threw a little mini cyber crop to try and get everyone's scrapping mojo going again. I've always enjoyed the cyber crops before so, I got the conservatory heater fired up, stuck on some lights and dragged my bum in there. I'm so glad I did as there have been some lovely classes and I'm liking the results!

First up a pre-crop challenge to blow off the scrapping cobwebs. This was to scrap the end of summer. I just had to pick this song title, that always creeps into my head around September:

Another pre crop challenge was a sketch so I scrapped Em and Jet:

First class of the weekend involved some stitching. Usually I would pop over to my mum's and borrow the sewing machine but seeing as she was on a cruise ship at the time, I had to make do with punching holes and hand sewing. It took forever but I'm pleased with it, and I got to scrap one of my favourite recent pics:

Next was a great challenge to use up some of those scrap bits of paper we scrappers accumalate. Here's a pic of our very own PM in the making, Councillor Gillard:

Said Ms Gillard even had a go at this one herself:

About time for a boy layout me thinks. This challenge was to make a border out of a paper punch. This heart punch I used for my cousin's wedding invites last year and I like that it's a bit unconventional using hearts on a boy's page. It's also a classic pic that was just crying out to be scrapped:

A bit of a head scratcher next. A challenge to produce a LO incorporating string, a clock and the number 8 or 10 (there were logical reasons behind all these, wish have vacated my head now!). Took me a while to think about this but eventually did a page for the kids' birthday book:

And finally, a new one for me but I absolutely love it. It was to produce a mini canvas based around a birthday. I decided to do 2, one for each child. I think what I loved even more was, as it was a small canvas, I got to use up even more scraps and so only actually paid out for the basic canvasses, everything else was out of old kits:

I can see canvas projects being added to my 'things to craft' list!

There's a few more classes on there I'm going to save for future, but for now I'm happy that I've made my paper stash feel a little bit loved again so it doesn't start glaring at the box of wool across the craftroom floor!

Poor Cindy!

It's not often we say that round here, Cindy's normally the one causing the trouble, but you had to feel sorry for her this weekend when she fell victim to a bored 4-year-old!

There she was, having a nice snooze on the sofa in the conservatory, when along comes said 4-year-old. "Hello little cat, look I've made you a hat"

"And what you need to do is wear the hat and see if it'll stay on while I drive my little yellow car at you"

"Hmmm, maybe you need help keeping it on, how about some sticky glue?"*

Hmmmm... Cindy can currently be found at the end of our drive with her suitcase!

* No cats were actually glued in the making of this blog post!

Councillor Gillard

For all of you out there who bury your heads in your hands and cry out in despair at today's world leaders (er, probably all of us I think!) then do not fear. They might all talk out of their bottoms but I have hope for the future - there's been an election, there's been a landslide, and look who's taken their first step into politics:

May I present Councillor Gillard MP*, duly elected school council representative for Year 4! Bless that girl of mine, she won by a huge majority too: 30 kids up for it (ie the whole class!), all 30 kids got a vote and they stopped counting before the end as Emily had 18 votes! OK, so when asked why they'd voted for Emily most did say it's because she's loud and so will get heard, but hey, I've heard a lot worse reasons for being voted into politics.

1st on Emily's agenda - world hunger. She has started her campaign this morning, along with her campaign manager Master X Gillard, and arranged a press call in the kitchen as they queued for pancakes. Master X was even heard to utter 'please, can I have some more'!

I think she's got the makings of a politician yet. Solve world hunger by making sure she's alright Jack first!

Next on the campaign trail, foreign secretary here is going to try and end the war over the tv!

* more playtime

Tactile

I was having a discussion the other day about normal scrapbooking versus digital scrapbooking. I've never tried digital and I don't think I ever would. My main reason is it's not tactile. A lot of us agreed that the reason we love crafting is that it is so tactile, there's all those textures which you just can't capture on screen.

It's been a very tactile week here. On Monday we took Xander on a little nature walk. He's changed his hours at school so he only goes Weds, Thur, Fri so he's at home all day Monday and Tuesday. As we get into Autumn it gets harder to come up with things to do so we took advantage of the dry weather and headed out into the woods. We collected leaves, acorns, conker shells and sticks so we could make patterns. When we got home we got out the paint and had loads of fun printing with all the things we had found:

I've also finally mastered the art of crocheting after many months of trying and I love it! Again, it is just so tactile, even more so than knitting. I finished this scarf this week out of this gorgeous wool:

I love the pattern, you just want to stroke it!

I also went on to crochet a big chunky scarf for Em. She loves this as it's so thick and the crochet stitches give it a lovely 'bumpy' feel:

So next time you hear us crafters talk about 'stroking' stash you can see why. I think we spend more time cooing about how lovely the stash is than actually using it!