Mixed Up Saturday

 

Good Saturday Morning Ladies, 

We have a lovely family day ahead, busy but its a nice kind of busy.   I don't know what I'd do without Paul on days like this,  I can't even remember the days when he didn't have the feintist idea how to cook a roast potato, now he is the 'Roastie King' in our family.  We did some prep last night but as Paul said it's just a regular Sunday dinner,  just a bit bigger.  

I finally had the energy to put the baubles on the tree,  it's one of those jobs that you have to be in the mood for. 

Here it is, no Star/Angel as we just haven't found a star that we like. We put our older one in the Dining room for the first time, the girls had fun choosing really gaudy colour baubles for it, it does look fun!  

Shopping was bloody exhausting,  why can't it just be simple?  I think we spent about an hour and a half looking at fridge freezers,  they all look the same, but the prices were ridiculous,  why do you need a fridge/freezer that links to your phone to tell you the expiry dates of your food,  or have a screen that you can write notes on?  Why !!  I think we have decided on one!  But then its 'from' £40 to deliver, £25 to take the old one away,  then extra to install,  although surely its only plugging it in!  So we are looking on line, we got our Dishwasher and washing machine from AO.com, so we will look there. 

These are all of the Christmas cards I made this year,  I'm sure there were more!  But thats plenty for what I need.  I enjoyed making every one of them.  

How many did you all manage to create?  

Well I must go and get organised for my guests, 

I hope that you all have a good Saturday,  

Love & hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

Our Last Challenge of 2024

 

Good Friday Morning my lovely friends,  

Well thank goodness it's Friday, we have a busy weekend ahead, thankfully Paul has taken today and Monday off to help prepare for the weekend and recuperate after,  we also need to go shopping for a fridge/freezer,  it seemed as though Paul has fixed it but the very loud noise returned a couple of days later and anything in the salad drawer freezes!  Frustratingly its the time of year that you really need your fridge.  We like to get our shopping in a week before Christmas to avoid having to deal with supermarkets at busy times with a wheelchair trolley !!!  We did consider having someone out to look at it but its a few years old and the cheapest call out fee was £65,  before the hourly rate and parts, so we will look for an upgrade. 

Our Last Challenge 

As we are all clearing our desks and craft areas away as we wind down for the year,  I thought it might be a good time to use some of those backgrounds, off cuts of pretty papers and card stock rather than putting them in a box or even worse binning them,  I have quite a few backgrounds that I have made and only used one of a set that I made, as When I am messy crafting I tend to make the most of the messy time!                    If you don't have any bits you can just go 'freestyle' and make whatever you like.

I hope that you have a fabulous Friday,

Love and hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

Kraft Christmas

 

Good Morning Ladies,  

I hope today finds you as well as possible,  have you all got Festive plans this weekend??   We have my sister and her husband coming over for a 'pre-Christmas family dinner', it will be lovely for me as all of my brood at the same table, which doesn't happen often enough,  in fact to me that will be the best gift ever!  Only Emily can make it this time, which is a bit sad,  Claire and Dave are just too busy this weekend.  Although 10 of us is plenty, we are having Roast Beef & Chicken and all the trimmings,  we didn't want turkey a week or so before we have it for Christmas.  

I had my scans yesterday afternoon,  just the wait now for results,  I honestly don't think I have any dignity left, with My bladder clinic appointments, gynecology appointments,hysteroscopy,  coil fitting and this scan (inside & out), a bit like when we have babies,  nobody looks at your face in that situation 🤣😂

Today's card will probably be my last Christmas card for this year, I thought I would make this last one a simple one,  my goodness Ladies if you could see the state of my desk after this last weeks crafting,  its the surrounding areas too, on the floor beside my desk, the window sill etc, so I must have a big reorganise today,  get a lot of Christmas stuff put away, although I want to leave some out for making some tags.                                                             I used the 'Lovely as a Tree' stamp set,  simply stamped onto linen effect card in Versamark and embossed with Gold embossing powder, I added the sentiment in the same way, adding some twine and some Red gems to embellish, I mounted onto Kraft card for a change.  

So what shall we move onto for our next Challenge??  

I hope you all have a good day, 

Love & hugs to all of you,

Sandra xxx 

Pastel Christmas card

 

Good Wednesday Morning Ladies,  

Are you all opening Advent calendars?? The girls have one, Paul and I said that we'd just choose a chocolate from the tin each day, trouble is it rarely stops at one !!  But we aren't doing it every day, so I guess that balances it out.🤣😂 

After Christmas we will be on our 'Big Wedding Slim', If I don't I will be even more limited to dresses than I was for Emily's,  so we both decided that we well cut down on our calories and drop some of the bad habits we have fallen into,  like at 5pm we have a cup of tea when Paul finishes work and we'll have a cake of couple of biscuits with it,  which is silly just an hour or so before dinner,  but I like to have a snack with my pills.  

I quite liked the pastel shades of yesterday's card so I thought I create a similar look with Distress Oxide inks, I used Tumbled Glass, Spun Sugar and Shaded Lilac Distress Oxide, which I added to a Tim Holtz brushstroke stamp and then spritzed with water then  stamped onto a piece of watercolour card. I dried it and popped it onto a silver glitter mat and then onto a card base, I used the same glitter card to die cut the snowflake, which I embellished with a crystal. 

I hope that you have a good day, 

Love & hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx 

Alcohol ink Christmas card

 

Good Morning Ladies, 

We had a sunny start to the day yesterday,  it makes such a difference to your mood when you wake with the Sun streaming through the window,  Paul brings me a cup of tea in bed every morning and if it's a lovely sunny day he will open the curtains so that can see the sun,  he does it if it snows too, in fact this last time it was Soph that came bursting in and literally threw the curtains open in excitement,  it made me smile that they still get excited about snow, even at 24 !! 

I saw some lovely Alcohol ink backgrounds on Pinterest by a lady called Ciara Tayler on Pinterest, I loved the pastel shades so I used Juniper, Cosmopolitan,  Cool Peri and Cloudy Blue Alcohol ink to create one background that I cut up into smaller panels. I added white glitter mat behind the panel and used the same white glitter card to create the die cut snowflakes, I added them to side of the Alcohol ink panel and added a sentiment to the bottom of the card.  

Not traditional Christmas colours but nice for a change.  

I hope that you have a good day, 

Love & Hugs to all of you,  

Sandra xxx 

Sonia's Adorable Christmas card

 

Good Monday Morning Ladies, 

Well that was a wild weekend,  people round here will be ok for logs for their fires for most of 2025!  There were loads of fallen trees, Matt tried a few different routes to get to ours to pick up some parcels,  the only 'open' road had a fallen tree being help up by power lines!   Thankfully he got here and home safely.  

We spent yesterday putting Christmas tree up and other bits,  listening to Christmas songs, the girls came home early too, which was lovely,  the park was closed again yesterday.  They were putting their trees up too, Soph goes all out in her room, she has all of our old foil decorations,  also some really old ones from my Mums, it looked very oriental circa 1980's.  She loves it ! 🤣😂

Sonia allowed me to share this adorable card that she made for family.  Everything about it is perfect,  from the soft pastel colours to the super cute characters.  Guaranteed to warm someone's heart this Christmas 😍

Thanks Sonia for allowing me to share XXX 

I hope that you all have a great start to the week,

Love and hugs to all,

Sandra xxx 

More Christmas Challenge cards

 

Good Sunday Morning Ladies, 

From a very Wet & Wild Gloucestershire,  I was awake most of Friday night as we were being battered by the wind, our bedroom is on a corner with dual aspect windows which made the wind sound a lot worse.  I didn't let up all night, the rain was hammering against the windows too, thankfully though we had no damage, which given the number of big trees in the garden is a miracle!  As Saturday progressed though the wind got worse, all roads to Bourton on Water were cut off by fallen trees, as I am writing this our electricity keeps dropping out as the wind is getting stronger!             I hope that you all stay safe and dry 😘

Let's look at what you have been making :

Karen

Karen's Description:

Here is the card I have just mentioned on blog

A Woodware stamp and a ScanNcut sentiment A few nail art gems to embellish a little Hope things go well today x

Simple & perfect, such a great design, perfect for batch card making.  That sentiment is so perfect for that stamp, the font is spot on. 

Thank you for sharing your card and for the inspiration XXX 

Lilian 

Lilian's Description:

Hi, here is my card for this week, 

Patterned paper, stencil and the tree stamp as usual.

Such a lovely card Lilian,  that patterned paper is so lovely,  the little tree stamped at the bottom is a addition.  I love that stencilled background too.         Thank you so much for another lovely Christmas card XXX

Maria

Maria's Description:

This is a card that I put together first this morning 🤭. My desk looks like a bomb has gone off 😂

Hope it's alright.......

Your card is more than 'alright' Maria, it's lovely,  the embossed frame is so pretty and leaves you a perfect place to put your sentiment,  I love your glittery embellishments too. 

Thank you so much for another lovely Christmas card XXX 

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Thank you so much Ladies for supporting the Blog Challenge 😘 

Have a lovely Sunday,

Love & hugs to all, 

Sandra xxx