Cherry on Top Blog Award!

I am very pleased to accept this blog award, which was sent to me from Karen. Thank you so much Karen.



There are 5 conditions to this award :



1) That I thank the person who sent me the award.



2) That the receiver places the award on their blog.



3) The Receiver lists 3 things about themselves.



4) The Receiver posts a photo that they love.



5) Tag 5 people for the award to keep it going.



OK, so here goes:



1) Thank you to Karen for the award. Karen is a dear friend who I have become close to recently. She is a very special lady, who's out look on life is amazing, and who finds things to smile about despite life's considerable adversities. She has also just sustained an injury, so pop over and see her blog here, and wish her well. Oh, and her crafting skills have to be seen to be believed!



2) Award posted to blog :-)



3) Three things about myself. Trick one. What would people want to know? a) I have learned more about other people and life since having a disabled child than I could have ever imagined, b) I love crafting, and am craving a dedicated crafting area, but there is no room at the inn :-(, c) As much as I love all the animals we have, I am, and always have been, a cat person.



4) This picture is as recent as I could get. I took it today when I went with the girls to visit a friend.






I think it shows how little kids really need to have tremendous fun. A slide, a hose pipe, and a sheet of plastic kept these girls busy for 2 hours!


5) The people I would like to tag are below.


Georgie - My friend Georgie, another fabulous crafter, has become a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. Her blog is here.


Monica - Another great Stampin' Up! demonstrator. She always has such fantastic ideas and photos on her blog, which is here.


Minna - My friend who is Finnish, but has lived in the UK, South Africa and now Saudi Arabia. She is always so busy, and I miss her so much. Her blog is here.


I am not able to tag anyone else at the minute, as I just don't follow enough blogs! Forgive me Karen, but as I am new to this, I just haven't got the connections yet! When I find new blogs to follow, I'll post here.

I hope that's ok, please visit everyone tagged and leave a note :-)

Adoption Card

My Mum, who is a foster carer, asked me to come up with an adoption card for a a child she knows who is going to be adopted this week. As she said, there are cards available commercially for adopters, but she wanted something more personal, and that could be more for the little girl to look back to one day, so she would have something from someone who knew her before she was given her forever home. After thinking for some time, and discounting using the little girl's name, which the adopters may change, I came up with this.

After I'd finished, I had a crisis, thinking that Mum would want something younger in design, using teddy bears for example. Luckily, she loved what I'd produced.

More fun!

Chris took the day off work today, and we all went out for the day to Crealy Adventure park. If you have kids, and are ever in the area, it's well worth a visit. They have indoor and outdoor activities and rides, and animals galore. We went last year during our holiday, which was in term time (how naughty!), which meant there were almost no queues and we spent all day going on and off of rides with Ellie. Today, being the school holidays it was certainly busier.

The first thing we headed for was the Pirate Ship, which took us ages to get Ellie to go on last year, but she made a bee-line for it today. Here is a picture of her with her Daddy having a ride.

Then we headed to the carousel, with the aim of getting Tabitha on at least one ride during the day. I took her on, and we sat together in a car, with Ellie riding on one of the horses in front of us. Tabitha seemed to enjoy this, which was a relief.

Feeling a little ambitious, I then took Tabitha on the log flume. She was very excited, looking at all the water while we waited to get on, then got a bit anxious as we went round. She wasn't keen on the tilt as the log went up on the conveyor, but seemed to be coping, and then we went down the other side, water splashed on her, and my goodness, she lost it! Unfortunately, it's a 2 drop flume, so when we started going up again, she was aware of what was going to happen, and became very tense. I sheltered her face this time, and she didn't get so wet, and although she wasn't all that happy, she recovered very quickly.

Then we went for our lunch, and had a wander through the wooded area, here's a picture of my gorgeous family, just before we went to see the deer.

Then we went to another barn, and Ellie had about a million goes on this. She started by going on with either Daddy or me, but then got very brave and was just queueing up by herself in the end.

Then I had the idea of getting on the mini-rollercoaster with Tabitha. I thought the speed of it would be ok for her, and she loves feeling wind in her face, so I thought we'd give it a go. Bad idea. One of the main problems was that people were screaming (as they do on coasters), and I'd forgotten that. Tabitha can't bare sudden loud noises like that. She didn't enjoy it at all, but we survived, and although it took her a while to settle afterwards, she doesn't seem to have been traumatised by her experience. Ellie and Chris went back on later, and she stood and watched it going round and round while we waited for them, and was perfectly happy. Sorry to say Tabitha, we are a family of thrill seekers, you better get used to it babe!

Ellie had a go at milking a cow, which she enjoyed, but didn't like the grease they used on the udders, and she got a certificate to say she had done it which she is proud of.

We were there for almost 7 hours, and on the way home, I took this photo. Always a nice image, you know you've done a good job when they crash out in the car :-)

Day of Fun

Today, Tabitha spent the day with a lovely lady who she has known for a long time. This lady was her carer at the Special Needs Playgroup (before the Council made the unbelievable decision to close this valuable resource down...don't get me started on that one!!), and since leaving there, she has become a part time respite carer, and we are lucky enough to have her services. Leaving a child who is non-verbal and has medical needs with anyone is extremely difficult, and I count myself very lucky to have Jo that I can call on. Anyway, today was one of our respite days, so Tabitha got picked up this morning, and Ellie and I had the day to ourselves.

Usually, we do things together at these times, that we can't do with Tabitha around. We have visited the local caves and climbed the hills before, and we have gone ice-skating, things you just can't do with a large and heavy special needs buggy. But today, funds are a little short (that's the school holidays for you!), so we didn't make big plans. I took Ellie for her morning swimming lesson (she's going every morning this week), then came home, and got the face paints out. I was pleased with the rabbit I painted on Ellie's face. She drew a butterfly on mine. I know I am going to regret this, but here we are, all painted up.

After this, we ate lunch, then went to a family fun swimming session, with another child that my Mum fosters and who Ellie just loves to pieces. It was great fun, jumping about, chasing them around and tipping them off floats. Then we came home, and Ellie made a card for the person who has been running the morning swimming lessons for years. This week is his final course, and she is sorry he is leaving. Ellie has been going to these week long courses now for 4 years, and was a total non-swimmer when she started (at 3!). Now she is an extremely accomplished swimmer for her age, and she still loves it. We have a lot to thank him for.

Tabitha displayed great understanding this evening. She was using her switches on the computer, and constantly demanding the program was reset when it had finished. I went to do it one more time, but told her (and signed) that this was the last time, and then it was finished. When the program got to the end, she jumped down off the chair, and headed up the corridor to bed!!! She can demonstrate such great understanding at times, it makes things all the more frustrating when she's being stubborn and digging her heels in. Even her speech therapist once said the thing that holds her back the most, is her own personality. If only we could get her to understand that....

Party Time

Today was one of Tabitha's friend's birthday party. In fact, the party today was for the only little girl in the class that Tabitha actually likes and actively seeks out. Tabitha still is at the 'playing alongside' rather than the 'playing with' stage of development and quite a lot of the children just don't understand how to treat and relate to her. This little girl is very different. I've seen her with Tabitha on a number of occasions, and she is able to judge Tabitha and adapt to her cues amazingly well for such a young child. I took a photo of them coming down the slide together.

I know that Tabitha will be a little confused in September when she goes back to school, and her friend isn't in her class anymore, as she is staying back in the Reception class while they are all moving up. At least she can still see her at playtimes, and hopefully, she'll be a bit better placed to make some more friends this year.

We have 11 more days until school goes back. Sometimes, it feels like forever.....

A new skill

A couple of weeks ago, I attempted to make pasta with Ellie. It was a disaster. I had read various things, but one thing that stood out, was everyone saying how quick and easy it is. Well, we started making it at 4pm, and we didn't get anything to eat until just gone 8pm. We encountered a faulty pasta machine, which required my husband to fix a cog, dried out dough, and just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. After all that work, we had a couple of little bits of pasta each, with the rest of the meal supplimented with bought dried pasta.

I decided today to give it one more go. This time, I used the food processor to make the dough, rested it well, only had a small battle with the pasta machine, and was very proud of myself when I produced this:

200gms of fresh egg pasta tagliatelle. I was very proud of myself :-)

I am also very pleased to report that having made the pasta, I also cooked it perfectly, and everyone ate it up and commented about how good it was and how nice it tasted. So now, I might consider making it again, something I wouldn't have thought I would ever say after my first attempt!

Big Bold Birthday again...

On Tuesday it's my Brother-in-law's birthday, so I thought I'd better get on with making him a card. To be honest, like a lot of people, I struggle with male themed cards. Female cards are so much easier to do, a bit of pink, lilac, light blue, and you're done, but male cards are much more tricky. Anyway, as I have just got the Big Bold Birthday set, I decided to use that again, and came up with this.

I was quite pleased with how it came out. I used Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie and Creamy Caramel ink for the cupcake and the sentiment, and Old Olive ink on the Old Olive cardstock for the background. My scalloped edge punch got an outing, as did the two oval punches.

As always, comments are welcomed. x

Latest Cards

I've had to make 2 cards recently, so thought I'd upload the photos tonight. The first one was a thank you card for someone that helped us out recently.

This thank you card uses a background from the Blossoms and Butterflies DCWV matstack, with the Stampin' Up Trendy Trees punched out with the Oval punch and layered on the scalloped oval. The trees are in Old Olive, Melon Mambo and More Mustard. I was quite pleased with this one, although after it had been delivered, I thought how it would have looked nice with some Chocolate Chip ribbon as well.

The next card is a birthday card for one of Tabitha's friends. I'm afraid the colours on this photo are quite poor. I may try and retake the picture tomorrow in daylight to improve it.
This card has been made with the Big Bold Birthday stamp set that I got today :-). I've used Red Red, Summer Sun and Cameo Coral for this one.

Edit: The second image has been taken in daylight and is much more representative of the colours. I also added another stamped image to the card as I felt it needed something else.

Just as a last minute addition, I found this photo of another Thank You card I made for a friend.

This one uses the Simply Said stamp set, my favourite one so far, and I've used the Melon Mambo colour. I really like this card, it's so simple but very pretty.

Please let me know what you think. I think I make cards with varying degrees of success, I need to work on being a bit more consistent.

Balloons!!!

Our summer holidays have been blighted by illness so far, with just the odd day here and there where we have been able to get out and do something. Yesterday was one of those days :) It wasn't perfect as Tabitha is still tending to get sicky after feeds, but at least she hasn't had a temperature for a couple of days now. Anyway, to take full advantage of everyone being well, we went to the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta for theThursday evening Nightglow event.

It was a wonderful event to go to. I did feel slightly ripped off, when we got a bit peckish and went to get some chips, only to find they were £2.50 for a tiny portion, but I guess that's a captive market for you. We saw the special shape balloons tethered to the ground as the wind was a bit gusty for them to take off.

To put the size of these things in perspective, the motorbike balloon is 37m high and 47m wide. In other words VAST!

Unfortunately, the gusts of wind didn't drop enough for the mass ascent to take place, so we didn't get to watch any balloons take off, but then we sat and waited for the Nightglow to start. It really is a spectacle to see. Here is a video I took of it taking place.

Tabitha did struggle with the noise and the cheering, which was a bit stressful. She just screamed for most of the first two songs, but then started to calm down a bit. At the end of the nightglow, I knew they were going to be setting off fireworks, which she wouldn't have coped with at all, so I left a little bit before the end and went back to the car with her. When the fireworks actually started, we were far enough away that the bangs weren't too loud, and Tabitha actually seemed to enjoy watching them which was lovely. She hasn't seen fireworks before, and it's nice to know she likes them, if only at a distance.

Today is rather stressful, you see we didn't get home until 11pm last night, and the result of that is two tired children, never a good recipe ;-)

Not so well....

Am sorry to have to report that since Thursday when we had such a lovely day, we've been battling with illness. First Chris got ill with a temperature, then I woke up feeling incredibly achy and generally horrible, turns out I had a temperature too. Then Tabitha developed yet another temperature, which seems to have sparked her sickness again.

All in all, we are the house of illness at the minute. Be warned, stay clear!!

Big Day Out!

We have planned for ages to take Ellie on a trip to London for the day. We particularly wanted to be able to take her to see the Changing of the Guard, and to the British Museum of Natural History as she loves bones and fossils. Our dilemma was that there was no way we could do that and take Tabitha with us, as dealing with her and the buggy while navigating the underground and the museum would have been very difficult. We managed to arrange for Tabitha to stay with her Nanna (my Mum) for the morning, and then to have her respite carer collect her at lunch time, take her out, and then bring her home and put her to bed, which meant we were free for a whole day to spend time with Ellie. I can't thank Mum and Jo enough for looking after Tabitha so well for us. She has got up this morning and is acting like nothing untoward happened yesterday, which is a good sign that she wasn't overly upset by the disruption.

On to our trip. We started off by driving to Reading, parking there, and catching the train to Paddington. It was cheaper to do that than driving to London and trying to park there! We got to Reading in time to have some breakfast, and here we are enjoying that in the station.

When we got to London, we walked from the station through Hyde Park, and down to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. On the way, we stopped at Marble Arch.





On to the Palace, where we arrived just in time to see the Changing of the Guard which Ellie watched from her Daddy's shoulders, although, I think she was more interested in watching the mounted Police. What a horse obsession she has!



We ate a packed lunch in Green Park, where Chris managed to catch a pidgeon, which was one of Ellie's favourite moments of the day. Then on the Underground, which fascinated Ellie, and confused Chris, luckily I was there to work out which tubes to get! Finally to the museum, which made Ellie remark that "This is just the best day out ever!". I managed to get a photo of her standing next to the Triceratops, which was one of the many exhibits we saw.




After that, we wandered into Knightsbridge to walk past Harrods, and we found a nice pub to have some dinner in. Then it was panic time to get back on the Underground and get back to Paddington before our train left! While we were waiting to cross the road, Chris stood with his tongue hanging out, looking at the Bugatti that drove passed us, which was soon followed by a white Rolls Royce, which had no proper number plates. Wonder who was in them....
We made it back to the train with 1 minute to spare, and finally made it home, tired but very happy to have had so much fun.

Climbing

I just could not get the enthusiasm up to cook dinner tonight, so I suggested that we went out to a local place we know that does fab food at not bad prices. They also have a little play area outside that the girls can play on while we wait for the food, and so everyone was very happy to be there.

We were there about 20 mins, and Tabitha decided to have a go at climbing up one of the pieces of equipment they have. I rushed over to make sure she was ok, and not about to fall off. Her first attempt, she took 2 steps up, then came back down, but then she went for it! I was having kittens, expecting her to fall, but she was really coordinated and got herself up to the top, climbed in and used the slide to get down again. The next time she did it, Chris was ready to catch her, and I got some photos.

She was a speedy girl by the end of our trip. We've never seen her climb so confidently, and it was just great to watch.


Another piccie of my girls while we were out.

Aren't they fab?