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