~ Happy Halloween! ~

What a weekend! We had such a fabulous weekend. On Sat, we held a Halloween party and on Sun, we celebrated my FIL's 75th birthday at a Chinese restaurant. 

Saturday

The organising of a Halloween party was suddenly throw at us last month. Apparently it was our turn to do it since BIL did it last year. So hubs and I discussed our roles... he, the chef while moi, games organiser. Thank goodness for the internet as I managed to source out quite a few games for the kiddos/adults too. Then there was the house to decorate. Once again, 'cos Halloween has become so commercialised, we managed to find lots of decorations for a fraction of the price! Hubs even put up the gazebos outside. 

Party commenced at 6pm. The kiddos were ever so excited! All guests came dressed up, well, that's the fun isn't it! Kids were entertained throughout the nite as I had prepared quite a few games for them. I leave with some happy memories of the nite:

The hallway given a touch of spook!

Moi & guest!

The eldest bobbing an apple. Incidentally, he was the fastest to get an apple!

The wee one being dressed as a mummy.

Roasting marshmallows!

It was certainly a fun nite, to be repeated next year at SIL's place! Guess it's gonna be a social event in our diaries from now onwards.

On the creative side, I've been hoarding up quite a few Halloween digi kits. Here's one I made, my first and a very amateurish effort!

Spook: created using a Haunted digi kit by Carina Gardner. 

Absolutely adore the Halloween papers she created using kraft paper. 

Back to routines... TTFN!

~ Banana Frog Hop ~

If you have come from Nat, welcome! Hope you are enjoying the hop so far. The theme for this month's hop is "Autumn".  Seeing that it's October and it's the end of the month, I can only think of Halloween! So with that in mind, I created this: 

Papers and embellishment were printed out from digital images, courtesy of Echo Park's Halloween collection.

I made use of Banana Frog's Tag It, Fanciful and MadFont alphabet set for this project. I stamped the tags and used them as background for the letters. The letters were cut out and sprinkled with stickles. This banner will come in handy when I'm having my Halloween party tonite! 

Your next hop is Annlouise. Having fun hopping! TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 240 ~

This week we are sponsored by Sweet n Sassy Stamps.

Today's challenge is called "I Got It Covered". Essentially cover the card with patterned papers, both outside and inside! Here's my card:

The outside.

Patterned papers were printed out from Crystal's December Sugar Cookie papers, found in Jessica Sprague's store. The cute mouse image is from Sweet N Sassy stamp and coloured using Copics.

The inside!

Yay! Another Xmas card to my collection! Enjoying half term at the moment.... especially not having to wake up early! Great timing as it's quite cold at the moment although it will get milder later this week! TTFN!

~ On Display: Banana Frog! ~

Today's is Colour Focus day and we had this inspiration from Gudrun Sjoden:

Gorgeous dress! Anyway, I based my card on the colours used here:

Patterned paper by Basic Grey Jovial collection. Bingo card is a digi image came from Lettering Delights. Stamped reindeer image is from It's A Christmas Deer set. Deer image glittered using sticklers.

Basing a lot of my card creations on the theme of Christmas. Heaven knows how much I need them! TTFN!

~ Sponsored Walk ~

It's Friday and the last day of term! Gosh, can't believe that 8 weeks have flown past so quickly! Before the school ended, both boys had to do a sponsored walk around the school perimeter, at least 10 times! Well, I did my best to accompany them and did 5 rounds with them. Luck was on their side as the weather was brilliant! Sunny albeit cold but anything better than rain!

The boys had to dressed up. This year's theme is based on a book character. Well, the eldest went as karate kid while the wee on dressed up as a vampire (a mini Edward Cullen)!

The boys are off for a week and we are having a Halloween party at the end of the month! Never thought that I would be involved in anything spooky but thankfully, it's so commercialised that you can easily find tons to buy! The boys are excited and I'm getting the house ready for decorating! Looking forward to some spooktacular event! TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 233 ~

This week we are sponsored by Stamping Up. Today's challenge is based on a sketch:

Pam luv white space and I'm no good at it as I find it difficult to restrain myself from adding more! Anyway, here's my card: 

All paper products came from Stamping Up. As for the white space, I had to emboss the paper!

Well, I survived the white space challenge! TTFN!

~ On Display: Banana Frog! ~

It was my turn to blog on Banana Frog and I played with their 3 new Christmas sets. Two of their sets came with journaling boxes and I challenged myself to use them, not just for journaling, but to see what else I could do with them. 

The first was to use it as a repetitive pattern with the final use as a emphasis:

The second usage was to use it as a background pattern:

Final usage was to create a decorative pattern on the paper:

Patterned papers came from Basic Grey Jovial collection.

Good to know I put them to different use! TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 226 ~

This week we are sponsored by Prickly Pear Rubber Stamps.

Today's challenge is called Tuesday Trio which asked for gold, leaf and ribbon to be on the card. Here's my card: 

 Patterned paper is Basic Grey Jovial collection. The gold element consisted of the gems, and ribbon, which was sprayed with a gold mist. 

Managed to create a Xmas card out of this challenge as I desperately need loads of Xmas cards. Sadly, my attempts to make 8 cards per month failed in the month of June. Looks like I might have to resort to commercially ones again this year!!! TTFN!

~ The Start Of Concerts! ~

Drove up to Liverpool today to attend my boys' Suzuki graduation. Basically they have completed Book 1 and as a result, they recorded the last song of the book for grading and this graduation was the result! But it wasn't just merely receiving certificates but they had to take part in a concert as well. 

We arrived an hour early and managed to sneak a quick getaway to visit The Beatles at Albert Dock. We didn't have time to go into the museum but we did spend some time at the souvenir store. Not really a Beatle fanatics but it was interesting to see what was on offer!

At the concert, we were told that no photos were allowed (how could they!) but nothing was said about not taking video so I did with my iPhone. Fortunately, I found an app called Camera Duo which allowed me to simultaneously take video and photo at the same time! So I did manage to snap a few key shots. 

This was taken by the camera while the video was shooting. Ok, so the quality isn't great but hey, it's the memories that count!

I didn't managed to snap my wee one but I did managed to cut this particular image out from the video. 

Quite chuffed to find an app that combines both applications.... taking video and photo at the same time! It's hard to do both when you are the sole person capturing all these memories! The only setback is that the quality isn't that great but I'm not complaining! I did manage to print the above photos out and they were ok (about 3.5x2.5" photos). Time to do something about them. TTFN!

~ Christmas Cards All Year 'Round: October's Challenge ~

For October's challenge, it has to be a card that has stitching (real or faux) and distressing the card in some way. Here's my card: 

My stitches appeared on the Noel bingo card with the edges distressed a little! Patterned paper from Basick Grey Wassil and tree is a stamped imaged from Banana Frog's Winter Wonderland.

Have to say, I'm sadly slacking in the Xmas card department. So much for wanted to get ahead. I think I need to do at least 24 cards to make up for the last few months of creative inertia! TTFN!

~ 365 Cards: Day 219 ~

This week we are sponsored by Character Cafe, a digital stamp company.

Today's challenge is to take inspiration from candy corn, a traditional sweet during Halloween. Being in the UK, where Halloween is just beginning to become popular, I had no idea what candy corn was, so a quick google lead me to this: 

Mmmm, looks delicious! My youngest would be salivating as he luvs sweets! Now looking at the shape of the sweet and colour, I came up with this card. I just had to use this particular image as I've just finished reading all four books of the Twilight saga and my head's just swimming with vampires images!

Well, the shape of the sweet represented vampire's teeth and the colours, just perfect for Halloween! The patterned paper is from Echo Park, a digi pack that I bought from Jessica Sprague site. The image was coloured using Copic markers. Now did I try to make him look like Edward Cullen??? LOL!

And talking about Halloween, I've been assigned the task to organise a Halloween party. The whole of hub's relatives will be descending upon us to celebrate it! Oh the joy!!! Once again, the net has been an invaluable source of inspiration and I've got my games sorted out (hubs is in charge of food). Just need to decorate the house now when the time comes! TTFN!

~ So glued.... ~

to these books in the last few days:

Ever since I discovered them while app surfing, I downloaded all four books and started reading the first one on Thursday last week. Boy, was I hooked! When it first came out, I didn't show much interest as I was in too deep with scrapbooking and had no time to read. Now that they are apps on my iPhone, reading is such a breeze now. Best of all, I can now read in the dark, as opposed to a traditional book!

The next thing is to hunt down the movies! I'm off to devour the last book... TTFN!