36 More Days

Posted on | May 10, 2013 | 1 Comment

Until Jovie’s birthday party!

And I’ve gone a bit overboard on the planning — but hey, what’s new {::SMILES}

Jovie and I decided to do a fairy and pirate birthday party for her upcoming fourth birthday. Since we just decided a week ago, I moved the party back to the 15th instead of closer to the 4th of June (her birth day), so that I can prepare accordingly.

Soooooooo, to make the party oh so pretty and fun, crazy mama here ordered over 600 yards of 6″ tulle to make six tutus, a few pom pom tulle decors, and tulle wands. I think I may have also purchased enough ribbons to tie around our village. I’ll give more details on where I purchased the supplies later after the order comes in. That way I can also do a bit of a review on the shop’s shipping — in case you need to buy lots of tulle and ribbons.

I’ve been on the Internet whenever I have the chance Pinning ideas and using Evernote to organize my notes and check list. If any of you have ANY fairy and pirate party idea, please don’t hesitate to email me or comment here. I’d love all (easy and affordable) ideas.

Last night I started creating and got four cards done. After I post this blog entry I am going to finish making the last two. With Jovie, there will (hopefully) be six girls and one boy. She said they are her best friends {::SMILES}. The party is scheduled to be an outdoors party and I seriously hope it’ll be lovely that day. BUT, I have plan B aka in our living room, in case the rain decides to visit.

The card is simple and whimsical I think. Initially I wanted to use WPlus9′s Oatmeal cardstock to print the invite on. That card stock is my FAVORITE and I have been using it for 75% of my cards. But, I couldn’t run the card stock through my printer because it was too thick. The card stock is 100lb (lovely and thick — perfect for card making) and my printer can only handle up to 85lb (Stampin’ Up! card stock would work fine, their card stocks are 80lb paper). Boo!! After some messing about, I decided to just print on normal printing paper and adhere it to WPlus9′s Ballet Slippers paper. While I miss the speckles of the Oatmeal paper I was quite happy with the change of plan.

I also wanted to include a photo of Jovie in the invite. I’m not sure why since these kids are her good friends and all the parents know how Jovie looks like but I just wanted to add a photo and give the invite a bit of scrapbook feel to it. The buntings idea came from my friends and I love of buntings. There will be buntings at the party and I thought that buntings on the invite would be the perfect extra touch. So buntings I made!

I didn’t use a template or die-cutter. I just cut out estimates squares for the buntings and a rectangle for the banner. Then I trimmed the edges accordingly. Two minutes (did two/three layers at a time) was what it took to prepare the pieces. After the trimming I had to do another thinking moment. Baker’s twine, hemp twine, clothes pins, stamping, hand drawing or sewing? I went for the later. I figure it’d be quicker and flatter. And it was.

I know I said flat, but I had to have some sort of dimension. And that’s where the button came in. I just used a glue dot and voila, all done!

If I had the idea thought of beforehand, I could have created all four invites in 30 minutes. BUT, I was faffing about as usual and I didn’t go to bed until 4 a.m.

Jovie saw her invites this morning and she approved. Later this afternoon we will hand a few of them to her school friends. Yay!

Bits of News

Posted on | March 21, 2013 | 3 Comments

Hi!! Been a bad… no, horrible, blogger and I really have no excuse. I could have spent the time but I didn’t. Instead I’ve been drinking tea, lattes, and gin and tonic, reading and messing about on the iPad during my spare time.

I did though scrapbook and managed a few Jovie pages. Yay me {::SMILE}. Nothing complicated. A pretty pattern paper as the base and a few bits of embellishments and a splash of ink.

Speaking of… Jovie has been doing sooooooooo well in terms of physical and mental development. She’s finally eating somewhat decently and getting noticeably bigger (although still one of the shortest in her age group), very smart and oh so cheeky. I probably should start Twittering again, “Things that Jovie Says”, so that you all can virtually hear her cheekiness because they’re all so so cute! Today her teacher told me that Jovie will be ~~pushed~~ encouraged to learn to read. Jovie’s phonics is quite good for her age and she’s starting to join letters together. I can’t wait to see how much she’ll pick up by the end of the school year and looking forward to reading many many books together with the girls and hubby (we’re all readers). I also think Jovie’s almost ready to go gymnastics on her own. We’ll see this coming Saturday if what I’ve been doing works. Will report back next week!

Miss M is doing superbly too. She’s in the top group in her classroom (the kids do the same topic but the higher the group, the more challenging the work is) and except for ballet, which she is quitting due to boredom after this term, is doing quite fabulously in all her after school activities.

As for me, or us, in general, we’ll be in England five more years! Yes, we will not be in the US until January of 2018!! We’re so excited about this and we look forward to not only spend more time with our British friends longer but to also travel to more European countries (and possibly northern Africa) during our stay. When we first moved here, we were traveling each time M had a school holiday (except Christmas break). But since she started doing competitive gymnastics, we had to slow our travels down a bit. It’s to the point where we don’t even go to London as often (and we used to go about once a month). So now we only go for a few days during the week after a competition weekend and maybe a couple full weeks off during the summer, summer and/or fall. While M has no dream of going to the Olympics, gymnastics is very important to her and since it is a sport where regular attendance is required to do well, we had to make compromises.

So that’s it. Little bits of news from us.

Until next time! Ciao!!

Blogging + Friendship

Posted on | November 14, 2012 | 3 Comments

I think if one’s not used to being active online, the idea of meeting somebody met online can be weird. But if one keeps virtually bumping into each other, meeting up in person just seems like the natural thing to do.

After four plus years of online rendezvous, Ashley Newell and I finally met. It was short, but it was nice nonetheless. My only regret was not being able to show her and Mac around more! We did though hit a few spots and showed them a bit of the British country side.

I’d LOVE to meet more of my blogging friends, especially those who started blogging (or following each other) from the beginning. I’d hate to miss anybody by naming them but a few from back in the days are Amy Tsuruta, Sarah Martina Parker, Tina Fussel, and Angie Tieman. We were all always doing a Kristina Werner and 2Sketches4You challenges and whatever other fun paper crafting fun goodness that’s going on online. We were all new to blogging and challenges and were oh so eager ha ha ha… Ahhh… being a bit nostalgic {::SMILES}.

I didn’t think I’d make real friends out of this blog of mine but I did and even though most I’ve never met, it’s wonderful that we can communicate on a regular basis outside of our blogs. Oh, Clouds, if you’re reading this, you’re due for a visit {::WINK}!

Oh oh, I made a scrapbook page last night! So proud of myself!! I went to the base craft shop and since I haven’t shopped for new things in ages, what they carried (not much) were lovely and new to me. I do miss craft shopping in the US. Nothing here compares to some of my favorite independent and big (Archivers) scrapbook American shops. So this is my goal: Whenever we go back, the first thing I am going to hit is a scrapbook store, HA HA!!

Take care and until next time!

Did You

Posted on | September 19, 2012 | 1 Comment

Learn anything today at preschool, Jovie?

Jovie: Nope!

Did you go anywhere with your teacher? (Emma said she saw the kids leave the premise)

Jovie: Nope! I didn’t go anywhere.

Did you do anything today then?

Jovie: Nope!

(pause and pondering)

Jovie: But I did play lots today!!

Ahhhh!!!

A Fabulous Day!

Posted on | September 11, 2012 | 1 Comment

Yesterday was! Jovie had a successful full, and yes FULL, day at preschool and I got a lot done while she was learning and playing with many children her age and other adults besides myself.

According to her, she did some painting, playing outside with some trucks, made play do, ate strawberries and asked her teacher to take her to the toilet. She was so proud of herself and very happy when I picked her up. And do note this: She didn’t cry when I dropped her off!

As for myself… I got to drink tea peacefully, got some work done, and even managed to do a bit of shopping and camera fixing in Cambridge for a couple hours! I did have a mini heart attack while driving. I looked back when trying to ease back into the left and saw an empty car seat. I thought for a second, “Oh my gosh, I left Jovie at home!” but then my brain relaxed and said, “No, no, no, you’re on your own today!!”

Fabulous, fabulous day! Not only for Jovie but also for me since I rarely leave the house without at least one child. I love the kids to pieces, I loved every second of our summer holiday together, and I do think about home schooling now and then but after two and a half years of being a stay-at-home-mom, it was so nice to have some me time again. I have a few things in mind for the next two years and being able to do what I plan on doing guilt free is a wonderful feeling.

Jovie is only in pre-school part-time. But the couple of days that I have to myself each week I will try to use to the fullest just like I know she will when she’s at school.

Layout note: I love how giddy she gets when she eats a cookie. The last photo’s my favorite. She was moving her hips back and forth dancing while licking her lips.