Embellish your World

An Elf layout

Our Elf Timmy has gone with the boys to Grandma & D-Dads house for a few days, this of course to ensure he continues to keep a good eye on them and report back to santa with tales of their behaviour! I am off on a two day course now (oh what a perfect time of year for it) but when I retun there is no more work and just the foody preparations for Christmas day to undertake. I am catering for my in-laws as well this year and have studied Nigella and Jamie for top tips. Quite fancy the shredded brussels and bacon idea and how about celeriac?

So as promised here is my Timmy the Elf layout (slightly blurry photo sorry!)  Loved using my large postage stamp punch with the Bella Boulervard papers to create a large photo mat with plenty of interest. So easy to create and a great way of using up left over papers and leaves ample of space for plenty of journalling. Why not tell the tale of one of your Christmas traditions with a similar page?

Cheesy grin photo

Love this photo of hubby and I taken on Sunday, nuff said really.

As mentioned yesterday the DT gallery for Christmas is now up on ATDML. Here are a couple of my projects for this month.

Tomorrow I will share my layout of Timmy the Elf - or you can pop over to the ATDML Christmas gallery now!

I am still here honest

Where does the time go really? I am still here, just busy being a working mum and preparing for the forthcoming season. Think I am all done on gift buying now, and ordered my turkey today, so just wrapping and veggies and I think we are all set.

Cards are also all written and those not being hand delivered are in the post. Very few handmade cards this year, just no time with everything else and  more demanding job leaves me emotionally exhausted of an evening of late so I'm not crafting quite as prolifically as I usually do. Hopefully with the resurrection of my crop in January I will start to get more done again - I don't think it helps that my craft room currently looks like Santa's grotto! Here is one handmade card I made with my ATDML design team kit for Dec which featured lots of different festive ranges.

The full gallery should be up in a day or two, in the meantime, here are a few sneaks of my other projects.

Journal your Christmas - Dec 1st - 5th 2011

FINALLY sharing the first few pages from my JYC album for this year, my fifth consecutive year of recording my December memories in the height of the season.

Photos are all taken on my HTC phone using the RetroCamera up which is kinda fun!

I took this one today of the boys on the way to WinterWonderland in Hyde Park.

Love the effect and could not achieve it myself in photoshop so kinda loving this app doing all the work for me!

Meet Timmy, our Elf

Sent from the North pole to watch over my boys as they await a visit from Santa! They have had the story explained to them, about how Timmy (named by Robert) will check to see if they have been very naughty or nice each day of December and then Timmy reports back to Santa each night with the news. Problem is, each time he comes back, we find him in a different place! So far he put up the tree on Dec 1st, slept on the dvds, hung himself on the coat rack (by his feet!) and climbed into the lampshade among other tricks.

Each morning to very eager young boys come bounding down the stairs to find him, even before the advent calendars get a look in! They have been told they cannot touch Timmy else the magic that carries him back to Santa each night is broken, and they will end up on the naughty list! So far they have been wonderful and I for one am over the moon with our new tradition. This little chap has certainly bought some festive cheer into our home this year and I am glad I adapted the "elf on the shelf" tale for my boys.

Tomorrow evening I have friends round to catch up with some festive crafting. Be warned you may be inundated with JYC pages in the following days, not to mention photos from Hyde Park WinterWonderland where we are all set to go to on Saturday.

I need baubles with more shine!

We have a new tree this year, having not put the tree up last year as we just did not have the room for it. So this year we have freecycled the old tree to a very happy family and bought a new slimline pop-up tree. It came predecorated with lights and traditional red/gold/green baubles which I didn't like. So, new lights, and some turqouise and lime green baubles, added to the green/gold baubles but with all the red removed and I have a tree I like apart from?.....My baubles do not have enough shine to take a decent reflections photo for my Shimelle JYC InFocus prompt! I took a great bauble shot last year, better light and bigger baubles though. Looks a bit grainy here (a smaller file copy I have) but the original was fine.

Tonight this was the best of those I took and notice how it is a red bauble! one of the discarded ones! My green, turquoise and gold were not playing ball(ble!)

Hoping I can find a nicely decorated tree in the Hotel foyet tomorrow as I head into central London for a training course. I may have better luck in daylight!

I love London - a night time photography walk.

I am so lucky to live not far from our Capital, just a brief train/tube ride in and you're there in the heart of it.  I am even luckier to have a friend in Caroline who bought me a night time photography walk in the city of Westminster for my Christmas present. Starting at the London Eye we walked along to Hungerford Bridge, then down to Trafalgar Square before ending up at Picadilly. Despiite it being a tad chilly, well it is December, we got some neat photos and had an enjoyable evening. I could have done without having to dose up on painkillers following several days of feeling achy and suffering with flu-like syptoms, but did manage to enjoy the evening (and the defrosting Hot Chocolate too!) Here are my favourite albeit not perfect photos.

At least one of these will be making there way into my JYC album for the 2nd of December, and then I have the wonderful crop from today at Eclectic to feature for today. I taught my cd calendar class again, this time with Basic Grey Out of Print papers. Photos to follow. My JYC page for the 1st will feature Timmy, our resident Elf for the month sent from the North Pole (aka M&S!). I will tell you more about him tomorrow along with the page. Until then ttfn x