Once again I’ve missed a few weeks of the PaperPlay challenges, but I had a bit of time yesterday, so here’s this week’s:

“This week we are asking you to create love themed projects”

I took part in a Valentine swap on the CropStop forum and, of course, forgot to take a photo before I sent mine! I found out this week, though, that one of the girls misread the list, so, while I’ve received the card I was expecting, another one is on the way! I thought it only fair, therefore, that I make another card to send back, so here it is…

The stamp is Penny Black and the hearts are Gemstones cardstock. Ribbon is from CropStop.

At the beginning of this month we, like most of Europe, had an awful lot of snow! Ireland doesn’t normally get much snow, and if there is any, it usually vanishes as quickly as it arrives! It was a bit of a shock to everyone’s system that this year we had snow for over a week!

A seasonal visitor braves the snow

The grass(!) and road just in front of our house

Our snowy house

Starting to thaw

I haven’t done one of the PaperPlay challenges in ages, but I’ve managed this week’s!

“Make something dedicated to our friends that bark, squeak, meow, roar, moo or neigh.”

Foxes do bark, don’t they?! I bought this stamp last year and finally got around to using it!

Papers are Basic Grey Boxer, flowers are Maya Road, ribbon and brad from stash.

Firstly, apologies, especially to Jan, for not having blogged for so long!

Last year we decided to finally buy our own home so most of our time was spent packing boxes, unpacking boxes, shopping for furniture, putting together said furniture, and all the other bits and pieces which go into buying a new house!

At the end of August we managed a week away in Sorrento. We spent much of the week relaxing by the hotel pool, but did venture in to the town a couple of times - not least in order to sample the lovely ice cream! We also did a day trip to Vesuvius and Herculaneum (a town buried by mud by Vesuvius’ eruption in 79AD).

In September we spent a lovely day with John and Jan at Free@last’s 10th anniversary open day - it was really good to see them all - the kids have grown so much!

Just before Christmas we were away again! This time for a weekend in Oslo. Disappointingly it rained for most of the weekend, but we still managed to explore a bit and visit the Viking Ship museum and Folk museum, as well as the Christmas markets.

Well, I think that’s enough for now! I need to retrieve some snow pictures from my camera so I’ll try to not leave it too long before uploading them!

This month Annamarie’s workshop was using the K & Company Que Sera Sera papers and stickers. When I looked at the papers, I wasn’t too sure which photos I’d have which would work with them. Having had a hunt through, I decided to take some of the photos of the Chinese New Year celebrations - and they were perfect for it!

Here are my finished layouts…

When mum & dad came over to visit last month, they brought some photos they’d taken of Toby, mostly at Christmas.

I’d been nagging mum to take a photo of Toby, Simon and dad together and this was one of the photos she brought with her.

I’ve been thinking about doing a layout of the three of them for some time and had some vague ideas in my head, but when I saw the sketch posted for the CropStop April sketch challenge, I knew exactly what I wanted to do! I used the sketch for the first page of a double layout and then rotated and changed it a bit for the second page.

So, here’s the sketch:

And the layout:

For those of you who didn’t know, Easter Saturday was my birthday. I received some beautiful cards, including these from the girls on the Craft Supplies Forum:

Jackie C

Claire (Lara)

Julie M

Dianne

Liz (Littlebit)

Linda (L-Bee)

And these cards and goodies from the girls on the CropStop forum:

Majo (Tante Kathe)

Marilyn

VickiR

Elaine (Jingles)

Sharon (Celticrafter)

I also received this gorgeous thank you card from Dalis.

Thanks to all of you - they’re fantastic!

I made this Easter card using a tutorial on the Cuttlebug Challenge blog.

You can see from the back that I didn’t cut a complete circle for the body, instead I left some of the fold intact so that it’s a card as I didn’t need to make the box included in the tutorial.

I used Nestabilities for the bigger body parts and punches for the hearts and small circles. The embossing is done with the cuttlebug D’vine Swirls and Swiss Dots embossing folders.

Last Saturday was our monthly crop and class at Donnycarney. We were using the lovely Basic Grey Granola papers for a double layout, and this is mine:

The pictures are all of Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, taken when we were there a couple of years ago…

Thanks to all of you who left kind comments in the hope of getting your hands on some candy!

The names all went in to an (empty) Roses tin

and Calum picked one at random…

Congratulations, Babs! I have your address so I’ll pop it in the post in the next couple of days!