No Rain

This is me with my feet up poolside at the villa in Menorca that we've just spent a week at. Aaah, bliss! We had Sky TV out there, so knew it had been raining back home, but it was a bit of a shock just how much there had been! We came through a cracking thunder storm on the way back down the M6 from Manchester yesterday afternoon.

We had an absolutely wonderful week in the sun (or shade, in my case!) The villa was lovely, situated in the quiet development of Son Vitamina and having our own pool is just so nice - no one to swim around, rowdy kids or drunk lads to contend with and there's no rush to put out your towels on the sunbeds at stupid o'clock in the morning.

It was nice to have a few swims every day as I haven't done any exercise since (or even before) getting pregnant and swimming is the only kind I'll do, but our local pool is closed for a refurb at the moment. D enjoyed the pool, as well as the roof terrace ("it's lovely up there") where he could go and watch the planes taking off and landing at Mahon airport which was pretty close - how exciting...

We really relaxed as D and my parents wouldn't let me do anything too strenuous. We mostly visited beaches (how nice are the beaches on Menorca?!) such as Sant Thomas and Cala Galdana, although not too keen on the few jelly fish we saw. We also spent a good 15 minutes or so driving down the bumpiest road ever (not fun!) to reach Calas Coves and were greeted with a gorgeous sight once we got there:

It was so quiet when we got there, although it seems lots of others made the bumpy trip down as it soon got quite busy. There are caves high up in the rocks on the left that people used to live in, but there was no way I was climbing up there! We spent ages watching the crabs crawling in and out of the rocks instead.

We ate lots of nice food too - one of the best things about going on holiday! Had to be a bit cautious though, being pregnant, and would have loved to have eaten more seafood, but didn't dare risk it!

We christened the baby Wiggly as that's all it seemed to do all week - must've liked the fact I was relaxing so much! I doubt we'll go abroad again now for a few years at least, so it was just lovely to be able to do this now before Wiggly arrives.

The hugest, most mahoosive thanks go to Mom and Dad for taking us away for such a lovely week for our birthday prezzies!

Back to earth now though! Loads of washing to do, no food in the fridge and back to work on Monday...



ETA: Why does Bloody Blogger insist on mucking around with the formatting every time?!! GAH!!!

Radar Love

Completely didn't have time to blog anything this week, but Tuesday saw the first anniversary of Radar Bun's 'Gotcha Day'. Can you believe he's been with us for a whole year now?! Isn't he a handsome bun? I do love him so much. Beanbean will always be my special girl, but Rade is just so big and soft and docile and a bit dumb sometimes that you just gotta love him! They both seem really happy now they're outside in their new home - even with all the rain we've had and a cracking thunderstorm last week, which probably scared the little bunny pants off them!

So, onto this week's Dare...

This week is was my turn to set the Dare (already?!) and I thought I'd keep it pretty simple but just asking everyone to use some acetate, vellum, plasma or something else at least a bit transparent on their cards. I haven't really ever used acetate much, except form making the odd shaker card way back when, so had fun experimenting.

The card on the right uses Blonde Moments papers for the background (edges inked), with acetate sizzix hearts on bright pink card. Two of the hearts are decorated with wiggly lines using Anita's 3D Gloss. I first used this technique in Kirsty's class at the photography day in February and have been dying to try it again - it really does produce a great effect, although perhaps Diamond Glaze is better as I find the Anita's comes out of the bottle too fast and can make a splodgy mess! The third heart has teeny diamantes all around the edge, although I realise none of this shows up very well in the photo. Finished the card off with some pink grosgrain and a stamped greeting, with hand-drawn borders around the edge of the card and greeting.

This one's a bit pants, but it was just an experiment really. I used some acetate to make the blank, but then thought I'd better add an insert as it's darn near impossible to write on acetate! I stuck a teeny piece of pink BG Blush paper (still inking those edges!) behind a piece of the brown BG Blush paper and used a rub-on for the cake, with a teeny diamante in the flower centre. This was then all stuck onto the insert, behind the acetate. I then put the greeting rub-on onto the front of the acetate. Ta-daa!

I made another card, which I quite like, but have just realised I can't post it, as it's for my daddy's father's day card and he will see it! Duh!

Please take a look at the DCM blog and have a go at the Dare. As ever, the girls have been fantastic and there are some gorgeous cards - plus one from this week's fabulous guest designer, none other than the most talented Ms Wiseman herself!