A sunny but wet day out in Wales

A couple of weeks ago 'P' finally managed to book his White Water Rafting experience at Canolfan Tryweryn that I bought him for his 40th birthday last year.  As luck would have it, his choice of weekend was superb as the weather was far better than most we'd seen so far this year.  The location of Canolfan Tryweryn couldn't have been more perfect.  Situated in Bala, North Wales the surrounding countryside was just lovely, made even better by the fact it was warm and the sun was shining.



After a talk on rafting instructions and safety, 'P' was then bussed up to the start point to begin his rafting session.  The children and I sat at the centre, where there were picnic benches and cafe facilities, awaiting 'P's first run down the river.  A few of the participants in 'P's raft had missed their slot which meant that rather than having a full raft, there were just two others and the instructor.  This unfortunately meant that some of the tricks that are carried out on the river weren't successful as the raft simply wasn't heavy enough.  This didn't stop 'P' having a fabulous time though.  He had 4 runs down the river in total which I thought was extremely good value for money.





The children and I walked Arnold along the trail that follows the river.  This allowed us to take up different vantage points for snapping pictures as 'P' whizzed past!  By the time he was finished he was completely knackered, but he did say he'd love to go back at some point and give the kayaking a try.





I'd really recommend Canolfan Tryweryn to anyway who'd love to give rafting a go.  The venue was smashing and all the staff extremely pleasant and helpful.  We've already said we'll go back and have even talked about the prospect of group rafting.  I have to say though, it's one occasion when I'm more than happy to 'walk the dog'.  Water and I don't mix and the thought of being drenched from head to toe does not appeal in the slightest.

June already?

Yes, it's June already and the longest day today too!  Hard to believe really looking out the window.  Today we have a mix of rain, cloud and yet more rain.  Beginning to wonder if we will actually have a Summer this year.

The last few months have been full on with work, in fact, for our little business year 5 has been our busiest to date (not that we're complaining!).

The lovely ladies choir that I belong to finally put on their concert back in April after 9 months of busy rehearsal.  We raised around £1600 in total half of which went to Short Cross Methodist Church and the other half toward research into Lupus.  Since then we've taken the concert out to a couple of other venues and we'll be performing again on Saturday night but this time in aid of Birmingham St Mary's Hospice who do invaluable work offering help and support to people with terminal illness.  This should then be our last performance of 'Film Fantasia' and then we'll have a short break before starting up again later in the Summer.

 

The school choir will be performing their Summer concert next Tuesday after rehearsing since January.  During the last few weeks we've taken a small group from the choir to sing at the Salvation Army's Birmingham Citadel and also at the 'Time Out' group's Jubilee Party.  We were made to feel very welcome on both occasions and children sang their hearts out.  They're more than ready now to perform their final concert and I think we're all a little sick of the songs if I'm completely honest!

My running has recently come to a bit of a standstill unfortunately due to some health worries.  Everything now looks to be clear so I'm hoping to get out for a run at the weekend.  This will be my first in 2 months so as you can imagine I think I'll struggle to get to the end of the street rather than manage the 7 miles level I'd finally reached.  It's a bit disappointing really as I felt I was doing so well, but I'm determined to get back to it and build it up gradually again as I did before.

The family are all well.  The school year seems to have whizzed by so fast, can't believe 'A' is nearly at the end of her first year of high school.  It doesn't seem 5 minutes since we were stressing about how she'd settle in.  'S' has had a good first year of study for his GCSE's and has done some marvellous things in Music in particular.

'P' celebrated his birthday at the start of the month so thought it was about time he booked in his birthday present from LAST year.....White Water Rafting.  See my next post for all the fun and photos!  He's still running and his performance has come on no end since he's been regularly running with the club.  He has another race tomorrow in Blakedown and during March managed to win 1st place in the competition on RunBritain for most improved running handicap..

Arnold celebrated his 2nd birthday on Tuesday.  Hard to believe he's been part of our family now for 2 years.  I can still remember when he first came home with us, I had to wear my knee length boots around the house in the peak of Summer to fend off his feisty puppy needle teeth!  Well worth the pain though, we wouldn't be without him :).

Happy 1st Birthday to me!

Well yesterday, Tales from a Mother, Musician and Multi-tasker was exactly one year old, goodness me, where did the year go?

I initially started blogging very occasionally on Windows Live Spaces but when this was taken over by Wordpress.com I got the bug for blogging and haven't looked back since.

I look at my blog like a diary.  I love to look back across my own posts to reminisce or to see what was happening this time last year.  It's a bonus that other people like to read my posts too and I'm always happy to receive comments.

When I started Tales from a MMM last year my posts were centred around the difficult time our family was going through due to 2 family deaths.  Although, I've included below the link to a post on blogged on 6th Oct which was an update on our lovely pup Arnold.  It's hard to believe now how much he's grown and changed.  We still love him to bits though (he's actually lying in his bed making funny snoring sounds as I type lol).

[caption id="attachment_1156" align="aligncenter" width="640" caption="Arnold 1 year on"][/caption]

Arnold Update - 15 Weeks!.

Thank you to all those who've visited, followed, liked and commented over the last year.

A birthday bear

Our lovely niece was 15 on Friday, my, where does the time go?!

Using another freebie stamp from Cardmaking & Papercraft I created this yellow and pink card.  I'm quite please with how the promarker shading turned out as this was one of my first attempts.  I finished the bear's flowers off with a little silver glitter glue.



(For the first time ever!) I am entering this card in the following challenges:

• Passion For Promarkers #115 – Anything Goes


• I love Promarkers #81 - Anything goes


• Stamps R Us - Anything goes

A belated card creation

Just a quick one tonight.  Made a lovely card (well, yes I'm biased) for hubby's birthday back in June but thought I'd forgotten to take a pic.............that was until today when I realised it was on my mobile phone all along!

I decided to go with a black & white theme and used an old photo I'd sneakily acquired from mom-in-law.  The photo itself was actually in colour but after copying it I converted it to grayscale to keep with the theme of the card.

Apologies for the quality of the photo!

[caption id="attachment_1045" align="aligncenter" width="377" caption="'P's 40th Birthday Card"][/caption]

Welcome to Iris Folding

In one of my recent magazines there was a great article on the papercraft technique called 'Iris Folding'. Although rather time consuming the actual technique itself was fairly simple and I think the overall effect was really effective. My first attempt was for my friend Jo's birthday. We've spent many a morning chatting over a nice cuppa or three so I had a look round for an idea that would incorporate this. I found a super example on The Little Paper Studio which included a teapot design. I tried to create something similar and came up with my own little phrase – 'Always time for tea with friends' for the teapot tag. The only problem I came across was when trying to stick my finished design to the card face due to the thickness of the folded paper I had real difficulty with this. I think next time I would make my design a little smaller to allow more free space around the edge for sticking down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had another attempt at iris folding for my brother's birthday last week. This time I went for a slightly more appropriate theme for my brother of a hot air balloon. I managed to find a template online for the hot air balloon shape and used some left over papers for the iris folding. If you fancy having a go at iris folding have a look at Handcrafted Crafted Greetings for further instructions. They also have iris folding templates available here.

A couple of other events to make for saw me creating a 'Brownie' themed card for our Niece who was 7 back at the start of June and yesterday 'A' sang at the wedding of her Youth On Stage choreographer. I looked around for a little wedding card inspiration as I've not made one until now but I was quite pleased with the result. The idea came from Card Making Corner.





 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr G's BIG 4-0

It's now more than a week since the big 4-0 occurred in our household and it's been a rather long birthday celebration for the person involved.

[caption id="attachment_900" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Mr G with his balloon bouquet"][/caption]

'P' celebrated his 40th back on 2nd June and we wanted to make it a day he'd remember.  I'd been planning and buying for a couple of weeks, spending the afternoon the day before making a card and helping 'A' to make Pecan Squares.  The kids and I got up early to decorate the house with more than the usual number of banners and balloons with an added gesture of pictures of him as a child stuck, not only to the house, but also on various lampposts along the street :).  I'd ordered delivery of a balloon bouquet but this was unfortunately delivered before he'd descended the stairs.  It was therefore hidden in the front room until he was up and awake!

[caption id="attachment_904" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The house all decked out!"][/caption]

The kids bought him a fantastic Notts Forest shirt with 'Griffiths 40' on the back which he was chuffed to bits with and along with the usual line of clothes and nonsense I'd also bought him a voucher for white water rafting.  Believe me he was more than a little worried when he opened the envelope and read the words 'Are you prepared?' on the package.  As something a little different I made him up a basket of all the little things he likes such as fizzy cola bottles, Hoegaaden beer, Dr Pepper, Werthers and so on and even included a new tax disk holder seeing as his other one is on its last legs.  One of his gifts, a signed autograph of Derren Brown, was a little late but he loved it all the same.

After breakfast altogether in the kitchen (which made a nice change!) we headed off to Bridgnorth in Shropshire to spend the day walking along the river, moseying around the shops and generally chilling out.  We packed a picnic and were lucky enough to grab a bench by the river.  We caught the cliffside railway up to High Town which was a nice experience as I discovered that not only had the kids never been on this before, but neither had 'P'.  His day was topped off with a fab 'Star Wars' cake from Asda which was just ideal.

[caption id="attachment_902" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Cliff Railway - Bridgnorth"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_903" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="'P' on the bridge at Bridgnorth"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_901" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Lunch by the river"][/caption]

Both sets of parents came around on 5th for a spot of tea and then Saturday night saw us celebrating at the Lutley Oak where we just invited friends to share a few drinks with us.

[caption id="attachment_905" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Lutley Oak celebrations"][/caption]

To top off his 40th in style we're both off to Lake Como next week.  This was actually my main present to him as I'd been saving up for some time.  We thought it was an ideal time as 'A' is away with school anyway and 'S' is happy to spend a few days with his Nan and Grandma (and Arnold or course!).  We're both so looking forward to Italy as neither of us has been there before.  The pictures we've seen so far look amazing and I'm sure it won't disappoint.

All in all, Mr G has had one very extended birthday which I hope he has enjoyed.  Can't wait to report back in two weeks time with news and pics from our lovely break.

Nan's 90th Party

Had a lovely time on Saturday night at Nan's 90th Birthday party.  She'd been told we were organising a bit of a tea but I think she was quite surprised to see her whole family there and was a little emotional :).



Lovely 90th Birthday cake made by Emma (thanks matey)!