it was lovely

hope yours was too

here's what we've been doing

Visiting the Christmas House (the caretaker of a local school does this every year to his house, we only discovered it this year - big hit, we've been 3 times already!)

Choosing a tree, decorating it,

and then posing under it for Mummy's camera.

october afternoon mini album

it's beginning to look a lot like...

Christmas! I've been having a lot of fun with a Christmas project since the start of the month. Shimelle's Journal your Christmas. It involves a short project each day from 1 December until 6th January which encourages you to make note of what is going on, and to notice all the small details that make your Christmas so special. I've really enjoyed it so far and am reasonably up to date with the daily prompts. The album above will store all my pages, I decided to keep it quite simple and am using a 6" ring binder.

Below is the first page, which is a manifesto of sorts. In it I outline whyI'm doing the album, and I promise myself 15 minutes a day to work on the pages.

These are some of the pages. Above is the page about Christmas cards (spoiled the suprise now for everyone on my card list!), and below is a page looking at winter weather.

This page outlines a perfect Christmas for me-he, she, i and lots of food and decorations!

and the prompt for the page below was around counting down the days. Here I used a hambly overlay to show Katy gazing at her advent calendar and behind the acetate is a close up of the tree on which she hangs her ornament each day.

Another prompt asked us to look at perfect and/or not so perfect Christmas past.

Katy and I are going to buy our tree after school tonight so will try to come back tomorrow with photos of that.

beside the seaside

We went to Brighton this weekend. It was fab. We arrived on Friday evening and struggled in the rain and wind to our hotel. We had booked online and were pleased to find our risk had paid off; the hotel was great. We didn't go far on Friday, just fish and chips next door to the hotel.

The morning was bright and sunny so we went to the beach, which Katy loved. The wind was strong but it felt great to be getting some fresh air. We played there for an hour and then headed to the pier.

Katy loved the pier and had a great time on all the rides, which she had to herself for most of the time.

She especially loved the mini dodgems and we had many laughs at her expense as she tried to get the hang of things.

Here she is with the dolphin she won with Daddy on the hook a duck. We spent the afternoon wandering the streets and shops and came home for a nap and The Santa Clause on dvd. Then we had the most delicious meal in a Greek restaurant near the hotel.

We had hoped to go to the aquarium this morning but the weather was terrible, we had been afraid when we went out to walk along the seafront that if Katy didn't blow away that something would blow past and hit us, the woinds were so wild. So we gave up and came home.

What with finding such a great little hotel and fantastic restaurant, we will definitely be returning.