Scrapping Tonight

A couple of weekends ago I had a day of shooting for a client, both her girls birthday parties. The first was Georgia's Mad Hatter Tea Party which the girls were invited too.
Of course Lilly went as The Mad Hatter again and thanks to an online friend, Izzy had the loan of a fab Red Queen outfit (made by said friend!!).

I was shooting general party photos and a party booth was set up, complete with faux grass!
Here are some photos of Izzy and Lilly aka Red Queen and The Mad Hatter...








How much fun are Photo Booths, I really enjoy doing these. Pop on over here if you would like to learn more about booking a photo/party booth at your next kids party/ Christmas party, any party, LOL

Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

The Quick Step

Last Thursday Peter was dancing at a charity Strictly Come Dancing event for Ricard House Childrens Hospice. After having his chest waxed and having a spray tan he had already raised a mighty sum of about £600.00, amazing how badly people enjoy seeing others in pain, LOL!

I was already in London for another event, so met the girls and Peters family at the hotel in Russell Square to watch Peter and his partner Diana dance the Cha Cha Cha and the Quick Step.

25 couples from Richard House and The Olympic Stadium trained for only 6 weeks, an hour a week with professional dancers for their dancing debut. Peter and Diana were opening the show!


We were all dead proud of him, the girls waved their banner "go go Daddy go go" whilst us adults waved our "7" boards in the air.
It was a fantastic evening raising money for a very worthy cause.

Dead proud of you hun xxxx

Anna x

Not sure how much I can say just yet, only because it has not been publicly announced yet, but tomorrow I am headed down to London as a consumer reporter to a party food launch for a major retail chain. i will be followed by a film crew, (darn why didnt I keep up the dieting!) and will be interviewing celebs and guests at the event.
My main job is to interview a very gorgeous and sexy celebrity chef, eeeekkkkk. And the next best part is I get to take photos as well. OMGG
In total shock to be honest. I will not be allowed to post photos due to celeb laws etc, but they may be added to my report on the retailers website/blog/FB page, not sure which yet.

(Random photo , sorry)

photo credit Ria Mishall Cooke

Really excited and very nervous. It is also the same day that my darling hubby is dancing for charity  for Richard House Children's Hospice. Its going to be a surreal and very long day, but one I cannot wait for!

I havn't been picked out of thin air to do this. I did enter a competition last Friday and have been emailed back and forth about questions I would ask etc, I got the phone call Monday to say I had been chosen.

Wish me luck, and hope to be back Friday with lots of gossip!!

Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

Its with great sadness and after months of decision making, that I have stepped down from the Nikki Sivils design team. I have had an amazing year with Nikki and the girls and feel really honored to have worked with Nikki. My photography business is keeping me really busy at the moment and I just havn't been dedicating the time that Nikki and the DT deserve.

I was the only UK girl on the team and worked hard to get Nikki Sivils designs showcased in our UK magazines.

I thought I would share a few of my fav Nikki Sivils projects with you :

one of my first projects

a more recent layout using the new Get Well Soon range

love this range of papers! Published in TSBM

another oldie. Published in TSBM

a cute mini book using Nikki Sivils papers and mini book

I will not stop visiting Nikki Sivils blogs and seeing what the DT have been up too, always inspirational.

Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

Yikes, been to long I know, hope to improve on this shortly but life and business has been manic!

Do want to share the Glee poster I did for all Izzy's friends who came to the party. Each poster was framed ready to hang on the wall!

Everyone loved their gift and Izzy's sits proudly in a birthday girl pink frame to go in her room.

Are you planning a birthday party soon? Do click on the tag "celebrations" below for previous parties I have done with my girls that may just spark of an idea!

Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

It is with great sadness that the world loses a great visionary in Steve Jobs, Apple founder and CEO of Apple and Pixar.
There is so much I could post here, words of wisdom, encouraging and uplifting videos, but I am sure with a google of "Steve Jobs" you will find something that will change the way you look at your life by his words.



This is one of my favorite quotes:

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary' – Steve Jobs 1955-2011 RIP

We are an Apple family as of last year. Our desktop is an Apple Mac, my phone is an Iphone, Peter carries and Ipod with him and we have an Ipad 2. We love our Apple gadgets, and they have really chnaged the way we live our lives and organize our lives, crazy isnt it!

I spent last weekend with 17 photographers and Dane Sanders, and Dane brings up the vision that Steve Jobs had for Apple and how we can be inspired by his business vision. He also quotes and talks about Steve alot in his books "Fast Track for Photographers".

Although I said to google videos etc, I urge you to go listen to any of his TED talks and this one very inspiring talk at Stanford University.



My heart goes out to his family and friends, he was at the end of the day a family man.
I think tonight I will be watching Toy Story in memory of Steve Jobs

Anna x

Izzy had her party on Friday, and she chose a Glee Themed party, and I had so much fun putting it all together. It wasnt without its stress and tantrums on my behalf, LOL, but I got there in the end.



It all started with the invite, and this Glee wallpaper I found. I just opened in photoshop and cut out the centre square and popped in a photo of Izzy which I had taken in the studio and manipulated a little in PS



I knew how important the slushies were, but couldn't get a soda stream or the stuff anywhere, so I made big quench cup bands which we filled with ice and pop! (this one is filled with sweets)


I bought red and yellow plates, napkins and found some french fries holders!

The pudding bar had a Glee "hand cake" , cupcakes, popcorn and oreos






We had a Glee trivia quiz and a Glee sing off using the Xbox Karaoke



Everyone had such fun, and the sign off was great! In fact they all ended up singing "Don't Stop Believing" and bought the roof down!

Next week I will add some more fun photo booth snaps and the Glee 2011 poster with all the guests on!

Hope you enjoyed the "details" post.
Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

Just stopping by quickly, been a really busy week. Wednesday was Izzy's birthday and she turned 11, where has my baby girl gone....
Well today it's her party and I have been busy this past week gathering bits and pieces for tonights Glee party.

Autumn has truly arrived when it's time to start collecting conkers. It doesn't matter how old you are, the joy of finding beautiful shiny mahogany coloured jewels excites as all; well it does in our house, LOL

This weekend I had a photo shoot beside a huge old conker tree near our house. Whilst I was setting the scene for my photo shoot, Peter and Lilly went conker collecting.
Just love the look on Lilly's face!








Do you still love conker collecting? Do share your stories and photos
Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

Playing with some Nikki Sivils last week for Nikki's blog, and I decided to mix things up and use 2 lines to design my layout. I used "school is cool" and "Get well soon"

It just shows that the name of a collection is not the only use you can have for it. I love the colours in the "Get Well Soon" collection, but I had already done a layout of a poorly Lilly and didnt want to do another "get well soon" themed layout.




Supplies : Nikki Sivils papers, die cuts, buttons, and alphabet stickers, Prima flowers and gems, wooden monogram from stash

The colours of both these collections worked well together. The photos are from a day on the river back in June.
Head on over to Nikki Sivils blog to see what the rest of the international DT did this month.

Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

my wedding day

 They say time heals, and it does, its true that the pain is not so harsh as the years go by.
My dad passed away 5 years ago today after a 15 year battle with MS. I am so thankful that I had 9 months with my dad living only a few miles up the road, and was able to visit him as often as I wanted. He had Christmas Day at ours, a huge moment for me, a summer party at ours and many an hour at Riverside Park with an ice cream.
I had a Womans networking conference to attend today, and I was the  photographer for the day. I was kept busy and I was amongst like minded women. My dad was watching over me, beaming....

Love you always Dad,
xxxxxx

I was photographing some skirts for a Folksy designer and went to the Big Top at the Circus in Bedford as a backdrop (more to come on my photo blog). So I decided that we should all go and visit the circus as the girls had never been.

I was a little disapointed, just wasn't as I remembered *sulk*. The girls enjoyed it, thats the main thing.

The colour in the tent was so orange so excuse the colour and image quality, but just didnt seem right to turn black and white.





The last time I went to a circus I was a little girl, so maybe everything seemed more WOW and bigger! There were no trapeze artists, but tbh the tent would'nt have been large enough. This circus was made up of only 6 performers so a very small show. Think I need to see Cirque de Soleil for the WOW factor!

Has anyone else been to a circus recently. Would love to hear what you thought
Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

I cannot believe I now have a year 4 and a year 6!! When did that happen? The summer holidays have flown passed, and all the promises I made were mostly broken, oops!

I did manage for the first time to have school uniforms and shoes purchased in good time and I actually got all their clothes labelled before the new year started!

Both the girls have learnt how to do knot own ties!

The girls school have introduced a new uniform and they looked really smart this morning. The biggest change was ties. The girls were really excited at wearing ties, but the funny thing was, collecting the children from the us this afternoon to find most of the kids without their ties on, LOL. The girls thankfully still had theirs on.

For those that read my photography blog, I am sure you cannot forget the photos I posted  from the Jane Austen Shoot I attended earlier in the month, organized by Melissa Love. I havnt stopped talking about it, LOL. I so enjoyed the day more than you can imagine. The styling, the models, the photographers all made the day memorable and inspirational!
Anyways, Melissa held a competition for all us attendees and we uploaded a favorite photo from the day that we had taken.
This was my submission:


The beautiful girl in the photo is Flora Dutton, one of the models on the day. This was my favorite scene, the Garden Tea Party. It was no surprise that I chose to submit from this scene really.
Well the winners were announced yesterday and I am really chuffed to announce that I came 3rd with the talented Tracey Barrow.
First place went to Boo Marshal. Congratulations to all the winners I feel really honured to amongst such fine talent.
I have won a set of vintage actions from Lisa Delvin; what could be more perfcet for me!
*happy dance*
Thanks to everyone who voted for me and got me through to the final.
Hugs
Anna x