Lawn Fawn & More Beaches

Sometimes life brings around lovely happystances ( good circumstances!!). In my freelance job for various magazines, sometimes I get really unique commissions. One such one was from Crafts Beautiful to do a series called ‘5 Ways With’ based on a particular manufacturers new range. I had to hunt down ranges & in doing so came to be in touch with Kelly Marie Alvarez. She’s the owner of Lawn Fawn and one of the nicest people in the US craft industry. She generously sent out a TON of stuff – some so new, they even had the Velcro from where they’d been stuck onto the CHA14 stand boards! Obviously we are working quite a few months in advance & the May issue is just out. There are 5 beautifully photographed Lawn Fawn cards all on the theme of ‘scenes’.

I’ve used a heap of sets- including these

and these lovely papers and embellishments

If you like the sets- you can visit Make The Day Special to purchase them. I’m not showing you all of them- you’ll have to buy the mag to see the rest..!

Yesterday I was a little stiff ( again!!). We decided to venture on a walk that involved following a typed out trail and a not-to-scale-map.
Should have been easy.
Ahem..
Is anything our family does ever straightforward?!!
We plumped for a little train travel which was supposed to add to the excitement. It did. Mostly.
Apart from the point where you’re visiting the underground part of the railway and the escalators are so high-angled and the kids so wriggly that my heart was in mouth plenty of times.
Once on the walk, it involved crossing two railways. One was secure, the other, you were told ‘just make sure you look and listen well’. Walking straight onto a track knowing that ‘trains cross here every few minutes’ was a little unsettling.
The next instruction was ‘cross through the golf course watching out for balls’!
Was this the ‘Bear Grylls walk’ in the local vicinity or was it just to give the folders target practice?!!
We walked through VERY quickly and came to the forested area. Legs tired quickly and we stopped for lunch after finding the most perfectly placed picnic table and chairs. Whilst eating our lunch we were treated to the surreal sight of police officers waving at us as they sped through the forest on quad bikes!
We got to the beach portion of the walk. The littliest was complaining of tiredness and apart from the broken glass on the beach, sand in their eyes and dodging the crazy dogs we had a great hour beachcombing and playing football thanks to finding a ball on the beach!

We were glad of the beach however, as it washed off the copious dollops of mud on our shoes. I wasn’t bothered- I told them we could wash the shoes but honestly, I seem to have unexpectedly raised neat freaks who were most concerned about the state of their shoes!!
We got a little lost.
The map was unspecific about which way you were doing the loop and I was unsure which way we were supposed to be heading along the beach. As it was an hours walk along the beach, I knew a wrong decision wasn’t going to go down well. Despite the lack of GPRS, we survived but then got lost in the forest too.
There was a great deal of whining by this point, they’d walked nearly 4 miles and although it’s not really far, it was windy on the beach and I think they were tired.
We relievedly reached the train station, got on the train but had to alight a stop before we were supposed to. We boarded another train to get the next place. The train after that took us somewhere we weren’t planning on going!
The escalators loomed and one of mine said they didn’t like heights.
Great.
The littlie decided to shout very loudly every sign he saw. People looked at him as he shouted ‘hold on tight, stand to the right!’. He repeated the phrase over and over but I was too tired to remonstrate him.
We couldn’t get to the stop we needed, so I had to drag them through town. Littlie was stopping every few minutes and if he could have stopped, sat down and never got up, he would have.
We finally reached the last train – ironically for all this train faffing, we could have driven the whole journey in 40 minutes!!
One started to worry that the car wouldn’t still be there, another decided we may have been broken into and yet another reckoned I couldn’t remember where we left the car.
The car was silent as I drove home- I’d finally managed to wear my kids out.
The next morning- it was quiet. No one rose early and all complained that their legs were stiff.
Not as stiff as mine.
The secret to good parenting?
Take them into dangerous situations where they may be run over, hit by golf balls, take them running along the beach ( avoiding the police, this time razzing it in a Landrover on the beach!!), do 7 individual train journeys, eat in the forest and you’ll end up with 3 tired but compliant kids!!

See you when I’ve been to the cinema ( also known as how to fall asleep in 5 minutes as it’s so dark and nobody is calling your name!) Xx