Some out takes.

 

Why is it that kids can never resist pulling a funny face in any given photographic moment.  I see it almost ALL the time when I do photoshoots of other people's children. I always let them pull some funny faces, and they get very excited when hear the camera click and and they know I've actually taken a real photo of them being silly! More often than not, they all giggle straight afterwards and that's when I get the decent shot! Hehe, the things one learns on the job.

I took these photos of my girl because of the hats she is wearing. If you want to see the scrapped layout, along with the photos that did make the final cut, head over here.

And one more, that didn't make the final cut, but maybe I'll keep it in the file for another time...

 

brought to you by the number 11, a cake and a cow!

 

  

By the time I got my act together and realised what a cool date it is today, and subsequently made a 7 second sign, (no make that 4 second!), my middle and eldest girls were gone for the night. It was 7:30, and I had about 5 minutes of light left. I made my poor baby girl get out of the bath "as quick as you can!" and "come outside and hold this sign". She started to complain about her positioning, not wanting trees in the background, and I was like "Lucy! There's no time, the sun is setting and I need a photo!" So we got this one. Middle girl is at a party til 9:00 and eldest is at youth group til 9:30. Umm, suddenly I have arrived at that stage where instead of being in my PJ's curled up with a book or with hubby and a movie, I am going out to pick kids up!! What the..? And oh yeah, I know, it is going to get SO MUCH WORSE!!! So NOT looking forward to it.

Oldest girl just had her birthday, and we had a very spectacular ice cream cake in the park, that caused and the kids' jaws to drop! Inside that white cream was three layers of amazing ice cream, one being crushed violet crumble flavour.  Best cake ever, according to the birthday girl.

 

I've been wanting to scrap this toy belonging to Amaris for a while, and I thought it was definitely time that I share a layout with you again. I love how this turned out, and am so happy to have the story documented for her.  I'm really getting into black cardstock right now - I didn't use black for so long...

 

I scrapped the other girls and some favourite toys recently too, if you want to see that layout, head over here. I will try to be here more regularly on a Friday - sorry for being a bit erratic lately. 

See you next Friday, for sure!! 

Nicole x

random red

 If you want to see why I took these strange photos from around my house, head over here.

 

This last photo (below) didn't make the final cut, (thank goodness) and you'll be happy to know, they have now been thrown out, after a couple of excellent years as my warm companions.

There will be more real layouts one day soon, I am sure!

big girl - some scrapping

 

I scrapped this photo because I was struck how my little girl, the one whom I still snuggle and squish 50 times a day and the one who still asks me to sing a bed time song to her,  is actually, a big girl now. This photo shows her with her two little cousins and both my husband and I were amazed at how 'not little' she suddenly is. I felt the fact that our little girl, who will always be the 'big' girl to her cousins, should be documented. 

The little brad comes from 'My Minds' Eye' - comes in a pack of about 20 - mix of squares and circles.

 

If you want to see how I scrapped this photo below, head over here to the Simple Aussie Girls.  Bye for now.

things I WANT to scrap....

...but haven't had any time to....yet.
But the time is coming. Oh yes it is.

Here's one of my problems.

 

This set of MEGA, super long, butt and thigh KILLING stairs that are never ending and go up the side of a steep small mountain, aren't in themselves, the problem. 

The problem is that I am trying to turn over a new leaf. I have known this leaf must be turned for several years, and I even mentioned it on this blog back in the month of New Years resolutions.  The leaf that is being turned is that of rising early in the morning. 

I am naturally a night owl, and that was my scrapping time - the wee hours. My night owl tendencies in turn made me a late riser (and often grumpy riser) who was always in a rush getting lunches made and kids off to school, THEN cleaning the house and showering and maybe exercising, and THEN starting my work day around 10:30 or 11am. I always knew that becoming an early riser would be life changing, in that I could do all that stuff BEFORE kids went to school and have a longer day while kids were at school. SO for 20 days now and counting, I have been up between 5:50 and 6:30am. 6:30 is now my sleep in! (AS opposed to two hours later like in the ol' days). Husband is very supportive and literally pushes me out of bed at 6ish and says "Go, honey, don't fall off the wagon!" And then precedes to go back to sleep (the lazy poopy head...grr). (Note he does wake up early with me 2 of the 7 days. Big deal). 

All this to say, that on my 5:50am days I go walking with my friend, Melanie, who thank goodness is at the corner waiting for me at that ungodly hour cause otherwise I would NEVER make it there alone, and on my first walk at the crack of dawn she took me up these stairs, which my legs screamed about for the next three days. The upside to my new early rising is that I am exercising more and am home by 7 getting into all the stuff that needs to be done, but the DOWN side is that by 9pm I am SMASHED and need to sleep instead of scrap or read (which is what I did if I didn't scrap). 

When do early risers scrap?? With working and kids, day scrapping seems too challenging.

Speaking of working, middle girl was off school sick and came to my studio with me for a few hours. She took this on my camera phone and hey, I think it's the only photo ever of me painting. 

And I should share this section of a painting with you (below), because this is where my lovely friend Di does her very disciplined exercising every week, right inside that yellow building. Back when our kiddies were little, we spent many an hour hanging around here with the kids and a coffee during the week.

 

SO I have been accumulating photos that I REALLLY want to scrap, and I plan on doing it soon (hopefully some this week), because my head is about to explode with unscrapped ideas!

Here's what I want to scrap. 

First up below is my little niece's first birthday. Good times. She lives near this beach at Bundeena (south of Sydney) now and the afternoon was spent frolicking with all the cousins in the waves!

 

During the week we also celebrated my middle girls birthday with a home made back yard open air cinema (complete with my queen size white bed sheet and very blurry photo!)

and stripey jelly cups (mine didn't turn out as cool as the ones I found on the internet, but kids loved them anyway cause they didn't see internet inspiration ones!).

 

On day of middle girls birthday I took these photos of her, second one is at beach with her bestie, Cha.

Another thing I should scrap is my youngest girls means of communication most days for the past few weeks. It was cute at first, getting slightly over it now (me that is, not her!). Nothing like having to respond during cooking by typing in a message.

 She has decided to get very fussy with eating, and most nights are becoming a drama. So frustrating the food habits of children. Their means of communicating are more interesting than a generation ago, though...

And the last thing I want to scrap (well the last that I will share now - there are certainly more things to scrap - does it ever end??) is my eldest girls recent SLOB antics. She is a pre-teen and the clean and tidy organised girl that she was has seriously 'left the building'. What replaced her is a MESSY girl who NEVER picks up after herself. Oh the joys. Details to come on the scrapped page!

I'm off to type up some LONG awaited journaling.

See you soon. x

what's in the news?

Oops sorry it's been so long since I posted. Just saw the date from the last post....big OOOPS.

These pages below are intended to be a double page spread, for each child's album. They are a response to a challenge set by Amy here.  I know the info on them is two years old, but at the time of these two events, I knew I wanted to record them. Only took me two years to get my butt into gear. Two years on though, they don't feel as important now, and since there have certainly been some big natural disasters that would rank of much higher importance. But at the time each of these was interesting and were directly related to us, and I wanted to record all of our thoughts and observations.  Not tha Michael Jackson is directly related to us(!), but his death was interesting for us...When I told the girls that Michael Jackson had died, they all asked "Who?"  The process of discovering him after his death, was something I wanted to record for them. They are all big fans now, and know all his music.

If you scrapped all the world's big events, you'd be scrapping constantly, but when Amy asked us to do a page about something beyond our own little families, I took up the opportunity to scrap those two events I have been thinking about doing for so long.

I scrapped the layouts digitally, to look like a newspaper article. I will print out the white section as an 8x10 (see first image) and mount it on a black background of bazzill, to give it the look that it has on the second image. It's a very no-frillsy, plain design concept.

For more great 'news' layouts from Amy's challenge, head here.

An oldie

If you want a little design lesson to help with your layouts, head over here to a tutorial that I have posted today. 
I haven't scrapped much lately, but am feeling pretty desperate to do so!!  Here's one of the layouts showed there. It is about my sisters and sister-in-law and myself. I love an occasional adult layout. I like what I have recorded in the journaling which is four years old, as things have radically changed for all of us now.  Eg, the first one, Sarah, is now married, has a son and lives in Atlanta.  The second one, Laura, now has 2 young kids and lives elsewhere. And the third one, Donna, now lives in Sydney. The only thing that's changed with me is that I've got older!

2 blue-ish layouts

 Some blue-ish [pages for you today. I don't know if I already shared this first layout or not. It uses a photo taken from January of my middle girl on holidays on the NSW south coast with her best buddy in  the whole world. As they boogie board over the waves they yell up big 'Whooooot's and no matter how many people are on the beach, we always know where these girls are and that they're okay!

I brought this photo over to photoshop and popped a title on it by sticking a text box on top of the photo, and making the text white. I think I did it as I'm running a little low on white letter stickers especially 'e' and 'a'!


Then I printed the photo out as a 6x8 and there you have it. The printed paper is some old old 'chatterbox'

The next layout s super super simple. As you can see.
 I write one of those dreadful form letters at Christmas time which say what we've all been doing that year, just to send to all the distant relatives around Australia and overseas, who we never ever see. I wouldn't inflict it on close family and friends! But as I finish up the letter each year, I do like the summary it provides of our lives at the time, so this layout below, actually stores a folded copy of the letter behind the photo.  I put adheshive tape around three sides of the pic but not along the top edge to allow for the letter to slide in. That way the girls can read it later down the track and see what we were all doing in 2010. Again, I am 6 months late is sharing this layout - I did it about 3 months ago, but worried it was simple too simple to share! It's called the 10 minute layout! Or maybe 6 or 7 minutes!