power shortage, scrapping and new soccer mum

Good morning friends! Sorry this post is a little late today - the power went out for 2 hours (!) just as I began writing this, and so I had to do something that required no power ... umm like tidying house, while I awaited power return. Took me a while to come up with something to do that required no power - my first thought of 'have a coffee' was no good, 'put on load of laundry' was no good, and then my next thought of 'check other peoples blogs' was definitely no good (duh) so tidy up the tornado that was my younger girls bedroom won out. Sad but probably a good thing in hindsight.

This week has gone so fast - faster than usual, and usually it's pretty fast! I can't believe that April is practically here!! Time just moves along so quick the older I get. Imagine when we are 80, will one month seem like only one week? I am constantly reminded how fast time moves by my eldest daughter who keeps referring to my life growing up as 'the olden days'. She wanted to download Miley Cyrus' latest song onto her ipod, and as always has to ask permission so we can check it out first. She tells us it's called 'Girls just want to have fun'. My husband proceeds to explain that someone else, other than Miley(!), actually wrote that song when WE were growing up. He jumps onto 'You Tube' and finds the original video clip by good old Cyndi L. and we all proceed to watch it. Eldest daughter is mortified. "Oh Dad!! This is SO bad. How embarrassing - it is SO from the olden days!". You know your getting old when...
Anyway I just finished this layout literally 3 minutes ago, about daughter #1, so that I would have something to post today! It was a bit rushed, and I don't know how I feel about it. I like the photos and I like the story, but the layout? ....mmm..... the story is about how she started saxophone lessons a few weeks ago and is loving it SO much more that we ever dreamed! She plays constantly, and I have to send her outside because of the noise, where her neighbour joins her for a street jam! As I run around apologising to all the other neighbours for breaking local council's noise pollution laws ... I never knew the sax was so loud!

The other layout that I did earlier in the week was about daughter #2. You know when you take a photo, and on seeing it printed are struck by how non-little they look. This was the first photo I have taken of daughter #2 like that. I loved it, she looks so grown up and maybe serene! She has her mouth closed because she is hiding an enormous GAP where she has lost 3 teeth - in a row - over the past week or so. Poor thing can hardly eat (though it certainly doesn't stop her) and a fourth tooth is wobbly, so the gap could soon become astronomical. If she smiled with an open mouth in this pic, she would go back to looking like a little kid again.

Even though she looks calm and sweet, this girl is not known for her calmness! She is out exploring, getting dirty, collecting plants and bugs and climbing high in trees, everyday.

She is incredibly active and always has been - was walking at 8 months :( - not fun.
She is always pretty messy, especially her hair and constantly has dirt on her face. I think she was supposed to be a boy.

Speaking of daughter #2, I officially became a 'soccer mum' this week.

It is a label I dreaded for ages, just never liked the idea of it, and weekend sport always kind of terrified me, but now that I actually am one, it's okay! In fact, it was SO SO fun watching her first game ever, and I can't WAIT til tomorrow morning to see second game. Poor kid has asked for two years to be able to play, but we were hesitant to give up our only morning together - remember hubby works at a church so Sunday mornings are far from slow! Anyway, we finally gave in to her, and are very happy that we did.

Hubby is coaching the all girls under 7's team, and he is taking is so seriously, it's hilarious and he's loving it. Bought a clipboard that is filled with internet researched drills (we now compete for internet time), he bought a coach's whistle, and had two little trophy's made up to hand out at the end of each game. He got two made up because the trophy is supposed to go home with a kid for a week and be brought back the next game - hence it's fairly obvious why a second might come in handy. Amelia scored the first goal of the season, and they beat an all boys team 9-2. Daddy (and coach) was very proud! Now if only those uniforms were bazzill 'whirlpool'....

Everyone in my family, immediate and extended is extremely sporty - a few were professional sport people. That would be everyone in my family, except me. There is totally a page coming together in my mind about that. Picture, if you will, my first pair of joggers that I have ever purchased myself (ie I guess my mother must have bought the ones I wore as a child!). I purchased my first pair a few years ago, and they are in very pristine condition, to this day. Once, I ran, back when I was about 22, for about 10 metres, to first base in a church baseball game. Everyone laughed so much, that I demanded a 'runner' for the rest of the season. And I haven't run since. Ever. I worry that if my children need me to run to winch them to safety I will have some serious problems. Now please don't get me wrong. I am not a lazy person who sits around doing nothing, I walk. I could walk all day. In fact, my main exercise is shopping. Walking, carrying shopping bags as weights must surely burn lots of calories - not to mention the 'twists' when turning around to make sure young children are following. When I head to the local Westfield, I consider myself going to exercise - that's what I tell hubby anyway. Sporty I am not. There's the title of my page. Mmm, now what photo...

Friday scrapping no. 11!

Hello! Hope everyone is going okay! I did a couple of pages earlier this week. Here's one of them - not a lot of journaling happening, I just remember taking these photos and watching Lucy try a couple of times, unsuccessfully, to make a sand castle, with bone dry sand. Never gonna happen. So here's a simple layout to remember the lesson learned that day on the beach.

I've been working on a mini album of our January holiday/vacation this week. I'm not a big mini-album person, but I'm starting to think there might be a time and place for them. I have always liked the concept, I just didn't know what to do with them or how to store them. I have about 4 mini albums all together now, and I've decided to just stick them all in a small basket on the coffee table so that everyone can peruse them at their leisure. I have lots of photos of our January trip, and there are lots of memories there. The kids love scrolling through the holiday pics on the computer. However I don't want to scrap 8000 pages on the holiday, so I did the mini album. The kids can flip through the mini as they want to. I am planning to do another mini of the preveious years vacation up North. I think this whole mini concept is great for these kind of events, when there is a heap of photos and a heap of memories to go with them. I like the idea of a Christmas mini each year with all the events leading up to and including Dec 25. I take a photo of the kids each Christmas to mail out to the rellies in the card - I wouldn't mind putting all these photos in the one mini album - all nine years worth. Anyway, I don't want to go crazy, just the occasional small and quick album for those occasional events. This album is 4x 6 horizontal. You can pick these up anywhere (camera shops, big W, Kmart, target etc) - I found mine on a $2 clearance table. The key is to buy the album first, and see how many pages are in it - it is always on the labelling. This one had room for 36 photos according to the label, so that meant about 18 photos, and 18 journaling pages. I ended up puttin 1/2 size photos on some of my journaling pages, though I did lose one photo to the fornt '2009' title page. I haven't quite finished this album yet, got to get a couple more photos printed. Here's some pages....

We are sadly coming to the end of summer :( It is still warm and we still get some hot days (like today and his weekend - yay), but we know we only have weeks left, before the autumn starts to set in. Apparently Sydney is similar to California weather. Warm and hot summers and mild winters - if we want snow, we drive to the mountains a few hours away for it. The sun shines 345 days a year in Sydney, on average (seriously) and we Aussies LOVE our weather. So anyway, I took these photos of my girls (and nephew) enjoying the afternoon sun down the road from our house this week. They are wonderfully CLEAR in real life, they just upload pixelated, even though I am uploading a 2MB file!! What is that? If you double click on the photo below, it will come up big and you can SEE that it is nice and clear. Other bloggers using 'blogger' can upload huge clear photos, but I haven't a clue how they do it - I've tried many different ways. If you have a mac, and know, tell me! If you have a pc, don't tell me, because you will be talking a language that I don't understand! Sorry, there's my whine for the day. Hope you like these pics, even though they came with a whine!

Hope you are having a decent week. Leave a comment if you want to let me know you were here.

PS. Lee, who now owns Remember When, is now selling American crafts binders and page refills and letter stickers (cheap too) so it's pretty much a one stop shop - Bazzill and AC - what else is there?

ladies

I can't resist a green wall backdrop.....

Friday scrapping...

Hi scrappers - today's post in going to be very quick as I have to go on a preschool 'walkabout' (ie walk around the neighbourhood). Why I still have to pay a million dollars to send her to preschool when I effectively have to show up and basically look after for most of the day is beyond me. Anyhoo, I did a double pager last night (before Greys Anatomy) about two youngest daughters. Just used some old AC pp which I still love and some old AC letter stickers. These yellow alphabet stickers came in one of those multi colour packs which really really drive me to distraction. They look lovely in the shop but are SO hard to use! Of course they didn't a yellow 'd' in the pack, so I had to use a white 'd' from my white pack of stickers (same font).

And here's two ultra quick layouts. Love how you just grab a kraft piece of cardstock and it will go with everything. The first one has a very low quality photo, but I had to scrap it because I thought it was funny. All my girls are into holding up their fingers in a 'V' whenever there's a camera around because they think it's funny and 'cool'. I didn't realise til I had this downloaded that Lucy's 'V' fingers are up behind my head, and Amelia's fingers were down over the camera lens (she took the photo). Just silly everyday stuff that I wanted to record. (btw: there are typos in this journling, but you'll be happy to know, not that you care, they have since been fixed!)

The last layout was insanely quick, and very not thrilling, but I'll share it anyway because it required no computer, and because it uses white cardstock on white pp, which kind of turned out okay. (both were inked around the edge).

Also, for those leaving comments, please know that I don't get to see any email addresses when you leave a comment, so I can't respond personally cause I have no way to contact you, so I can only respond publicly in the comment section. If you have a question and want to email me, please do on nsouthworth@optusnet.com.au. I will TRY to set up a link that has my email in it, in the side bar tonight - I have tried before, unsuccessfully, but I will give it another go. Sometimes, it just seems more suitable to answer comments just to the person who asked the question!

Well have a great week, I will share a very simple and easy mini album that I'm working on next week. Keep on scrapping!

Nicole

2pm update:

Photos of Lucy from today's 'walkabout'. Can't resist an old wall in bazzill colour 'lagoon'!!

I do take photos of my other children as well, incase you were starting to have your doubts! It's just that Lucy seems to be with me the most, and therefore bears the brunt of the camera the most! Here's one I took of my eldest on Monday. Wow, I love this photo, even if the blue wall is very 'intense!'

Speaking of Bazzill, my friend, Lee, has bought the Remember When Paper Co. Lee's husband and my husband used to work together, and I converted Lee to the religion of Scrapbooking several years ago. I nearly fell over when she told me that it was she that bought RWPC! Anyway, Lee is looking for guest people to blog on the RW blog, and she has a very HUGE range of all the bazzill colours happening and is soon to have the WHOLE range, I believe. You can check out her online store here. And to celebrate the change over of owners, Lee is offering 10% off all orders placed in March. Nice!

for arty types only

Today's post is about your children's art, how to savour, scrap and keep it and how not to hold on to every individual mark that they have ever made on paper. My children draw every single day. It's what they do when they wake up in the morning, before I get up (thank goodness they have reached an age where I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn with them) and during the day if they are home, and then in the afternoons before dinner time. Often we find lovely little drawings left on our bedside tables that were put there for us at 6am while we are sleeping. The problem is what to DO with all these little creations. They could easily take over my entire house if I let them. Here is my current plan of attack. At the end of each day, I gather all the artwork that is lying around, in preschool bags etc, and decide what is cute, and what is just a scribble or not 'keep worthy'. After the kids are in bed I run to the recycling bin with the scribbles or bits of paper that merely have a triangle drawn on them. Then all the rest I put in to a big A3 plastic envelope. Each child has their own envelope. When the envelope is getting too full (usually after 3-4 weeks) I go through it, sometimes with the child, and decided which ones we really love, and we say goodbye to the rest. We keep about 4 or 5 a month. Some may seriously disagree we me on this, but for me, I don't want to keep every little thing, if not for storage reasons alone, and to tell you the truth, when they are 45, they really aren't going to want every bit of paper that their pen touched.

Often a drawing that really makes me laugh will come along or one that is particularly cute, and I will scrap it. I give my girls 100 page A4 sketch books from art stores or newsagents to draw on. They are also known as visual diaries, and you can pick them up at places like Go Lo or the reject shop. They are about $4-$8. I always give them one or two sketch books for birthdays and Christmas, and they are always excited at a new clean book of drawing paper! I let them draw in these, because they are acid free (just check labelling), so I can scrap them and they are, as I said, A4. That's similar to 8.5 x 11. Those big enormous artworks that come home from preschool are wonderful for their creativity but SO hard to store and keep. With these ones, if it's particularly special, I take a photo of it, and one of the child holding it, so that we have a record of it.

This is a drawing middle daughter did for me at 6am, that I found left on my bedside table. I thought it was so cute and funny. Love that last fairy trying to pull the cherry off the cupcake, and having a sad face because she can't! And one fairy is doing back flips! lol!

And here's another one that I scrapped about 12 months ago, in a similar layout design - seems to work well for these sized drawings. Double click on it and check out the bees - oh so cute!

I only scrap about 3 drawings a year from Amelia and Lucy. The oldest child has more outside activities now and her afternoons and mornings are spent practicing musical instruments and dancing. She still draws, but not as continuously as the younger two. Mostly she draws at school, I keep asking the teacher to use acid free paper.....(nutcase mother alert!)

Here's a couple of other ways I have scrapped artwork - With the first one, I went through the sketch book and chose little sections of pages that I liked. I don't like the scrapbooking design as such, and I think the dark framing cardstock needs desperately to be changed, but I do like all the little snippets of her drawing that I captured!

and don't you love those first self portraits....

A few weeks ago I took youngest daughter Lucy (4) to my studio because I needed to work for a few hours and I let her loose with some paper and paints. Now I do appreciate the fact that I can get anything done with a four year old with me - I appreciate it because I could never have done it with my first two daughters - they were way too active! Anyway, a few days later, I was back at my studio going through all the paintings that she had done (that were now dry) trying to decide which too keep and which to say goodbye too. As I was sifting through (she painted for over 2 hours straight!) I came across this one and I LOVED it. I bought it home and asked her about it and she said it was 'aboriginal abstract' - so funny what they know that you don't know that they know! I guess she learns this stuff from preschool as well as from me. Anyway I decided to frame it and hang it in my lounge room. LOVE it.

If you want to give this a go with your kids, the secret to tell them is the paint and cover all the white spaces, because usually a child will just paint an object on a white paper (which is still cute!). I didn't suggest this to Lucy, she just happened to do it this time. Lucky. Also, another thing that I learned when giving a little painting lesson to the preschool class is encourage kids to mix colours. This was a revelation to the kids and the teachers there. Usually, kids will paint blue from the blue pot, and red from the red pot. If they mix 2-3 colours together often with white, they learn to create new, more interesting colours, and the colour is much richer and less transparent and see-through-ish.

Anyway, as you might have guessed by my talk about a studio, my job is to paint canvases - I am hesitant to call my self an 'artist', because I don't think I am that good yet. So when people ask me what do I do, I say I paint, and I think that they think I paint houses or fences. Which is fine.
I have been painting full time since I was 19. It is a great flexible job, pays well, great hours, and I am passionate about it. Can't wait to get to work. I paint oil landscape paintings on big canvases, in a contemporary style. Here's a couple of close up photos of paintings done recently - I always like close up details as opposed to the photo of the whole painting - incase you were interested to see what I do when not scrapbooking - ie my real job that I have kept pretty quiet up til now! Most of my work over the past 2 years is of different aspects of Sydney Harbour. It is a very big, interesting and scenic harbour, and I know all the ins and outs of it really well, and I LOVE to paint it. I do paint other city's for exhibitions twice a year and the occasional country scene in a contemporary way - but Sydney is where my heart is. The first image was taken this week on my mobile phone - sorry about the LOW quality photo. Sydney Harbour has lots of wharves poking into it - love painting these - 3rd image. Feel very weird posting these - just didn't want to say I paint and then not clarify what it is I actually paint!

I have done a layout about our jobs. They are weird jobs. He is a speaker, preacher at a church and a teacher (lecturer) at a theological college. He is a very bright and academic, but also very dramatic and arty (he's basically a frustrated actor!). I am very not bright (he shakes his head at my blondness!), but I am practical and handy (unlike him). We have weird, creative, jobs. And we are very fortunate to both be employed to do what we love.

See you Friday for more scrapbooking and less art!

Get Real - it's Friday

Firstly, here's my layout to go with my new header to kick off March. Another summer inspired layout. Thank you, Renee D, for planting the summer photos idea in my head - wish you had a blog - I miss your inspiration!

Now. This is very important. We Australians, call these shoes 'thongs' and I know that you North Americans, and maybe others, use the word 'thong' for something else... and you call these shoes 'flip flops'. I need to clear that up before you hyperventilate when reading my journaling about everyone bringing their thongs over and then chucking them in a big pile to go for a swim. Don't panic. Lucky I lived in North America for a while, hey? My translation abilities have come in SO handy!

Okay, so Di's post from yesterday has totally inspired me to continue on with the 'real' theme today. I have in my mind to do a 'friends' layout with individual photos of those who I call my friends, and three reasons why each person is my friend under each photo. Di would be one! I think one common link between all of those who I would call my friends is that they are REAL. They are in touch with reality. They are not picture perfect, their lives and children and houses aren't picture perfect, yet they are not negative or whiney or depressing. Just real. Being real, yet positive is a huge goal of mine. I have made being positive, yet real, a major part of my scrapbooking. I think it is really important for my kids to grow up and look back on the reality that was their life. Not a photo with the word 'perfect' written under it. For them to look back and see how life really was for their Mum. And to tell you the truth, my life is really good. I am very thankful and grateful. I adore my husband, I have a job I love, by some miracle I have three healthy gorgeous kids - I don't have a lot to complain about. I am happy to do a layout about my husband, and gush a little, because that is my reality. I am happy to do a layout about how much I love hanging out with my 4yr old before she goes to school, because that is my reality. But I am also happy to do a layout about the struggles of being a good parent, because that is also my reality. And as long as I am real, without being negative, then I want to do that, for my sake - it's good therapy to get it out on paper- and for my kids' sake -because I want them to know I am not perfect, parenting is a new thing for me, and one day it might just help them with their own children.

These layouts below are about my eldest daughter. Parenting gets harder the older they get. When I had newborns that never slept for more than 30min, and 18month olds that were so active (and still never slept) that I was nearly rocking in a corner, I thought that they were the hard years, and it was easy from then on in. Wrongo. Physically, it has got easier, but mentally and emotionally is is harder now. At least with a 2 year old tantrum, you had plans of attack with how to deal with it, and you knew what to do, even if it was a bit exhausting. Now, with older kids, it's harder to know what to do - which tactic to take. My daughter, Amaris, is a very sweet natured, extremely well behaved child, but is on the high maintenance end. She has a drama-queen T-shirt, and that really says it all. She is very confident, but is going through a stage which swings from "Can't be bothered to try" and "this is new, and different, so I'm a little anxious, therefore I will also not even try". Our dilema, as her parents is when to let her have her way, and when to make her do things she claims she doesn't want to do. Do you be a friend and say "Don't worry darling, you don't do anything you don't want to", and sit back as she gets away with literally doing nothing, or do you take the "get off your butt, you'll be fine, get in a have a go, and you're doing it whether you like it or not" approach. I have gone with the latter, but it has been difficult. So here are my REAL layouts about my 9 yr old. They tell the story, set the scene, share my struggles, yet are very positive, and in the end, she knows I love her! Click on these layouts to get a larger view of the journaling if you want to. This layout below is really a bit too simple. Every now and then, I just go really really simple. Probably should add some pp to it somewhere...

Below is an older layout, but one of my all time favourite layouts inspired by 'the mom song'. It is all the things I say every single day, mostly in the order in which I say it. It is very REAL, and I wish it was a little 'happier' but when my hubby read through it he was laughing his head off saying this is so TRUE! It was the reality of my life at that time, and even now, 18 months on, I bet what I would daily say, is slightly different. Must do an update. I even love the blurry photo that my then 3 yr old took of middle child and me.

This was also a very real layout. It is nearly 3 years old. I have uploaded it small, so you don't have to read the journaling and think I am a complete nutcase. It was a sad little piece about how I wished at the time, that I was a better mum. More patient, kinder, less tired! Heck, let's face it, I still wish that now! I talked about how I'm far from perfect, but how I would vow to try harder and being the Mum I wanted to be. It was a 1am crisis journaling moment. I am happy for them to read it later, especially if they have their own little ones one day.

Off to continue pondering about my 'friends' layout - the biggest dilema is how to get decent photos of everyone - who has photos of themselves? We, as scrapbookers, really should, but we don't.....

Tune in next Tuesday as I plan to do an ARTY post. See you then.