my flowergirls

Well, we did it. We pulled it off. I pulled off half decent curled hair for three little girls by 11am. Said three girls led the bridal party down the isle of a hundred year old HUGE stone church, full of people, one at a time, led by the youngest, Lucy. And they did it perfectly. They held their flowers at the correct height. They didn't walk too fast. And they smiled at the crowd. Nice.

Apart from the fact that before the wedding middle child was caught rolling in ivy in the cream dress and heading towards a fountain at which point a screaming mother could be heard, all went extremely well. They were delightful and several people suggested we make money off them by renting them out to other bridal parties. Pondering that thought...

It was a huge day, and heaven knows how I can possibly scrap such an event for them. These are just some of my photos, but I am looking forward to seeing the professional ones in a couple of weeks.

What the heck, here are a few more. Who can choose when one is biased, and can't decide which photos ones likes?? Also, you can see the ivy on the ground in the first of the photos below, just so you can envision the situation with middle child....and yes, the bride was every bit as stunning, as she appears...

weddings, brazil and a secret layout.

It's Friday morning again - wow the weeks move on so quickly. I won't have time to breathe til Sunday night at 8:30pm. I have to grocery shop today, you know what it's like when there's no fruit, no milk, no bread, no cereal, and no toilet paper! I really can't put it off another day.

And I need to do laundry, because my daughter somehow got black licorice all over her bed linen (grrr..middle daughter, of course!) and my husband is complaining of a dwindling supply of clean underwear.

Also need a haircut, cause I'm going to a wedding tomorrow and at the moment my head is resembling a cave man.

3:00pm school pickup.
3:30pm oldest daughter has a ballet lesson.
4:30pm pick her up.
5:00pm Pick youngest daughter up from friends house.
Get dinner happening.
7:30pm Private scrap lesson at my house.

How did life end up like this? You should see Sunday, it's the same. It's funny, when you have babies and toddlers you think life is busy, but compared to older kids, it is nothing! With little kids it's more constant, you don't have headspace, and you're lucky to get a shower in. With bigger kids, you get an hour or two by yourself, which is nice for some sanity, but in that hour you run like a chicken with your head cut off!

And TOMORROW, I have to turn 3 little girls into flowergirls, complete with curled, professional looking hair by 11am ! hahaha.

Wedding at 12, kill time in the city with 3 flowergirls til reception at 4, possibly home by 8pm? The person getting married is a very special friend of the family's who has had a very close bond with the girls since they were born. Her name is Ainsley. Since Amaris was a few months old, Ainsley walked to our house from primary school once a week to play with the baby. Basically she never stopped - even during her HSC! She would show up on Tuesday afternoons to play with the girls! When she was at Uni, she came in for the whole day and looked after my toddler and baby while I worked. The girls all adore her, and are horrified that she is getting married and might not want to babysit anymore! Though they are happy they get to be flower girls. I did a layout over a year ago about Ainsley and it was lengthy in it's journaling, because I had a lot to say. On the second page I got Ainsley to journal about the girls. It is so awesome for our girls to have this gorgeous 'big girl' in their lives.

Anyway this post wasn't actually going to be about Ainsley, but I got carried away. Look out for some flowergirl wedding photos in the days to come!!

This post was supposed to be about the one and only layout I squeezed in this week. It's called secret, and I LOVE this photo of my eldest and my youngest. Wasn't quite sure how to scrap it, but I knew it had to be simple because of the patterned on the cushion that they are laying on in the photo. I've had this pp in my stash, unused for about 2 years, so YAY I found a place to make it work. Hope you like it.

One more thing I did do this week, is have a scrap day with one of my BFF, and new scrap convert Robyn (remember the flight attendant?). I helped her finish 5 pages in about 4 hours, with a few coffees and lunch squeezed in. Robyn was telling me that she went into a scrap store last weekend to stock up on some cardstock and some brads. She went up to the man in the store and said "excuse me, where do I find the Brazil and the Braids". I'm dying laughing as Robyn is telling me that the man is looking at her blankly. Typical flight attendant that she is - totally destination focused! I'm telling her she needs to think of herbs - parsley, sage and BAZZILL, next time she walks into a scrap store!! And think of Brad Pitt, not hair, when asking for brads. So we've been calling cardstock 'Brazil' ever since. Too funny.

See you soon with flowergirl images! Must remember to charge those camera batteries and stock up on the Brazil!

a baking man

It all started about 2 months ago, when my husband, Marc, got peckish one Sunday afternoon.

I'm supposed to be working today, but I'm too cold. So I'm going to sit at home with a coffee, wrapped in my big feather/down quilt and blog, since I have horribly neglected my blog for a good two weeks now. Because I have chosen to not work, and be lazy, this is a very expensive post indeed. Oh well.

Before I go further, I must warn you that this post isn't about scrapbooking so much, but it IS about something about which I want to scrap about! Did that sentence make sense?? As I've said before, I like to get the story out on this blog, then go back as use it for my scrapbooking inspiration when I'm ready to do the layout.

Second warning. Don't continue reading if you are hungry, or if you are on a diet. I would be both of these things, so luckily I am writing this, not reading.

So back to the story. Marc got peckish. Marc has always loved homemade baked goods (I try to make a batch of his favourite cookies on his birthday) and he is not afraid to get into the kitchen himself to satisfy his own culinary desires! I love to watch him bake. He is one of those cooks that is very perfect and meticulous, and measures every ingredient exactly. Unlike me who just chucks approximate amounts in and hopes for the best.

A quick bit of background. Marc is very academic. He is one of those very intelligent brainiac types, and is a uni lecturer (What he is doing with me? No one knows.) He also loves church history. If we were to go away and needed light reading, he would take a commentary or 'church history Volume IX', and I would take a scrapbooking magazine. He is working on a theological PhD. He knows everything about the Reformation, and how Henry XIIIth started his own church, the Church of England church, because he wanted a divorce (true story).

We went to Europe in our early 20's, back when we had no children and were traveling as cheap as we could with just a backpack. He told me all about some guy called John Calvin, and who did what historical thing, as we roamed through all the cathedrals. We stood in St Peters square, and I was informed about a whole LOT of Pope history. (The correct term would be 'Papal history'- see, I do know something?).

For Amelia's birthday last year, Marc wanted to have a Pope Party. "Come dressed as your favourite Pope!". Can you imagine that on a kids invitation? The neighbourhood would have all run away screaming, and Amelia would have had to change schools, for sure. If they didn't run screaming, imagine little Pope's, actually arriving carrying birthday presents! So you get the drift. Ask him any question on Church history and he will know it. He has been on panels, where people ask him questions off the cuff, and he wrote/published a small book in response to the Divinci Code. I know that he is slightly unusual, and is not like other husbands, who fix the dripping tap, or take pride in whippersnipping their lawns, but I love him anyway. He is arty, and creative, and he is very very funny. That always helps as I walk past my unkept lawn.

So on this particular Sunday afternoon, he was leafing through a recent Donna Hay Magazine issue looking for something yummy to bake, and he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. He said to me: Look. At. THIS!

He is gobsmacked. A Cathedral cake.

Church history in a CAKE!!

Does it get any better? Apparently not. He's like 'I want to make that!'. And I'm explaining that unfortunately we don't have a cathedral cake tin (!) but I will have a look at the shops next time I am there.

So he settles for making some small cakes in our friand shaped cake tins. They look cooler than round muffin tins. I explain that they aren't actually friands, cause they are a different type of cake, they just look like friands. Okay.

These small cakes were cinnamon sugar coated maple apple cakes and they were so DIVINE. They were so so yummy, especially when they were warm. Recipe below.

He made these friand shaped cakes for a couple of weeks, and also tried his hand at the chocolate orange marble cake that was over the page in the magazine.

It was based mostly on dark chocolate, butter and cream, and was SO rich we nearly died!! It took us two weeks to get through, making any person who walked through our door eat some before they were allowed to leave.

Meanwhile I am secretly trying unsuccessfully to find the cathedral cake tin. I looked at the department stores around us, some specialty kitchen shops, and even went into to city, thinking the big department shops would have it there. No. After much secret google searching I finally found the one store in Sydney that stocks the thing. It is about 40minutes North of the city (I live 40 minutes south of the city) but it was literally 500 metres away from where I went away on a conference last weekend. I didn't tell him I had found it, in case, heaven forbid they were out of stock or something! I get to this gorgeous store, called Alfresco Emporium, and I find the almighty cathedral cake tin. In fact, I found two. The big one, that makes the big cake, and some little ones, almost like big muffins, in the shape of little cathedrals! Too cute. How could I choose? I bought both. I accidently also bought a much needed food processor while I was there. I come home from the weekend, totally excited with my find, laden with shopping bags. I walk in the door and Marc looks concerned at all the shopping, saying "I thought you were at a conference??". I said, "take a look at what I found for you!!"

Yes. He was a very happy man. It was hard to explain to the other women at the conference why I was walking around with a cathedral cake tin for my husband!

So last Thursday, he had a day off, and he tried it out.

Oh yeah. It was Awesome. And the actual cake, a dark spiced coffee cake was TO DIE FOR. I was dying, eating the small sliver that my diet allowed. Just. Okay, so it didn't really 'allow' but who could resist???

Then he went straight onto making the above mentioned 'cinnamon sugar coated maple apple cakes' into the smaller tins.

In the smaller tins there were 2 cathedrals, and the other 4 were other shapes. By the time I took this photo..

...he had grabbed the two little cathedral cakes and was off out the door to take them to a friends house to catch up over coffee. The friend is a wannabe gourmet chef, so I think he would have appreciated the small cathedral cakes!

Why my husband still looks darn good, and isn't the size of a small boat, I will never know. I am really careful what I eat, and I go for small jogs while he bakes cakes. People come up to us, and say "Hey Marc, you're looking good, have you been working out?" AARRGGHH! So annoying. It actually seriously happens at least once a week. As he has a beer or two, some hot chips for lunch and a baked good, while I drink my water, and eat a carrot stick, and then go for a jog! The injustice of it all. Perhaps men are just constitutionally made better. Or they can hide it easier. Either way, it's so not fair.

By the way, here are the recipes to the two fabulous baked thingys that I have been talking about. Will have to double click on image to make it readable. The last ingredient on the second recipe is 'sugar'. These pages have been extremely well used over the last 2 months. I hope I don't get in trouble, or worse, sued, by Donna Hay. I am plugging your magazine, Donna. It is awesome, and I'm giving you full credit!! Consider this free advertising. These cakes were from issue No. 44. This is the one non-scrap magazine that I subscribe to! Love it.

Friday - better late than never.

Kids are jumping on the lounge and dinner is in oven (only just!). It's going to be a quick post unfortunately, which is sad, because I feel like I haven't posted for months, though it's only been a week. I went away last weekend and have spent the rest of this week just catching up, and trying to catch my breath!

So anyway, here is a layout that I did a little while ago - super simple - but better to have a post with a layout than no layout at all!

And here is a sketch challenge for anyone who feels like having a go.

I have enjoyed seeing what you come up with with my past sketches. As you can see, there are 8.5x11 and 12x12 options. Go for it and email me your layout - you've got til the end of next week, so get scrappin'! (talking as much to myself as to anyone else).

Can't wait to show you my husbands baking escapades - he's gone mad! Will have to wait til early next week - a CRAZY weekend approaches....

Di says hello, she is good, has moved house, and will be back online soon!

sorry...

Sorry you guys - no, I haven't died! I'm just very busy, but I will be here in a few hours with a layout and a sketch challenge. Just need a few more hours!
Nicole

spongebob and little art

Hi Fridayer's. I must be honest and say that I have done pretty much no scrapping this week. It comes in waves, and I am currently in a shallow wave, or what ever you call a wave that doesn't include scrapping - no worries, a big scrap-filled wave will come along soon.

I thought perhaps I might give you a craft update. If you missed my post of the nightmare that is craft, you can read it here. Since banning this hobby in my house for a couple of weeks things have improved a little around here. Since confiscating all scissors tape and glue, things are calmer, but they still manage to create little messy masterpieces and have discovered the joys of origami. I went to the toilet this morning next to a folded paper crab on the floor that was very impressive with it's well folded claws and it's had two matchsticks sticking out of the folds or paper for two sticking-up eyes.

Still I can't complain too much, and things have improved. While I was out last weekend, they did manage to talk their father into letting them have the scissors for an outdoor activity. I assume that since it was outdoor, and since he was engrossed in ice hockey Stanley Cup finals on TV, he thought it would be okay. Amelia and Lucy, I think with help of Amaris, created the world of 'spongebob squarepants'. The mind behind the creation was of course Amelia (middle child) who regrettably, was inspired when she saw a pineapple, sticking out of the neighbours garbage bin.

Yes. So many issues here. I would love to say that she wasn't in someone else's garbage looking for items. Really, really, I SO would like to say that. She does ASSURE me that 'it was sticking right out' of the bin, therefore just waiting, begging, to be borrowed, grabbed or stolen, in the name of creativity. When one comes home and sees the scene, cute as it is, it is very hard to know which angle to take in my response...eg, how clever of you...what a great imagination....where the heck did that pineapple come from....what???....and are you planning on putting everything away? I took all the above angles.

So for those of you aware of the sensation called 'spongebob squarepants', here is a look at the world of spongebob, recreated on a rock (and in a puddle) outside our house.

If your kids aren't into this, here's an explanation. You can obviously see spongbob himself outside his pineapple house, and there is the apparently successful restaurant called the 'chum bucket' in the background, with it's manager, 'planton' in front of it.

In this second photo, you can see the house belonging to the character 'squidward' - a brick with a face, which is eerily similar to squidwards actual cartoon house. In the background is an oxygen dome, the house of the 'sandy cheeks' character, you can see she has been drawn with her little oxygen helmet on. Apparently she is the only character that requires oxygen. And yes, that would be the mixing bowl from my kitchen drawer. Like I said to you praise the creativity, or do you go 'grrrrrrrrr'.

Apart from one other heavily supervised activity including paint, where the sunlight was just just too perfect to not take a photo, there has been no other major craft activity since the ban.

My eldest daughter did an amazing painting for a school art show last week, which I will share soon. I just love it and was so proud of the effort she put in, though I am still steadily trying to steer her more into the areas of accounting and science, and less into the creative arts...which she loves....ahem.

Speaking of art, I remember I did scrap a little layout this week of youngest daughter's cute drawings. The drawings only stay cute as this for a few short years, so gotta scrap them while you can. Lucy has fab fine motor skills and draws small. She is incredibly quiet spoken, no one can ever hear her, and very clean and precise. She was an eighteen month old who carefully licked her icecream cone, all around, very cleanly and precisely, and never needed a tissue or napkin to clean the face. Precise 'little art' seems to suit her personality so well. I adore that bird with the spirally feathers on the tail. That last little bird (will have to double click on image to even see it) was tough to cut out. She did these about 6 months ago and I have held on to them.

See you early next week for some baking inspiration!! Then back to scrapbooking, I promise.

challenge II layouts.

A big thank you to all who participated in my challenge of last week - I LOVE what everyone came up with and I love how differently everyone interpreted the sketch. Here is the sketch, to jog your memory...

...and here are my attempts in both 8.5 x 11 and 12 x 12 sizes. Definitely stuck on 'kraft' at the moment.

And here are some layouts from others who mostly took the sketch as it was.

This first one comes from Sally in Perth - check out the photography here - WOW!

and the next one from Alexandra, a Parisian living in USA. (Is that right, Alexandra?). Isn't this layout just stunning????

Some used one photo with this sketch like Amy in Victoria (below)

and some used 3 photos! 4 actually! This layout below was by Jenny S in Sydney who emailed her layout to me within hours of me posting the challenge!! The keen award goes to...Jenny!

Other clever people rotated the sketch to use horizontal photos.
This first layout below comes all the way from Switzerland and is by Agata - love how colourful this is.

and this second rotated layout below comes from Shannon, NSW Central Coast. Shannon's the 'clever girl'. And she also likes kraft.

And this last layout was slightly different to the sketch, but was inspired by the sketch none the less, and HOW cute are the FROGS!!! This layout was done digitally, by Sharon, in far north-west Queensland.

Nice work girls, and so fun to see what you all came up with! THANK YOU for participating. Another challenge will come your way soon.

Nicole xxx

one more collage...can't help it.

Hi Friday scrappers! Firstly, before I forget, come back and visit on Monday morning (Sunday night for the rest of the world) for when I show you the layouts that have been sent to me for my sketch challenge. They are really gorgeous!! In case you wanted to scrap over the next day or so and wanted to use my sketch challenge, here it is again. Email your layout to me if you're quick.

Secondly, I'm just going to answer a few questions that have been asked of me this week, and I rudely haven't responded to yet individually!

1. What adhesive/glue do I use/recommend? I use 'express it' brand double sided tape.

I have given up on glue, because most of the stuff I glued 4 or 5 years ago has now become 'un-stuck'. grr. There are dispenser-type devices, purposely made for scrapbooking that you buy in scrapbooking stores that stick the sticky tabs on, but wow they can be expensive. And the refills are really expensive. And I make a lot of layouts and I go through a LOT of adhesive. SO basically I look for something that is really economical, and the best thing that I have found is double sided tape - though I also use photo tabs from Kmart or coles, they are only $2.99 for 500. I buy the double sided tape more often cause the art supply shop next to where I work carries it. It comes in a 50m roll, and I buy it in 3 different widths - 1cm, 5mm and 3mm. It is great for getting on thin strips. It's possibly more time consuming that the high tech devices from the scrap shop, but it's cheap, I find it easy and quick, and there's no device for the tape to get stuck in. It actually can be quicker, in that if I was to stick a row of photos butted up against each other across a page (as I do often) I just stick a length of tape across the page, and stick the photos straight down onto it, as opposed to individually putting tape on the back of each photo.

It's only $2.30 - $4.50 per 50m roll. I'm all about not needing second mortgages to support my hobby. You can get it from most art/craft supply stores. It is repositional for a few minutes. There's a double sided tape that looks similar from spotlight, and it is super super super strong. It could quite easily hold two cars together - this one is in no way repositionable - once you've stuck it, it's STUCK. Beware of this one for scrapbooking. It is cool for things like sticking labels on cloth albums or for sticking cars together. Those labels, or cars, will never unstick!!

2. Do I journal for 'adults eyes only'? What this means, is that sometimes, you want to journal what's on your mind, and be real, but you know your kids aren't going to be happy if they read it now. You journal it in the hope that they read it when they're adults. For example, I might journal about my 7 year old sons huge tantrums that I am really really struggling with and how he doesn't get on with his siblings right now. Although I try to be positive, I still want to be real. I don't necessarily want him to read this right now I don't want to offend him, and he might be mad that I would journal about such a thing. Also, my point of view, and my feelings aren't really something I think he can really understand or grasp right now anyway. Notice I made up a 'son' for this example.

So, do I keep my journaling happy, and easy and suitable for the child right now, or do I journal for them as adults, for one day to look back on?
I am more of an 'adults eyes' journaler. For me, and this might be different for you, I scrap a LOT of layouts. And because I scrap so many, probably about 70-80 a year, the girls really don't care about them right now. I say 'do you like this layout I did about you?' and they glaze over and go 'yeah' and then run off to play. I scrap in the hope that ONE day they will appreciate it, and enjoy it. I must say though, they do like looking back through their baby albums and oohing and aahing at themselves. But to tell you the truth, if there was a big paragraph of journaling, they wouldn't read it at this stage. My nine year old, might read a bit or two, here and there, but only in her baby albums, not current stuff. For me, I keep it as real as I can, while staying positive, and reinforcing my love for them! When they are all grown, and have kids of their own, they might get more into reading the journaling. For now, they just aren't that interested.

By the way, after chatting with Di this week, I have decided to scrap less. Do they really want 18 albums when they leave home? No. As they get older, I want to scrap less, and fill only one album every 2-3 years, instead of filling one album each, per year as I do now. It's all a bit ridiculous.

3. Do you do your collages in Photoshop Elements? Yes. Hopefully the rest of this post will reiterate that! For more collaging in Photoshop Elements, read this post from a few weeks ago.

My skills have improved slightly recently in Photoshop, in that I discovered the 'grid' (under 'view', I think). Duh. Once I had a grid on the page, it was easier to drop photos in, drag them smaller and make them all the same size. Before, I was doing it by eye, and sticking photos on top of each other to get them identical in size. As you can tell, I am SO no expert. It's just a matter of having a go, and learning by playing.

My collage layout of this week, should be the last for several weeks (maybe months?), as I haven't taken heaps of photos for a while. I was inspired to do this layout after this photo that my husband took of Lucy and I walking to preschool.

I decided that it was such a pretty walk, that I took my little camera with us the next day, and took lots of photos of our whole walk. I set the camera on the ground and used the self timer for the first one (thanks to old RW blogger Renee for that idea) and I snapped away until the last two photos which are of Lucy arriving at preschool and standing next to her locker. I really want to remember this time with her. I love our walks and our hand holding and chatting the whole way. Makes me wish every child could be a last child, and have this one on one time with me. One on one time with no babies, prams and toddlers to take up my time, as was the way it was when my other girls were littler.

This whole page, except for the strips of pp down the sides and the brads, was done on photoshop and printed as an 8x 10 photo. Double click on the image if you want a closer view.

See you soon xx

easy journaling idea.

Today through my bleary eyed tiredness, I'll share a couple of layouts I did last week - one for Lucy, one for Amelia. I painted little peoples faces at my girls school fair for six hours a day (straight - without a seconds break!) for Saturday and Sunday, and I seem to still be recovering! I did just go for a jog (Di, are you impressed?) to try and wake me up, but I think a coffee, straight after this post, is the only thing that's gonna help!
Back to my layouts. I do this type of journaling about the girls approximately once a year - just little random tidbits about who they are and what they're like, right now. These things change radically from year to year and I LOVE going back over past years and reading what I wrote about the girls then. You forget SO much of the little stuff. Thank goodness for scrapbooking. The facts are remembered! It's such an easy way to journal about them - please give it a go - I love it.

There are a couple of typos in these pages (grr) rest assured they have now been fixed. The observations' stamp by 7gypsies comes courtesy of my LOVELY blog reader Sally, who sent me HERS when she heard that mine had broken. How sweet is that? Thanks Sally! (will get back to your email BTW)

PS. By the way, so glad to hear I am not the only one with 'craft issues'! Thanks for your great comments - it was very reassuring to know that I am not alone!