Signing out for teeny little while...

Sorry all. I am just too tired and busy for blog world at the moment - no scrapping is getting done. Give me a week or two, and I may return! Things are good, but I just don't have the space in my brain for this, and now, late at night when I used to do the blog, I just wanna crash on my lounge, which is what I'm about to do. Hopefully I will see you soon. xxx
PS. Maybe it's partly the heat. Someone tell Sydney that it is nearing the END of summer and it shouldn't be so HOT!!

2 layouts and 2 photos

I am quickly writing this post late Thursday night, because I know I won't have time in the morning. I'm busy busy. It is wonderful having 5 days in which to do my stuff, but it seems there is still always plenty going on. I just have a lot happening with my work at the moment. And one can't complain about that!

So about these layouts that I'm going to share. My husband, Marc, is always trying to show off and lift all three of his children at once. He's done it since they were little, but it's getting very very hard, as they are getting bigger, and are all heavier than they look. The eldest and youngest in particular have quite muscular bodies, and apparently muscle is quite heavy - of course not having any, I wouldn't know.

We got Rachel Richter to take this photo of Marc holding all three girls, and nearly giving himself a hernia, and I have scrapped it a couple of different ways, one layout for each child. I haven't bothered to put up the third layout as it is quite similar to this first layout.

For this second layout, I basically lifted the design from the 'cartwheel' page from a few posts ago. I even used another OLD metal label holder/name plate thingy to house the date. I have lifted this basic design about a million times, I'm sure.

Now I just have to show you these photos of Lucy in a lolly shop (candy store) taken on the south coast in a tiny town called Tilba Tilba. Cute shop, and the girls spent ages in there trying to decide on how to spend some of their Christmas money. I made each of them make the purchases themselves (I almost always do - my way of trying to get them to be independent) and I stood on the other side of the counter and snapped this photo. I love it.

Ahh the decisions....

The scrapped layout will certainly be titled 'decisions', and in the mean time, I have thrown together a digi page. I have just finished compiling a 52 page photo book, full of simple digi pages as a 'yearbook' of 2009, for my parents and in-laws, for Christmas. Two months late, I know! But it's finally done, and I will share some more of that next week.

So that I don't hand them a mega-late Christmas present for 2010, I have already started working on this year's book, and have already done last months pages. I am keeping is EXTREMELY simple and streamlined, so that it really does look like an actual book, and not so much like scrapbooking in digi form. Here's the page.

I told ya, seriously simple.

See ya in a few days. Will show you the book.

old fashioned collaging.

Today I'll share a recent layout done in the old-fashioned way of cutting and sticking onto paper, rather than of exporting, cropping and placing on a computer screen, and THEN printing. Yes, it's a non-digital collage. I started with many 4 x 6 prints, and just cut them down and stuck them on a 12 x 12. It was very quick and easy and didn't require any brain action, which sometimes, for me, digital scrapping does. I must say, that these days, I like par-taking in a mixture of digital and non-digital collages. Digital certainly gives you more options, but non-digital, is easier on my brain.

The middle row of photos are 4" high (10cm) so they were landscape photos with the sides cropped off. Always handy to take some shots where the subject is a little more in the distance to allow a 4 x 6 print to be heavily cropped. Or you can do it all digitally. Whatever takes your fancy that moment.

I certainly had lots of photos to choose from that day, as it was at Di's house, with her kayaks, and using her new camera! :) I think she took about 300 photos that day! I took about 20 of those I admit. Anyway, thanks Di, for all the pics, and thanks for the great day, my kids are still talking about their first kayak ever, and asking when they can do it again. They LOVED it, though Amaris did get her first sunburn that day. 3 hours of those thigh's facing the sun wasn't a great idea.

SO I did a double page spread, one page concentrating on journaling, and one on all the pics. It was a memory too good for the kids to not scrap. This is Amaris' layout.

These two pages sit side by side in the album, like this

.

I'll leave you with another favourite holiday pic. I love the colour in this country/lake shot. This one inspires me to go paint, which is what I am off to do right now!
See you soon.

Last Christmas layout and a big week for littlest girl

Hey girls.

(I assume it's only girls, out there??)

Here's my last Christmas-type layout that I will share.

It's about the tradition of attending our church's 'Carols By Candlelight' event - a big yearly thing, that attracts between 5000-6000 people. I have been attending this event since I was a teenager, and haven't missed a year (except that one year when my husband was up on stage MC-ing, I had a tired four year old, a tantruming two year old and a 6 month old baby, and it was 8pm, and I arrived at the event by myself pushing the double pram and carrying baby bags and then when it starting to RAIN, I turned right around and came home, pushing the stroller through the mud. Yeah, I missed that year. For some reason it is fully entrenched in my memory, even though it was 5 years ago).

So now we love to go, and each year seems to get better, as the girls get older and can stay awake to see the fireworks and enjoy the night fully. So here's the layout to record this special thing that we do.

I share the top one, because I like it best, but as you know, I scrap one for each child's album, and with Lucy's one below, I forgot to add in the journaling (which was the same for all three) that I love her little hand matching Daddy's big hand, protecting their flames. So I added this extra bit in a quick handwritten line at the top. Just wanted to show you that if you forget something like that, you can always add it in later with a bit of handwriting, and I don't think I wrecked it? And I'd run out of those gorgeous AC pink cloth letter stickers and had to use black ones. I love the fine-ness of the font in the first ones.

We did have an exciting week this week with my last baby starting big school. And guess what? I wasn't even a mess. I thought I would be, but I was fine. Probably helped that she has become increasingly bored , and therefore more demanding, at home the weeks leading up to this day.

I am officially without children, 5 days a week, for the first time in over 10 years! Wow.

Here's some of my fave photos. Sorry so many - I really can't choose. I am biased. She is just CUTE!

First there was a quick pep talk from Daddy. (Note: Lucy flatly refuses to let me do her hair at the moment - it's been several months now actually - so I bought her the headband and she pulls it on herself).

Then the walk to school with the sisters (who were almost more excited than her!)

This below is my favourite one. My 10yr old Amaris took it. And she also took the following photo of, miracle of miracles, ME with Lucy. Yes, I am actually in a photo!! First time in many months.

And a hug from big sister before she left for her part of the school.

See you very soon!
xx

A challenge with my old supplies and my lovely #2

A little while ago, my Canadian scrappin' buddy, Barb, asked me and 2 other scrappers to do a layout for an upcoming article she was writing for Ella's e-zine. You can find the article here, which was really cool by the way - great job, Barb!

The layout Barb challenged us to do, was one that used up our OLD scrap supplies. Now I for one, am not a hoarder. At all. I'm into minimalism, in many areas of my life, so I don't hold on to supplies that I don't think I will use. If I haven't used it in over 12 months, and in reality know that I will probably pick something else over it, I get rid of it. It's the same with my wardrobe. I have a TINY amount of wardrobe space, and I like it like that. I only keep what I wear a lot. And that's not very much. I just find my life more calmer, and more managable, the less crap, I mean 'stuff', that I have.

Anyhoo, I found the challenge very 'challenging' due to my lack of old supplies, but I dug deep into what small stash I have and gave it my best shot. I found I'd held on to those old Making Memories metal label/plate holders and the metal rimmed vellum tags. Remember those? Remember all that Making Memories metal stuff?? That was all the rage just as I started into scrapbooking.

So this is the page that I came up with for Barb's challenge.

I took the vellum out of the tags and just used the rims, as I thought the circle element worked alright with the 'rounded' movement of the cartwheels. Might end up taking those metal rims off the layout, I can't decide whether they are giving me a headache or not!
To all the old metal stuff, I added some much newer AC pp and letter stickers.
The scallop edge scissors are also a very old concept, though they are pretty new for me. I hated them 8 years ago, when they were huge, but they have grown on me, and now I like a bit of scallop edging, here or there. I guess I'm a bit behind the times!
The photos of Lucy doing what she seems to do ALL the time, were taken by Rachel Richter.

Since I've been back from being away, I've been catching up on some blog reading and found some very very sad stories on Shannon and Di's blogs, reminding us all about some different aspects of car safety, meningococcal vaccines, and the fact that tragic events do in fact happen to real, ordinary people, and we can never ever say, that will never happen to me. I personally know four people very well, who have had such tragedy strike very very suddenly within their families. All with a child.

So after reading these heart wrenching reminders, I ran straight outside to the front yard and took some up-to-date photos of Amelia, the only daughter that was home at the time. I haven't had any decent photos of Amelia for months. It was dusk and she was playing on the front porch with a neighbour, her hair was a mess, her feet were filthy, but all that is very Amelia. She was very obliging with the camera (sometimes she certainly is not!), so I went with it.

I even took her out for a Thai dinner that night (the others were all out) and took a photo of her and I together. Something I haven't done for a really really really long time.

Go take some up-to-date piccy's of the ones you love, right now! If you need to. I did.

See you very soon, for one last Christmassy layout. Then that's it, I promise, til next year! And I still have that non-photoshop collage to share too. Stay tuned. xx