nicole's scraps & life

Some out takes.

2011-11-28T21:08:00.000+11:00

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!

2011-11-11T20:40:00.004+11:00

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

2011-11-04T13:39:00.001+11:00

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

2011-10-07T15:45:00.000+11:00

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....

2011-09-25T14:22:00.001+10:00

...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?

2011-08-26T19:29:00.001+10:00

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

2011-08-05T14:36:00.000+10:00

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

2011-07-27T08:48:00.002+10:00

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!

a layout 'n' stuff

2011-07-12T14:52:00.003+10:00

This layout is about eldest and one of her best buddies. Although the best buddy and her family are fine about her being on this blog, the journaling is about best bud and my eldest, and I'm not keen on sharing journaling that is about someones else's kiddy here, so some of the journaling has been blocked out for the friend's sake. I share the layout cause I like the black aspects to it. The black door frames inspired the black cardstock strips. A very typical design for me, but tried and tested is okay!!

In other news, we had our first gym comp with middle girl, and I did some cool hair forit, if I do say so myself!

We have continued attending many a soccer game, which we all watch totally enthralled....

and we attended another cousin's birthday party - they seem to be constant! But lots of fun when all the kiddies get together!

We are in the midst of school holidays in which I have been trying, in vain it seems, to keep things quiet and calm. Hence, a small short blog post!

Five Things

2011-07-01T16:58:00.008+10:00

I've seen the 'Five things on Friday' deal on blogs before and I always think 'I must try that soon'. Sadly I always see it elsewhere, on a Friday, just after I've posted here, and think I should do that on the next Friday, but then by the time the week rolls around I've forgotten all about it! This week I remembered.

So here we go.

1. Have you noticed that slow cooking is seriously in right now?? For so many years my Mum has tried to make me take one of her many old orange and brown crockpots and for many years I've gracefully rejected all offers, because orange crock pots are ugly and big, and because 'slow cooking' wasn't too fashionable (and because husband has two serious aversions in his life - one is cushions, and one is small appliances - hates both, big time).
But now they are IN. Masterfoods and Maggie have gone nuts recently producing small sachets of recipe bases for slow cooking that take up almost whole isles, and slowcookers (now silver or white and slick looking) are currently the fastest selling appliance. Once it was waffle makers and fondue sets, then it was breadmakers and 'George Foreman' syle grills, and now we've come full circle back to slow cookers. Interesting.

2. The other thing that is more fashionable than it was 10 years ago is tea. Serving tea in a real pot, having flavoured teas and the whole high tea business is certainly big. Green teas, white teas, chai teas, and brewing it all properly is something that wasn't there ten years ago. Well not as much anyway, maybe it was, and I'm just slow to come to the party. I might be slow, but I have jumped on the band wagon, and now love to occasionally buy this (partly because of brilliant packaging which gets people like me in the door whether I drink tea or not).

I brew it in my teapot, and serve it in my groovy little red tea cups. A 'cuppa' has changed from what it was back when I was a kid. Then again, so has a coffee...

3. I was in a store the other day and found this.

It's kind of weird, cause I am very rarely drawn to things that aren't practical or usable, and I'm not a big shopper in general, I'm not into stuff that sits, and I'm not into 'cutesy' but man, this little owl kind of stopped me in my tracks! It's only about 15cm or 6" high, and I couldn't stop staring at how cute it was. I had a moment which I pretty much never have, and had to buy it. Good thing my moment happened when I was looking at a very reasonably priced little thing and not a large item cause with my budget the way it is these days...... any WAY, it's now in my house. I initially bought it for 11 year old even though it very annoyingly has a rattle inside it, because I thought it would look fabulous sitting on her bed or on the shelf.....

BUT she didn't want the little owl! Can you believe that? She's at that age, where I can't predict what she would like any more. So I am considering giving it to my niece for her first birthday in September - it does have a rattle after all!! For now I'll just stare at it myself for a while.

4. This year, I have really really got into reading. I have scrapped less, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but have read more, which is a good thing, because I have found I get huge enjoyment out of it. I've always enjoyed reading but having babies and little kids kind of put reading on the back burner for several years, but I have now rediscovered it. My kids seem to be old enough now that I can hide under my quilt for an hour and read a book and they can understand that. I've read lots this year, and these are three recents I want to share with you.

Lordy, I loved this book (above). It is historical fiction almost, set in Mississipi in the 1950's. It is about the writing of a book which was a collection of stories of the African American people that worked as 'the Help' for white households. The good stories and the bad.It was very funny, and moving, and fascinating. LOVED it.

This book (above) was sent to me by Sharon and it too is a bit of historical fiction, set just after World War II. It was so gorgeous, it is hard to even explain. The story is told by letters going back and forth and around to all the characters. Very funny, and too, quite moving. Sharon sent me this book, after a year of so I sent her this book below which was similar in style. It documents the life of two English sisters, one of which has moved to Canada temporarily with her family. The book is made up of the emails that go back and forth between them, and it is seriously hilarious. Have read it twice now. I could so relate to the sister who found herself living in Canada and all the weird and humorous things that entailed for her. This book is titled 'and God Created the Au Pair' but it has very little to do with the au pair.

I actually got one of these for my past birthday.

It's called a Kindle, and it's like a little hard drive for books. You 'buy' a book on Amazon, and download it straight to your kindle. It's not like a computer screen, it's really like looking at a book. The lighting is different to a computer. It's great because if you feel like reading something, you jump on to amazon.com, read the ratings and reviews of other people, if it sounds good you download it, and you have a new book to read in 5 minutes in your little hands. It's also good cause in my little house I don't have a lot of storage so I don't have to store books now. They are stored on my kindle (I have about 14 so far). It's good because kindle books are cheaper than buying the real thing, and some are free and many that I buy are 99c. I always check for good reviews first! The only problem is I can't share the book when I've finished. All I can do is tell you to read something, and that's what I'm doing now, giving you my recommendations.

One more great read was 'The Last Letter' by Kathleen Shoop. A story set in the times of the early American pioneers settling on the prairies. Again historical fiction (wow quite the recurring pattern here, huh?) and a sad but fascinating story.

5. I'm really liking the Simple Aussie Girls blog. If you haven't stopped by yet, get over there. There are a lot of simple scrapping page flyin' around, and with five of us posting, as well as people participating in challenges, there's heaps of inspiration. Go check it out, and let me know what you think.
On a random note, I'm also really liking Red Rock Deli Balsamic Vinegar and rocksalt chips and so is my husband. Big time. We go to the store and buy bread, milk and these chips. Of course we don't share with the kids, they are too precious (the chips that is). We wait for them to go to bed (which is getting later with the big girl...grr) and then we haggle over them. This has been a serious 'issue' for over 6 months now, and just look out if those goodies are on sale! Stampede in the grocery isle! By us only, that is.

They SAY on the front they 'have up to 75% less fat' but the don't say less fat than what?? We just hurry over that last lingering question and get into them! OMG.

P.S Happy Canada Day to all including my other half. I am wearing red and white as we speak.

a double pager using 7 photos - pointe shoes....

2011-06-24T16:36:00.003+10:00

Now I DID promise to show you some photos of my 11 year old girl getting her first pointe shoes for ballet, didn't I? Well, not only do I have some photos, but I have them scrapped! I made a quick photoshop collage which was an 8x10 divided into quarters, then I repeated it for the second page and added a title with a text box. I stuck the two 8x10's on white cardstock, stuck a strip of patterned paper down each side, rounded some corners, added a large white brad in a chipboard flower, and the page was done.

These two layouts will sit side by side in her album.

I completed another layout, yet again, scrapping a little piece of memorabilia from my middle girl. For this layout and LOTS of other simple inspiring layouts visit the 'Simple Aussie Girls' blog here. As I have said on the the Simple Aussie Girls blog, while I am SO FAR from the Best Mum Ever, for now this particularly loving child thinks I'm a candidate, so I've got to jump on that while I can. And show her in 8 years when I won't let her out of the house 'wearing that' and she thinks I am far from the 'best Mum ever'. I love this little sketch she did, left for me on the fridge. I especially like the fact that love is blind, and she thinks I have thin legs. Nice.

camera experimentation....

2011-06-17T18:22:00.003+10:00

Lunch time.

So yum. I grab a slice of sourdough bread, load it up with some sliced avocado on the bottom, then, baby spinach leaves, then some mushrooms fried up quickly while the bread is toasting, and two poached eggs on top. My favourite lunch at the moment. I enjoy it with a latte or a green tea. Look forward to it whenever I'm at home around the lunch hour.

I was working on my photography, using only the manual setting and my 50mm lens. This photo was straight out of the camera. No editing - which is very hard for me to not do. I would increase the aperture a touch next time to allow for slightly more focus. I took some with the mushrooms focused, and some with the egg focused, but didn't quite swing both focused! It hard work on the eyes, getting everything focused through that little viewfinder, and according to the optometrist whom I saw for the first time ever last week - I have great eyesight!! After taking about eight photos of my lunch, focusing on different bits, my eyes were telling me 'enough!' and besides, my lunch was waiting to be eaten!
Must experiment more with my camera. A few emails back and forth picking the brains of my friend Mel, helped me with this one. I had an ISO question or two. Thanks Mel.

In scrapping news, I have a new layout to share, this one is my eldest and her two girl cousins.

I just read a few posts ago, that I had promised to share some photos of my eldest getting her pointe ballet shoes. That is very me, to promise and then promptly forget! Will do that next time. 'Promise'.

Check this out

2011-06-13T08:11:00.001+10:00

A simple style gallery is finally here. It will be just layouts from simple Aussie girls, for you to scroll through and get inspiration. Layouts only, not talking! Of course, you can talk and ask questions in the comments sections, but us posting are being quiet and just sharing layouts. So you have something, other than stupid facebook, to relax infront of with your morning coffee for 5 minutes, and get inspired along the way.

I for one am really looking forward to it.

Click here and go check it out. Even Cathy Zielske has, so you'd better hurry!

And if you like it, while you are there, copy the html for the Simple Aussie Girls button and pop it on your blog for us.

friends

2011-06-12T15:51:00.010+10:00

Wow 3 posts in 5 days. Can you say 'inconsistent'?

So some emails were flying around my inbox yesterday, and somewhere in there someone, I think, asked how Di and I met. Heaps of people actually ask that, including my own daughter recently. We are from different suburbs, have different circles of friends, and our paths don't actually cross much. When people ask, 'So how do you guys know each other?' I just say 'scrapbooking' but I quite like our little story and after Di shared it to the person asking yesterday (Sharon) and cc'd me in on the email, I was instantly inspired to scrap it, along with other stories about my friends.

I have been thinking of scrapping some layouts about my friends for a couple of years now, and yesterday's emails threw me into action, finally. I don't have lots and lots of friends, just a handful. I like my handful. I plan on doing a few pages like this one below, telling the stories of how I met my friends and why they are my friends. The first page I plan on doing, which I haven't yet done, is about what a friend is to me. A definition so to speak. It will have a photo of myself, and will have this information on it:

What is a friend?

A friend is someone on whose doorstep you can arrive unannounced and be welcomed (with a squeal of delight and open arms, hopefully!)

A friend is someone who if you say ‘I have to drive to the city to pick something up and drive back’ they’ll come for the ride just for the opportunity to chat in the car for an hour.

A friend is someone who when you go out for a coffee, you don’t ask them what coffee they want to order, you just order it, because you already know.

A friend is not someone who you have to feel guilty or bad about not seeing or calling. There are no guilt trips in friendship.

A friend is someone with whom you never run out of things to say, yet you can sit in silence comfortably.

A friend makes you laugh. A lot.

A friend does not make the friendship hard work. A friend makes you come away feeling good and happy and content, not bad about yourself, or stressed, or annoyed.

A friend is someone from whom you get short emails and texts that say simply “Hey you” or “How’s it going?” or “coffee?”

It is really really hard to offend a true friend.

For me, my friends all have some common links. They are not drama queens, they are not precious, they are not princesses, they do not care or notice what state my house is in, they are real yet are positive, they are confidant and very secure in themselves. My friends also love food.

Then on the following layout, I will start the stories of my friends. I got these girls to take a photo of themselves on their Mac's and email them to me. Here's the first layout that I scrapped late last night, with the first friend in tow. I share, in case you want to know how I met Di. Journaling is below image.

Things are straight in real life, my photographing skills are not fab this afternoon.
It felt nice to do a page for ME, as opposed to the kids. It's been at least 2 years since I scrapped for me, I reckon.

You can either double click on the layout to read the journaling or her it is below:

In 2002, a woman called Diane, whom I did not know, suddenly lost her six year old son, Mark. Mark’s kindy teacher was a friend of mine from church and when Mark passed away, the Kindy teacher organised a group of us from church to make meals for this lady and her family.

So I made a meal. It was ricotta and spinach cannelloni. Someone else ended up delivering it and I never actually met Diane and she never met me.

A couple of years later, I started teaching scrapbooking at a local store and a very pregnant woman called Diane had booked herself into a class.

I heard her story of losing her son, and then she told me we knew someone in common which was Sheena, the Kindy teacher. I put two and two together and said in the middle of the class " I know who you are...I cooked you a meal!" and the rest is history.

We now have three daughters each, our children have shared gymnastic classes, and we have shared hundreds, (possibly thousands!) of coffees together. We interrupt each other constantly and talk about 50 things at once. We both get distracted at the slightest thing. We are slightly blonde and ditzy but, of course, underneath the blondness are brilliantly intelligent! (wink). We go on fabulous low carb diets that last about a minute (though she is much better at it than me).

Now that all our kids are in school, we don’t see each other face to face all the time like we used to, but still chat every few days through email or texting.

I love that Di is real. Di is not a drama queen, she is heaps of fun, and is secure in herself. It’s a very easy friendship. We have been away for a few weekends together and Di has been known to say: “Girls, I’m wearing my trackies and ugg boots and I’m not changing all weekend”. Love it, that is so Di.

And here is the next friend's journaling: (hope she doesn't mind me sharing this to the world - a true friend forgives, right?) She is in the air somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney (Qantas employee) as we speak and I'm too impatient for her to land to get permission.

I have only known Robyn for about 4 years but it feels like forever. I knew of Robyn, because her parents went to our church, and I knew them. We got talking one day after church. They had advertised an upcoming women’s retreat in Narabeen and I asked her if she was planning to go. Robyn said “I’ll go if you go” and “can we be roommates?”, which was quite risky of Robyn since we had only just met! I said “OK, you’re on!”

So she picked me up and we drove to Narabeen together and we talked the whole entire way there without taking a breath. We talked for the whole retreat, including into the wee hours of the early morning, and then talked all the way home. And we haven’t stopped talking since. Though I must admit, half the time we are together we are laughing hysterically.

I refer to Robyn as my partner in crime and we only will do something for the church if the other one is involved. We paint walls, we make artwork, we are on committees together and we quit together. If you want one of us, you get both.

Our two daughters, 2 years apart have fallen madly in love with each other and are best best friends, crying if they don’t see each other for a few weeks, and sending notes and emails to each other in between .

We have spent our holidays camping with Robyn’s family for three years now, and I have also converted her to scrapbooking. We shop together, go to IKEA together, eat Baklava and share hazelnut skim lattes together. We love finding a good bargain together and being creative. Robyn comes to my studio and we paint together.

Robyn loves food, and we can talk intensely about food for hours. Robyn is not at all a drama queen, is not precious, and is real. It’s an easy friendship that feels so much older than it is.

More to come VERY soon. Tomorrow in fact. Something cool is almost here......

sweet

2011-06-10T12:36:00.000+10:00

Done a few pages lately regarding cousins. This is one above.

And below, just letting ya know, there is something brewing in the the land of simple scrappers. More to come in a few days. And it's a bit cool.

'cousins' - scrapping at last.

2011-06-08T19:24:00.001+10:00

Things to note:

1. Normally I would use all white cardstock with a photo like this but I decided to try to be a bit different and go with these more unusual colours (unusual for me, that is).

2. Didn't have too much to say, just wanted to record this first picture that we got of the seven of them.

3. Loving this patterned paper by 'Kaiser' - although it looks quite 'classy' and regal, it seems to compliment the graffiti somehow.

4. That's it folks, more to come.

Another room makeover

2011-05-22T09:45:00.005+10:00

We recently had another bedroom makeover in our house. Kids grow, and needs change - just how it is. Especially in a pretty small house, one has to think creatively. You might remember the last room makeover for younger girls which is here.

Eldest girl decided to venture to a room downstairs, all by herself. The rest of us have bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs is a bit unrenovated, a bit dungeony, a bit dark (though not her new room - just the rest of downstairs), the ceilings are a little lower and look a little 'basementy' and it was a bit step to move downstairs far away from everyone.The walls down there are cement rendered in a 1960's, rough greek island grotto kind of style.

The room was used a a spare room, (VERY basic guest room). But we talked about the fact that it was a reasonably big room (MUCH bigger than her tiny upstairs room), there was a double bed which is fun for sleep overs, she would be able to sleep-in on the weekends because the noise of her younger sisters wouldn't wake her, and she has room to leave her saxophone out on it's stand, and leave her music stand up with music on it (neither of which she had room for before) and play til her hearts content without the rest of the family telling her to be quiet!

She considered all these advantages and we decided she should sleep down there for a month and make sure she liked it, and then I would make it a little prettier for her. Well once she got used to the new room size, she couldn't go back upstairs to her tiny room, so she officially moved down there. I painted the dark blue walls white, gave her my own white quilt cover, and bought her some new purple sheets and a cushion or two. It was darn hard to find purple sheets because apparently according to nice sales lady purple is not 'in' but I had a vision in my mind of orange and purple (much to nice sales lady's horror) and I went with it. I love the result, and so does the girl. She agreed to my ideas because it didn't feel young girly, and she doesn't like pink, yet it is still feminine, yet a bit more grown up. Her Christmas present light cotton throw rug lives at the end of the bed, folded to expose the orange bit. There is a big white furry shag rug on the floor which we've had for years that is not in the photos. This kid can be with white. Middle child? Not so much.

A wall opposite the bed has a built in counter that we painted white and she uses as her desk, and behind this desk is a small wall that we painted purple, and there is another 1960's style nook, that we painted purple and white too. Photos all below. There is a brick castle like archway into the room, which is actually very cute, and not 70's in style, so you will see that in the last picture which was taken before I painted the walls, and when I allowed her to have some candles in her new room for the first time - she felt very grown up. She sits in her new reading chair to read which we found in my sisters garage - when we mentioned to my sister we were going orange and purple she offered us this cute retro chair. The padded seat lifts up on hinges to reveal a secret storage box under those pleats. It is now used to house all her books. My sister also donated mosaic picture frame on the wall from her garage.

So yes, this was a makeover on a serious budget, requiring one can of white paint, a set purple sheets, and two cushions, one of which was $5. The bear on the bed has it's own story, and is on my list to be scrapbooked.

And the girl is happy. And sleeps in. And plays her sax. And has already had several sleepovers!

worst blogger award, with some pictures.

2011-05-08T22:10:00.007+10:00

Yep, that's me, heading rapidly towards the winner at the world's worst blogging awards. Thank you for this award, I would like to thank my lack of motivation, my crappy attitude toward scrapping, my excellent laziness, and my lovely children who now go to bed later being a bit older and therefore, for take up so much of my blog time at night. Yes, thank you, for all your nominations, and I hope to be here again, same place at next year's worst blog awards.

SO, how about I share some piccy's seen I have jack-diddly-all in the way of scrapping to show you. Lets start way back before Easter. On the last day of school there were wonderfully exciting Easter celebrations at the school. Instead of making us poor mum's come up with brilliant glue filled Easter hats and watch children parade around in circles for two hours, they decide to give the parents a break, (oh thank you) and make the Easter craft at school. The kids decorated a photocopied egg with bits of stuff, and then held it against them and paraded that around for 2 hours. I told you it was wonderfully exciting. And the primary kids had to make an egg 'diorama' - making a scene to do with eggs, preferably humourous and quirky, and stick it all in a box that's on it's side so all can see the cute scene. Amaris asked 'But why, Mum?' and I said 'I don't really know why honey, are you being marked on it?', she said no. Then she asked, 'what do we do with it at the end of the day?' I said, "bring it home, and sit it on your desk til it gets in the way too much, then chuck it, I guess." Amaris said "Oh". But I'm sure it's a good thing, that diorama.

Yes, just call me the Mum with the world's worst attitude. For an arty person, I'm really practical. Amaris has actually inherited this flaw from me to a degree. When I was a kid, I wasn't into 'playing' cause I couldn't see the point, or what the practical outcome would be. I was right into 'doing things' that produced something. Like paint-by,numbers, or drawing or a mosaic. Playing 'Mr Whippy' at a flagpole or 'capture the flag' (translation for the North Americans), always puzzled me cause I couldn't see the long term point. So parading around in circles with a weird hat or holding a decorated picture of an egg, or putting hours into an egg diorama that you couldn't really do anything with is, a little puzzling. Though I'm sure it's educational and they might have learned lots of good things - NOTE: we did do a diorama once!

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE teachers and I think they do the best and most important job in the world, and I support them all the way - but I just couldn't face it on that particular day of parading around in circles in the sun, and looking at egg scenes in boxes. I begged children to let me take them to a beach instead for that last day of school and they eagerly agreed and we had a really lovely day. It was only us there at this little beach, and I sat in a low beach chair in the sun with a coffee reading this:

which is the sequel to Gone with the Wind and looking up to see kids happily playing and exploring by themselves. We took a picnic and it was seriously quite blissful. I took a few pic's cause I really haven't had my camera out for my family for quite a while.

Back to that Scarlett book (and darn it, I really wasn't planning to talk much on this post, yet look at me already, blathering on and on and on. Must try to shut up, and just pop up some piccys as planned), so back to the book, oh it was GREAT. And HUGE. Normally a book takes me mere hours to get through, because I have no self discipline and just read on, feeding no one, looking at no one, not sleeping til I finish it. But Scarlett was so huge, with such teeny print, that it took me two weeks to get through it - so exciting!! Loved curling up at night with my quilt, some chocolate and Scarlett. (Ahhh...no wonder I've been hopeless at blogging). I looked forward to it all day. I literally wept when I did finish it. I didn't want it over. Now I need another sequel! Thanks, my friend, Melanie, for lending it to me, I will give it back soon...maybe. Mel also lent me the Gone with the Wind movie, which was awesome and LONG - love it. I hadn't seen it since I was about 6, so I didn't remember the story line. Marc was away for a few nights, so I settled in with the quilt and the tissues and got into it. Mel forgot to tell me it was four hours long, so it was bit of a late night. But it set me up to read the sequel. That was a great two weeks, I look back with fond memories... (it was only 3 weeks ago).

Around this time, little cousin, Olivia, popped over and and we set her down on Amaris' white bed and snapped some photos. She is the smiley-est baby EVER, and even when she is tired, she smiles through teary eyes! My girls are in heaven with her. She is a lot of fun for all of us, even Marc!

We stripped her off because my sister wanted a photo of her cute butt and this resulted in a little puddle on the white quilt cover, but it was so worth it, even though Amaris was slightly horrified!

A few days after the truancy situation, we headed south, as it was school holidays, to my sisters holiday house. The girls made up dances with the other little girl cousin (who has only a brother so was in complete heaven) and performed them all, several times, and Lucy discovered that wearing a beanie meant she could get away without doing her hair. So the purple beanie stayed on her head for the entire 5 days that we were away. My parents arrived in a newly acquired 'campervan' and set up camp on the front lawn, as the little house can only sleep so many, and my parents wanted to test out their new toy - that's my Dad cooking breakfast one morning in front it. The kids took turns sleeping out in the campervan with the grandparents. . While we were there, all the kids also learned the rules of 'draughts' and spent many an hour playing each other. I'm not a good 'game' person, as you can imagine, so it takes a time away with game loving Aunts and grandmothers to teach them such things.

The day after we got home it was Lucy's birthday. My baby turned SEVEN - what the heck is that all about. I just can't fathom it. Six, still sounds cute and little. Seven sounds BIG. I am a little distraught, she is SO my beloved baby. The other day, I was reading on my bed, and she crawled up beside me, and said, "do you ever have that feeling that you need something, but you don't really know what it is?". I said, "Yeah, sometimes. Sit with with me while I read, and you might know what it is you need soon." So she snuggled in, as only she can, moulding her little body into the side of mine and she lay there while I read. I think it was Scarlett! After a little while, she said "I know what it was I needed! It was just you!" Does that not just melt your heart? Really must scrap that. I memorised it instantly so I wouldn't forget. Anyway, that beloved squishy baby of mine is seven and I'm very sad that I can't make her stay little. I took this on her birthday day - notice she still is wearing a hat knowing that she can avoid having her hair done. Also notice, still missing front teeth, though they are starting to make an appearance, finally.

On her birthday I took Lucy and her little friends to the movies. It was school holidays so it worked out nicely except for the fact, that it was in fact school holidays and when we got there, me alone with a car load of girls, no parking and a long walk to the cinema, the movies were ALL sold out! All eight cinema's! ??? I had never seen that happen before. Not very fun. So I bought tickets then and there to the next session which was 3 hours later, and then had to do the long walk back to the car, and drive to some local gardens to kill the time. The cinemas is part of a huge westfield mall, but the idea of roaming the mall with seven girls sounded overwhelming and possibly expensive, so we went to the gardens down the road instead. Here were two of her little friends that day - her two besties.

I also snapped this one of her looking very eagle like. Or is it an owl?? She struck me as very like some kind of creature perched up there on the pole. Not sure what creature though, anyone? This is very her, Always balanced high up somewhere, often in her own little world.

When we returned to the movies for the second time, Amaris screamed and ran to this poster and begged me to take a photo. She has really been hounding me to do a scrap page about her JB 'thing' that she's got going. Beiber fever definitely happening in a certain 11 yr old in this house. She was devastated when his concert sold out in 20 min. Anyway, I should probably use this photo soon and do the scrap page she so desperately wants. I'm a nice Mum, sometimes.

SO then there was Easter. Phew, hey? Are you exhausted yet? What is up with me, no blogging for ever, then one that takes hours! So yes, then there was Easter, and there were Easter egg hunts with cousins, at their grandparents house. Lucy is shown below holding all her eggs in the skirt of her dress (still got that hat on!). There was also a mischievous and hilarious, slightly naughty, typically two year old boy cousin who always makes us giggle.

After the Egg hunt was the traditional game of cricket in the back lane. That's my sister, Donna, helping Amelia with her form.

And one can always be a wicket keeper WHILST handstanding! If you look closely you'll notice she is still watching the game!

Next post, I will show you my big girl getting her new POINTE ballet shoes - so excited to finally be up on pointe. And if I scrap, I'll show you that too,
xxx

some scrapping

2011-04-23T19:28:00.002+10:00

Here is a fairly 'orange' layout (with a fairly, I mean VERY ordinary photo). Double click on the image if you want to read journaling.

This lightweight cotton blanket or 'throw' was a gift to eldest girl last Christmas and she drags it around the house with her. She has always been a decent reader but has really got into choosing her own books and reading for pleasure over the past few years. It's a great thing and I'm not complaining, but being a reader and having night owl tendencies do have it's downsides, which are seen the next day with a tired and possibly grumpy girl. Of course we tell her to turn the light off and go to sleep, and God love her, she gives it a go, but half an hour later when sleep hasn't come and she is still awake, she can be found under her covers reading by the light of a nintendo DS.

This old patterned paper has been sitting in my stash for years, just waiting for the right moment, and the moment arrived with the orange, pink and blue that came through in this photo.

The next layout is also of eldest girl. A photo you may have already seen as I took it in Melbourne last year on a horse & cart ride. I love the cathedral in the back ground. This was her favourite photo of the trip so I scrapped it as a 6x8 enlargement on a page of it's own.

We went to Melbourne for ballet and I hadn't yet scrapped any of the ballet related Melbourne photos, even though that was the point of the trip and the main story that had to be told. In the following image below, I added the other remaining key photos of our Melbourne trip and a block of journaling to a 8x10 'canvas' in photoshop and printed the whole thing out as an 8x10 and stuck it on a 8.5x11" piece of green cardstock and these two Melbourne layouts sit beside each other in her album.

And yay, it is done. I was so mad at myself for leaving the scrapping of this event so long. The photos were taken in Sept last year, and the story was there THEN, and it was hard to take my mind back 8 months and scrap it. It was a really great time for us, and I wish I'd scrapped it at the time, might have done it more justice. Well, never mind, it is done now, and we both love looking back on these photos, and I hope she'll enjoy reading the story in years to come.

I know I'm at least a good week late with these - sorry, but I'm lucky to have got here at all!

BACK

2011-04-04T15:16:00.008+10:00

I'm back! No I am not ill, no my husband hasn't left me, no I haven''t been in rehab...or prison, no I haven't lost any close family members, yes, life just got a bit busy. Thank you so much for all your emails of concern and 'are you okay's'. Lovely to know you guys care - really, I was most touched.

I thought I was gonna return two Fridays ago, but it didn't quite happen. Then I thought I was going to return last Friday, but then it, too, didn't quite happen. So here I am returning to blog land. I need to scrap my current routine, cause it would make your head whirl. It is crazy, and the annoying thing is that I always thought mothers who had crazy lives thanks to their children were S.T.U.P.I.D! I never wanted to be one, yet here I am. Just preparing and organising all the food for them so they have decent meals and snacks is almost a full time career. Meals are often on the run and at varying times - ie must plan portable food that doesn't necessarily have to be hot, or at least pack it in thermo-insulated packing to keep it warm, (and make it contain some decent protein, so they are fuller longer, and apparently the protein helps with muscle they are using lots of muscle!). You get my drift. It is very difficult to decide what is worthwhile (as far as the bits that make up my routine) and what is just plain STUPID. What the kids love and are decent at helps the decision making process, but doesn't help the chaos. They only do a couple of things each, but I guess when the few things gets times by three... Opportunities for certain special activities outside of the normal arise (ie involving gym, music and ballet), and I feel I can't just say, "Well, sorry, I really don't feel like driving that day". Sometimes I just gotta grin and bear it, but don't worry, plenty of things get knocked back and refused. I have never been organised like I am now. And add preparing CV's so your kid can get into out-of-area high schools (high school?? What the...) and add attending interviews with principals and diagnostic tests for those schools to the already lovely schedule. So my brain was and is full, and that is why I had to go on blog holiday for a minute or two (or a month or two).

I found it helpful to step right away from this screen in front of me, and instead, when I needed some rejuvenation, I found myself here.

I played piano a lot as a kid - first just pottering as a child, and then taking lessons as a teenager. I have been without a piano for about 18 years, but just last year, I sold lots of my husbands old lego sets on ebay (hehe - don't worry I got his permission) and with the lego selling proceeds bought this digital piano. Yeah, there was a fair bit of lego, and it was old and 'retro' being from husbands childhood. And if you knew my husband you know it was all in pristine condition with original perfect instructions. (Um, obviously we didn't sell any of MY old lego...or middle childs lego...). Don't worry, he did keep all his favourite sets. I haven't played for, well, like 18 years, but recently found my old exam books and have been finding much pleasure getting back into it again. I push all the lovely kids out the door for school at 9am, and sit down at my piano with my coffee instead of losing myself in the computer. Piano is very therapeutic and relaxing and wonderfully solitary - so apart from being taxi and head chef and life orgainser around here, this is somewhere I've been lately.

So what else has been happening? I've taken a few photos of some families which is fun. It's 'full on', in a hard way to explain, but quite rewarding. Here's a few of the most recent: A little girl and her baby sister, sitting in front of their garage door; a 8 day old girl; and a family at a local beach.

During the past month we went a park just down the road for my nieces 5th birthday. We took a standard shot of all the cousins, actually it was the first one we've taken since the baby in the picture was born, there were scooter races, and 2 yr old red headed boy found the bubbler (drinking fountain) and delighted in getting very wet (and naked!).

We endured a very wet weekend in March, so by Sunday afternoon I let my girls return to their younger years and paint. Bad mother that I am, I pretty much never let them do this any more at home, hoping instead that the school teachers do it. I went to my studio (5 minutes away), gathered up all the old acrylic paints, lots of paper and lots of my brushes, and brought it all home for them. I completely covered the dining table with newspaper and let them go for it. They had unlimited pieces of paper, so they just kept painting! Kept them occupied for a good hour or more!

And speaking of painting, I did a little painting to get a 'red' thing I had going on out of my system - I decided to call the piece, 'green tea' even though it is all about the red for me (confused? - yeah me too - blame it on the full brain). It is very different to the usual landscape that I paint, and I find it quite difficult to get red into my landscape paintings, so I got it out of my system with this. Weird, but it was fun.

Now I'll have you know that I HAVE scrapped, and WILL be back with scrapping SOON!!
I PROMISE!!!

blog break

2011-03-07T09:19:00.002+11:00

Sorry all - I'm going on a little blog break, hiatus, leave of absence, whatever you want to call it, I'm going there, probably just for a few weeks. Signing out....

Nicole

Middlest

2011-02-25T17:30:00.001+11:00

That middle child. Where does one begin?? She is so affectionate, so sweet and kind and wears her heart on her sleeve. She is broken hearted at the slightest thing, and passionately loves her family. She sees beauty in nature and simple things that the others bypass. That middle child is also highly volatile, insanely messy, short tempered, and ends up in the most trouble. She swings from glass half full to glass half empty in a second. She's very extreme, and has been right from the beginning - picture the new mother wheeling that hospital bassinette up and down the ward halls in the wee hours with the tantruming newborn. Good times. The girl is extreme. Extremely beautiful in so many ways, extremely hard work in so many ways. The middlest. A constant puzzle yet a delight.

One of her sweet things is to leave little love notes for us all around. Just this week she made a hollow cupcake out of playdough. The top icing part of the cupcake was not attached to the base and acted as a lid. She left her creation on the kitchen counter with a note that said 'open'. I lifted the 'lid' or the top section of the cupcake and inside was a tiny note about how much she loves us. Yes, she is heart warming. She is particularly attached to her Dad (who is particularly attached to her), and this little note was found on his bedside table one evening. She wasn't too happy when she saw this layout scrapped because 'that note was for Dad to keep! Not to go in my scrap album!!' Hopefully one day she'll be okay with the fact that I borrowed it for this layout. I love scrapping their original work like this - it's been a long time since I scrapped such stuff.

PS. Really should have taken a photo of that playdoh cup cake - it was all green, but it was gorgeous! Might ask her to re-make for me this weekend.

Three layouts, only slightly late. :)

2011-02-19T11:59:00.001+11:00

Just a bit late this time - not as late as last week!

Not much scrapping mojo happening this week, but I can show you some layouts that I did a couple of weeks ago.

The photos for these three layouts are from last September! So they have been hanging around waiting. The photos themselves weren't highly inspirational, but the event was exciting enough to be scrap worthy and I knew it was a memory that my girls would want documented, as it was a great day for them - meeting their new cousin only hours after she was born - and after waiting months for it to happen!

We live only a street away from my sister and her children, one of which is Olivia, the baby in these photos, so we see a lot of them. My girls have a strong relationship with their little cousins so it was good to have this moment captured and remembered.

Here are the three layouts show my girls meeting their cousin. I know you've seen the pics before if you were reading this blog last September! The three layouts all show strong similarities in design and style, and especially with the black freehand line that I was big on two weeks ago when I scrapped these! The patterned paper is from a remaining sliver of an old piece of American Crafts paper (which I still LOVE). The titles on the lower two images are the old American Crafts rub on alphabets. I find it very satisfying to use up old supplies! The hearts I had to draw and cut out, as I don't have a heart punch.

Hope you get an idea or two from these three very simple layouts, each slightly different. Must do a sketch challenge soon! Bye for now. x

Lateness and some kiddy layouts

2011-02-13T18:55:00.002+11:00

Oh yeah - very very late Friday scrapping post. My apologies - my head just hasn't been where it needed to be. Well on this slightly rainy but most pleasant evening, I attempt to post a very late post!
Here's a layout!

I shared this photo that I took of the girls on their last day of school together last year.

I popped the text on the photo in photoshop elements - something I haven't done for a really long time but something I used to do all the time. It was nice to revisit the idea. If you want to put white journaling text over a dark photo then you need a program such as photoshop or something equivalent. If you wanted dark journaling text over a patch of light on a photo, you can actually just run the photo straight through the printer and it will print right there on it. When I do this I make sure I do a test run so I know exactly where the text will print. I run an A4 white paper through first and then stick my photo right over the text on the paper exactly where I want it, then I ran the paper through the printer again, photo stuck on. However, because this is white print on a dark background, you need to do that in photoshop or equivalent first, cause printers don't have white ink! The title is letter stickers.

I've got heavily into the free hand black line around stuff lately, and the last five pages or so that I've scrapped all have this line. I usually scrawl a little something so that I don't have to connect the ends of my line. You don't want to over think this free hand line, or go too slowly. You just need to cruise along confidently, and I find looking past my hand to where I WANT to draw, rather than watching my pen line as I go, is effective in getting the pen line to draw smoother and go where I want it to go. It doesn't have to be perfect. Embrace the imperfection of freehanded-ness!

I scrapped this on one of the last few days of the school holidays, which means I had a little friend with me who wanted to scrap too. I didn't pay too much attention to what she was doing at the time, but as I packed up later, I found her little masterpieces and will put then in her personal little scrap album that contains all her own pages. She decided against journaling on the first layout, showing a photo of her baby cousin, but I thought it was cute with the brads, rounded corners and elephant punch outs! Won't lecture her on the importance of telling the story - she is only 6 after all, and the event certainly kept her occupied while I scrapped! No complainin' here!

On this next layout below, she did journal but didn't want to hassle her Mama by asking how to spell stuff. She had just finished Kindergarten, and she's still working on the spelling of words!! Here's the translation: "Lucy and Daddy are enjoying their hug. Daddy's copying me."

This last one she narrated her journaling to me while I was on the computer and she asked me to print it out on white. Love the journaling. Unfortunately it is true about the squeezing - done totally in love! Close up of the journaling on the last image.

Thanks for popping in, will see you next Friday with more layouts all of which will include a freehand drawn line in black pen! Hopefully I will be less tardy next week!

some more collages via templates

2011-02-04T22:17:00.001+11:00

Friday evening has rolled around once again. My intention, you know, is to post in the morning, but as it turns out I don't usually have time to sit down til late evening. This week everyone started back at school, and I became an introvert, a hermit, a recluse. I crawled into my shell and have basically stayed there all week. Such extreme weather as it seems to always be this time of year. Minus 36 in my husbands home town in Canada, total blizzards over half of USA, 40+ degrees here and major cyclones, floods and fires, lack of power everywhere from here to North America. Crazy!

As just mentioned, it is as my girls say, 'hot diggedy hot' here, so I decided to take the week off from my normal work and just gather my thoughts, try to organise the innards of my house, and tried to coordinate the timetable and afternoon activities of three kids. Piano lessons, gymnastics lessons, saxophone lessons, and oh the ballet lessons.

Honestly, life is turning more and more into a military operation. I planned a timetable for all the school recesses and lunches. See they don't eat normal things like sandwiches. And I can't really blame them I hated sandwiches for lunch as a kid. So we have the 'plan' which includes things like cheese, crackers, pasta salad, chopped up veges and dip, tortilla breads, caesar salad, crackers with a tuna dip that they construct at lunch, muffins, banana bread, cous cous, deli cold meats, yogurts etc. I know it sounds a bit silly, and it does take a bit of effort, but I really really hate a lunch not being eaten and coming home!

Lots of organising and just slowly feeling my way and how life will look for this year. I've enjoyed my hermit status. But must get back to real life next week.

So onto scrapbooking. Just as a follow up to last Friday, I'll show you two more collage approaches using Cathy Z 'monthly' templates. Both layouts use photos of eldest girl taken during December. With such event scrapping, I just can't pic one pic, and sometimes many photos tell the story well.

First layout is the usual -the template was printed as an 8x10 and stuck onto black cardstock. I'm loving black cardstock right now. I just ordered a pile of it - seem to be using it all the time.

The second layout I used the same batch of templates, but instead of printing it out as an 8x10, I printed it as a 6 x8, which worked out just fine. I was planning on adhering the 6x8 photo to a 8.5 x 11 cardstock, and then on a facing page do all the journaling along with just one photo, making a double page spread, but laziness got the better of me and I stuck it all on the one page. This is how it turned out.

A bit different in design to my usual template attempts. And I felt the need to add a circle, and a brad, as I tend to always do! Remember, you can always try this non-digitally. You just need small photos (either ones that can be heavily cropped or get them printed out wallet size at your photo processing place).

Now next week, normal old fashioned scrapping, complete with the use of a black pen, and no digital stuff! Promise! x

Christmas scrapped!

2011-01-28T22:03:00.004+11:00

Firstly, thanks heaps to my special guest blogger friend Renee, who posted some treats for us while I was away, devoid of internet for 2 weeks. Loved reading her posts when I returned. How cute was that black board - totally thinking it's a great idea for the next birthday invitations....

So on to Christmas scrapping. I decided to use Cathy Zielske's monthly templates and did a double page spread, containing a total of 18 photos (9 per page) which pretty much summed up Christmas. Each of my three children got the same layouts, with several photos appearing on all three layouts (mostly on the second page that contained the journaling), but with many of the photos concentrating on just them. Tell me if that doesn't make sense.

The middle photo on each second page layout was a small amount of journaling that read like a list of things that made up our Christmas season.

In order to use Cathy's templates, you need photoshop or in my case photoshop elements. I printed out my completed template as an 8x10 photo and stuck it on a green piece of cardstock, and ran a strip of pp along the bottom. If you aren't into digital templates etc, you could totally do this page using paper scrapping. You just need to be able to crop all your photos down to about 5cm x 8cm. You can replace as many photos with journaling squares as you feel is needed. And you could stick '2010' right over the top of a photo with stickers.

If you are like me you took a million photos, Christmas seems like months ago, and you don't feel like scrapping 40 or so different Christmas pages. For me, this collage concept is a good solution!

How's your Christmas scrapping going?

Happy Australia Day!

2011-01-26T22:19:00.000+11:00

Celebrated in true Aussie style - at the beach! I'm back. See you Friday

it looks like this

2011-01-21T23:06:00.002+11:00

photo uploaded from iphone - apparently my hard drive is full - as of today. um.... that is a problem

a dozen things

2011-01-21T22:52:00.003+11:00

Well I made a page. Its been a while. Its not how I planned. In my mind it was going to be much free er - but that didn't happen. It seems to lack something - but I err on the simple simple, very simple plain side of life. I was inspired by the dozen things post on martawrites.com and also the easy/hard post on lovelife.typepad.com -

and just while I am mentioning places that inspire me - my most favourite blog of 2010 is innerpickle.com.au - love Fiona's writing style and her cooking.

Back to my first layout of 2011-

It reads: (for those of you who like the details) a dozen things 1. You understand everything we say and constantly surprise us with your comprehension. You grabbed a towel when you heard us talking about paper towel. You collect things and put them away. You GET the flow of life. 2. You give the sweeetest kisses - or you nod your head down to be kissed if you dont feel like giving the kiss. You are warm and compassionate already. 3. You love Sage. You also love Cohen. You light up when either are around. You can say both of their names - but you call Cohen “co-co”. You constantly bother Cohen with your hugs and kisses. You never miss a goodnight kiss with Sage either. We love seeing your feelings come through. 4. You are toilet trained. Totally. You are very proud of yourself and we are proud of you too. We are also thankful not to be buying you nappies so thanks for helping out there. 5. You respond to Amos, Moss, Mossi and Mozz. We call you all those names all the time. My least favourite is Mossi and I am trying to get that dropped off the list. 6. You love your Mondays with Grandpa. You two have formed a really special little bond and he is your most fav Grandparent. You seem calm with Gramps and you play differently when Sage and Cohen aren’t around to bother you. You guys go to the park together – its your special time. 7. You seem kinda technically minded. You stack blocks and put things together and pull them apart. I am kinda puzzled by this- You didn’t get this from me. I am looking forward to seeing whether you develop this skill further. 8. You love your crocs shoes. I mean love. 9. You know what you want, even when you don’t have the words to tell us. We are getting pretty good at understanding your language and its working well for us. You are quite determinded though – so we have had to work out what you mean. I said determined right? 10. You and Sage have just started sharing a room. I keep finding you curled up together reading books. Its very cute. 11. You like to dance and you love music. Our home is devoid of musical talent but gee we listen to a lot of tunes. You recognise familiar tunes and your wiggly dancing body is so cute. 12. We love you. You have woven into the life of our family amazingly. You have brought us more blessing than we could ever have dreamed. We thank God for you all the time. January 2011

who knew?

2011-01-21T13:09:00.003+11:00

who knew - how fast they would grow up? who knew - that all the little days and moments would add up to whole months and years so quickly. who knew - that they really do grow up right before your eyes who knew - some days would be really rather quite hard and tiring who knew - that in all days there would be moments more glorious and joyful than you could ever have imagined.who knew - their own strengths and weaknesses could be so visible in their children who knew - just how great it would be for them to hug you and call out to you make up songs with you and ask you questions who knew - just how much fun it would be

the big one goes to school in just under two weeks. in so many ways i cant believe we are here - in this spot i didnt really dream beyond. the big one - she is going well. she is kind and nurturing and creative and careful. she is asking questions at a rate of seven thousand million per second. the small one - he is going well too. he is different to her - everyone says that - you just cant quite imagine until you are living it. he is funny and more technically minded. he is strong and mighty as i imagined he would be. There is something compelling about how both are growing to become the names we gave them, the wise one and the mighty prophet. i am so thankful for both of them.

Twice in one day this week people I didnt know commented on how I had my hands full. It was an interesting reflection. They have felt kinda full lately. I have become the woman who dreams and thinks about scrapbooking and reads scrapping blogs and doesnt scrap. Grrr... hoping for change.

We are going to Harveys this avo - to print something for me to post here this evening before Nicole gets back. I am reminded of how seriously amazing she is. Those of you know only know her in blog world - she writes in such a humble way about herself.

On an other note - i have been at the beach and park a lot since i popped that photo up last week. i am thankful for the holidays to be here with my kids. i love school holidays. i am thankful not to live in Queensland right now - sending our thoughts to leanne stamatellos (i cant remember how to hyperlink) - and now i am also mindful of those in victoria. our family has survived flood - in different circumstances twice. it scars you for life. its a phenomenal world we live in - dry then wet.

i will be back later - tonight - see you soon

2011-01-14T13:52:00.000+11:00

Resolutions and layouts

2011-01-07T21:08:00.003+11:00

Hi friends. Hope you are enjoying the new year. I have made two New Years Resolutions after deciding that my New Years Resolution was to be GIVE UP on making New Years Resolutions. After I decided on that one, I came up with two better ones. Here they are:

1. Drink More. I know, I know, I know!!!! That is NOT a common resolution, in fact most people's resolutions would be the opposite. I don't drink at all. Not beer, wine, champagne, none of it, for no good reason other than I just don't like the taste, and can't be bothered to spend that much money on something I don't like. Socially, it's a bit of a pain, financially it's good, but I've decided to drink one glass of red a wine a week because I heard it helps prevent alzheimers, and with the way I forget stuff, I can just see me with this one, so that's my New Years Resolution. To drink more. Yay me. My husband loves drinking red wine so he is a bit excited by my goals. Anyone else out there with the same one??

2. Wake up earlier. After many many years of being woken by babies and very young children at worst 11 times a night, and at best by very awake happy lively children before the crack of dawn (i.e 5am) for the last two years I have been a mean Mum and made them fend for themselves in the morning while I choose the luxury of sleeping in. I have very early risers, (a genetic flaw inherited from father) so from early on I would organise the movie they wanted to watch the night before, leave food out on the kitchen bench (fruit, dry cereal etc) and train them from very early how to press play (the button with the triangle on it on the VCR) in the morning when they woke. Now though, I have got very set in my ways and really struggle to get up before 8am. Scrapping into the wee wee hours and other night owl tendencies doesn't help. So after 8am I have a coffee, make the lunches, be grumpy, clean up kitchen, do stuff in general, and about 10am decide whether or not to exercise instead of going straight to work considering I only have 5 hours left in the day. The 'not' decision to exercise usually wins. Can you imagine how life changing getting up at 6am would be??? I would have 2 more hours in the day!! It's like a lightbulb moment. So I am starting slowly and this week I've been up at 7:30 am each day, and trying to not be so night owlish. Next week, it's 7am. I'm not promising to exercise all the time or anything, cause that has been my New Years Resolutions for about 12 years now, and it certainly hasn't happened, but I think I could be really onto something with the 'early to bed, early to rise' mantra.

What are your New Year Resolutions (apart from exercise and lose a few kilo's - it's all too boring!)

Today I have a couple of new layouts for you. Both focus on eldest girl and both use multiple photos.

The first layout below is done on Kraft cardstock, definitely the world's GREATEST cardstock colour after white. I buy it at at least 30 sheets at a time. This is just a quick summary of an event, that is daughter's 11th birthday.

The second layout is again about ballet. There were several about ballet this year, and I guess that's because ballet is a key part of this girls life. She started learning Grade 4 ballet in February this year and did her exam in June, then started learning Grade 5 work, and did that exam in October. She managed distinctions in both exams, each of which are very challenging! The teacher wanted to move her ahead a bit faster, I think just because of her age and the training she's doing with the Australian Ballet School - she started learning ballet properly at the late age of 8 and has had to do some catch up! There was a lot of work involved and at times she was over it, but it's all over and now, in January, she's enjoying a well earned rest. I think she looks elegant yet strong in these photos below that I took of her warming up for her Grade 5 exam. I also think she looks older than the 10 that she was at the time!

So there you have two layouts if you needed some layout inspiration this week. All the above photos were originally 4x6 and I just cropped them down as needed.

PS. I am about to go away for two weeks, but I am working on secret guest blogger to fill in!

December action

2011-01-01T22:13:00.024+11:00

Right. So the last 3 weeks have been a whirl wind of whipping out the camera, concerts, Christmas festivities and New years celebrations. Happy New Year by the way.

I do have some layouts to show you, but I'll do that in a couple of days, cause right now I want to throw at you our life in pictures from the last few weeks before I've totally moved on to the new year.

First up is a weird quick little painting that I did, the second last one before the school term ended. It's a beach. Hope you figured that out.

My very last painting of the year done the day after the one above was a bigger one (1.4m long) and it is an interpretation of the Sydney to Hobart Boxing Day yacht race. Painting is all done for the year. :(

Then, just to radically change subjects, we grew our very first strawberry from a planter basket on our verandah...

..and proceeded to eat it. It was small, but sweet. Apparently.

It was then time to put up the old tree. Nice blurry action shots....

Eldest girl had her end of year ballet concert at NIDA which is the only time of the year that she is allowed to put makeup on and not wipe it all off before anybody sees her.

After the hair and makeup were done, her and little friend proceeded to play in NIDA's glass elevator and cause mischief in general. The actual dance pales in comparison of the fun of the rest of the day!

About 4 days after the ballet concert, it was Lucy's last day of her first year at school. I can't believe how quick that went, and I can't believe what a confident self assured Lucy we have got now. She had a brilliant first year, and loved every minute. Can't wait to scrap this photo and the story that goes along with her first year at school.

This was Lucy and Amelia's last day of school, but also their last day at the same school grounds, as Amelia moves up next year to the primary school located down the road. I took in this in their playground on their last morning together. They have been great pals this year at school, and I'm told they often spent their lunches playing together. Note: December also saw Lucy lose her two front teeth!

The day after this was the Year 6 farewell, which the year 5's are invited to. Amaris is in year 5, and this was her first dressed up school occasion. Her and her friends asked me to take some shots of them before they went, and they just love being on my blog asking me immediately after "can you put us on your blog???" So here you are girls, out there in internet/blogland. Thrilling, huh? Also thrilling that my girl is actually wearing a dress. Miraculous, really. Mine's the middle girl below.

Then it was time for our annual gingerbread bake. We didn't do houses last year, but returned to them this year. I find it easier for them each to make their own individual houses and have total creative control over them, rather than argue about what lolly goes where on one big house. I feel like an engineer cutting the dough to size and making sure it will all 'construct' properly with overlapping eaves and all!

Next up was another annual tradition. We attended our church's Carols by Candlelight event. It poured all afternoon up until 6:30pm leaving everyone waiting at their front doors wondering whether to go or not, but then the skies suddenly cleared and thousands showed up, and we had a great and dry night. With faces painted and all!

One of our first days once school was out was filled at a local bay, and eldest daughter and friend enjoyed hanging out with the bubbler or 'drinking fountain', depending where you're from. Give kids a bit of water and they are totally amused. So many photos I have of my kids playing with spurting water!

Down at the bay's edge, we found a cool boatshed, and the girls decided it would be a good place for handstands. Is anywhere, in this whole world, NOT a good place for a handstand?? My kitchen apparently is a great place...(grr).

On December 23rd, we all went into the city to check out the decorations including the David Jones window displays and an amazing moving light show that was projected up on to the side of St Mary's Cathedral. It was done to music and it was a lovely relaxing way to spend the evening at dusk in the city! Definitely will go again next year.

On Christmas Eve, the girls grandparents visiting from USA took them to build-a-bear for their Christmas present, which the girls loved!

Then it was Christmas day! There was the ham....

There was me trying to get that shot that Di once got of herself in the reflection of the decoration. And hey, there should be at least ONE shot of me this Christmas, right? This is it! Lol!

And there was the cuddling of the seriously adored baby cousin, Olivia.

Then there was the annual tradition of getting in the pool on Christmas Day cause it's hot!!!! The girls spent most of the day being tipped up in this little boat by their dad, and then getting (gracefully) back in the boat. That boat was the best $9.99 I ever spent at Christmas!

Hope you all had a great Christmas and Happy New Year to you all! Thanks for hanging out with me here a this blog in 2010. xxx

2010-12-22T16:28:00.003+11:00

Hi all. Even though I have a million people coming to my house for lunch on Christmas, and I currently have 7 people living in my house needing meals and activity daily, I chose to forget these key items for a while and escape from normal life and scrap a few pages.

I did a photo shoot for a family this morning. After having my confidence rocked a bit this week by a couple of different situations, I returned to the Automatic mode on the camera and I hate the results. They are too dark and grainy. I like 'light' shots and tend to manually let extra light in because I love that look, though I was alerted by a lovely friend that I should watch out for over exposure, and yes, she had a very good point, so I have endeavoured to tone down the lightness a bit. I'll return to manual mode again next time for sure. Sorry this is such random blathering and nothing is making sense. All I can say, is I like my manual photos much better than the auto photos, though I need to be careful of light! So back to the subject at hand, scrapbooking.

I scrapped a photo from last January - wow, how up to date is that!! Not.
I reverted to the old 'patchwork quilt' look of scrapping with lots of squares of different colours building up the page. I bought a big load of black cardstock because I am trying to branch out from the usual white pages of mine. I started out with a piece of black and went from there. I did a very simple version, and a slightly more 'less simple' version for another childs album. I also took up the opportunity to use some mini mini letter stickers which I bought for reasons unknown.

So here's the pages and a close up of the heading. They are about my husband, the story teller.

Hope you all all enjoying school holidays and hope you are slightly more ready than me for this weekend!!!
Nicole x

no semi automatic for me

2010-12-14T21:33:00.014+11:00

No semi-automatic?? That sounds very weapon like, doesn't it? Actually considering I am 'shooting' people several times a week, it's all very fitting. Ugh, it's making me feel a bit queazy, must get back on to the correct topic, and that is photography.
I have gone fully MANUAL!! It's been about 3 weeks now, and I haven't gone near the automatic or even partly automatic modes on my camera. I'm on the little 'M' on the dial, which means MANUAL! I can't believe I'm actually doing it, and it's mostly working! And I'm loving it - couldn't go back. Through total experimentation, I am adjusting my apertures , shutter speed and ISO's manually before each lot of shots. Every time I change direction, or move down the path, I have to readjust. And sometimes I forget, giving me a highly under and over exposed shot. I just need to remember to keep checking my shots whenever I change location to check that things are okay. I'm finding I don't need to 'fix' photos in iphoto anymore, well not much anyway, and there are some that I don't touch up at all, which I NEVER EVER thought would happen. I still often manipulate the colour of the photo, but I'm not fixing major technical flaws anymore! Not as much anyway! Here's some of my manual photos from the past few photo shoots that I've done for some local families.

This little girl below was so cute and serene sitting on her Mum's bed and then seconds later was jumping on it - see second one below!

Totally loving 'sibling' photos at the moment. Love showing a relationship in pics.

I think my favourite is the one of the two kids on the bed with Mum in the background holding the baby. Wishing I had that exact photo when I was at that stage. Any photos that tickle your fancy, or any that don't?
If you live in southern Sydney zone and want some family photos taken - email me. I've had requests for 'gift voucher's' so I've made some up and now you can give a photo shoot to someone else if you need a gift idea!
I photograph grown up families too! (below)

In laws arrive from USA of Friday, so I'm hoping to be here for a quick blog then, but just in case...thought I'd let you know why. Hope you are all well. x

Christmases past...

2010-12-10T20:08:00.004+11:00

Sorry you guys, but I got nothin'! I have absolutely nothing new to show you. The last 36 hrs have been busy with school presentation nights, Kindergarten class Christmas parties, Year 2 graduation assembly from the infants school into the primary, and tomorrow is the big annual ballet concert at NIDA (National Institude of Dramatic Art). Phew.

I thought I might dig into the archives and find some old Chrissy pages to help you get into the Christmas scrapping mood. Yeah right, who has time to scrap?? Oh well what the hey, here are some anyway, because like I said, I got nothing else!

First we go WAY back to 1999. The photos are from 1999 but I didn't scrap back then, I scrapped it many years later. This layout show my now 11 year old at 12 days old, stuffed into a Santa stocking. Nice.

Then we move on to 2004, when my little Lucy was only 7 months old. Pudgy little thing she was. this was scrapped at the time the photos were taken, back in the times of ribbon on layouts.

Then we fast forward two years to 2006...

and then on to 2007...

I might dig out the old albums from 2002 and 03 and see what the Christmas pages looked like then, because I have no recollection as to what they are like? This is why we scrap, right, to remember, because otherwise, with my mushy brain the way it is, we would have NO IDEA what happened in years past!

Hope you are surviving the craziness....

Nicole

Challenge results!

2010-12-02T21:20:00.010+11:00

Wow wow wow!! I can't believe I got all these lovely layouts in for my sketch challenge at this time of year. The craziness is starting to descend on this house, as it is yours I'm sure, so thank you for making the effort girls. AND I welcome a couple of 'newbies' to my blog, whom I don't already 'know'. Love how you think you know your blog friends who you've never actually met. Anyway, hello and welcome to new readers Alexa and Giselle - thank you for participating!

In case you haven't been around I'll get you up to speed about what on earth is going on here. About two weeks ago, I put out a sketch on this blog and asked anyone who so felt inclined to scrap a layout having been inspired by my sketch, and email it to me, so I could post the results here. I used to do sketch challenges a lot but this year have fallen off the band wagon a bit with them. I LOVE to see all the different interpretations people come up with from the one sketch. So cool, and these below are no exception. I was enthralled and delighted to see them each arrive in my inbox.

First here's the sketch.

And here's my original layout one according to my sketch.

Another 'then and now layout for me. I love 'then and now's' - so satisfying because you get to use an old photo that possibly hasn't been scrapped before (mine never have) and because you do actually get to see a comparison between then shots. that comparison is lovely for me to see, but I think even more fun for my daughter in the photo. I tend to find the old photo first, lying around unscrapped in a photo box somewhere, and then find a new photo to go with it, or purposely take one to go with it, just so I have a reason to scrap the old one. Notice I printed my journaling on patterned paper - don't forget you can do that, you know. Often I do forget, for months at a time. You obviously just need a relatively subdued pattern so your journaling doesn't get too lost on it.

And the good thing about these black and white photos is that I can use almost any colour to go with them, and I got to use purple. I have hardly ANY purple in my scrapbooking life! I have some purple brads thanks to the lovely Sharon, but have hardly any purple cardstock and virtually no purple patterned paper, so I like to choose a colour that I rarely use, just because I can.

Moving right along, check out this gorgeous layout that came in from one of my newbie readers, Giselle. I love it! How cool is that patterned paper?? Thank you Giselle. Not sure where Giselle is from, but with my strong detective abilities in full swing, I deduce that by the date on the layout and the fall theme, and the fact that people are warmly dressed at this time of year, I guess northern hemisphere?

Next up, we have a fabulously simple and striking layout from Alexandra in Chicago.

Told you it was striking. So gorgeous - thank you Alexandra!

Below is a yet another stunning layout from someone I don't already 'know - a newbie called Alexa. A newbie to this blog, definitely not a newbie scrapper. Check it out!!! W.O.W. Thank you so much Alexa. Stunning. Again, with my detective cap on, do I guess Great Britain somewhere is where Alexa hails from?? Just going by the architecture in the background. That's my guess!

Then, Sharon, my self confessed teacher's pet completed TWO layouts. Keener award goes to Sharon from Queensland. Nice job Sharon! Thanks!

Then we have a nice simple layout from my friend Diane, showing photos of a common theme in Di's family - the water!! I love how fabulous this looks in it's minimalist approach, and how the photo order has been swapped around from the original sketch. Thanks Di!

And last but not least, below we have the lovely talented Amy from Melbourne and her creative twist of making the layout a horizontal event, and lets not forget to mention her brilliant photo taking skills. These photos make me hungry! LOVE the idea behind this layout. I totally want to scrap a list of my favourite things...now I feel like watching 'sound of music' ...thanks alot Amy...( rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens, ...something and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string... I know you're singing along.)

Love all these layouts girls. I was totally inspired. THANK YOU. And thanks to reader and friend Jodie, who did a layout, but used the wrong sketch! Lol - oh well, at least you got some scrapping done!

Already I'm looking forward to my next sketch challenge - coming soon!

Nicole.

It's your scapping PT (personal trainer) again.

2010-11-26T09:56:00.008+11:00

There's a new minor interest in our house with the younger two girls. Over the past 12 months or so they have acquired some beanie babies, or beanie kids, or beanie bears? Whatever, they have 'beanie things'.

They have received one each for birthdays and Christmas, and when overseas relatives send them a little money for their birthday, off they go to the local toy store and buy one or two new ones.

I'm trying to dissuade many more arriving, because I find with my kids that less is more. A few are special, and the more they have of something, somehow the special-ness decreases. So, although I know my Mum is getting them one each for Christmas, I'm hoping that'll be it for a while. I not into 'stuff' or excess of anything for either the kids or us, so while this collection I'm sure is nothing compared to some of yours, it's plenty for us.:)

I've scrapped the beanie 'things' twice, one for each girl. AND I even drew a sketch of each layout for you, so you can get to it, and do some scrapping this weekend. Just copy. I'm telling my new scrappers - just copy, don't worry about being all creative and trying to be radically different to your last layout - if your brain is mushy with the busy-ness of life as mine is, just copy these ideas and get it done. Keep it simple. Nike ad: 'Just do it'. (Enough personal training for now!)

Here's the first layout. All my layouts are 8.5 x 11" and you can easily convert the concepts to a 12 x 12. Double click on the layout to get a decent view. Note: Thanks Sharon for the little purple button brads on these layouts - love them!!

BTW, I 'draw' these sketches in Photoshop for Alexandra who asked. I just draw boxes and fill them in with colour.

And here is the next layout - again, click on it for a decent, more focused view. Why oh why are the photos of my layouts lately so BAD? Anyway, a similar concept using one main photo at the top, and one smaller one at the bottom. This layout below lends itself to having two 4x6 photos at the top instead of one big landscape one - I've hinted at that possibility in the sketch. In fact, below the sketch is another layout of my eldest girl visiting the Old Melbourne Gaol (jail), which is basically the same in design, just uses two vertical pics at the top.

That's it for this week. Plenty of ideas for you to get scrpping so off you go. I totally feel like staying at home an scrapping all day, but i have to go to work, so see you soon.

P.S Thanks to those keen scrappers who have got their layout to me from the sketch challenge which is due, for anyone else who's interested this Sunday night is the deadline. Here's the challenge sketch in case you still want to send me your creation so I can post it here on my blog.

Photos of families

2010-11-24T13:28:00.015+11:00

A mid week post finally. But it's not much about scrapbooking. I guess it could eventually be, for those people who own the kids in the following photos. If, of course, they are in fact scrapbookers!

I've been doing a few family photo shoots a week for the past few weeks, and have been enjoying the challenge immensely. It is quite fun, quite hard (when there's children who are under 3 and don't want to be photographed or it's very windy, or very sunny, or very rainy) and quite rewarding, when you have clients who are so happy with their photos that they kiss you (that's happened once!)

I'll be here on Friday with some scrapping for you but here's some photos I've taken of families from the last week or two.

I think my favourite one is the one of the little girls with the coloured dress playing with the sand. But I do also like the first one - I've titled it 'weeds' because that what is it the foreground! Who'd of thought weeds could be so pretty?

Thanks for visiting, see you Friday.
xx

Two Friday Layouts

2010-11-19T09:39:00.005+11:00

Hi scrappers and Friday tune-in people. Off to school canteen again today. Was called at the last minute and it seems I have a real problem saying 'no' so off I go to cook a million nuggets and make 80000 milkshakes. But I have about 7 minutes before I should be there, so time for a quick sketch and a layout.

Here's a sketch I drew up for you:

It's geared to one big photo and 3 small cropped ones. I have done my layout on an 8.5x11" page and my photo was 6x8". If you wanted to convert to a 12 x 12 i'd get a 8x12 enlargement photo, but one that you can trim the top or bottom off a bit to make it more panoramic in shape, otherwise you'll not have enough room on the rest of the layout for journaling and the other photos. You might want to even forget the other photos, and just do the one big photo if you are scrapping 12 x 12.

So here's my layout from this sketch:

It is about middle girl being the animal whisperer of the family. Was going to use 'animal whisperer' as my heading but didn't have enough letter stickers so had to come up with something shorter. Not even any pp used here, so it is very simple.

I did do another layout this week, from photos taken ages ago, back in August I think. It's 'event' scrapping which can be a challenge. School events in colour are usually a challenge. I did fit four photos on this layout, and it probably would have been more successful if the photos down left side of the layout were just two vertical 4 x 6's instead of the three (two of them cropped) that I have fitted in. It was about speech finals day, and how middle girl was terrified, gave it her best shot, and gained a place.

Again, no pp was used. This week is the 'photos and cardstock only' week.

A few more days for the sketch challenge layouts to come in if you're interested (see last post).

See you all for a midweek post in a few days.

Nicole

a layout and a challenge!

2010-11-12T09:19:00.007+11:00

Hello all, it's Friday again - comes around so so quickly! The weeks are flying by and I can't believe that Christmas is only just around the corner. How did that happen?

I have another sketch and layout for you today. It's another simple quicky. Aren't they all??

Here's the sketch: (note for 12 x 12 scrappers below)

And here's my interpretation of it. My main photo was vertical rather than horizontal as in the sketch, so I moved the journaling around a bit to cater for the upright photo. There's a little strip of fun patterned paper under the main photo and a strip of colour running along the bottom of the layout to kind of 'ground' the whole thing. It was about how my big girl and her friend amused themselves in an airport for many hours, en route to Melbourne.

(FOR 12 x 12 scrappers: You could convert this layout above to 12 x 12 by putting two full 4x6 photos along the bottom, or 3 trimmed photos at 10x10cm each. On a 12 x 12 layout, you could keep the main photo as a 4x6 or you could certainly get away with making it a 5 x 7". On a 12 x 12 you could still computer journal, because that whole upper section containing the journaling would be a landscape A4 size - once printed you would mount the A4 sheet on a 12 x 12 colour cardstock so you could adhere the bottom photos, and leave a small strip of colour exposed from the backing cardstock along the very bottom).

Now I have a sketch challenge for you! Remember the old sketch challenge that we used to do many moons ago? The deal is, if you want to give this sketch a go, either a 8.5x11 layout as it is shown, a 12 x 12 interpretation or even a card, give it a whirl, scan it or take a decent photo of your creation (see note below) and then email it to me, and I'll post whatever graces my inbox, here on the blog. Here's your sketch from which you can interpret as you please.

You have until the end of next weekend (28th Nov) - that's about 9 days from now and I will post whatever arrives on Tuesday 30th Nov. Now no pressure, people. If it's only my own interpretation that gets posted, that's quite okay. A little boring, but okay! I know we are headed into manic season. See if you can manage it.

Chat soon xx

Nicole

NOTE: Tip - When taking a photo of your layout, place it on the floor or short stool, beside a glass door/window. Get directly above it and looking through your camera, try to make sure it is square and the edges of the layout are lined up with the edges of your cameras view finder, so that your pages isn't looking like it's on an angle. Might need to brighten your photo a little in your photo program if it takes a little dark. I tend to 'enhance' my photos of layouts and even sharpen the image a bit. It depends on your photo editing software.

a sketch and a layout.

2010-11-05T15:39:00.008+11:00

I have a new layout to share today, since it is 'Friday Scrapbooking' and it's so super easy, and effective that you should definitely give it a go. It's suited to one 4x6 horizontal photo, and even made a sketch for you. It could easily be converted to a 12 x 12 layout. Here's the sketch:

And here's a layout to show you how it can work.

I used some new patterned paper under the strips of journaling. Regarding the journaling, I just double or triple space the space between the lines (also known as 'leading'), or you can just hit 'return' two or three times between each line, then print it on cardstock, then just trim with with a blade & ruler or paper trimmer, so that the strips end up about 1cm wide.

The layout is about the best buds that Amaris does dancing with. They are her best buds at school too, and their presence at ballet has been helpful for Amaris. They are a sweet little trio. Very funny together! Here are some other photos that I took of them that day - really should scrap the humour, shouldn't I. They were actually, I hate to say it, all taking turns in burping. Nice. So ballerina-ish!

Sketch challenge coming up soon!

Winners and red chairs.

2010-11-03T13:22:00.010+11:00

And the winner of my 'Scrapbooking Boys' ebook giveawy from last week is 'Rachael' whose son puts on 3 pairs of socks so he can slide better on the floor - hehe, I can just see it now.

BUT. WAIT. I actually have TWO of these books to give away and I could not go past 'DebF' who has FIVE boys! Wow, the mind boggles, and life must certainly be, as Deb puts it, very interesting!! Rachael and DebF email me and I will will send you your secret codes! And congratulations, hope you can make much use out of this book! For anyone else who's interested, it can be found here.

Now I have to tell you a story about a red chair.

I love red. I have a thing for red. I have a red handbag, red wallet, red diary, red most things. About 15 years ago, I did a modern oil painting of red chair just cause I felt like it, and often if I wanted something, I could get it out of my system by painting a picture of it. So instead of buying an actual red chair, I painted a painting of one, loose and Van Gogh style. It sold just after I painted it, so I can't show it to you.

Several of years ago, I noticed an old wooden chair, painted bright red, under an old carport, belonging to a little old house, belonging to a little old married couple, about 20 houses down my street. There was an retro orange vinyl chair next to the cute wooden red chair, and sometimes the little couple would sit in the two chairs watching the street. Whenever I walked past on the way to my girls school, I would look longingly at that red chair. I considered going and buying an old chair and painting it bright red, but just never really got around to it, and really, what was I going to do with an old red chair anyway?? Always the practical realist am I.

So years go past, I am still loving the dusty old red chair in the old carport down the street, and I start to think I wonder if I could knock on the door and offer to buy it? Every now and then, I would see one or both of the married couple (who were both 90) out side, and just do the friendly neighbourly wave and 'how are you' and I would always chicken out about asking them to sell it. It certainly wasn't worth much, but I could hardly steal it in the dark of night, could I? I Though it did cross my mind. Just kidding, of course it didn't. Well maybe. Just once.

Over the past month I have started taking photos of families (and actually being paid for the first time ever!) and I'm starting to think about 'props' for my outdoor shoots. I realise I really want that red chair, because now I actually have a reason for wanting it. I can put it to use. I figure I should ask the old loves to sell it to me, and if they won't, I'll head to St Vinnies, and just buy myself a chair and paint it.

I pluck up the courage and knock on their door...deep breathing. I am such a chicken like that.

Having never officially met, I say 'Hi, I'm Nicole, from up the road, how are you??' The little old lady says 'Oh my husband just died and the funeral was yesterday'. Oh good Lord! How bad is my timing? I'm trying to wrack my brain to think was the red chair the chair that the old husband sat in under that carport, and if so, I can hardly ask her to sell it they day after his funeral! How do I get myself into these situations! I abandon all red chair desires, and ask her if there's anything I can do for her, would she like me to take her grocery shopping, or can I get anything for her. We have a quick chat, and I ran away, mortified that I want her husband's chair.

A week later, I knock again. I'm slightly horrified at my motives. I ask her how she's doing, and if there's anything I can do for her. Then I pluck up all courage, once again. Though this time, I figure I shouldn't try to get hold of it for good - just borrow it, in case of deep sentimental value.

I said "I've been noticing your lovely red chair for a while now. Can I ask a huge favour? Can I pretty please just borrow it for this afternoon (I had a photo shoot) and I promise that I will return it tomorrow morning!"

And guess what she said in reply: "That old thing?? Just take it, I don't want it!"

Really?? Really, truly?? SO excited. I left her my number, told her to call me if she needed anything at all, and threw the red chair in the back of the car!

Oh. Yay.

And here it is, sitting on my front porch, between my two white chairs.

Looks a bit weird, and will have to move it to my garage in another day or so, but I have already made good use of the red chair.

P.S Did you ever notice all the crazy colours of council sheds around worksites like this one above? It might just be our local council that has these weird colour portable shed things, but I'm kinda liking them. They are ugly in real life, and my families that I photograph do look at me strangely when I ask them to sit in front of one.

P.P.S I popped a copy of the little girl on the red chair into Gladys' mail box, so she could see I was putting her chair to good use.

saxophone duet

2010-10-29T20:28:00.005+11:00

Phew, made it to Friday night! I was on canteen duty at my kids' school today and honestly, I think nearly every child in this whole suburb had a lunch order today. Our little canteen only serves the Kindergarten to Year 2's and honestly, we cooked 70,000 nuggets, 90,000 dinosaur shaped nuggets, 40,000 pizzas, a million wraps and toasted sandwiches, and made 18,000 milkshakes! We RAN not stop from 10am and we were SO exhausted when we were finished for the day. We only got about 50 of the orders wrong.... (the kids just kept coming back...."you didn't give me my 'insert hot food that takes an hour to cook here'").

So here I am writing this blog a little later than the usual Friday morning. I've found time for some scrapping lately, no idea how, and today I share a layout that I did last week. The photos are from January, so no, definitely not 'up to date'!

My cousins were visiting from Canada. MY cousins, yes I have my own relatives that live over there, they don't all belong to my Canadian husband. My Canadian cousin and his Scottish wife came over for breakfast (very international crowd!) and brought with them their little 3 yr old son, Ewan. My eldest decides to do a mini recital in the living area, still in her PJ's - very normal for eldest child to perform anything, for whoever will watch/listen. She's playing away on her sax when Ewan comes out with a little toy sax that he found in my other girls room. He pulls up a stool, crosses his legs like older 2nd cousin and just joins in. It was SOOO cute!
Here's the original photos:

And here's how I scrapped it.

I added two chipboard lasercut flowers thinking it echoed the 'duet' theme.

See you soon, all.

P.S Next post will announce winner of 'Scrapbooking Boys' giveaway.

2010-10-27T18:04:00.002+11:00

Got some nice piccy's this morning photographing a very cute family and this little angel...

See here for some other pics.

Some pics on Tuesday

2010-10-26T20:03:00.005+11:00

I have been inspired (or is it mildly depressed?) by the many brilliant photographers in this bloggy world of ours, and especially with their brilliant photos. Upon further research, I found that many of them use a fixed 50mm lens and they also 'get' apertures, ISO's, shutter speeds in practice, not only theory. My small brain can't seem to get a decent grasp on any of that stuff, but I thought I could check out the 50mm lens. Those cool photographers have the cooler and more expensive 50mm f/1.4 lens, but my budget only allowed for the 50mm f/1.8 lens which was really really cheap as far as lenses go - ($125).

It arrived in the mail about 36 hours after I went late night online shopping, and I had a go. These were my first three photos in order as they were taken, and straight out of the camera. Think I'm pretty happy with my little acquisition. Amelia has just got out of the pool and I snapped her, telling her I needed to experiment with my new lens. She had come first in the running race at the athletics carnival that day, and wanted me to take the photo of her '1st' sticker in the palm of her hand. You can make out the wrinkly water logged pool fingers.

Minutes after we went for a barbecue with the extended family at a local park to celebrate eldest girls 11th birthday! Photos included a hug with Grandad,

yet another standard cousins shot (hey they're only young and willing once!)

and the equally standard photo of the birthday cake, which was cupcakes, cause they're easier than cutting a cake on location. Paper patty cake things are from IKEA! Happy Birthday big girl!

Brads, Boys and a giveaway

2010-10-22T11:07:00.013+11:00

My husband has been in USA for nine days and just returned yesterday and with him he brought for me, God LOVE him, these new brads!!!! Some women want diamond earrings, I want brads!

I'm LOVING them. My stash was getting quite low as I use them all the time. They are a mix of mini brads and midsized brads (about 8mm) and are made by Basic Grey. Apparently they are called 'painted brads'. Niiiice.
I was totally and immediately inspired to scrap and scrapped these page about him last night.

His Grandpa lives in Connecticut and recently turned 90. All the grandchildren were requested to write a little something about their fond memories of Grandpa, and Marc's cousin complied all the memories into a little book. Marc wrote his memories and emailed it off, but I saved the text into a word doc planning to scrap it one day. I dug out two old pictures of Marc and his Grandpa from the heritage disc of scanned pics, and pulled this layout together.

It's quite masculine - no flowers, no butterflies, no frills. It's a boy layout.

Because I have a thing for orange, I now have millions of mid sized orange brads. Somehow, I have no light purple/mauve brads. Anyone wanna swap, say, 10 mid sized orange brads for 10 light purple/mauve brads? (I'm talking the ones that are approx 8mm diameter). Email me!

Now speaking of BOYS, the lovely girls at Ella Publishing have sent me a coupon to GIVE AWAY an ebook to one of my blog readers! Do you have boys? Want some boy ideas? Ella invited five moms of boys (and only boys) to brainstorm a list of 20 essential “dude” topics and create incredible layout examples for each. They offered up their best ideas for making their sons' layouts meaningful, authentic, unique, and, well, masculine. And with 15 boys, ranging in age from 3 to 19, these women know a thing or two about muddy boots, grass stains, dump trucks, and video games.

Now according to the amount of comments I normally get, I have 2, maybe 3 blog readers total, so competition won't be tough! If you want this e-book, you need to leave me a comment before next Tuesday evening 26th Oct, Sydney time. Tell me anything you want, how about whether you have boys, how many you have, and what's something they do that makes you laugh. I'll randomly pick a winner, or will I pick the one that makes me laugh the most??

Also tell me if you like all my new brads! My latest scrap convert, Melanie M has a husband named Brad, which I think is hilarious for scrapbooking. I was helping her do her first page at her house this week, and I was saying things like "Right, so you need lots of different brads, a brad will really help a page, do you have a mini-brad?". We were giggling the whole time!

Thanks Family 'B'!

2010-10-19T09:45:00.005+11:00

Recently, I did a photo shoot at a local park with a gorgeous family and loved it!!! If your friends with me on facebook, my apologies if you've already seen these.

Above: You know I can't resist a good skip bin (dumpster)! I think the family were slightly concerned when I nicely demanded the kids sit in front of the huge garbage bin!

Aren't these children adorable! I was so in love with that little four year old boy (red shirt)! The two photos of him with his dad are my favourites!! Heck, I was in love with all three kids - so cute!! I can see why these photographer people enjoy this so much. It is very rewarding to be able to give a family some captured moments and family photos that they are gonna love both now and later on when they look back way back when.

That last photo was a council workers portable shed - the park had construction work going on - lucky for us the shed was bright blue!

I was so excited to give them their photos (and disc!) and even scrapped a little 6x8 package together for them.

I found a chocolate brown envelope to hold the disc, and put the disc and some photo prints all in this scrapped envelope. Anyway, family 'B' loved the photos and I have 3 more bookings for the upcoming weeks - yay!
nicolesfamilyphotos.weebly.com

'Back to normal' Friday

2010-10-15T18:22:00.006+11:00

Well it's back to scrapping!

After 7 days of holiday photos, it's time to get down to business. Scrapping business.

I did this layout the other night, and it is very simple and very easy and I even used some VERY old American crafts letter stickers. You know those AC stickers that are multicoloured and drive me completely insane trying to use them? Well I finally used them! I obviously haven't scrapped for a while, or more importantly taken photos of my layouts for a while, because I have takenthe photo of this layout very wonkily! Things run straight in real life!

These photos are very very very un-brilliant, and after I got them printed, I came very close to not scrapping them and just popping them into the slip album. However, in the slip album they would have been more boring, and these pics, of all pics, really needed the story to be told to make them interesting for the kids later down the track.

My husband got very excited one evening because there was a partial lunar eclipse, the first (or last?) one in so many years (I'm not into science). Anyway, he got all of us to get up on the roof of our house. Our roof has a three story drop at the back, which is where we were cause this part of the roof is flat, so it was a big thrill for the kids to actually be allowed to get up there for the first time! The memory is more about being up on the roof, at night, in the freezing cold, than the eclipse, but at least in years to come, they'll know WHY they were on the roof. If they care.
Anyway, it's scrapped, the story's been told. It's all good.

PS On Tuesday, I'll be back with photos from a photo session I did of a gorgeous family before I went to Melbourne.

country seven - Lucy shananigans

2010-10-14T20:26:00.007+11:00

Lucy spends a good percentage of her life upside down. I would say between 15 - 20% of her existence is upside down. Wherever there's grass, in supermarket isles, outside on the driveway at church waiting for me to stop talking, on the lounge, against any wall (esp my white walls ...grrr) on the trampoline, up the hallways. Actually, they ALL spend much of their life in this state, especially the eldest, Amaris. It really drives me nuts by the end of the day, especially when I'm making dinner in the kitchen and there are upside down bodies beside me. I go crazy!

Lucy asked me to photograph how one 'officially' does a handstand. I thought one just stuck ones hands on the ground and tried to get their feet higher than the rest of them, but no, there is the 'correct' way, according to Lucy. So here's the anatomy of a handstand:

1. Stand like a "T"

2. Stand like an "I"

3. "Lunge".......

4. "Handstand"

So there you go. Now you know. In case you needed to know.

Right after the correct handstand demo, Lucy and Amelia decided that it was their turn to have a photo with their Daddy, since Amaris had done so earlier in the trip. Will have to share Amelia's another time, but here is Lucy's current 'Daddy and me' pics.

There's a scrappin' pic, if ever I saw one. So the next question is, WHEN will I get to all this scrapping??? Thanks for sticking with me for these past seven days. Well thank you to Amy and Sharon, is anyone else still out there??

Country six - the entertainment

2010-10-13T21:42:00.008+11:00

So apart from the acres and acres of grass in which to run and play, here's how the kids filled their days in the country on the property on which we were staying.

They fed the chickens

and collected their eggs. (Love the background colours in this shed!)

They were loving the resident ostrich coincidentally named Olivia

and the donkey (whose name escapes me) got fed carrots and was a great amusement when it bolted full pace in big circles around it's enclosure at 5 pm each afternoon...

They pat the goat,

and picked barely ripe strawberries. And ate them...

And then when the sprinklers spontaneously came on late each afternoon, they were all totally thrilled! They seemed to not think it was worth the effort of coming inside to change into more appropriate swimming attire. Only the Mums thought that.

Can you believe I've been here SIX days in a row?!

country five - a pond to ponder

2010-10-12T20:12:00.007+11:00

Amelia's the type of girl who is the biggest social butterfly you can imagine, but then will need some 'down time' to ponder, gather her thoughts, and talk to herself a bit. She is a real soft soul.

Right next to the end of the porch of the cottage we were staying at in Mudgee last week, was a little secluded pond.

Amelia could be found here, several times a day, just having a little moment alone.

The duck is obviously not real, it's plastic, but gave her much amusement as she poked and prodded it with a stick to help it swim around.

She placed little things on leaves and floated them around the pond - she asked me to take a photo of this one and then said "Isn't it pretty?"

Of course there were plenty of times that one or more of the other children would join her.

On this occasion, I was standing on the porch looking for her and her cousin Jack. I yelled out to them from the porch not seeing them at the pond a few metres away as they were crouched down low below the foliage studying something. When they heard me call, they both popped up through the greenery and this was my view.

On seeing them, I had to ask what they had been doing, and was anything wrecked, stepped on, eaten, or trashed? They do look a bit suspicious and if you knew the two of them, you would ask too if everything surrounding them was still okay! But they assured me all was well, and after checking the pond surrounds for myself, they were right.

Cute little pond though, hey? What kid wouldn't love hanging out out here??

Country four - en route

2010-10-11T15:45:00.009+11:00

Perhaps I should show you what we did en route to our country holiday. About half way there is Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Generations have stopped here and posed in front of 'the three sisters'.

I have a photo of my Dad as a child with his sister in this exact spot, I have a photo of me as a child (unfortunately in the eighties) with my sisters in this exact spot, and here are my kids, in front of 'the three sisters'.

Actually, it was a little underwhelming. On approach Lucy asked 'Who are the three sisters, anyway?' . We replied "they are just big rocks, they're not really sisters". Lucy asks "Are they shaped like people? Do they have heads?' We said, 'No, they are just three big rocks'. Lucy says 'Oh.' And yes it was a bit 'Oh' when we we got there. The Three Sisters, or three big rocks, seem to have got a bit smaller since I was a kid. Or maybe I've just got bigger. Anyway, we had to have the traditional photo in front of the rocks, cause that is just what you have to do. Apparently.

In about 20 seconds we had moved on to ooh-ing and aah-ing over 3 week old cousin Olivia asleep and missing the tourist attraction!

...and then Amaris decided she and her Dad hadn't had a decent photo together in at least two year and now was the time. We found a great stone wall (outside the public toilets!) and I snapped this of the two of them.

Back tomorrow!

Country three - the 'yukky-animal' whisperer

2010-10-10T09:22:00.006+11:00

Sharon asked for a view of the cottage and Lucy was the only one who thought to take one, so it is a little un-straight and a touch off focus, but it is just fine for a 6 year old wanna be photographer. The photo shows it's cuteness and rustic country charm. There were a couple of cottages that our families took over, this was the main one, where we had all our meals out on that back porch. Below is Dad cooking breakfast for all 15 of us, every morning. That's my sister getting her bacon and eggs. I'm sure I only put on an extra 10kg while I was here.

So, one day most of the adults went to a few places like this...

and did lots of taste testing and buying of bottles. I'm not a big wine drinker, so I was the designated driver. When we came home Amelia ran up to me and said "Mum! You've got to come and see this! I've found something!"

She took me into a shed, bent over a tank/cage thing, and came out with the 'something'. I resisted the urge to scream and run, and instead embraced her kind soft heartedness to all things small and furry..... (ugh!)

Love this one above...love her, not the thing she's loving....

See you tomorrow. Thanks for visiting.

Country two

2010-10-09T16:44:00.008+11:00

We traveled four hours west to a town called Mudgee, known for it's wineries among other things. My parents love Mudgee and they have been coming here to visit the vineyards with friends for 10 years and this year they decided they wanted to bring all of us along - ie their children and grandkids.

I think now is a good time to introduce you to all the grandchildren, as they appear in most of the pics!

L-R: Amaris 10 (mine), Hugo 2, Amelia 8 (mine), Jack 6, Holly 4, Lucy 6 (mine) - absent from the photo is newborn Olivia who is 3 weeks old and spent the holiday being cuddled by all.

We stayed in some little cottages right in the town and all the cottages backed onto this huge area which was like a mini farm. It wasn't looking very drought stricken at all! It was very lovely!
Here's the view from the back porch of our cottage.

In these enclosures in the background of the photo above were a llama, a donkey, an ostrich, MANY chickens and roosters, guinea pigs, rabbits and a wallaby! They certainly amused the children with feeding times and egg collecting etc.

Moving the camera to the left and continuing with the view from the porch, were these huge vege gardens which we were invited to pick from as we needed. Very exciting! Children were sent off to find such things as lettuces and snow peas around the dinner hour (all had labels, so they had to read before they dug!)

And still standing on the porch and continuing around to the left left was a putting green area, which the children loved to run wild on. Of course it was never good when the two year old grandkid found a golf club and decided to see how far he could swing and/or throw it. You never saw five older cousins scatter so fast. Only Lucy ended up with an icepack and a bump on her forehead.

Loving those 'hangy' trees at the background - (Botanist or horticultralist I am not). Amaris could often be found under them chilling with her ipod and twice a couple of rabbits joined her.

Will be back tomorrow with more photos showing what we all got up to on our visit to the country.

Country one

2010-10-08T19:55:00.007+11:00

Last Tuesday morning, the day after the last post, we took off with my whole family (sisters, parents etc) to country New South Wales for a few days. It was lovely, restful, sunny, and very fun for the kids. I have only just returned, an hour or so ago.

If you've read my last post, you'll understand there's been no time for scrapping in my life, so my apologies for the lack of layouts but oh, will they be coming soon! I have SO much to scrap.

Tonight I'll lave your with these two photos, to prove that I have in fact been hanging in the country, and I will come back each and every day til next Friday, with photos that I took while we were away and little stories to accompany them. See you tomorrow - I hope you come visit.

Melbourne

2010-10-04T20:45:00.007+11:00

Alrighty then.

Here we are on a public holiday Monday evening. Nice. Yesterday I put on a big 40th birthday which was 'Canadian' themed, for my Canadian themed husband, and it was quite funny. Will show photos from that soon. This party was two days after coming back from taking eldest girl to Melbourne.

And today I am tired.

But happy. Cause all the previous events are over, and they were really good. So now I'm content, but need a rest. Before I hit my pillow, I'll show you some photos of the girl in Melbourne. Actually the first picture is in Sydney as of course we were flying out the morning that Australia's second largest airline went into meltdown and therefore so did the domestic terminal in Sydney. We weren't on that airline, but our airline, a cheaper airline named after a large cat, which will remain nameless, decided to cancel ALL their flights to Melbourne that day too, just for fun. Well they didn't tell us why exactly - I guess they didn't want to be the only ones not canceling flights that day. Needless to say, there was a large stampede to the only airline that was actually flying that day, and only that we were there at 8am did we get those last remaining few seats on the last flight out that evening on the very expensive airline. Ahh...good times. Expensive times.

So we were stuck in the domestic terminal waiting for our flight for many many hours and eldest girl and her friend 'O' amused themselves the only way preteens know how, other than doing handstands where ever there was a square metre of spare space and THAT is , annoying fashion store staff. I had to buy some sunnies for myself from here just to appease the girl behind the counter!

So finally we arrived in Melbourne, as daughter, Amaris, and her friend had both been accepted to train with the Australian ballet school and were here at the school in Southbank for a weeks intensive training.

Once we got there and we discovered just how few students the Australian Ballet School chooses to train, we were amazed that both these school friends were accepted together! So cool, and quite mind blowing that they had opportunity to do this with each other. They are best buddies, and they had such fun being plane buddies and hotel room buddies, and galavanting around Melbourne together. They are a very fortunate little pair.

They were training in the big beautiful studios of the Australian Ballet, each one complete with it's own piano player, right next to the studios containing senior ballet dancers and principal artists of the Australian Ballet Company! If Amaris was lacking passion and enthusiam before this trip, she certainly found it. She came out at the end of each 'school' day at 4pm and said "I LOVED it!!!". I only got one super quick and very rushed photo of the two of them in a studio before class one morning, as the school is very wary of psycho dancing mothers and we were heavily encouraged to drop them at the door and not be nutty with the camera! That went for scrapbookers too.

Speaking of nutty Mum's, there were many were impressive slick ballet hairdos going on there, and I was under pressure to perform 'bun' miracles each morning in the hotel room and the two girls while the other Mum made their lunches.

One afternoon after 'school' we took the girls on a horse and cart ride through one of the main CBD streets. They squealed and laughed, and both had to immediately call their Dads in Sydney to say "Guess what I'm doing right now?!" and then hold the phone out over the wheel so each Dad could hear the 'clip clopping'.

Apart from ballet-ing and horse and cart riding, the only other thing we did with the girls was take them to the old Melbourne gaol which was very fun. The gaol housed Australia's most famous criminal, Ned Kelly, and the girls had fun dressing up as him.

Due to the unexpected and enormous costs of having to buy flights at the last minute on the most expensive airline, there was NO shopping to be done, just lots of sitting around at the 'lindt cafe' eating macaroons and drinking coffee, or sitting in the foyer of the big Melbourne Art gallery for hours at a time reading our books. Actually very peaceful. Hope we didn't appear homeless, cause we would sit there for like four hours! The art gallery was next door to the Australian ballet, so it was most convenient.

We had a very nice time, and two little ballerina's had had an amazing opportunity!

See you soon!!

PJ's

2010-10-02T07:41:00.004+10:00

A return to the old strip journaling here! I do quite like it! It is very quick, easy and effective.The letter stickers used for the title are AC and that patterned paper is quite old, by Sassafrass lass. There is a thin dark brown border ('java' cardstock) around everything, before the big white swiss dotty cardstock frame. Just explaining the process, because I have at last one brand new scrapper out there reading this and desperate to start scrapping. Hi Melanie M.

This layout above, coming to you early Saturday morning, instead of the intended Friday, is about how my 10 year old mostly fit into adult sized PJ's from not-a-kids store and was excited. Her first clothing item that isn't made for kids. She does look older than her 10 years here, which is a little sad, but she has always been like that since she was very little (ie it's not my fault!!).

Have just returned from taking this girl to Melbourne for the week, and will be back on Monday with lots of photos. Also had the pleasure of photographing a family before I went to Melbourne, so will share some of those photos too.

See you then.

'the lane' layouts

2010-09-24T11:51:00.005+10:00

Hey, I actually made it here on time this week. My life has picked up into full swing craziness, with the first of three major events starting tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I have to fly to Melbourne with eldest girl to take her to a weeks training session with the Australian Ballet School. She's excited at the idea of going on a plane and staying in a hotel. We'll see how she copes at doing ballet for 6 hours a day, every day. Eek. Oh well, I'll be hanging around having lots of coffee's cause I can't afford to take advantage of the great Melbourne shopping, thanks to the costs involved in getting her to and being part of the Australian Ballet school! It's just her and me, another ballet girl and her mother, so it'll be nice once we get there.

Here's my layout of the week to share with you.

I used a 6x8 enlargement of this photo that I love of all my kids and the cousins, riding various vehicles in the lane behind my parents house. As always, I did three pages for my three girls as they are all in the pic, and the variations are below.

Only the bottom of each layout varied, because I didn't have enough of the same letter stickers for three layouts. On one I just computer printed the heading, as I couldn't be bothered to search for more stickers. And on the last image, you see a teeny bit of glitter on that birdie! The lovely Alexandra sent me these cute little embellishments, and I am really liking this little bird and his glittery wing. That last layout also has a thin black border/frame around the edge of the page. I often have to succumb to the lure of the border, but I held strong on the other two.

The journaling is the same on all three. Letter stickers and big flowery pp is by American crafts, all bought here.

See you when I get back from Melbourne, in time for next Friday!

lifting oneself

2010-09-22T10:50:00.005+10:00

You all know what I mean by that - I mean scrap lifting of course.

I did this quick layout above the other night of Amelia's last game of soccer for the season. I tell you, this size page (8.5 x 11) is SO easy. I just printed a narrow column of text somewhere over on the left side of the page, and then when it came out of the printer, I literally just shoved the 5 x 7 photo on wherever it fit, and filled the space beneath the photo with patterned paper, so as to bring the length down so it was in line with the bottom to the column of text. And that was about it. Talk about your 10 minute layout.

This layout below was the one that I lifted from. It is basically the same, but used two trimmed down 4 x 6 photos instead of one 5 x 7. I do like this second layout better.

I'm all about simplicity, swiftness of execution (arty for 'really really quick') and having the memory documented. It's all good.

I will be back THIS Friday for sure - sorry about last Friday - I ended up driving south to Narooma (4 hours away) with a friend Friday morning, and putting on a very quick, last minute mini exhibition of paintings. It was totally crazy and we drove back the next day. Heaps of fun, though, and sold some art, but totally forgot about Friday blogging!

One layout that I'll show you this Friday comes with a mild glitter warning. See you then.

another mid week post!

2010-09-15T13:25:00.006+10:00

Wow, eh? Is that two midweek posts in 2 weeks?

Meet my husbands grandparents. They are 90, and are the cutest pair ever!! The live on the other side of the world, and my girls have never met them.

I share this layout below with you because the event was cool, not so much the layout. the layout's okay, I mean I'm happy enough with it, but it's nothing new or interesting, and it's a design I have repeated many times over. But that's okay. The story is down on paper.

Thanks to the wonderful world of technology, my girls were able to 'meet' the great grandparents for the first time in an almost live-ish type of way, and they were able to say 'Happy 90th Birthday' to their great grandfather who lives in Connecticut, USA. Thanks to skype, the great grandparents were able to see them in something other than a photo for the first time, and watch them as they spoke with weird Australian accents. It was a very cool event, especially for the oldies, as they don't own a computer, so this was all very exciting for them. One of their grandsons in USA, my husbands cousin set it up for them.

How cute are they wearing their pink outfits? Had to break out some pink patterned paper for that one.

And our big news of the week, is that yesterday we got a new niece and cousin!

Remember the big belly from two posts ago? Well this is this cuteness that was in that belly. Isn't that weird, and incredible, and miraculous, that something so perfect comes from inside a belly??

We got to meet the new family member, 'Olivia Jasmine' at 14 hours old. Girls were beside themselves as you can imagine.

and all were totally in heaven when they got to cuddle her.

See you soon. xx

....cake decorating and scrapbooking unite..maybe???

2010-09-10T10:53:00.006+10:00

As we speak, I am trying to decorate a cake for middle girls birthday today using icing, wooden skewers, cardstock, thickers, circle punches, string, double sided tape and candles. I have officially now gone completely mad. I will be back this afternoon with the results, and maybe a layout?

Update: wa-la! Sorry for not mentioning it earlier, but this cake idea was totally inspired, possibly stolen, from this one at Sharons Blog who was inspired by this one! Sorry I don't know who to give credit to for the second one, but thanks Sharon and mystery internet person for the idea.

mid week layout

2010-09-08T09:31:00.004+10:00

A mid week post, like I promised! :)

I did this layout last week and I thought I would share it with you, as it is an example of fitting four photos on one 8.5x11 layout, and it shows highlighting a word or two from your journaling to make a title. (And the photos are a bit funny).

The problem you would normally encounter when increasing the font size of a few words in a sentence as I did with the words 'a facial' is that the line spacing under just that line would then also increase. Which looks weird and is annoying. You can either manually adjust the line spacing on the tool bar so that it's all uniform, or write the title in a separate text box and drag it down into place (after 'tabbing' in your paragraph to allow enough blank space for the title to fit into). that may well not make sense, but I haven't had a coffee yet....

Back on Friday with more scrapping. :)

If there's any questions, shoot.

winners, a pregnant sister and some scrapping

2010-09-03T12:24:00.012+10:00

....and the winners of last posts 'Scrapbooking Girls' ebook from Ella publishing are commenters Number 8 and number 10, which were Emma and Miriam! Congratulations girls!! Email me and I will send you the special code to download your free ebook. If you aren't Emma or Miriam, but would like like more info on the 'Scrapbooking Girls' ebook, you can check it out here. Thanks to all those who commented - even my own mother found this blog and gave a comment - wow!

This morning my 9 month pregnant sister (due on Sunday) came over with her 2 year old son, Hugo, and we had some fun with the camera and a white sheet....

I've started to take some photos of some local families so if you know you live nearby, shoot me an email.

This week I got a new printer!!! YAYAYYYY! After 5 weeks without one, I was starting to hyperventilate, and when the printer repair guy called and said it was going to cost $280 to FIX it, I said he could keep the printer. My gift to him. And I would just get a new one. So I did, and I've scrapped!!! Oh it was so good o finally be back into it. :)

I scrapped the book week/book character photos of two weeks ago. I scrapped three pages, one for each child, in 3 slightly differently designed layouts - different because each one used a different amount of photos. They were very busy, event type photos, so I kept things as simple as I could on the scrapping side.

That's all for today - will try for a mid-week post next week - promise!

Scrappy project and Ella book!

2010-08-26T09:52:00.017+10:00

Hi Friday scrapbookers and looker-on-ers and those who would scrap but never get around to it.
Today I'm going to share a little scrappy type of project, that I've been working on over the past week or so. I do apologize the hasn't been too many new layouts shown on here - they will come, and very soon - I pinky promise!!!

So this project was a gift for my Mother's birthday a couple of days ago. My Mum is one of those Mums who are extremely tricky to buy for and every year my sisters and Dad and I are all completely stumped at what gift to get her. She is a garage sale queen and her hobby is doing the rounds of the local second hand/st vinnies/salvos/good will type stores, scouring for bargains. So you can't exactly by her a new vase, for example, cause she just picked up 3 perfectly good ones (2 possibly antique) this week while doing the rounds of her favourite pre-loved stores. So you see our dilemma.

We decided (when I say we, I mean 'I') to think outside the box and make something fun that would show her that she is appreciated. My sister was going to a local park about 3 weeks ago, and asked my other sister and I to join her, with all the children. I took this as the perfect opportunity to bring along with me a notebook, and I made them sit on the park bench and recount lessons they learned from our mother.

I planned on assembling all the lessons learned in a mini album and try to find some photos of our mother from our childhood to go with the journaling. We ended up bringing up lots of funny memories too, and sat there laughing hysterically on the park bench, so the book ended up including lots of memories about Mum from our childhood, as well as the lessons we learned.

As I started compiling the journaling into related areas (eg domestic lessons, random life lessons, lessons about laundry/ cooking etc) I had my sisters search through their old photos for anything relevant. I also headed to the local scrap shop and searched for some 70's looking paper, or paper that reminded me of when we were kids.

I started out with an empty 5 x 7" chipboard mini album from Maya Road. I've had it stashed away for a couple of years, and was pleased to put it to use.

The album had 9 chipboard pages (9 double pages) and had planned to do one page with a photo and the facing page with the journaling. I ended up with too many fun 70's photos, so I complied then into a collage in Photoshop Elements and printed them out as nine 5 x 7 enlargements. I tried keep the photos relating to the journaling on the facing page as much as possible. I stuck the 5 x 7 enlargements on to the nine chipboard pages. The album, I discovered wasn't exactly 5 x 7 - it was more like 5.5 x 7" so I had to add a strip of patterned paper across the bottom edge, and ran it right across onto the facing page for continuity.

Then it was onto the journaling. I printed it out at a LOVELY friend's house, who let me take over her printer cause mine still wasn't (isn't) fixed - thank you, friend - and printed each piece as a 5 x 7 journaling block. Then I inked the edges cause I figured they would get dirty with fingerprints otherwise, so I might as well dirty them up ahead of time. The inking actually looked quite good and rustic.

Then I stuck the cardstock journaling pages down, and this is how the inside pages looked.

Then it was onto the cover. I ended up covering back and front with strips of the paper used at the bottom of each page. All nice and vintage/retro and old looking. Stuck everything on with double sided tape. Here's the progress shot.

Here's the front and back covers finished. (AC vinyl thickers for the title)

The spine was giving me grief, so I ended up 'binding' it with a strip of wide black tape and putting an extra strip of pp down the spine to hide the majority of the tape. Looked okay in the end, though.

So there you have it. Got any ideas for your Mother's Christmas present this year?

Now in other exciting news, I have a giveaway for you.

I was invited by Angie Lucas from Ella Publishing to join in with four other women (all from USA) to create an ebook about scrapbooking girls. We each had to do 4 new layouts, so that's 20 layouts altogether.

All five of us contributors, only have girls (!) The book is now ready and available for purchase here through Ella and I have seen it, and it is very cool. I got some heavy inspiration from what I saw in it, and it is much better than buying a magazine, cause each and every page is really good, and there's no ads! With an ebook, you buy it (it's $US5.99) then you can download it, and if you want to, you can then print it out. You can print it out on some cardstock or heavy paper, or if you want to be really swish, print it out on matte photo paper and put it in a nice binder and you'll have a quality book. Ella has a free sampler book on it's site (a mix of all the ebooks) and there are many other ebooks for sale there, so if you were to buy and print several out, you would have an awesome collection of great reference material.

Here's the blurb for this current 'girls ebook' ...

"Got girls? This handy-dandy guidebook is here to help you make sure you capture all the essentials of who they are—the facets of their lives and personalities that matter most—in between all the holiday and event photos that describe what they do. We invited five moms of girls (and only girls) to brainstorm a list of 20 essential “girly” topics and create stunning layout examples for each. They offered up their best ideas for making their girls’ layouts meaningful, authentic, and unique. And with 13 daughters, ranging in age from 3 to 16, these women know a thing or two about buttons and butterflies, princess costumes and prom dresses. Let's get girly!" p.s. Ella has an Essential Guide for Scrapbooking Boys, too! Watch for it in September 2010.

Ella Publishing has given me as a contributor, TWO FREE ebooks to give away to two of my blog readers! It is a 30 page book, with 20 brand new layouts for girls and LOTS more tips and ideas and variations. And I've seen it, and it's good!!!

All you need to do to win this ebook is leave me a comment, and tell me something like, do you scrapbook? When do you scrapbook? Do you wish you actually did do some scrapbooking? what do you love/hate about scrapbooking? tell me whatever you want, just leave me a comment and I will pick two people to receive an ebook (through email, I will send you a special code to download).

You have up until and including Sept 1st to leave a comment. Click on the 'comments' tag at the end of the post. You don't have to have an 'account' or whatever to leave a comment, just sign in as an anonymous person, but leave your name in your comment.

See you soon!

SO many photos! (grab a cuppa)

2010-08-20T09:56:00.016+10:00

Still no scrapping on the home front, but lots of photos and a little project that I've been working on this week - scrap related!

So this has been what's been going on over the last week or so.

We went to my parents house for my Dad's birthday. They have a VERY excellent lane at the back of their house where my sisters and I grew up climbing trees and riding bikes. Only four house back on to the lane, so it's a great place for bike riding. I took these photos of the cousins hanging in the lane that we used to.

I already have that top photo printed, and am just waiting for my stupid printer so I can scrap it. Love the memories the photo will hold for the kids.

I've been painting away, and went on a still life fruit tangent which was very fun, in between the usual landscapes.

We've had an awesome lion suit for years in the cupboard, but it now has to be returned to it's rightful owner (my Aunty) who just lent it to us til her own grandchildren were big enough to wear it. I've been wanting to take photos of someone in it for a couple of years now but no one would ever put it on and perform for me on command, and when they did have it on, it was usually in the middle of us entertaining or something, and it wasn't the right time to break out the camera. So last week, Lucy suddenly and out of the blue, said "okay Mum, I'll put on that lion suit, you can take photos and you can even put it on your blog". So I went with it, and snapped my little lion in the front yard. Her complexion and brown eyes actually makes her the perfect lion cub.

We also played our last soccer game of the season, much to Amelia's devastation. Yes, yes, so she played with a slightly fractured wrist. Yes, yes, we are awful parents, but she MADE us let her play. She was in full negotiations with the doctor, about whether she could play - "how about just one half? and what about training, can I train??" She was SO mad that she needed a cast. Not happy Jan. (Cultural saying for non-aussies). She was in tears that this was the last game of the season - she loves it so much, and look at that grin - she literally plays the whole game with a grin on her face! I hope that other gorgeous boy's parents don't mind him being here. I have no idea who he is, and I'm not normally into putting strangers kids on the internet but I just loved the shot taken for the other end of the field and cropped/zoomed in, with both of them having such fun.

Last weekend, Marc was working away (speaking at a conference) and the rule is if you go away you take a child (except the rule doesn't apply to me, and it's actually fine for him to take a child, so don't worry, I'm not a completely nutty and demanding psycho wife!). Anyway, in the past he has taken one or both of the older girls, but this time it was Lucy's turn, and she was SO excited, to be Daddy's only special girl for the weekend. She had a ball, declaring it 'best, ever!'

We also had the public speaking this week, with both oldest girls placing in the finals - a first time for Amelia who was so nervous she was shaking, poor thing. Eldest was just loving the chance to show off to the crowd. No nerves there..

Here was Amelia before she went on, sitting next to the teacher.

I also this week decided I want to take more photos of families around here as a little fun thing to do on the side. Recently I took these of some lovely friends (Hi Carly, hope you don't mind me posting these!!!) and had so much fun I'd like to do more! There's nothing like capturing these moments for someone, who otherwise might not get that moment captured! So if you live south Sydney region, and have been thinking about getting some pics taken of you and your kids, email me (link under 'about me' section at the top of blog) and I'll send you some info. Don't worry, it's not at all scary!

And I did mention I have been working on a scrap related project this week, but I'll have to show you in full next week, cause it is for a birthday present for an extended family member and I don't want them to see it here, or hear about it here from nice friends who say, "oh I saw your present on...yada yada". So I will give you a sneak peek right now, and come back next week if you want to see more.

See you soon xxx

P.S. Just reminiscing about my Lucy, below. It is so fleeting, is it not?

no printer scrapping and some pics

2010-08-13T09:28:00.015+10:00

Hey, I made my Friday post actually arrive on Friday this time - not 18 hours late on the following day like last week.

I still haven't got my printer back from the shop - that reminds me I MUST call AGAIN today (only for the 20th time since the fiasco started) and see what's going on - so scrapbooking has been minimal.

I did do a layout for a scrapbooking memories assignment, but had to hand write the journaling, so if you get that magazine in a few months and see a strange handwritten layout and matching card by yours truly, you'll know why it's handwritten!!

So a few weeks ago, we were at a regional gallery thing, with a restaurant and park-like surrounds with my sisters and their children. All the kids were peering over a wall into a creek below and luckily the camera was on hand for this shot of all the cousins.

As I watched my girls running around the gardens of this gallery that day, I pondered 'where have my girly girls gone?' Over the last twelve months, the younger girls have taken their big sisters lead and slowly morphed into grungy, black, navy and grey clothing. No one will wear pink, or a dress of any sort - not even a denim skirt. One daughter came home from school recently and said in a horrified voice 'so and so bought a doll to school today - can you believe that!!'. Long gone are even the dolls. Yet strangely, they don't want to look like boys. We were at the shoe store just yesterday trying, in vain, to find some shoes. We went to the girl section and found fair amounts of pink, purple, bling and glitter, which cause fake vomit-acting all around, but then the boy section was too boyish and off limits too. I tell them there are only two sections available, in shoes and clothes - boys or girls - there are no in between sections called 'for those who are girls but don't want to dress like girls'. Needless to say, left the shoe shop empty handed.
So as I tried to recall just how and when this phenomenon took place, I decided take a photo of them as they were dressed that day. (What am I to do with all that pink cardstock I have??)

There's not much I can do about the grunge skater look going on here - I have to pick my battles, and it's a bit of a battle everyday as it is with the clothes and hair dramas of three daughters. I just need to accept and move on!

THEN, as weirdness would have it, with in days Elizabeth Dillow and Angie Lucas emailed me to ask if I could do a layout on girls not being stereotypically girls? So I did the following layout, and while I am less that thrilled with the handwritten journaling, I'll share it with you anyway - as I have nothing else! If you want to read the article in which this layout was featured it is over here at Ella Publishing.

To up date you on the book character dress up requirement at school this week, we ended up with a Hermione from Harry Potter, Minnie mouse - she refused to be a fairy, ballerina or princess like all the other little kindergarten girls, but when anyone suggested she was Mickey Mouse she firmly corrected them: "I'm Minnie" (see, not too girly, but definitely not boy) and Pippi longstocking. All were happy with their looks, even though two were only wearing skirts for the 'dressing-up' required!

And one more funny photo in case you need a giggle today. My sisters and I were looking through some old photos and found this one which sparked very strong memories of our childhood. In our house in the seventies, much of the furniture (ie our high chair, the dining room chairs etc) was painted bright orange! That's me, the pudgy baby in front of my now- vintage-and-surely-not-up-to-current-safety-standards high chair. You can't really tell here thanks to the large amount of um..fat.. but I am wearing orange bloomers over my nappy. Gotta love being a seventies baby!!

See you next week.

PS. Don't forget to leave a comment so that I know that someone, (anyone?) was here! Your comments always keep me wonderfully entertained! Thanks.

Friday scrapping on Saturday...

2010-08-07T10:04:00.007+10:00

ummm....so I didn't quite get to the ol' blog yesterday, and as I speak I have rushed home between game 1 and 2 of 3 soccer games, a ballet lesson and two birthday parties. You know how it is....
So here I am about 18 hours late. My big frustration this week is that my printer is in the shop being repaired (has been there for TWO weeks) and they are waiting on a part. Just because the printer is a million years old and the part isn't readily in stock...sigh....I love my little printer and I'm not quite ready to part with it for a new one. And my credit card balance isn't ready for that either. So I haven't scrapped much. It's frustrating cause I WANT to and am totally in the mood, and yes I know I can scrap without a computer, and I have done... but wasn't too thrilled with the page, so I am scared to try it again. My handwriting just doesn't work as well when there is a lot to say.
So I'll show you how I scrapped those house-y pictures that I took a month or so ago - I use a CZ template cause I couldn't think of another easy fast way of scrapping lots of pics - but this is it for now - I am officially all templated out.

And I also did this page about Amaris and how ballet is for us at the moment - the last page before my printer died.

Gotta rush back to game 2 of the soccers.

PS. Sorry to those who have emailed me with questions....I will back to you soon! I hope!