cycles

Things seem to go in cycles for me. I feel myself entering back into a scrapbooking cycle. I don't think it will look exactly like it did the last time I cycled through, but I'm looking forward to embracing whatever it does look like this time :)

I just found a site and got all excited :) I like her style!

Paislee Press

memory keeping

Every time I do another page for our photo books (which is hardly ever - as you can see by this finished one I'm only up to april 2009!) I wish I had kept better records (aka blog entries) on what we were up to...and I alternate between wishing I'd taken more photos and wishing I'd taken less. I'm pretty determined to get 2009 finished asap. I've got May all ready and waiting and hopefully in about a month I can get it printed...I'd like to think it'd be quicker but there's gotta be some report writing in there somewhere :(

Malakai has officially stopped his afternoon sleep as of last week :( I'm so devastated. I had hoped to keep that going til preschool!! But it seemed it was starting to affect his night sleep so the decision was made. He's currently as tall as Josh was when he was 4, with still three more months til Malakai turns 4 himself. He's already expressed that he wants Josh at his preschool, 'Because I love him so much'. awwwww!! I love that :)So I recently had my staff retreat, which was unlike any I'd been to before. In the week following, our Principal announced he would be resigning at the end of 2011. He's been there for 12 years, I've never had a different principal!! So it's interesting times at work. I'd still love to do just one day instead of 2, although lately I've been working 3 days a week due to various reasons. I find that's WAY too much and will try not to do it if I can avoid it from now on.
I bought a couple of DVD's recently ;) bit of a splurge I guess. I'm still waiting for Larkrise to Candleford to arrive, but I've got this one already and just waiting for a chance to watch it. I did watch it when it aired on TV, and I really liked it so I'm hoping it's as good as I remember lol!

I'm also re-reading The Ministry of Motherhood with this bookclub. It's quite amazing that I'm up to date so far (with the book reading side of things at least!) I don't remember much of it from when I read it before, so I'm underlining a lot more this time. Writing and underlining in my books is really new to me and I still feel kinda weird doing it, but I've noticed I get a lot more out of it that way.

getting photobooks done...so SLOWLY...

I'm currently working on the photobooks that are replacing my old system of printing all my photo's and putting them in regular albums. I'm only 'catching up' 2009 and going on from there, but that's turning out to be a bigger job than I thought lol. Here are some of the pages I've done so far...I've also done some for 2010. Altho I've deliberately left them very simple, it seems to still take a lot longer than I'd like to get them done...I'm sticking to repeating the patterned papers throughout the book for continuity (that's what other people say when they do that and it sounds good to me!)opening page

1st page for January

journalling page for january

1st page for february

2nd page for february

journalling page for february

ok...so I'm hyperventilating over what I just found (when I'm supposed to be making banana choc chip muffins while the babies sleep...who aren't really babies anymore but I'm in denial...)

~Absolutely gorgeous baby girl papers that I am coveting for Ariella's baby album~

getting some scrapbooking done...

...both paper and digital. All of Ariella at the moment, trying to get a move on with her first year album. Just enjoying it while it lasts ;)


the cover of her album

Jan pic

Feb pic


March pic

a digi layout for one of my empty 8x8 albums...I've always enjoyed buying albums a little too much! They're all really simple layouts, maybe I'll add more later, maybe I won't. I do intend to find some rubons/stickers to put the month on each of her first 12 month photo's, it's just a matter of finding the right thing lol. And so far I've hand written the journalling on ALL the layouts for her album...I hope I don't look back in a few years and regret that!

Batemans Bay holiday

I'm on another scrapping binge. Mainly because of the reactions of my kids when they look through their scrapbooks - it's addictive ;)

I put together this layout tonight...there are SO MANY photo's from this very short overnight holiday, so there'll be at least 2 digi layouts before I'm done :)

I'm also working on Ariella's first year album - very simple compared to Josh's first year album but the most important thing is that it's getting done lol.

oh.my.goodness

what an awesome week :) starting off with a public holiday (Aaron home!!!) and a really nice morning at craft on wednesday with both kids who were just amazingly great and let me even get some scrapping done...which leads me to one of the best things this week, getting organised to start teaching scrapbooking classes again :) !!!!!

I went into a local scrap shop about a month ago, and as I was leaving the owner asked if I would be interested in teaching some classes for her. I was a bit reluctant cause I really haven't been seriously scrapbooking for ages...maybe 2yrs or so? But I thought it'd be such a great way to get back into it so I emailed her after talking to Aaron about it and said I'd LOVE to!

So I've started off with a class that comes from an Aussie Scrap Source kit...a nice easy way to get back into it. I'm halfway thru the 4 pages in the kit and am loving doing it again. It's hard not to feel overwhelmed with all that I feel I 'should catch up on', but I'm trying to simplify my approach to scrapbooking in general, starting with NOT allowing myself to feel pressured and bogged down with scrapping every birthday/major event etc.

My awesome week continued with a catch up with someone I haven't seen in ages :) and paint and play with Malakai this morning. He is just blooming at the moment, his gorgeous personality is really coming out and I'm enjoying him heaps. He uses the word 'awesome' all the time...I might ask him if he wants to do something and he'll say, 'that'd be awesome'...I wonder where he picked that up from?!

Ella is doing her little cowgirl walk everywhere now and is pretty awesome herself. The only thing I'm unimpressed with her about is her ability to suss out when I'm sneaking naughty food and insist that I share :( the boys were fairly oblivious to my frequent sneaks of chocolate behind the pantry door, but Ella is WAY more clued into that sort of thing! RATS! But it makes for some special times too. She loves to wear shoes now, says 'cuggle' and 'share' but doesn't say no much, yet...her favourite naughty thing to do is go up the stairs and get into the cupboards, particularly the onion/potato cupboard and the basket of paints (thankfully she hasn't opened them yet!).

Well, the kids are sleeping, I'm off to help out at school in an hour so I'm going to keep scrapbooking while I can. Hope everyone else had a nice week too ;)

new inspiration

Shop and Crop has a new blog...I'm all for any inspiration I can get my hands on :) plus they have a giveaway going and I'm always up for that! lol

I'm working on a mini album of our trip to Sydney for my 30th. I'm using a Basic Grey dark chocolate album and having a great time. I even made my own little pocket thingys to slip pics into. Will share when it's finished (hopefully this week!).

another layout

During the quiet of the afternoon (such a blessing) I spent some time staying on top of the filing etc in the study...and then couldn't resist putting this very simple LO together:

I had the photo's and the papers all set aside from about 3 yrs ago and when I reorganised some scrap stuff this past week (looking for those 1st yr birthday photos lol!) I found them and couldn't decide whether I just wouldn't bother doing the LO since it'd been so long, or just 'get around to it someday...'. I'm glad I did it tho :) I feel like I'm getting on a bit of a roll with scrapping again which is VERY nice!

Josh went to Questacon today with his friend Matthew to celebrate Matthew's 4th birthday. I went to a friend's birthday celebration also. It was a lovely day of socialising :)

hello friday :)

do you feel like time is flying? can't believe it's april already. can't believe ariella is 3 months old already. can't believe I have to go back to work at the end of this month :( can't believe Shane Long is going to be preaching in my church this weekend...his father was my first pastor from when I came to God in Canada back in 1996. He has since passed away unfortunately. I am good friends with Shane's brother Rick and his wife Laura (who I still have to call Laura Jo - I can't help it!) and SOOOO very happy for them at the arrival of baby Talia :) I still only really remember Shane as a teenager so it's all a bit weird lol. I'm looking forward to hearing him preach on sunday tho!


She's so clever - holding her rattle and even trying to chew it! And she LOVES to poke her tongue out...and smile - A LOT. It's awesome :)

I found some cute paper at spotlight this week (while trying...in vain...to find the 'perfect' curtain fabric for Ariella's blinds) and layered some of the birds/butterflies to make another frame for her room:




Thinking of putting a family pic in the 3rd frame...

Kai has been really sick this week. Puked up all over himself and the floor at spotlight (one of 2 trips out there this week lol) very high temp etc. Seems to be coming good today tho thankfully.

Josh and Aaron had an AWESOME time away fishing for FIVE days. I missed them terribly :( Josh caught his first fish and I'll post up his moment of glory as soon as i get the pic off grandad's camera.

I'm off to have a massage today thanks to my wonderful friend Lisa :) my birthday present from last year and I'm finally using it.

Have an awesome day everyone ;)

IT'S FINALLY FINISHED!!!

Josh is nearly 4 and a half (on the 20th) and only last night I finished his 1st year album. I'm so excited...it's kinda been niggling in the back of my mind for about...well probably 3.5yrs lol. These are the last two 2 pages layouts I did while Aaron and Josh were away in order to get it finished:


the first one is kinda just a mass of some really cute photo's and enlargements I had lying around. I'm not sure what I originally had planned for these pages but this is simply what it ended up being. The words up the left side are

Psalm 127:3 Children are a heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.



I had 'misplaced' all the photo's from Josh's first birthday except for the large picture of his Pooh Bear cake (that Aaron and I made :) so I spent a HUGE chunk of time (wasted the time, actually) searching in vain everywhere for those photo's. I was getting desperate, thinking I'd just lost them :(

But thankfully Mum had them stashed away on a disk and all was not lost! I think you should be able to click on the pic and see them better, they're of all the people who came to his party opening the present they gave him together. I think they're such great photo's simply because we have this visual image of Josh opening his gifts from the special people that gave them to him :)


(cute pic of Benjy hey Heather!)

So...Josh has 40 pages in his 1st year scrapbook. Unfortunately Kai and Ella will not have that many. They'll just have 20, cause not only is that more realistic to get finished before they're 18, it'll make the scrapbook easier to hold and store

FUN!

Elisha recently celebrated her 'blogiversary', and gave out a special gift - a storyboard PSD file. This made me VERY happy :) and tonight I finally got time to do something very simple with it. I simply added photo's and changed the wording. Oh and changed the background colour.




FUN!!! Thank you Elisha!

more playing around

a little creativity always helps :)

not happy with the patterned paper in the middle (wonder why?!) but since I'm still in the process of building up my digital 'stash' I didn't have a lot of choice. Any suggestions on something else I could do with that middle bit are VERY welcome, the more I look at it the more I don't like it!! lol

The first layout of Ariella

I had a lot of fun playing with photoshop making this layout. It felt like it took no time at all. I plan to print it out A4 size, adhere it to cardstock and then embellish it before I put it in her album (which i still have to get...).

fun fun!

finally :o) getting things done...

I signed up for 2 online classes last month (not realising that they would run at the same time) and didn't get around to doing either of them! Thankfully with online classes it doesn't matter, so I went and did the Christmas one last night, and then this one is on it's way to completion as of today :)

doesn't it end up being a gorgeous little binder? I love the design they used



Unfortunately the class involves a lot of cutting and hole punching :( which is going to take me a while - but I figure once it's done it'll be a worthwhile investment in terms of getting stories recorded and for future use on scrap pages. (Plus I have a little spare time on my hands at the moment waiting for this baby to arrive, and this sort of thing probably wouldn't get done for AGES after she's born anyway so I'm taking advantage of the time i have - and trying not to get frustrated that she's still not here!)

yep I've pretty much lost the plot...

Well, today has been productive in a sense. No baby yet, but plenty of other stuff going on :)

I did my 2007 Christmas album pages :)

I used a free download from Creating Keepsakes so it made it relatively easy (altho I'm still learning with this whole digi scrapbooking thing). It uses colours I wouldn't necessarily use which I think is a good thing, get me out of my comfort zone so to speak. Anyhow the bottom line is, my Christmas scrapbooking for 2007 is DONE.
Feels good!

Cover

pages 1 & 2



pages 3 & 4



pages 5 & 6



page 7

So yeah, there's pretty much my first major attempt at digital scrapbooking. I'm looking forward to doing lots more since that took only a couple of hours.

I also finished Josh's curtains today. Took forever cause I'm just plain slow with everything I'm doing at the moment. But it's another thing to cross off my 'to do' list - giving me a huge feeling of satisfaction!! lol

*SQUEAL*!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!

I found some MAJOR inspiration...too much in fact, my brain is overloaded and I haven't even started on my invites yet :(

I found it here - I have always loved her stuff generally, but never checked out the website before. LOVE IT!

especially this: I want to make this for the baby's room :)

...and aren't these gorgeous??

am feeling inspired for the boys rooms too:

they have downloadable templates for these little darlings:

and these always come in handy:

Ok, so I'm off to actually get some work done! enjoy :)

inspiration and illness

Well, I've been to the scrapbooking shop and found some gorgeous Kaisercraft stuff...the brads and paper from the 'On the Dot' range, the 'Little Man' range and just the brads from the 'Blushed' range cause there was no paper left :(

I'm very much into trying to get matching stuff these days (like mini 'kits') to save time. I really should just buy more kits online ;)

Oh i also got these chipboard stickers from Basic Grey...i've been eyeing them off for a while, thinking I could use the larger ones on josh's bedroom walls. I'm really excited about using them but just need to get some more things to go with them...!

All the boys in the house are really sick today...poor Aaron just recovered from something last week and now has the full-on flu with muscle aches/chills/fever/weakness etc. Everyone has a fever actually. Poor Malakai is so sad cause he feels rotten...crying about everything. Josh is currently distracted by David Attenborough's 'The Life of Mammals'. That kid really loves documentaries! I figure when ur sick it's ok to watch a little more tv than normal :) He's hardly eaten all day, which is a sure indication that all is not well...wouldn't even eat a lolly last night when he came crying into our room saying his ear was sore...yes, Aaron offered him a jube at 11.30pm! and no, that's NOT our normal nutritional practises lol :)

So...after all the boys are in bed (only 1/2hr to go!) I'm going to *hopefully* get busy and creative...lol, that's if I don't just feel like flaking out myself!

I know a lot of families are battling sickness at the moment, our prayers are with you.

Oh yeah...I'M SO EXCITED THAT IT'S OFFICIALLY SPRING TODAY!!!!!!!!! Be gone winter :p

Happy Spring all :)

National Zoo and Aquarium (post is a little longer than I'd planned...)

We took the boys to the National Zoo and Aquarium on tuesday for Malakai's birthday. It was such a gorgeous day weather-wise and we had a wonderful time. The only thing we would've changed was actually charging the camera batteries before we went :( these are the only photo's we got (besides a few other dud ones) before the battery went dead. Normally we'd also have mum's camera, but she was in Sydney lol! It was one of those 'learning' experiences that we hope never happens again :(

The boys and I at the monkey enclosure

Daddy holding Malakai up to see the giant crayfish thingy

We thought the zoo was great. But the aquarium was what particularly got the boys attention. Both of them were just nuts with excitement. It was really cute. So now we're planning a trip to the big aquarium in Sydney :)

Aaron started his new job on thursday :) it's going well altho lots of new stuff to learn of course. He's moved from a section where there was only about 2 guys to a section where there's only about 2 women. lol, that's nice for a change cause the disability sector was also predominantly women.

Praise the Lord we all seem to be better now :) Kai and I are still coughing but it's the tail end of it thankfully.

All my friends around here are seriously getting crafty. Makes me feel a bit slack cause I haven't done a thing lately! I used to be into sewing but I'm not that good, so I just kinda let that die a natural death (altho I've still got quite a bit of really nice fabric that I am going to sew into something 'one day'!). Then I got into cross-stitching/embroidery/needlework etc but my style has changed, and I'm not really into that anymore. I have this HUGE cross-stitch that is practically finished but I haven't bothered with the last bits cause I know I don't really want to put it on the wall around here...very disheartening. Maybe one day I'll change my mind, and it'll still be there waiting lol! I made a quilt once, and I love it, but it's still not my thing. One friend (hi Ruth) is particularly into cake decorating and I remember loving that in high school (wasn't half bad at it either ;) but it's not really the thing for me right now either.

I guess that leaves me with my passion for scrapbooking :) and I'm more than happy with that. So why do I still look at the end product of what other people are doing and think that I should be doing it too? (Cause it all looks really awesome everyone!) Or perhaps because I really haven't done a lot of scrapbooking lately and there's not a lot of 'end product' of my own around here I feel a bit slack? Or there's a silly mind-set in me that thinks I should be doing something cause lots of other people are?...wanting to be a part of the 'group'...

The bottom line? I need to get some scrapbooking done! lol, and just enjoy it cause it's what I love doing. Maybe that's what it is that draws me to what others are doing...the fact that they are enjoying whatever 'thing' they do.

I think that's it.

Well then, I'm off to 'enjoy'...might start with a trip to the scrapbooking shop ;)

squeal!!!!

I am SO EXCITED about what Ali Edwards is doing on her blog with hybrid/digital scrapbooking! I need to get me some of those overlays. Ahhhh!!! I can just see some clean, simple scrap pages coming with minimal time and fuss....I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!