Pieces of me

yeah, I know.....

I've been a total slack-ass blogger, but I'm going to make up for it with this post. If you make it to the end of it, you are my hero. No doubt.

Spring has sprung. O.k., not officially, but it's all going on here what with the rain and the sunny days. Grass is growing, birds are singing, and I have ventured back out onto the verandah. Yeah, life is good :)

Our daffodils are in full swing. Yep, I know, I talk about these every year, but I luuuuurrrve them. Right now I can take a walk around the house and the daffodil "paddock" (years ago this paddock was leased out to daffodil growers & we have what was left behind - I am slowly, very slowly, bringing the bulbs up to the house garden - a couple of wheelbarrows/varieties a year!!), and pick a whole heap of different ones - still have about 8 different varieities to come through. Here's a collage of pics I took this morning.

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Our new calves - 1 is rosie's (the brown one), the other 2 are foster calves that rosie is also feeding (yeah, she loves that! Isn't it every mother's dream to be feeding triplets at one time?)

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Some layouts........

This is one of my favourite quotes - I've used it on a few layouts over the years. Just pulled out the pen & paint brush for this one. Nice and quick :)

You've gotta love colour-blocking - it's totally my fall-back when I don't know what else to do with a layout & the photos are a bit hard to work with. These are photos of the girls in John's CFA uniform after he'd come back from a weekend fighting the big fires in Victoria last summer.

Love these photos of Tigger.

It's funny how the creative process works. This layout originally started with me scribbling some rough circles onto the cardstock - I was going to draw or paint them on, use a portrait pic of erin & it was to be a single page l/o. Then I started playing with freehand paper circles & pulled out these pics of the cat. Loved how it looked, so I turned it into a 2 pager.

  I distressed the edges of the paper stripes, check out this pic - 1 half is distressed, the other not, you might have to click on the pic to see the larger image & be able to tell the difference. Love the texture it adds.

I went back and forth on putting a title on it, but I love the simplicity of it as is.

So, anyway, when I was distressing the edges, I'm thinking - this makes it look like rag strips, which, of course, I had to give a go........

This one isn't finished yet - needs the title & journalling, but I wanted to show it next to the one above.

Love this pic of erin - it's from a year or  two ago.

Have some more to share, but this post is getting out of hand, so later in the week :))

hx

what a week!

So, so busy this week. I've had a project 1/2 done on my desk that has been driving me crazy because I want to finish it and can only get a few minutes at a time on it. It's something different for me. The kids were packing kits for the S&C sydney show, and we ended up with a whole heap of little cardboard tubes, so I'm working on a project with these. How's that for obscure????!!!! Hoping to get it done this weekend.

One of the things keeping me so busy is the new Fiskars Ambassador Blog lots of stuff planned to get everyone involved, so if you have a chance, go check it out :))

I am still doing gym - 3x a week and super-proud of myself. LOL. My run time is down to 14.40, can't seem to crack the 14.30 mark - maybe on Monday! I have increased a couple of my weights, though I am a little worried that I enjoy this so much, I'm beginning to have Linda Hamilton Terminator 2 flashbacks when I see myself in the mirror "pumping the iron", then, I take a reality check and see what everyone else is lifting, Arnie, I am not.

Have a good weekend, y'all!

Hx

friday

o.k., I can't hold it in any longer. I'm going to burst. I just have to tell someone, so let me whisper it in your ear.....I'm having an affair.......!!! yep, it's true.....with......Murcott Mandarins. These are just soooooooo good at the moment, I'm having to buy them 3 times a week to keep up with the demand. Did I get you all excited? Well, you should be - go out and try some now :)

Still doing the gym thing! I have been going for a whole 3 weeks now, I am nothing, if not a woman of committment!!! LOL! I have been working on beating my run/walk time on the treadmill each time I go. Chipped off another 5 seconds - I know that doesn't sound impressive, but on Wednesday, I knocked off 30 seconds off the time and was just about at my limit, so any little bit I got off today, I was definitely happy :)

I love the layouts that just pop into my head, all complete, and come together effortlessly when I put them down on paper. Many of these that have happened like this are my all-time faves.These ideas usually hit me at bedtime and, if I'm lucky, I remember them the next morning and sketch them in my book. This layout is one of these bedtime ideas. I know, I know, not everyone can have the same sort of rich fantasy world that's have going on in my head, I bet you John's just thinks everyone should have a wife who thinks scrapbook layouts at bedtime.

Is there anything more classic than a red/white/black combo? Love it. The colours were probably inspired by erin's headband, which is red with white dots, but maybe not. I have been having a real red-fest of late, love it.

Now working on another idea that popped full-blown into my head on the way home from the gym - a great excuse to put aside the CFA photos that I was struggling with.

So, so, so, so glad it's Friday. Pizza night. Love it!

Oh, oh, and I've found a new author - Sarah McCarty. Don't read her unless you want to leap on your husband and rip his clothes off as soon as he walks in the door :)

Have a great weekend, y'all :)

Hx

tuesday.....

One of my goals for this year is to make inroads into my piles of unused product. I have this whole mentality of not wanting to cut a piece of paper unless it's for the right thing. Yeah, I know, it only costs a dollar or two, but it's a mindset. But seriously, I have to tell myself - it's not like they're going to increase in value the longer I keep hold of them. To that end, I used some BG papers (a whole 5 sheets!!) on my latest project, which, incidentally, also made a huge dent on the pile of photos I had printed up a couple of weeks ago. I made a book (yes, another one!!!) for our family holiday to Merimbula last year.

Just for a bit of fun, I've created 4 layers on the cover to make it look like ocean waves.

Each "cover" after the first has a different quote that I like about the ocean.

O.k., so I don't surf, but I LOVED this quote and had to include it, it reads: "surfing is an embrace of the ocean. To ride the slope of a wave is not to conquer but to communicate - a form of worship" Bob Krauss. I knew it was too big to fit on the inside pages with pics of John & Alana surfing, so I whacked it on here.

I really had to think about the layout of the inside pages, as when the book is opened out, 3 pages are on view at any one time, so they had to seague into each other.

Here's a couple of the inisde pages, with some of my favorite photos from the holiday. The album is a very basic layout, mostly photos, a small amount of hand-drawing. The flowers that I used throughout the album are all from one sheet of paper - I think I should get an award for maximising the use of one sheet of 12x12 - man did I have to stretch that baby out to be able to get a bit of it on every page. Very creative hiding behind photos, punching out centres, etc, etc. I've put the rest of the photos into the Merimbula 2006 album if you want to check it out.

Hx

if I ever pick up a green or red pencil again....

slap me! Go on, go ahead! You know you want to! After a week of colouring in things green and red, I am OVER IT! Soooo, I finished my Christmas album that I started almost 2 years ago, so some of the layouts were done back then, though the majority have been done in the last week. I think one of the reasons I tend to get bored with these sort of projects, is that I like my albums to have a consistent theme, but it becomes mind-numbing doing the same thing over and over again. Yeah, and let's not even get started on the holly!!!

Here's the cover

I might have posted this on here last year. Can't remember, frankly, too lazy to check. Anyway, everything was glued on and then the whole lot waxed. Hmmmm.......wax. Love that stuff, leaves a great, smooth surface & it smells yummy too!

The white stuff is dribbled paint straight from the tube, you need a nice thick stuff like Jo Sonja, or matisse to do this. The "merry" has been painted, then h2o's painted over the top to make them shimmery.

Title says a collection of memories from 2005, but on my "pudding" page (which I missed photographing - next time I pull out my camera I'll get it) has photos from about 15 years ago on it.

The first page, love these pics of goldie & erin. This was another year of the aborted christmas card photo. Every year I tell myself I'm going to do a christmas card using a photo of the kids/family, but I've only made it happen once (about 6 years ago!)

This was one of the layouts that I had done when I first started the album, I added a bit of line work & colouring in to it to help blend with the newer pages, but basically it's as is.

some more inside pages........

my favorite page is probably the pudding page which I forgot to photograph, I love it because it has the actual recipe my mum pulled out of an old women's weekly mag over 40 years ago and that she has made every year since. Also have some old shillings, etc attached to the page that mum used to put in the puddings, guv'.

All I can say is so glad it's done and now I can move onto some layouts & this humungous pile of photos I have waiting to be scrapped :)) hx