Woooooosh!

That would be the sound of life going past at an alarming rate.

The last two weeks have been crazy.

• There are playgroup Christmas Craft activities to plan and prepare. Last week we did calendars with handprints. I gave them a choice of poems to put on them this is my favourite:

This isn't just a butterfly
As you can plainly see
I made it with my hand
Which is a part of me.
It comes with lots of love
just so you can recall
exactly how my fingers looked
when I was very small.

And today we made Christmas trees. The mums and dads had to help a bit but they all seemed pleased with the results.

Next week I will have come up with a tree decoration using some really funky felt shapes I ordered, or maybe a card would be cool. And we have gift boxes to decorate with glitter and other such messy stuff.

• Rally crafts and end of year events to organise. We just had our prizegiving service/ shared dinner yesterday - which went really well but took a lot of preparing. I had to be organised and order stuff like badges ahead of time so that they could be posted to me. And getting cups/trophies engraved takes a bit of planning. And then working out who earned what badge when I lost the bit of paper with those details on.... And then there was the small matter of making sure everyone had a uniform to wear - totally forgot about my own kids uniform which was still sitting in the wash pile!

Only one more rally night this year. We have a bouncy castle booked and I have a kit to make little peg angels to hang on the Christmas Tree. I suppose a special supper would also be nice. Oh and I used photos from the recent Rally camp in Stacey Julian's finishing line class at CC so I had to have that album finished for the parents to see yesterday. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph it - so there's no pretty picture for you to see.

• RE (religious education) lessons continue each week and take a bit of preparation time too. Starting on the Christmas lessons this week - more opportunity for Christmas crafts - planning for this takes a bit of thought as I have 35 kids and only 30 mins.
  

• And then there was the crazy idea of teaching the ladies group from Church a scrapbooking related project at Kiwiscraps. They made one of these:

That was on Friday night. It was fun but a bit different teaching people I know - they made sarcastic comments if I was too bossy! Lots of them bought extra supplies so they could make another one at home - some Christmas present planning going on I think. We are getting together tomorrow night too for a fancy dinner and have to do the Christmas prezzie swap thing - so I'm making a quick gift for that.


This week seems a little less busy. Jessi has her ballet concert on the weekend. Actually she has to do three concerts over the weekend and practices leading up to it.

Alexander has a couple of birthday parties to attend.

Rebekah has a school trip tomorrow and I'm parent helping - gotta bring my togs apparently!

Oh and I heard that I need to post off the Christmas presents to England this week if they are to get there in time. I found the perfect present for Grace last week when I was out shopping with Mum. I have Angela's present planned but not made and no idea what to get Tim.

OK gotta make the family some dinner before I go out to weight watchers. It will be interesting to see what affect a busy week has on weightloss. I've been too busy to exercise lots but also too busy to eat too much...

Well, the Santa parade went well. Rebekah sat and waved and behaved like royalty. I snuck out of Nic's class to take some photos at the start of the parade - so there are now loads of photos to remember the occasion by.

Crafting Connection was lots of fun. Staying in the hotel was so convenient and luxurious - not so sure about that glass wall in the bathroom - what were they thinking?

Thanks for being a great room mate Ali.

The classes were fun - even the 'chaos 101' class that I TA'd for Nic. It's amazing how much mess can be made when a bunch of ladies are scrapping as fast as they can. I'll have to take pics of the projects I did and give them a post of their own.

It was great to meet up with on-line friends and chat in real life.

It's taken me all week to recover - not sure why I'm so tired but I was kinda greatful for Louise's challenge deadline to help me unpack my scrapping bag and get scrapping again. This one is a lift from a layout by Dallas. Among other things I lifted, I really wanted to use a one word title like she had. So I spent a good part of today looking for a word that was a suitable length, described Jessi and used each letter only once. (My pack of alphas only had one of each letter in it.)


Simple - but it works I think.

Best of luck to those of you who applied for the new SE design team. The waiting part is always the hardest.

Exciting Stuff

Crafting Connection starts today. I'm staying in at the hotel, doing lots of classes and a little bit of helping out. Should be fun!

In other exciting news - Rebekah just won for herself a ride on Santa's float at the Wellington Christmas Parade this Sunday, and a new bed and $200 to spend at Farmers on bedding! How'd she win?

Well ... for some strange reason we were watching Studio Two (after school kids t.v) and they had a comp. running where the kids had to create a Christmas Stocking and send it in. The timing was tight - had to be posted to Auckland and all, but I figured it was worth a shot. So with Lara's gumboot entry to Up2Scrap last year in mind, I gave Rebekah an old Spiderman gumboot, some black gesso paint and a few Christmassy (not too precious) scrapbooking supplies. She came up with a pretty respectable boot so I wrapped it up and posted it off. (without taking a photo!)

So I got a phone call yesterday while I was driving home from Levin to make sure Rebekah was watching t.v cause they were announcing the winners and then today we got a courier package with the beautiful dress she has to wear in the parade.

Pretty exciting stuff for an 8 year old!


The gallery is up at Scrapbook Essentials. This one was the most fun to do. I'm thankful for lots of things but these were my top 10 the other night when I was working on this.


Enjoy your weekends - I plan to!

The gallery goes up today....

... so there's not much point in sneak peeks.

But I like these two so I thought I'd share them.


This one won't be in the gallery straight away, there are a couple of finishing things I want to do first.


Keep your eye on the Scrapbook Essentials gallery for the rest.

And another Grace Layout!

This one is for Louise's sketch challenge. I think you can still see the sketch in there somewhere - the papers kinda had a mind of their own. The little gold butterflies came in one of my birthday raks - thanks Julie. And the ribbon with the zigzag stitch - part of my b.day present from England - only fitting that it should be used on a layout of Grace. Oh and the papers - Urban Lily - 50cents a sheet on clearance at Spotlight.

Up 2 Scrap

Well, I've seen it with my own eyes - it's out and I'm really in it!

So I thought I'd share here too. Matching card and tag - guess which SE kit I had on my table at the time!


My off the page thingy. I started with a NZ recipe book but didn't like the way it was working out. And then Rebekah came home with her Kapa Haka uniform to be washed and the idea grew from there.

It was fun taking photos of the kids performing. Love the way Joseph posed for his Moko photo. And check out those mini poi - white plastic bags from KiwiScraps come in useful for lots of things!


And the layout.

I took the mag to weight watchers last night to show them this. The weird thing is that when I flicked through the mag at the shop - I saw the 'fat' pic of me and thought 'how embarrassing I'm in the mag' but then I realised that's not what I look like anymore. I look like the other photo and I'm not embarrassed about that.

Well, I'm madly working on my layouts for the November SE kit. I'm not sure if it's cause the papers are so beautiful, or cause I know it's my last kit - but I don't want to cut them up! Gotta get over that so I can make beautiful layouts instead.

Three more sleeps till Crafting Connection ....

So Excited!

I couldn't believe my eyes when I checked in at NZ Dare's today and found my blue and green layout there, along with my name saying I'd won a Tarisota kit!

For the longest time I have watched the kits come and go at Tarisota. I have heard others rave about their beautifulness. I have followed the Tarisota design team girls like a silent groupy - they would be one of my biggest sources of inspiration. I have dreamed. I have planned. Yet still have not had the pleasure of seeing one of these kits arrive at my door. Lets just say ... I'm so excited to have won!

And tomorrow I turn 34 - I wonder what surprises I'll find tomorrow. (Lot's of giggles and whispers behind closed doors at bedtime tonight.)

Two colours only.

I can't believe it's been a whole week since I last updated this thing. Not sure why the time goes faster at this time of year ... I guess life is kinda busy.

I've had a great scrapping day today. I got almost 2hrs without Jessi while she played at a friends, then they came here and played together - nicely, so I kept on scrapping!

So first up is my NZ Dare's layout. Use two colours only. I've used green and blue - yay for blue ink pads which help cover any white in the papers. That's my beautiful wee niece Grace walking in the English countryside somewhere far away. It's actually really hard doing layouts of other peoples kids - cos I never know what to journal about. If I was more organised I could have asked Angela to e-mail me some journaling. It's a pity when it's 2pm here it's 2am over there!

The next layout also happens to be about Grace. I have no idea what that thing is she's standing beside - I just really liked the wall behind her - the colour, the wiggly pipes, the writing.

This one is for Louise's challenge on her blog. She said no patterned paper! Well ... you could make your own - just not use any real stuff. Now, me using less than three patterned papers on a layout doesn't happen often. So I got busy and made a variety of papers to use.

• The first is the base cardstock one - I dipped a piece of string in black paint and dropped it on the card. (Thanks kindy for teaching me that one!) Then I found a bead necklace lying on the floor and tried dipping that too! I made a mask by punching swirls in some paper and used my pink paint dabber to make the swirls. I added words to follow the lines and then just a touch of kindy glitz to make it sparkle.
• The blue is just paint wiped on with a sponge.
• The dark pink - I used sandpaper to rub over the paper while it was sitting on my script stamp - so the white bits are the pattern of the stamp.
• The light pink has silver paint and silver stitching in wiggly lines.

Thanks for the challenge Louise - it was fun to think outside the 'patterned paper box' for a change.