Olympic Warm-up

Haha! Did I have you fooled even just a bit with that title? It’s not about physical sport at all – although, perhaps I should really go for a walk today.

SketchBook is getting in the groove of all things Olympian and having a bit of a scrapping contest. All participants had to choose a country to represent and sign-up by today. Now, normally I don’t enter these things because A) there are waaaaay too many talented ladies out there for me to even “compete” and B) the whole time commitment thing – I usually can’t be sure I can meet the deadlines because ….yes, that’s right: “study first”. I so cannot wait til 22 October!

However, this contest is one where we are being encouraged to take part in as and when we can. Not too sure therefore if I can take part in every challenge, but, well, maybe some of them. So there was a warm up that needed to be in by midnight last night. I decided yesterday morning I might as well have a go and signed up as Luxembourg. Knowing the challenge was to do a layout in the colours of the chosen countries flag and only those colours, I wanted to be kind to myself and knew that I had plenty of red, white and blue to work with. At 7.30 I was hunting for a photo of myself to work with – yes, that was the other part of the challenge. There deliberately is not too many pics of me waiting to be used – but thanks to Kris who took some photos on teh fly while we were at scrapcamp a few months back, I found a couple.

So the flag I had to work with:

And no, I have not got this confused with Netherlands! Their flags are virtually identical, and while I lived over there, I always thought that the similarity was borne from the fact the Grand Duke was of the House of Orange – the same as the ruling house of Netherlands. Well, that turns out to be a coincidence. Interesting. The blue here is a different shade of blue to the Dutch flag and Luxembourg uses a ratio of 3:5 or 1:2, meaning their flag is longer than that of their Dutch cousins. The colours for the Luxembourg flag were derived from the country’s coat of arms, and the flag was first used during the Belgian revolt in 1830, although it was only in 1972 that they brought in legislation regulating their flag.

Anyway, that’s enough history for the moment. Here is the layout I did for the warm-up:

Actually, I’m glad to have done this challenge. As I said, it was at 7.30pm last night that I figured out what I was going to use and how. The layout was uploaded by about 10.30. All in all, a pretty quick layout! But the thing that pleases me most is how I managed to document the connection to my nana. I’ve enjoyed all sorts of crafts for a while now, and when I thought about it, it was my nana that introduced me to things like knitting and cross-stitch about 30 odd years ago. It was something I didn’t think of much back then, I got bored with it all and only restarted doing something crafty in late High School. Now, I can’t live with not doing something! And I’ve added a fair few other handcrafts into my repertoire! Who knew my nana was teaching me all those years ago something that would become so satisfying?

Bucket List

Yes, the title is from the movie of the same name. Hannah and Janine put up four prompts at Scrapbook Essentials for the month for our Book of Me albums. Some girls have done all four, but I have done just this page. The concept behind the Bucket List is pretty much the same as in the movie: to list five things we want to have done before we shuffle off our mortal coils.

It’s taken me pretty much the whole month to think abut this, because there are a lot of things on my mental To Do list. Some of them are as simple as ensuring I don’t eat all of my easter eggs in one go today.

The interesting thing that I noted as I was making my list, pretty much all of them involve travel of some kind. I wonder if this is because I’ve always had the travel bug, or if there is some other reason I’m not aware of. Some things that didn’t quite make the “Top 5″ are to see parts of New Zealand I haven’t been to; to go to Waitangi on Waitangi day; to visit family and friends overseas and spend time with them; to climb Mt Everest. Actually – that last one – that’s not on any list of mine at all! What is on my list:

1. Take Mr 6 (and of course Mr 4) back to Belgium as this was his birthplace. Show him around where we lived etc. And while we’re there, explore a bit more of the places where his Oma and Opa lived.
2. To go to Gallipoli on ANZAC Day.
3. To see and explore parts of Europe that I missed the first time around. Like Prague - where we were scheduled to go to for Hubby’s work but that conference got transferred because of their extremely severe flooding. Like the Alhambra – where we tried to visit but didn’t know that you had to be in before a certain time because visitor numbers are limited! Like Scotland, or other places in England. Like the whole rest of Italy. Like the rest of Spain. Like Greece.
4. To take the boys to Disney. In the US.
5. To Be Happy. Which actually hides a lot of things in a simple statement.

It’s all about ME!

Another BOM page (Book of Me). The prompts have started back up at Scrapbook Essentials and, although I have been quite good at adding to my album on my own, it’s good to have some prompts to get you started.

Having done 2 challenges for the forum in the past 24 hours I’m feeling pretty pleased. Never mind I had a whole month in which to get my BOM page done. I consider it an obligation to fulfil in my role as Queen of Procrastination.    I’m still hoping to get the fortnightly sketch done but as that deadline is tomorrow, it’s not looking so hot. Oh well – it’ll be the first one I think that I’ve missed for the year. And as I have the photos for it, I’m very likely to get the sketch itself done – just not for the deadline. So all is well in the pretty paper land of ScrappyDo.

Now, I’m off to drool catch up on Prison Break. And probably should think of doing a tidy in the lounge as I have Widdleshamrock and the teenage one over tomorrow evening for a spot relaxation and de-stressing. Bring it on!!

On Being 36

Seeing as I threw out a wee challenge to you to go do some BoM pages. And considering I wanted to do some creating for me. I thought I should really get on and do something. That and my head was hurting from having so many ideas!

I got all inspired by the All About Eve challenge #2: Age – so here is my take. Seeing as hubby as (possibly quite rightly….. ) put a spending cap on my supplies, I had to dig through some of my stash. That can only be a good thing, right?! I think I’ve managed to use supplies from about 3 of the Scrapbook Essentials monthly kits – I bet Meg never thought that would happen!!

My journalling is about how once upon a time I thought 26 was the magical age…. and how suddenly 10 years on, I’m actually more or less comfortable to be in my skin. Most days.

In other news… well, hardly news! Term 3 started today, and it was good to have some routine back. Routine? Yeah right!! An invite to for morning tea – couldn’t refuse. And lunch with an old friend… definitely. And the study…… exactly! Oh well, there’s always tomorrow. Seriously though, it was a good thing having lunch with the girlfriend. I may not have studied, but she did make me walk the vegetarian panini off. And how! Along Oriental Parade, then up the path to Roseneath. I’d forgotten how steep Mt Vic is!! My legs are definitely noticing they got used today. And it was superbly calm and warm in the sun. Grab the moment….

All About Me

How many of us out there are working on a Book of Me album? Or even pages? I reckon there’s a bunch of us who know we should, but for a million and one reasons never get around to it. I’m loving the fact that the fantabulous Janine provides us with some prompts at Scrapbook Essentials. So far I think I’ve only missed the one month – but have plans to catch it up.

While spending time waiting for some assignment answers to come to me, I checked out a few other places – and found this great site: All About Eve. It’s a new blog – designed specifically to get us moving about telling OUR stories. The ones that don’t get told because we’re always too busy telling everyone elses. They of course need to be told – but so do ours! Their first two prompts are great – very simple yet open to a whole range of interpretations. You could keep it simple and light – or delve deeper and get some insight to yourself…

So my plan is to get a bit selfish over the next couple of weeks – and do some me pages – get that crafty spark going again. The boys will ALWAYS have a zillion and one pictures that I want to scrap – but I want to make sure I get in some ME time.

So why don’t you join me and get some of your stories told. If you do, link back to me so I can check them out.

And another week bites the dust!

Wow – does your time go as quickly as mine? Or am I in some sped up universe?! I can hardly believe it is Friday today. Except as I look back through the week and we seem to have done all the stuff we do throughout the week – which confirms that yes, indeed, today is Friday!

Ok – so birthday. Seriously low-key. Hubby came home sick from work at lunch time and I was so not going to organise my own cake. Despite Mr 5′s howls of protest. Methinks the protesting on his part was more due to missing out on Birthday cake than being upset for his dear Mother. Hmmmmm. Empathy is something still in progress in that boy…..

Then Wednesday came – and I was laid low with a tummy bug. Thankfully nowhere near as bad as some people seem to have been struck, but icky nonetheless. Managed to struggle through a bit of study yesterday, catch up on Heroes and Prison Break and basically feel quite a lot better.

And that brings me to today. I haven’t been in the mood for doing more than flicking through mags. Borrowed one from a girlfriend that has an awesome decorated lunchbox to serve as a birthday card file. Guess what I’m going to be working on at some point! Am hoping to pop into a cyber crop running at Scrapbook Outlet tonight – first one I’ve done so we’ll see how that pans out. I have a few projects I need to get completed over the weekend, plus a couple of course assignments to work on. And let’s not mention the housework. No, seriously, we’re not talking about that OK?! I guess I’ll be a tad on the busy side.

Hubby is in a district solo competition this weekend. First time in a looooong time he has done something like that. He used to win medals and stuff – when he was younger – so it’s good to see him getting back into that. Will let you know how he gets on.

In the meantime, seeing as I have done not a lot over the week, and Karen asked so nicely, I’m going to link back to her blog regarding her challenge of scrapping yourself. Click here to go to a wonderfully eclectic place – you’ll learn a bit about all sorts of things! And if you want to see my efforts, the last one is in the last post: “Tea or Coffee” or go click on my BOM category in the right hand column to see the last few I’ve done.

And just to finish, as this weekend sees the final of the Super 14 being played out in Sth Africa, and my crusaders are out….. my pick to win is the Sharks. They did all the decent scoring last week – lets hope it doesn’t turn into a kicking game.

A few items from the ScrapCamp

I’m not going to add them all cos basically you don’t want to be bored, right?! But here is a few…. and I’ll add a couple more when I get some time.
First up is this cool Spidey page. Thanks to Sandra for the template…. isn’t it way cool?!

The Tea or Coffee is a layout for my BOM album. And believe it or not, it wasn’t a challenge. So getting a few pages going there. Gotta love that.

There seemed to be an emerging trend of circles using the Creative memories circle cutter. I didn’t have any photos that seemed to tell me they wanted circles but as I had the title in mind for this one, and I discovered somebody had brought their star tool, this was my take on that theme!

Lots of fiddly cutting also seemed to be a trend and I gave that a go too. Loved the way it came out. Will definitely be giving that a go more often. In fact, I bought some cool papers just so I could!

Exploding Box and other creations

It is my mum’s birthday next week so I thought I’d better get a move on and come up with something. After a bit of thinking, I decided on an Exploding Box. Now that sounds like fun does it not? A friend had made one for her mother for christmas. She left that one blank to allow her mum to put in pics of all of her grandkids. I was tempted to do that as well, but as my mum doesn’t see the boys so much, I thoght I’d leave just a few places to add the rest of the clan.

There are quite a few instructions out and about, but I used the ones on Anso’s blog. They are very clear and easy to follow and I can highly recommend this as a project as a gift to anyone.

I went along to a 12 hour crop yesterday. Not for the whole 12 hours – I thought I’d better be kind to hubby and the Mr’s and hang around for a bit! I did however get there for a good 4-5 hours at the end. A nice bunch of ladies – and some amazing work there. My box was the main project I had in mind to do there – and I’m glad I had a lot of time. It got started from scratch and completed pretty quickly.

I also had time to complete the SE April BOM challenge. There were several prompts, but I decided to scrap my quirks. I had it all done before I packed up – with the exception of the last quirk – I couldn’t remember what I’d said! Well, that’s been sorted out and added to the page now, but the pic is before that.

I’ve used Romani pp and Bazzil CS, Pebbles Inc stamps and MM paint plus Doodlebug paper frills. I quite like how it came out – although it isn’t quite the way my head pictured it would look. It’s quite bright isn’t it?!

Another thing I’ve taken to doing lately is trying to expand on the story of the page. Sometimes when I’ve finished a page, I’m looking at it and thinking, OK so why did that story seem important, or what extra detail happened that I think I want to tell. This page is an example. I’m pleased with it, it tells a little bit about me – but if someone is looking at it in a few years from now, I’m sure they’ll be thinking – “What the….”

So, I’ve started writing on the back of the page as well. Sometimes it’s a case of what happened next, or just an extra detail or two that I didn’t have room for on the front. But for this page, I felt I needed to explain how this page came to life. So, I noted that the quirks came from a blog tag, and that in turn was formed into a challenge for the BOM prompts. Extra details. Extra names.

I wonder if a generation or two from now, they’ll even have any idea of the time we spent on blogs and forums. Will they be terms that are still used?

PS – someone at the crop said to me last night, “I really like your style”. That stopped my brain in its tracks for a bit. I didn’t even know I had a style!

I’ll take the compliment anyways!!

BOM – Blue

I’m loving this layout…. but it’s not all my own doing. No – I’ve CASEd from Cathy Z in her second clean and simple book. But when I saw her page about the colour pink, I just knew I could do the same for my colour!

I had to laugh too because I knew I had the perfect pic – even the SIL’s 2nd tree (! … I know…. a 2nd tree?!) was kindly decorated in theme!! The pic is a few years old – so definitely things have changed…. namely more wrinkles and more grey hairs being covered!!

I was going to say too that I did the 3 layouts this week just using my stash and the kit items. But then I remembered that the flower on this page would make me a lyer….. it was one of my unexpected purchases from Friday night. Oh well. Almost only my stash!

Footnote: CASE = “Copy and Steal Everything”

There’s been a whole lot of scrappin’ going on!

I think I’ve managed to have the best week ever in terms of scrapping. I’ve managed to get not one, but TWO crop nights in PLUS the class I’m doing on Saturdays. I’m loving it! Drove the hubby round the twist – apparently me being out two nights this week meant he was unable to paint our bathroom………… “yes, Dear………… NOT!!!“ Men, Eh?!

Anyway, I have managed to complete a total of five, yes, FIVE layouts this week. Now that is going to be a record that remains unbeaten for some time. I will probably get around to posting them but as Flickr only seems to let you post one pic per post and I can only be bothered writing one post tonight, most will have to wait!

The one I am posting I got a lot of interesting feedback on when I finished at Friday night’s crop. I’m sure that most people spotting it thought I was round the twistseriously for scrapping my straightners, but when I explained the kind of album it was for, they all thought it was pretty cool. It was quite amazing to see that almost everyone at my table had never considered scrapping about themselves. Most particularly liked the kooky subject matter as they got that they could scrap about them without necessarily including a picture of themselves in the layout.

Although this subject might seem trivial, it is actually a little more meaningful to me. I don’t know why, but if I feel my hair is under control – at least to some degree – I feel more confident about the way I look and therefore present a more confident face to the world. If my hair is doing its own thing, I tend to feel way more self conscious than is proper. It all goes back to the fact I’m a pretty shy and insecure person. Make that a Reformed shy girl. I’m pretty sure most of my insecurities have been left back in my 20s, but for some reason, if my hair will not co-operate they do threaten a comeback. Now I am armed – resistence is futile!

So, anyways, how many of you out there are doing BOMs for yourselves. Don’t forget to tell some of your own stories – if you need any prompts, visit the forum at Scrapbook Essentials – there’s a bunch of ideas round there.

The other layouts I finished were some that I’ve had going round my head for a while: a heritage one with DH’s Oma and Opa, a very guilty little fellow caught stealing christmas treats a couple of years ago, one of Mr’s 5 and 3 being very cute together and then there was my class one today.

The rest of the week has gone by in a blur – my new lino is down and I’m loving it! My new stove is in and installed – and has been used! I came home today after the colour class to find out we had been invited to a Pot-luck St Pats dinner at friends up the road. So the very first thing cooked in the new oven was a peach sponge – with a layer of dark chocolate melts under the sponge. It was heavenly! My new fridge is also in – and semi filled. Need to get groceries. It all has me inspired to go and cook fantastic gourmet treats for me and the family. We’ll be seeing how long that urge lasts!

Oh – and I also got the cupcakes made – and they look great! Promise to share the pics in the next day or two.

The party is tomorrow and I’m sure prior to that hubby will have me on babysitting duties while he finishes painting the bathroom (yes, you just heard the sound of a whip being cracked!) and I must get some study in. So, catch you all next post and I hope you all have a great weekend!