And finally....

...here is my ballet fairy block, which is actually called "Gift Angel" in the instructions. This is one of the larger blocks in the quilt, so took me a little longer to complete :).


She also took a bit longer because there was a bit more stitching to do, too. The ballet slippers are satin stitched, and I actually was stitching those while I was waiting for Lydia to do her dance exams a couple of weeks back...appropriate, I thought.

So now I'm back to choosing fabrics and preparing a block for stitching...and you know that's my favourite bit :).

Onto cardmaking..

This weeks Copycatcard challenge is to create a Christmas card using the colour blue, and this is what I made...

The bits that look dark are actually silver, and I Cuttlebugged the white spots onto the paper...love this little machine :). Why not make a start on your Chrissy cards and give this challenge a go?

That's about it for today! Not much scrapping happening, due to constantly hungry children LOL, but if you want to see something funny...pop over to the Scrapsidaisy forum. The girls have challenged (bullied???) us into posting our very first LOs, and there are some absolute classics!

Have a great Tuesday...it's still raining here so our afternoon at the park is not looking good :(

Somebody save me....

...from myself, that is LOL.

Look what I found today...







And if that isn't bad enough...

...there's a whole shop dedicated to them! Oh my goodness.

I have known about Pandora bracelets for a while, but was under the mistaken impression that they only came in silver...and I am not really a silver person. But no....they also come in gold. Beautiful shiny gold, with gold charms too.

I tried one on, and it was beyond gorgeous. Then I spent the whole train ride home trying to justify spending those sorts of $$$ on a bracelet...without success. I even started wishing that it was my 40th birthday coming up so that I could buy one...but it isn't. Not even close.

So, I guess I will spend the rest of the afternoon fantasizing over the catalogue, and sighing very deeply.

LOL...any wish fairies out there???

I know I said enough already...

on the Christmas thing, but here's another LOL. I was packing away my Christmas papers etc, and came across the Teresa Collins "tis the season" diecuts I received a couple of weeks back (thank you postie xxxx) and couldn't resist using one.



Keeping things simple, as per usual :) This seems to be the direction my scrapping is heading at the moment...telling the story rather than "making it pretty"...and I'm good with that.

And where is the stitching lately, I hear you ask? Good question. I'm still working on the Christmas ballet fairy block, and am nearly done, but the scrapping keeps getting in the way! Sooo.....I thought I'd share a photo of the quilt that I made for Lydia.

I finished it a couple of weeks before I started this blog. It was made from a Hatched and Patched book called "An Angels Story"...I chose all the fabrics etc, and it took me WAAAY too long to make. I had a long break from stitching for our first couple of years in Perth, and the quilt didn't see the light of day for many long months, but I finally pulled it out and finished it this year. Lydia loves it...she says that having it on her bed makes her feel like I am cuddling her all night, and that she is wrapped in love....aaawwwww. Makes it all worthwhile, really.

Happy Friday everyone...

And not only is it Friday, but it's also the beginning of school holidays here in not-so-sunny Perth....YAY! Roll on lazy days, sleep-ins and time with the kids....LOVE holidays.

I have been busy creating another Christmas LO, and yes, I am almost over Christmas for the time being...how about you? LOL

This one features the last of my photos from 2003...

and yes, in real life, these people DO actually have names and faces :) but since I am no longer in contact with these girls, I thought I should hide their identities! Truth be told, it is probably less offensive to show their faces, as the photo DOES look sort of weird, but what do you do? LOL (and no laughing at my longish hair please hee hee).

More older products on this LO too...yay! Some paper from the MM Holiday range, also Basic Grey Fruitcake, Felt Fusion and Daisy D's rub-ons from a couple of years back. I have to say, again, it feels SOOOO good to be using some stuff from my stash :) I have no Christmas photos left from 2004, so am now up to 2005, but may leave these for another time, I think.

I also resisted the urge to sew on this LO...a rare thing these days. In response to a question I have had about sewing (hi Linda xxx) , i haven't found that it has damaged my sewing machine at all. My only tip is to make sure you keep a seperate needle for sewing on paper, as it tends to blunt them too much for re-use on fabric. Other than that....GO FOR IT! Sewing would have to be my all-time favourite scrapping technique. The thread can help to unify your project, without overwhelming it, and it also adds that little bit of detail that a LO sometimes needs.

Another tip while I think of it :) Don't sew over your adhesives, as this gums up your needle, and the sewing machine doesn't like it AT ALL. I usually lay my double sided tape a couple of centimetres away from where my stitching will go...just a little bit of tape to hold the paper, not your usual amount, as the stitches will do the holding for you.

Hope that helps :)

A roll on Christmas?

I am thinking any more than one LO on any given subject classifies as a "roll"...don't you think?

I was also thinking that I was up to 2004 with my Christmas photos...but alas. I turned these ones over, and they said "Christmas 2003", so I am not quite as "up-to-date" as I had anticipated...sigh.




I dug into my stash of Christmas stuff...this is stored seperately to my "normal" stuff...and grabbed some older Basic Grey paper (from the Blitzen range), some really ancient MM Christmas paper and a couple of older embellishments too, and created this page for the album. Lots of stitching on this one (again!!!) and two less Christmas photos in the pile...YAY!

I wonder how long this "roll" will last LOL.

Hope the sun is shining where you are :)
(it's pouring rain here)

Confessions of an addict...

It is no secret that I am addicted to patterned paper. I think, just maybe, that I have taken my addiction to a whole new level today. Case in point: the new Making Memories Fa La La collection. To be fair, I HAVE been waiting for this line since it's release in the USA. So when it went up for pre-order on the Scrapsidaisy site, I of course, ordered it all.

On the same day, as I was dropping some stuff into Tomorrows Memories, I saw it...Fa La la...peeking out of an as yet unpacked box, just begging for me to buy it. Well, I could hardly leave it there, could I? It WAS begging after all. So now I have two lots.

Did I mention that it is DIVINE? Check it out....

Now that I have my first lot in my hot little hands :) I set about finding some Christmas photos.

Now, my Christmas scrapping is one thing that I am a tad proud of. You see, I haven't scrapped a birthday LO for years...and years. But Christmas? Well, I have an album dedicated to Christmas, and as far as the whole "up-to-date" debate goes, my Christmas album is as good as it gets in my house. I am up to 2004, and with only 2 more photos left of that particular Christmas, I will be up to 2005...YAY!!!!! Not only that (LOL) but I have completed a couple of LOs of each year since 2005, so the chances of my Christmas actually getting "up-to-date" are pretty good....if, in fact, getting up-to-date is a good thing (but that is another issue all together :)) LOL

Anyhoo...above is the first of many :) LOs using Making Memories Fa La La. The die-cut circle is actually backed on a Hambly Transparency, and I've used the new MM trims and tiny alphas as well. Loving this range....if you need some, well, I know of two places you can get it ;)

And a yellow one...

To my delight (and also, I admit, a bit to my disgust :) ) I dug through my older papers this morning and found ...yep, yellow polka dot. So may I present the final house in the "little boxes" series...

the yellow one....


Again, out of focus...sorry about that!

All lined up together, they are extremely cute....except the yellow one is missing it's bow..oops, I added that later hee hee.

Best be off to tackle some housework, and deal with sick kids...and play with my yummy new goodies from Scrapsidaisy that came in the mail this morning...SEI Poppy!

Little boxes on the hillside...

When I was a little girl, we used to sing a song called "Little Boxes", which was about some "little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky"...do you know the one? (please say you do, because when I sang it to my hubby he looked at me like I was crazy :) ) Now in this song, there was "a pink one, and a green one, and a blue one, and a yellow one", and for some reason, when I saw these little house kits from Collections, I was reminded of the song.

Now, I've seen LOTS of these little houses made up, most of them done in the Collections papers and chipboards, and while I love the way they look, I knew that wasn't the direction I wanted to take with mine. So today, I set out to make my "little boxes".

There's a pink one....



And a green one....

And a blue one....

but no yellow one LOL! I can't find any yellow polka dot paper in my stash, so the yellow one will have to wait for another day! (sorry about the photo quality today...I couldn't seem to take a clear photo to save myself LOL).

And here they are all together....

Aaaawwwwww.....how cute! I think the "find" of the day would have to be the little white picket fence...perfect for the project! It was on a sheet of stickers that I bought from my local general store when we lived in NSW, back when I first started scrapping many years ago! I have almost thrown them away on numerous occasions, but now I'm so VERY glad I didn't. Goes to show that you shouldn't throw things away...you never know when they will come in handy!

Might go and see what other treasures lay in the bottom of that sticker drawer :)

Sunday Night Confession :)

I love kits...all kinds of kits, but especially those of the scrapbooking/cardmaking kind.

There are times when you have the time to create something, but the mojo isn't really flowing IYKWIM? That's when kits really come into their own. You can still make something beautiful, without having to think too hard, or rummage through your stash for just the right bits.

Today was just that sort of day, so I reached for one of the kits that I picked up at Tomorrows Memories, and started creating.

And voila! I have made ten beautiful Christmas cards! Nothing too difficult in these ones, but I love that I have actually started preparing for Christmas. (There were still a couple of these kits at the shop last time I looked, if you want to make some, too!)

Just goes to prove too, that sometimes it's not so much about coming up with some new and fantastic idea, but more the practical part that makes me happy :)

Hope you have done something today that makes you happy xx

A card or two..

Just a quick post before I head off to a party :)

I thought I had better make my hubby's friend Dan a card for his 21st birthday (that's where we are headed soon) because he does occasionally read this blog, and his Mum is also a keen scrapper I believe, so I didn't think I could get away with a store-bought card!

I was told (!!!) to make it green, black and white, and not girly...hopefully I have achieved this.






I also put my hand up this week to choose a theme for Copycatcards, so have gone with "Lavender and Lace". I figured you could make it old-worldish like I have, or do something a little funky with some of the more modern laces you can pick up.

I've embossed the background Making Memories journaling page with the Cuttlebug, which is a little hard to photograph well...sorry about that. I also finally broke out some of my Stampin' Up stamps which I have had sitting in my cupboard, unmounted, for a while...oops.

If you've never had a go at cardmaking...why not try it? It's a great way to use up some of your stash :) and I'd love to see what you come up with.

Places to go, people to see....gotta go xxxx

A rare double..

...and believe me, they will be even rarer after this one LOL! For what looks like a fairly simple LO, this one took me ages. The sketch is challenge number 18 over on the Scrapsidaisy forum, and I chose to make it a double so that I could include more photos...never again! What I dislike most about doubles? Cutting the embellishments in half...oh, and trying to make it look balanced...oh, and having to go and buy extra pink cardstock because I only had one sheet...LOL.

Get the idea? Never again.


What I DID like about this LO? That I used some older paper from my stash (Basic Grey Two Scoops) rather than the pile of new stuff sitting on my desk :) and some older embellishments too (and not from the same range either!) That is always a good feeling.

I'm setting the challenge for Copycatcards this week, so that will be next on my list of things to do...keep an eye out over on the Copycatcards blog :). I also hope to be doing a bit on my Christmas quilt, so hopefully will have a completed block to show you soon...the one I am working on has a bit more stitching than the others.

Have a great weekend..I am heading out to the country for a 21st birthday party (hi Dan!), and taxi-ing kids to birthday parties...ho hum! Hope yours is fantastic!

Telling the story...

To me, the hobby of scrapbooking is so much more than just pretty paper (as much as I LURVE pretty paper LOL). It's a way of sorting through my thoughts, and having some 'me time', and recording the milestones in my family's lives. It's also a way to tell the story, if you like, of me...who I am, where I've come from, and perhaps explain a little of why I am the way I am. This is why most pages that I create have journaling on them...to me, it's ALL about the story.

Some of my journaling goes pretty deep....which is why I have chosen to erase the words on the following page.

As much as I believe in writing the story, I am not into "putting it all out there", especially on a publicly accessible weblog. So, please forgive me for not sharing the words with you :)

The LO, on the other hand....well, I am liking the way this one turned out! Kraft cardstock again, and some handstitching around the hand cut heart. I saw this idea a few months back somewhere, and loved the way it looked. The paper is by Little Yellow Bicycle, a fairly new brand which I am loving! It didn't grab me at first, but once I had bought some...well, it is now a favourite! Can't wait for their new Christmas lines which were released at CHA.

A big thank you to everyone who has left me a comment here on the blog. It is always a highlight of my day to read them :) and I appreciate every single one of them. If you haven't....I would love to hear from you! Have a wonderful day xxx

This is FUNNY....

well, I think so anyway! Received this in an email, and thought I would share..


NEXT SURVIVOR SERIES

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks. Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes There is no fast food. Each man must take care of his 3 kids ; keep his assigned house clean , correct all homework , and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of 'pretend' bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week. Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives , and send cards out on time--no emailing . Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment , a dentist appointment and a haircut appointment .

He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care. He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function. Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house , planting flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done . The men must shave their legs , wear makeup daily , adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes , keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed .

During one of the six weeks , the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties. They must attend weekly school meetings , church , and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.

They will need to read a book to the kids each night and in the morning, feed them , dress them , brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name. Also the child's weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if... he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice. If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years eventually earning the right to be called Mother!

LOVE IT!!!!

Add an arrow...

How hard could it be?

This is this week's Copycatcard challenge.

Well, as it turns out, I found it pretty tricky indeed LOL! For a start I couldn't find any arrows that I wanted to use, and was considering cutting out my own...then found one in my chipboard drawer. I must have pulled out at least a dozen colour combinations before I settled on the October Afternoon paper, and then added the KI Lace cardstock behind it.



I don't usually like to use my yummy "thickers" alphas on cards, but it was getting late, and I was far too brain-dead to be creative late last night LOL, so they got used! And who IS 40? Who knows?!!?? Seemed like a good number at the time...or maybe I was feeling 40! Anyhoo.....card challenge completed! (I guess this is why they are called "challenges" hee hee)

Have a great Wednesday xxx

Searching for my inner Cathy Z...without success!

I have been a big fan of Cathy Zielske for almost as long as I've been scrapping. I love her simple designs, I love her philosophy on scrapbooking, I love her writing style, and I love her books. I used to think that if I could scrap like Cathy Z, I would be one very happy scrapbooker. In fact, my style used to be VERY simple, and I was happy with that.

Fast forward a few years, and things have changed! No longer am I satisfied with really simple, story + photo LOs. I think it's a result of teaching scrapbooking, which is more about technique and product, than story and photos IYKWIM? I also find it very difficult to resist the urge to stitch on every LO, which is NOT a feature of CZ's style (that I have noticed, anyway :))

To get to the point....I tried to keep this LO simple, really I did. But the urge to stitch, and distress, and stamp a little, got the better of me.

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but there's some stitching on there! (Have you ever tried taking a photo of a LO in the middle of a sunny day? Quite a tricky thing to do!)

Now, don't get me wrong here...I am very happy with the way I scrap at the moment...just can't believe how much my style has changed in the last little while. I guess that's what's great about this hobby, the way you evolve as a scrapper, and the changes that happen over time :) If you've read Cathy Z's latest book, you'll see how much HER style has changed from her first book, too :)

It's all good!

The "stuff" I have used on this LO is all available at Tomorrows Memories...check out the Urban Lily papers, they are yummy!

A layout amongst the chaos...

Scrapbooking can really be my sanity saver at times. Last week was absolute chaos in my house, but in between the comings and goings, I had a play with my Design Team goodies from Tomorrows Memories, and this is what I came up with...


This LO has lots of dimension which I have tried to capture in a photo...without a lot of success LOL...

I have machine stitched around the ledger paper and along the vine ribbon with some metallic silver thread...I wasn't sure how it would go in the sewing machine, but it handled the job! To be honest, the vine ribbon had me thrown for quite a while...had NO idea what I was going to do with it (thanks for that, Sonya ,LOL) but I am happy with the end result. The letters are hand cut from one of the Jenni Bowlin papers, then I added some sparkle with Kindyglitz (which I am not usually a big fan of, but...) and mounted the circle in metallic silver paper. All of this yummy stuff you can buy at Tomorrows Memories :)

I have another pack of DT goodies to play with, and a Copycatcard to make, so these will be my missions for tomorrow...and a couple of baskets of ironing LOL. Hate it when laundry gets in the way!

Proud Mummy Moments

I realise that I may be boring you all to death with trampolining news :) but I promise this will be my last post about it for a while (and to be quite honest, after all the extra training sessions over the last few weeks, I am pretty much over it myself LOL)
Riley competed in the WA State Championships for Trampolining today, and won the SILVER MEDAL! WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO! He and his partner also won Bronze in the Synchronized Trampolining event...an awesome result!


Now I have a confession to make. I didn't actually take these photos myself (much as I wish I did LOL)...they were taken by Michelle Shoosmith, Mum of said synchro partner and very talented photographer. She has recently started her own photography business...check it out at www.creativereflections.com.au.


Confession number 2...these photos were actually taken a while back at a tramp competition, not today! BUT...this is pretty much what he looked like today :)

I never take any photos of the actual competition...I am always just a little concerned that my flash might go off, which can be disastrous in the high-risk sport of tramp. The judges have also been known to deduct marks from the competitors scores for a flash going off, and I am usually pretty busy holding my breath and peeking from behind my fingers while he is competing anyway!

OK, now I have all the trampolining out of the way, we might be able to get back to some scrapping and stitching and such...here's hoping!

Cupcake City

WARNING:

If you are feeling hungry, don't look or read any further!


Today, my house looked a little bit like Cupcake City...there were cakes going on all over the place! If you know me well, you know that when I bake, I really bake. I can't ever seem to stop at one batch of cupcakes, or a single chocolate cake, or a slice. I usually just keep on baking until I run out of a vital ingredient, like flour or sugar or something. This tendency served me well today...I had LOTS of baking to do for the school fete tomorrow, and it didn't faze me one bit! I started on the cupcakes and cooked...oh, about 60 or so LOL.

Don't they look cute in their little boxes? The fete committee had each child decorate a cake box, and then sent it home with a note asking it to be returned, filled, on the day of the fete. I thought this was very clever!

Then I started on the big cakes...a yummy chocolate one, covered in grated chocolate, and a butter cake covered in orange icing and coconut....yummmmmmmmm. Still not "baked out", I made my kids favourite weet-bix slice as well. I was planning to make biscuits as well, but ran out of time. Oh well, maybe next time :)

Now all we have to do is pray for sunshine...the weather is looking VERY dodgy at the moment, and it is raining outside as I write this. I SO hope it clears up...there is so much organization that goes into a school fete. Keep your fingers crossed!

The things we do...

LOL! This is the money tree, or more technically, the tree of scratchies! They were kindly donated to our school fete, so we decided to make them a bit more visually appealing than just an envelope of scratchies...not sure if that has actually been achieved, though! And if the tree looks a bit lopsided, um....that's because it is! It proved to be a bit challenging to find the perfectly shaped branch, so I decided to go with the lopsided approach :)

I have spent the day cleaning house (blah!) and making raffle prizes and vouchers into some sort of displayable form...thank goodness for cardstock and stamps! This has proven to be a MUCH bigger job than I had originally envisaged, but I am soldiering on...could be a late night!

I am not finding much time for my hobbies lately, but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes...sigh. Tomorrow I will be pricing white elephant items, driving kids around, making large gold dollar signs (don't even ask!) and fitting in an extra tramp training in preparation for State Champs on Sunday,so it's not looking good for tomorrow either :(

Roll on next week......

Just a card...

and only a card to share today. I made this one for an old and very dear friend of mine who had bubby number 5 (!!!!) a while back...a precious little girl called Bella. I have had the card made for a while, but like many things, it has sat on my desk just waiting to be written on. I finally posted it yesterday, so she will be a little surprised to receive it this late after the event...better late than never, I guess!

This is probably my favourite card ever...don't ask me why, I just really like it! I used Making Memories Garden Party goodies-just some bits and pieces I had left from the range.

In other news...LOL...Tomorrows Memories now have a blog! You can check it out at www.tomorrowsmemorieswa.blogspot.com . They also have some new Design Team members...but you'll have to go to the blog for all the goss!

I HAVE been a bit creative today ( in between full on kidstuff for most of the day), but have yet to take a photo to share...I will try to remember for tomorrow! The kids school are having a fete this weekend, so there will be lots of creating, and baking, and organising happening here this week! Today it was a money tree...hee hee...must take that photo!

I finally found some time to scrap on Sunday afternoon (YAY!!) I've been wanting to document my darling little 4 year old's "chattiness" for a while...it's what fills my days, after all. I had to laugh, though... the whole time I was working on this LO, she was playing with her sister outside and I swear, she hardly took a breath! Boy, this girl can talk!

I have used some of the new Basic Grey Eva papers on this LO. They are soooooo beautiful...lots of pinks and maroons, and with two girls I am ALWAYS after pink paper LOL. You probably can't see on the photo, but I have done lots of machine stitching on this LO...around the edges of the pink, the white, and all up and down on the stamped swirls (underneath the buttons). I have raised the circle where the title is on magic mount as well, so there is quite a bit of texture going on!

But wait, there's more LOL. Yep, while hubby was playing Wii until the early hours, I stayed up and did the current challenge from the Scrapsidaisy blog (thanks Julieann!). Thought I would make it nice and bright to match Maisy Mouse. We've been Maisy fans for a while around here, so there was no way we were going to miss meeting her! I still can't believe how HUGE she was...and Merryn just loved her (as you can see by the photos).

I used a few scraps for this LO...I couldn't find any of the right colour green in my cardstock stash, so had to go searching. I really wanted red felt flowers, too, so had to hand cut my own. The red pattern is some Jenni Bowlin I had left over from something else as well...love it when I can use up some older stuff!

Got a million little things I have to get done, so I best be off to it! Have a great Monday xxx

Weekend? What weekend?

I don't know about anyone else, but for me, this weekend has just flown by! We have so much sporting stuff, and family stuff,and just stuff in general (LOL)going on, and it's suddenly Sunday afternoon.

There was to be NO sleep in for some of us this morning, as my son competed in the WA State Trampolining Competition, and we had to be there WAY too early for a Sunday morning. (I did leave hubby and the girls in bed, though). Today they competed on the "double mini", and my son won the Bronze medal! YAY! Here he is with his medal...so proud!

Next weekend he competes on the trampoline, and also in the synchronized trampoline events, so I guess we won't be sleeping in again next Sunday!

This weeks Copycatcard challenge is set...use a flower, ribbon and a brad on your card. Again, not too tricky...you really should have a go! We had a great response last week, and it is so inspiring to see all the cards in the slideshow. I decided to make a card for my friend who lost someone close to them recently, and used one of my favourite older papers from Basic Grey's Lilykate range. I hope she likes it.

While I was taking photos, I snapped one of the Fathers Day card that I made for my father-in-law that should have been posted...oooohhhh, about a week ago! (Sorry Pop!)

I picked up my Design Team pack from Tomorrows Memories a couple of days ago, and was SO excited to see some of the yummy new Jenny Bowlin Victoria papers...mmmmmmm...so that should inspire me to get some scrapping done! There are lots and lots of new goodies arriving at the shop all the time...it is so hard to resist buying one of everything!

Happy Fathers Day to all the wonderful Dads I know...hope you have been spoilt rotten!

It's Thursday already...

I really don't know where the time has gone this week! Well, no, technically that's not true...I have been busy busy with kidstuff this week, and haven't managed to do much scrapping in the last couple of days. In between drop-offs and pick-ups (and sports carnivals and tennis and tramp practice and play dates etc etc), I have done a little bit of stitching, and here are the results....


A very cute little naive Christmas tree, complete with bluebird sitting on the top (he's a little hard to see in the photo...sorry about that), and......

the plum puddings!!!!!

I adore this quilt block, and even though I don't actually like plum pudding to eat, nothing says "Christmas" to me much more than plum puddings (except maybe Christmas trees....oh, and presents...and even Santa ...ok, whatever!) The completion of these two blocks presents a little problem for me now....I don't have any more prepared blocks to stitch! So I may have to stay up late choosing fabrics for the next block and getting it all ready...one of my favourite bits!

The cards I made for the shop have been selling really well , so I have some more cardmaking to do, and the postie brought me some lovely new goodies to play with too, so I really don't know where to start! Ah, the problems of too many all-consuming hobbies :)

Hope your hobbies are keeping you happy too...have a great Friday xxx

The boy makes an appearance

Yesterday while buying papers that I don't need :) I picked up some of the new Dream Street Simply Stated range...a stunning collection with lots of beige, black and white. The red is a Creative Cafe diecut, which I hated cutting into ...they are just so beautiful...but sometimes you just have to do it! The "r" and circle rubon are long term residents of my stash...but not anymore!


And this is my darling son....and boy, does he hate this photo! I guess it will teach him to smile for the camera when I ask him, hey? LOL. He specifically requested that I put a LO of him here on the blog, so wish granted! Black, red and white is so striking, huh?

I created a couple more cards for the shop today, and have also nearly finished my plum puddings block for "Christmas Belles" which I will photograph as soon as I get the chance. It is so good to be stitching again!

Travel album and lots of cards!

Today I thought I would share some of the travel album that I completed recently, which is all about our big trip to Kalbarri and Coral Bay earlier this year. I already owned a beautiful
8.5 X 11 inch American Crafts cloth album, so decided to use it, and a whole lot of the Passport range by Making Memories. I kept it really simple, as a) the papers were quite busy, b) I had quite a lot of photos to add to it and and, c) I really wanted to get it finished!



These pages are actually double page spreads...it took a while to get used to scrapping in landscape! The one above is about Coral Bay and Ningaloo Reef.

And this one is various shots of our little family at Natures Window...the experience was totally awesome if you ever get a chance to do it.

And this is the front of the album. I won't bore you with the rest of the pages (there are many), but if you'd like to take a closer look, it is at Tomorrows Memories for a little visit :).

I have been very busy over the last couple of days making cards for the shop, which of course I forgot to take photos of. While I was there, buying more paper which I need like a hole in the head and restocking the card display, I ran into one of my favourite customers, who asked me to make a wedding card for her. I was so flattered! So Helen, if you are reading this, thank you for making my day :) and your card is ready!

I hope to get a little scrapbooking done tomorrow (all going to plan) so hopefully I will have some to share tomorrow xxx