Volcanoes and earthquakes!

A bit of excitement happening in our household today...a volcanic eruption, no less!

Riley is a bit of a budding scientist, and was very excited when Santa delivered a Volcano Kit. He spent yesterday afternoon painting the shell in readiness for the big eruption...today was all about chemical mixing (don't you just love the goggles?) The whole family was gathered to witness the first eruption...

and even though I haven't captured it well in photos, it was quite spectacular!

And the earthquake? Well, the photo really speaks for itself, don't you think?

Yep, that would be me "working out" on the Wii fit! LOL. I have to say, I am really enjoying (or should that be embracing?) this new type of exercise, and the kids love it more than me! I have to stand in line for my turn, and then they do more exercises alongside me. Loving "step plus" the most so far, followed closely by the ski jump exercise...oh, and hula hooping too. Hopefully I will be saying goodbye to the oversized butt fairly soon :)

I've also been giving some thought to how embrace is going to affect my scrapbooking, and I have come up with a few strategies.

First of all, I am planning to embrace scraplifting! I read so many magazines, online sites etc and see so many ideas that I love, and yet when I sit down to create, I get stumped for a LO idea. I have no problem with the photos and story and colour combos, but really struggle sometimes with how I'm going to lay it all out. So instead of that pulling me up (or making me waste hours on end) I am planning to start with a scraplift, and let my LO evolve from there!

So last night, I challenged myself to totally scraplift a LO from my new issue of Scrapbook Trends... and this is what I ended up with...

The original LO is by Paula Gilarde. I changed the tree (hers is strips of paper with buttons) and used some MM chipboard buttons instead. I've also changed colours, number of photos, and added some extra embellishments etc, but the LO is very similar...and it wasn't so hard! (Paper by Basic Grey, thickers alphas, and other embellishments cut with the Slice)

I also want to embrace the supplies that I already own. Far too often, I reach for the newest papers, or the latest embellishments, without even thinking of the masses of scrapping stuff I have in the cupboard(s)...

So with this in mind, I delved into the stash to make this LO about Merryn's Christmas dress. The green diecut paper is a sheet of K & Co my sister gave me in Brisbane in May (thanks Leisa...I finally used it!)and the present embellishment is cut from the dress fabric! I backed it with Jac paper, cut around it, and adhered with foam tape....and of course, it matches perfectly ;) There is lots of machine stitching which you can't see well on the photo, and I've threaded embroidery cotton through the edge of the diecut. Who says you need "new" stuff to create a LO that you love?

TTFN xxx