They say bad luck runs in threes...

...but I stopped counting when the threes started multiplying! LOL

We've had a week of breakdowns around here... the computer, the dishwasher, the car, the pool, the alarm system...and the list goes on. In between organising repairs I've managed to do a bit of scrapping...

I broke my own rule, and re-scrapped this photo from Riley's album...actually removed it from the original page and all (my computer wasn't working, remember?) Riley's baby album is full of photos, but not a lot of detail and journaling. I'm hoping to work on that this year :)

These papers are Creative Imaginations Baby Boy Collection, available at Tomorrows Memories. I've hand cut the image from one of the papers and mounted it over my photo a little. The "My Little One" journal card in the top right is also from the collection...such a gorgeous baby boy range! TMs can also help you out with ribbon, AC Thickers and all the other bits and pieces I've used.

A little more of the Creative Imaginations goodness...

...more of the yummy paper, and another piece from the journal card sheet of paper. The journaling is about how Riley became Riley, not Samuel as originally planned. This is a photo that I have scrapped before too...only in colour, smaller, and with no journaling.

Again, all supplies are available from Tomorrows Memories, and you can check out these pages while you're there if you like ;)

I've been battling the book coverings too....

...ready for the kids' first day back on Wednesday. We'll all be a bit sad to see the end of the holidays...no more sleep-ins for us! I'm anticipating a very productive year, judging by the amount of stationery I've labelled in the last week :)

And finally, some baking...

I was lucky enough to receive some beautiful new cookbooks for Christmas, and am determined to put them to use this year. I started with some white chocolate and fresh blueberry muffins, and they were DIVINE! Must bake them again :)

Hope you are having a wonderful Monday

TTFN xxx

Today...in quote form.

Nothing else will ever make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, as motherhood.
-Elia Parsons

And really, that says it all...especially the tired bit :)

TTFN xxx

Santa...times two?

Another Christmas layout to share with you today...this time about a rather dodgy experience we had with our Santa photo last year :)

The Santa was bad enough all on his own (didn't talk to the kids much, general lack of personality and interest), but when we went to leave his room after our photo we accidentally went through a wrong door...and you guessed it! There was another Santa in the next room, complete with another Rudolph snoring by the fireplace, and another family having their Santa photo taken....now that is dodgy! I'm not sure my kids will ever recover :)

I've used a mix of supplies on this one...Echo Park Be Mine Black Diamonds, Cosmo Cricket Mitten Weather, Girls Paperie Tinsel and Twig, and even a bit of inking to finish it off. The alphas are by Basic Grey and Carolees Creations.

Thanks for visiting!

TTFN xxx

P.S. Camille over at Simplify (owner of my favourite red polkadot sofa and creator of Bliss fabrics) is having a fantastic giveaway over on her blog...a perfect opportunity to win a copy of her book and some other yummy goodies!

Simple...but not so quick :)

I have spent a lot of time today making this layout. I know...it looks simple. If I were to recreate it, it would take maybe 15 minutes flat...but when your paper mojo is not happening, well, these things take time :)


I really really wanted to use this gorgeous Mitten Weather range by Cosmo Cricket, but green, red and purple together? Hmmm...challenging :)

Can it be that Christmas was almost a month ago already? I'd better get moving on those Christmas photos I think! Hope my next page comes together faster than this one though LOL.

Have a great weekend...it's Friday!

TTFN xxx

The Mystery of Glimmer Glam

I admit it, the colours totally sucked me in....

...such a rich red, such a gorgeous turquoise. And the name? Glimmer Glam. It sounds lovely doesn't it? So I bought some :)

Last night I had the urge to make a page, and somewhere in the creating process it dawned on me that my turquoise (actually, it's called "mermaid") Glimmer Glam would match my project. Not long after that, I realised that I had absolutely no idea what to do with it! LOL! It doesn't come in a spray bottle like Glimmermist, and my computer was turned off, so I couldn't google some instructions....hmmmm...what to do?

So I found an eyedropper (from the baby panadol days) and made some globs of Glimmer Glam on my background paper...

...so far so good. Then I grabbed a paintbrush and painted some white chipboard letters with it...noice. The spots looked a bit plain, so I used the tip of a letter opener to make little sun shapes...it sorta matched the retro look of the sticker I was planning to use.

Then I got totally carried away and painted over the dress on the sticker! I can see how this stuff can get addictive :)

After leaving it overnight to dry, I ended up with this...

...which really is quite sparkly in real life! I must point out that this is a 9x9 layout, a size that I use for my little album where I put pages just about me :) and which I add to,on average, once a year :)

Paper is by Echo Park, sticker is Modern Homemaker by October Afternoon, and sparkles are Glimmer Glam Mermaid.

And yes...I started a new job today :)

TTFN xxx

P.S. I do usually use photos in my scrapbooking...you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise given my last few pages :)

Our miracle

My scrapbooking is all over the place :)

I don't scrap chronologically...but more as the mood hits me, or when my memory recalls some little detail that I think should be preserved on a scrapbook page.

The other day I picked up some very cute papers from the new baby boy range by Creative Imaginations at Tomorrows Memories . This sparked me to look back through some of Riley's older albums, and I realised that I had never recorded the story of his birth...oh for shame! I had left a "space" to write about it (on a very unattractive page, I might add LOL), but had never actually done it.

So late one night, when the house was quiet, I let myself just write. And write. And write :)


Today, I condensed the writing just a bit, and transferred it to a page...gruesome details and all :)

Paper and card by Creative Imaginations, bling by Prima, ribbons from my stash...and all available from Tomorrows Memories. The range is also available in baby girl colours, which is adorable.

I'm hoping to make a few more baby boy pages from this range...Riley's baby album badly needs more detail...and perhaps less photos cut into weird shapes :) We all had to start somewhere I guess LOL

TTFN xxx

2011- The Journal

I'm a list maker. I'm a scrapbooker with a story to tell. I'm a lover of polkadots and pretty things. I'm a collector of velvet ribbons and sweet fabric labels :)

What better way to combine all of these things than in a journal for 2011?

I usually have seperate places that I record things (like crafty to-do lists, and journaling for my scrapbooks, and such) but this year...I have just one book. And now that it has a pretty cover, the chances of me recording stuff in it is just that little bit better :)

Another tick off my side bar to-do list? That makes me happy!

Enjoy your Sunday

TTFN xxx

Just for the record...

...I can make (an almost-perfect) one of these rotten little stars that seem to give me grief every time I try LOL.

There must be a trick to matching them up I think...please share if you know one. For reasons previously discussed, they do have me spooked a bit. I know...they look easy...but don't be fooled!

So, for the record, that's Block 5 of Little Bluebirds completed...must do an update on my sidebar To-Do List.

A nice little something arrived in my letterbox today...

This is the pattern for the next Stitch-A-Long group project. I still haven't quite decided if I'm going to take part, but thought I'd check out the project before making a decision...it is very cute, and doesn't look like too much work involved (compared to last year, anyway). What do you think?

Have a great weekend

TTFN xxx

One charm pack...three ways!

After a lovely day of stitching, cuppa-ing and eating, I can finally show you what Linda, Tracey and I created with our 12 Days of Christmas charm square pack! We all started with the same charm squares and the same pattern (from the book Gift by Rosalie Quinlan), but the results were quite different.

This is Linda's tablerunner...

The green background came up beautifully. She hand quilted the pinwheels, and stipple quilted the background by machine...stunning!

Tracey went with a cream background...

...and I took this photo when she was almost finished sewing the binding on :) This is Tracey's first attempt at quilting...what a fantastic result! She hand quilted around the pinwheels, and it produced such a gorgeous puffiness...just divine!

As you already know, I machine quilted mine....

...and my background is white :) I also added red buttons to the pinwheel centres.

Here is the completed tablerunner...woohoooooo!

And a little close-up of the details.

Stitching this project together was such a great experience that we've decided to make it a more regular thing...creating is more fun when you do it with friends :)

TTFN xxx

This, that and something else!

From the girl who has been noted to say that she does not like to machine quilt....

...LOL! This tablerunner that I've been making with Kate Spain's 12 Days of Christmas fabric has me giddy with happiness. The colours are divine, the quilting is going splendidly (if I do say so myself!) and tomorrow should see me finished! Linda and Tracey are coming up to have a day of quilt binding tomorrow, and I can not wait to see how our tablerunners all look together! (you may remember us starting on this project together before Christmas...)

We've been doing a bit (ok, lot) of reorganisation around the house in the last few days, preparing for a makeover of Lydia's bedroom. Part of the deal was that Merryn would score Lydia's old desk...and that made her more excited than Lydia!


Merryn spent the afternoon drawing, colouring, reorganising and playing at her desk...happy as a pig in mud :) She has definitely made the desk her own!

On a more serious note...the images of the flooding in Queensland on TV today have been nothing short of horrific. So many people have been left homeless, having lost everything to the raging waters that are flooding over 75% of the state. Dig deep, fellow Aussies...they could really use some help right now.

TTFN xxx

Going public....

Each and every New Year since I can remember, I've made a crafting to-do list...do you make one too? It's a list of the projects that I'd like to finish in the New Year, with the idea that it will decrease my UFO pile, and give my crafting some direction....hahahaha! Last year, I crossed just one thing off my list, and had added several by the time the year ended...epic fail, as my teenager would say :)

This year, I'm going to try something a bit different...going public! I'm not sure if I'm game to tell you all that's on the list (that would scare you for sure!), but here's what I'm working on right now...


This is Little Bluebirds, a block of the month quilt by Janelle Wind. I started stitching this back in 2009, but lost my momentum sometime after that...why, you might ask?

I remember it clearly. I was up to Month 2 (out of 7 months in the entire quilt) and machine stitched some stars for the first border...and the points didn't quite match on some of them. I convinced myself that I could live with that, and continued stitching....bad move.

Turns out, I couldn't live with that at all, but rather than unpick and fix it, I put it aside and started working on the next Month. The stars kept haunting me though, and my attention soon turned to other projects. I should also add here, that there is LOTS (and lots!) of stitching in Little Bluebirds!

Anyhoo...here's where I'm at. I'm up to Month 5, and have finished about half of the stitching. I've unpicked Block 2, and am waiting for a day-without-distractions to make my near-to-perfect stars. My Block 6 is ready to trace, and the other half is ready to stitch. Add a touch of momentum, and before too long, I will be crossing an item off my 2011 crafting to-do list.

And wouldn't that be nice?

TTFN xxx

A card...and some very co-operative animals!

Yes...a card! My brother-in-law (not-so) recently married his true love in Fiji, and like the true procrastinator I am, I put off making the card...and then put it off some more until I completely forgot about it! Better late than never?

Traditional was the way to go...white with a touch of gold. I embossed the white background with the Cuttlebug, and used a gorgeous stamp from Stampin' Up.... then put it in an envelope and posted it as quickly as I could! LOL I really must work on building up the (virtually non-existent) card stash.

Today, in blistering heat, we headed to Perth Zoo for a visit. Look at the red faces on my little ones...

I was expecting the animals to mostly be sleeping in the shade, but they were surprisingly active...

...providing Lydia and I with lots of photo opportunities. The lions, the tigers, the giraffes, the lemurs, the elephants...they all came up close today. Love it when that happens :)

Hope you are enjoying the school holidays...and managing to keep cool!

TTFN xxx

The word...in action!

Momentum...it's going to be a little word that serves me well this year, I can tell :)

Already I'm thinking of things in a slightly different way...letting myself get on a roll, rather than procrastinating my way into frustration (as I tend to do sometimes LOL).

Here are the results of letting a little momentum happen...


A double LO using photos from Carols By Candlelight this year, using some scraps from my Everybody Loves Christmas pack by Echo Park. I used up most of the papers in my December Daily album, but couldn't bare to relegate the rest of them to my scrap bin :)

These glittery letters are from an almost-empty pack of Lil Davis chipboard I've had for years. I cut a "d" into an "a", and a "g" into an "o"...that's allowed, you know :)

The tree is cut from a sheet of Tinsel and Twig paper by The Girls Paperie. I stitched around the outside, and set eyelets for the decorations. I inked the edges of the LO to add a bit more definition.

Momentum then kicked into overdrive, and I made another LO...

Just a simple one to document the Baby Shower we held for Merryn's classroom teachers assistant (x2) and 2 of the Mums in the class, who are all expecting babies in the New Year! I used the same glittery alphas (again with a repurposed letter to fill in for the "o") because they were on my desk :) The paper is by Pebbles Inc, and I cut the "for 4" (that you can barely see in the photo) using my Slice.

I'm hoping to get a little momentum happening with my Little Bluebirds stitching in the next few days...it has taken me FAR too long to finish, and I'm not letting myself start anything new until it's done!

TTFN xxx

You have to be quick!

I hope you're sitting down....


...because I have actually scrapbooked! For a while there, I thought I had forgotten how :) but thanks to a new challenge over at Scrapsidaisy, I broke out the papers and made a page....wooohooooo!

I used a very old piece of Chatterbox paper called Foyer Dots (yay for using up some stash!), some Echo Park Sweet Summertime paper and stickers, and a few other bits and pieces :) The page is quite a bit brighter in real life, but I was so excited to finish a page that I took a photo immediately LOL.

Today is another hot one here in Perth, so we've had to postpone our bike ride until this afternoon...I might just have to make another page now that the air conditioner is on :)

TTFN xxx

2011

I love the first day of the year. It's like starting a new chapter of your life...the pages are blank, just waiting to be written. There's a whole year ahead of you, full of possiblity.

It's a day of reflection and resolutions. A day of clearing out the old, and bringing in the new.

A day for one little word. After much thought, I have settled on my one little word for this year...momentum. According to my little Oxford dictionary, it means impetus gained by movement.

In 2010, I started to make some changes in my life...good changes that have improved my emotional well-being in many ways. In 2011, I hope to continue these changes and allow them to gather some momentum, some speed, some power. I've also earmarked today to make changes to the way I feel physically...and as I begin to see the results of these changes, I will use momentum to help me keep going, to help me achieve my goals.

I'm excited to see where my little word will take me this year.

Happy New Year to you and yours...may 2011 be filled with possibilty and happiness.

TTFN xxx