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