Last Minute November Post!

Well, I thought I had better pull my finger out and get a couple of challenges that I did get done for this month up onto my blog and linked! In truth they have been sitting on my desk done for at least a couple of weeks waiting, and waiting and being ignored!

I have managed to do the White with One and Kraft it Up challenges for November, yay me! First of all here is the White with One - White + Greens + Chevron Pattern:

I had fun playing with my new Spellbinders hexagons in this one, and I even pulled out my Slice and cut the cute little car and title. I didn't realise how much green I had until I started looking!

This next one is the Kraft It Up challenge of Kraft + Minimalist/White Space:

A simple layout about DD1 academic achievement in her first year at high school. I got to use one of the cute little Purple Pumpkin badges that I own too!

Now this page was supposed to be for the October Scrap the Boys challenge of scrapping your boys favourite book/s. I, as usual at the moment, didn't get it up in time. I am not even sure if it was finished in time either! But, never the less, a page I still love!

On a proud parent note, we have DD1 who achieved academic honours for year 8 (at least 5 "A's" across her subjects), DD2 who has been elected Strings Captain for next year and DS who was accepted into the schools enhancement program as well as to do violin! Can't ask for much more than that from your kids can you??!!

On that note, thanks for dropping by!

Katie

Photo Catch-Up

Ok, so as is usual at this time of year, there is a lot going on, so I thought I would do a quick catch up of events via photos! So here goes, hopefully in chronological order!

So, first of all, we went on our annual camping trip with some of our school family friends. The group ended up consisting of around 24 kids all up. So you can imagine the kids had a great time hanging out with friends all weekend. This year saw us down at Pottsville, and the first photo shows where we found a safe and protected place to swim. Pretty isn't it?!

 

This week saw Liam receive an award on assembly - "Star of the Week", looks pretty pleased with himself doesn't he?!

Also this week our big girl received an Academic Honours award at the school's annual awards evening. To be given one of these you must have achieved at least 5 "A's" across your year 8 subjects and Niamh managed 6! Her subjects were - Science, Chinese, Spanish, Art Accelerate, Music Accelerate and Industrial Technology and Design (the old "manual arts" subject), not a bad effort and she was also so close to an A in maths as well. So as you can imagine we are pretty proud of our big girl. Funny to think her first awards night is the 59th annual event, and mine was the 32nd annual event, but it was called speech night back then!

Then we flowed into Halloween. Usually we don't go out of our way to do much, but it is becoming bigger and bigger here each year. The kids all did a "trick or treat" to the camping families while we were away, and I let the kids do the same in our street this year.

Well, I think that wraps things up for now. See you next time!

Crazy Times

Well, here we are, well into October now... where have the weeks been going, that is what I want to know!

Things have been pretty busy here, well for me they have! I have been photographing families, events, weddings and Kindy's. And I am still in the thick of it with another Kindy to shoot next week. Throw into that the fact that we have just finished another lot of school holidays and every day living and it is lucky I have time to scratch myself!

I have however, managed to do a little bit of scrapping. Because we all know that it is good for the soul! Call it my "de-stressor", my way to escape if only for a little while. There were quite a few layouts done "almost" in time for challenges for August and September, I do try but.....

Oh, and guess what? I have just become the owner of a new camera! Yay! I have upgraded to the 5Diii, only just arrived the other day so I am still playing, but so far I love it! The photos of the layouts below were taken using the new baby.

This first one is actually for a current challenge, can you believe it??!! It is for the October Scrap the Girls challenge: Flowers, Two different alphas, more than one photo and staples.

This one I think was for the September Scrap the Girls challenge of Action Photos. Love the new butterfly die that I got myself, it is a beauty!

I think this was Scrap the Boys for September, didn't get it up in time, but I loved the page! The challenge was to use their background as a starting point, hence all the mist/ink/stamping in the background. Also having fun with some new bits and pieces from Purple Pumpkin!

I don't think this was for anything in particular, but I enjoyed playing with masks, inks and stamping.

I think this started out as a sketch for Purple Pumpkin, maybe August, but it took on a life of its own. There are still Purple Pumpkin goodies there though! These are some of my favourite photos of Erin. The look on her face as she goes down the log ride is hilarious! A cross between sheer terror and pure fun!

Well, that will be all for now. I hope to get back with some photos from Binna Burra soon. Andrew and I were lucky enough to have a long weekend by ourselves there during the school holidays. We managed to do about 32 km's of bush walking in two days! So as you can imagine there are a few photos from our walks!Till then....

Some more challenges

Managed to get another couple of challenges done, yay me! I feel like I am catching up after having such a lull in scrapping. It is a nice feeling too. Well the challenges that I have done are for Scrap the Boys and Kraft it Up.

For Scrap the Boys the criteria was - "School Photos", lucky I have a few of those lying around!

Had fun playing with my new chevron mask, and some Tim Holtz stamps, and this Studio Calico mist was the perfect colour match!

For Kraft it Up the criteria, besides the obvious Kraft is - Tell the story of something you would like to do/ wish to do in the future and must include journaling.

My wish is to be able to see penguins in their own environment down in Antarctica. I would love to travel there and photograph and be amongst the emperor penguins, wouldn't that be amazing! Hmm might have to win the lotto for that one! Unless someone would like to sponsor me of course!

Here are another couple of photos from down the coast too. Our accommodation was right next door to the "Sling Shot" and "Vomitron" rides and at night when they were going they were all lit up like Christmas! Was funny to hear the screams coming from there too!

One night we travelled down to Burleigh for fish and chips and took the camera too to get a different view on Surfers. I didn't have the best lens for the job with me, but the result is still all right, I think.

Anyway, that's it for me today. Maybe I will try and do some more scrapping this weekend! Or perhaps a photo expedition?!

More Photos and stuff...

Back again! Thought I would share another couple of photos from our coast get away.

Erin and Liam having a "Zen" moment in the water, also providing proof that despite the cold they did actually go into the water!

Love seeing the penguins at seaworld! Hard to photograph them well in the water and through the glass when they move so fast though! I liked this view, he looked like he was swimming right at me!

Penguins again! This time just through the glass and not through glass and water! They are such lovely creatures! Could watch them for ages.

So yesterday was first day back at school, so what is any self respecting Mother to do with her time? scrap of course, and I did! Finished a page for the Scrap the Girls challenge blog. This months criteria was: Black + White + One other colour (just like the penguin above!)

Love this photo of Niamh, taken using my phone when we were out at South Bank earlier this year. This is the common scowl I get these days when I try to take a photo of her. I wonder if she will grow up and then start asking why there aren't many photos of her as an early teenager??!! I just noticed too, that my colour scheme does match the gorgeous king penguin in the photo above! Too funny!

Anyway, done for now. Catch you later!

Scrapping and Photos!

Well, school holidays have come and gone and I can't really say I have done a lot during this time, but hey, who cares, right??!! I did some layouts for June for White with One and Kraft It Up, but never got them loaded in time, but hey, sometimes it is just about doing something. So here I am today instead to load some photos from our little break at the Gold Coast, and a few pages that I have done, oh and proof that I have met the wonderful man himself... Tim!

You can't half tell he's done this before! He was there for at least an hour smiling and signing while we all waited for our turn to stand next to him and smile!

So here are the June layouts that I mentioned, but forgot to load....

Then, when I had five minutes or so to myself I did a couple of pages just for me! My thoughts have been to not buy any new paper and just pick a kit/manufacturer and just use up all that patterned paper that I have lying around. So much of it that I really do not need to buy anything new for ages (I am sure that will not stop me for long though!). So Simple Stories and Echo Park have been used here, with lots of great MFT dies! These however I do not have enough of, yet..... LOL!!!





And last of all, thought I would get in early this month, and have my White with One layout.

White + Polka Dots + Tape

So I have had great fun playing with some of the new seasonal distress inks, squeezed lemonade from the spring collection and pickled raspberries from the new summer range. Aren't the colours just gorgeous?! So I created my dots using the inks and a mask and the zigzag tape (D-lish Scraps) I thought just helped frame the photos perfectly. A simple page that came together quickly, but was a lot of fun to create!

Last of all, a couple of photos from the coast. The first was funny as a group of tourists were captivated by Erin and Liam digging and playing in the sand in the middle of winter! So of course, I took a photo of them taking a photo of my kids!

And this next one is one of the views we had from our 29th floor! Pretty hard to take really, but someone has to do it!

Well, that is all from me for now. Catch you another time!

What have I been up to??

Well, it has been over two months since I last posted, so you would hope a whole lot! But really in the scheme of things not a lot!

I did have a scrappy retreat weekend with my crafting girlfriends at the end of April, and I put together quite a few pages then, I even did a couple of April challenges, I just never got them photographed and up! Never mind, I am always happy for a start to my scrapping process. May seemed to come and go in a blur, not a lot of crafting happened (burn out from my weekend perhaps?) and now here we are in June.

I have had the most wonderful experience this month, however, that involves crafting and a special class! I got to craft with the wonderful and talented Tim Holtz! Yay for me!! I have to admit, his was the first and only class that I have ever taken, and now anything else will have a very very high bench mark to make it worth my while! Let me just say the Tim and Mario are such wonderfully laid back and down to earth people and the class was pure joy. The time just disappeared in a flash of laughing, inking, painting and creating. I do have some photos of me with Tim, but they are on a friends camera so I will have to wait to put those ones up, but I do have a few of my own from the day too.

So, obviously, this is the lovely Tim himself!

And this is my creation.

And these are the lovely ladies that I was attending with, all holding up our creations and the wonderful Mario so kindly holding up mine!

So apart from this here are a few layouts from my crafty retreat back in April, if some of them look vaguely like sketch challenges from April then they probably are, I can't remember which ones I did! Hmmm failing memory is that a bad sign??!!

There are quite a few more, but I might share some of them another time, don't want to overload you!

So, that's life at the moment. Thanks for stopping by!

Another Challenge

Well, I think I will have to mark March as a record scrapping month! I now have the March 15th Stuck?! sketch to add to my collection of challenge entries for this month, and I did another layout using some Purple Pumpkin goodies to throw up on their weekly Facebook comp. But I have a feeling things may slow down a little now, I am sure I cannot continue this pace! I do know I need to sit down and start putting some of these pages into albums though. My pile is getting rather large.... OK enough with the chit chat, here is the March 15th sketch from Stuck?!

And here is my take:

Finally playing around with some Basic Grey Picadilly line that has been in my stash for a little too long....

And this is my page for Purple Pumpkin:

This was one of those, thank goodness for cameras in phones moments when I saw this artwork of Liam's hanging up at school. It still makes me smile when I look at it too! So the Purple Pumpkin goodies on this one are the cute but large button, the ticket and the twine. This size button (the XL) is the newest size to the store.

Thanks for stopping by, until next time!

Stuck?! March 1st

Well, I have completed another challenge! This time I have gone with the March 1st sketch over at Stuck?!, and lucky for me they have just recently put up the second sketch for the month to give me something more to work on! So here is the sketch:

And here is my interpretation:

Finally getting around to playing with the gorgeous Random collection from Crate Paper (only been sitting there for a few months!!). I have also been playing around with all the cool photo effect apps that I can get for my tablet, loving being able to send them over the wi-fi to our printer too!

Well, that's all for now. Off to think about the next sketch....

March Challenges

Well, I am in early this month for my usual challenges! Yay me! I have done 5 challenges already! Yes you read correctly, I did say 5!

White With One - White + Kraft + Layering

Kraft It Up:
1 piece of Kraft cardstock (or patterned kraft)
2 photos of any size
3 word title
4 different patterned papers
5 different embellishments

OK, numbers 1 - 4 are pretty obvious, but thought I would point out the 5 embellishments! Die-cut butterfly, twine, button, photo corner and border sticker, there, that was easy!

Scrap the Boys - "Life is Good" for title + red + handwritten journaling

Scrap the Girls - Celebrations

Purple Pumpkin - sketch

So there you have it, 5 challenges down, now to find some more!! Either that or I have done my dash for a while lol..... Although, I have just got some more Purple Pumpkin goodies and they are doing a weekly kind of challenge on Facebook......

See Ya!