Scrappy Kea

1. Do you decorate your house this time of year? if so… how? We put up our Christmas tree early in December. I am currently working on an advent calendar using canvasses like one in the last Up2Scrap magazine. The few Christmas cards I get are hung on strings along the wall. This year there is a Christmas Spirit competition in the Wakatipu where our council have given out packs of card, glitter and christmas ideas for people to decorate the front of their houses - I'm giving that a go with a 'kiwi christmas' theme - no snow! 2. Have you ever been in a decoration competition? Entering one this year - not planning on winning but it's a fun project to work on with the children. 3. How much is too much? For me anything with bright lights (I like white ones) & moving plastic santas turn me right off. 4. How do you celebrate this time of year? As a Christian I celebrate Jesus' birth as the Son of God in the most humblest of contexts. We make it a focus on family a...

Blog challenge: If I had a magic want 5 things I would use it for: pay my visa & loans so I was starting the year in credit automatically gain budgeting skills so I don't buy too much scrapping stuff Never ending scrap supplies access to a free babysitter so I can go out easily great eating and exercise habits (or a body that can eat, eat, eat and not put on weight)

Mum wanted something to keep her papers together for a meeting and I suggested I make her a clipboard for this purpose. She agreed and this is what I came up with. I'm now doing some for Christmas presents and my daughter is doing one for her school teacher. This one was an 14 size but the others I'm doing are A5 - much cuter but perhaps less practical? Have decided I need to make more of my Christmas presents this year - to pass on the value of giving of each other to my children and to save some money where I can. These are great for using left overs of my scrap stuff and for trying out some different ideas that could be used in layouts.

I'm off to Dunners tomorrow for a Playcentre training weekend where I'm sitting in on some courses in order to then facilitate the workshops next year. I have a whole weekend away without my children and am staying with Mum & Dad tomorrow night then my sister & brother inlaw on Saturday night. Guess what - I'm not going to take any scrapping stuff with me! I'll be taking my camera and notebook though and see what inspiration I get from mums pile of house mags and from grey old Dunedin. I've been playing around with ideas for the For Keeps A-Zalbum today and its starting to take some sort of shape. Found www.aussiescrapsource.com to be fantastic as they have a competition section where a design team has all their ideas for pages A-I on the site (have seen some of these in For Keeps) - great inspiration. I've also been organising an eight hour scrap in the Wakatipu and there seems to be a lot of interest - I'm worried that there aren't enough ...

http://www.eforum.co.nz/viewtopic.php?t=3727 1. Name one productive thing you accomplished this past weekend. Planned my Christmas presents .2. Name two things that you look forward to doing. drinking coffee & scrapbooking with friends 3. Name three things that gross you out. vomit, dead things & spitting 4. Name four things that you normally do on a daily basis. check emails, check discussion forums, drink coffee, pray, do something scrap related 5. Name five things that you own that you think you could get rid of and not miss. nothing but everything - (this is really soppy but true) as long as we have each other and the basics - warmth, shelter, food and drink I could do without everything though I probably wouldn't be happy about it -imagine life with no cameras, photos or scrap supplies!

Kia Ora It feels like Auckland in Arrowtown today! Really zaps my energy. Mum still has Ethan (should be bringing him back tomorrow). It's been a busy week but don't really have anything concrete to show for it which is really frustrating. I picked up my 141 photos on Wednesday and now they are taunting me - I have so many I don't know where to start! I met with some friends on Wednesday night who are stampers. It was great as I've never really explored stamps much and lately I've been wanting to check them out (an insert in a magazine all about stamping sparked this). We looked at magazines and talked about colours for a layout before deciding that we needed to set ourselves a project. We each left with a slide mount, an embossed stamp image, some shim and some copper tape and a skeleton leaf as well as an A5 black card and an A5 brown card. Our challenge is to create a card using these and anything else we want before we meet again. (will post it when I...

Now I have all three scrapped & on the wall.

Katya's canvas.  First attempt at scrap canvas.

Alicia's canvas (would be mean just to publish Eth's)

This is my wee man.  Scrap Canvas.  Used some paper I found in Mosgiel, wooden star shapes from Destination Art in Arrowtown, Bazzill Navy cardstock.  All mod podged (matte) but with some white mixed for around the photo on the bazzill and on the stars - just so the picture of Ethan stands out clear and crisp from the canvas!

So this blogging thing is really addictive (almost as addictive as scrapping but without the real sense of achievement when a layout is complete). Planted sunflower seeds with children at Sunday School this morning. They loved the hands on activity and had a fantastic knowledge of plants and how they grow (aged 3-5). They all had big smiles when they went to go home with their flower pots just awaiting their TLC so a plant can grow. I completed a scrapcanvas for my son last night (he's still with mum in Dunners) as I've had one for each of the girls up for a while but had to try to get a 'study' photo of him that I could do up too and finally did. I'm quite pleased with it. Will upload it later. I want to do some scrapbooking, in fact am itching to do some but need to wait for my photos to arrive as I'm completely out. I'm just finishing off a mini album for my MIL - using some older copies of photos she gave me & putting them in a concertina album ...

The photo I mentioned yesterday - finally figured out how to include it! (Thanks Nic for you advice on kiwiscraps forum).  Enjoy.

After lots of rain yesterday and last night today is nice and sunny. The girls & I just had a walk down by the river into Arrowtown where I had to purchase some more digitalmax pre-pays as am getting some photos to scrap! (it took 4 1/2 hours for 141 photos to be uploaded). I was pleasantly surprised as they still had some of the old cards (pay $20, get $25 worth). Since getting more I have ordered a larger print of the photo on the right (just coz, as my son would say). I'll wait till the prints come through before getting larger versions of any of the others. I went out for dinner last night with other Kindergarten Board members & the teachers from our five Kgtns. Nice food. I drove the van so after dropping everyone home (all around the Wakatipu) I got to bed at around 1:30am - at least it was my sleep in this morning! Must go enjoy the remaining sunshine!

Well, today's been a really normal day! Woke up, asked for espresso in bed - and actually got it (making the day not so normal to start with). Dh & I got children ready for school & playcentre, briefly discussed our days then I drove into QT for work with daughter #2 (DS is still at Granny's). Set up Playcentre, joined children in their play, observed children involved in play, tidied up after children, sang some songs, read some stories, and sang our goodbye song. Now I'm home and on the computer - absolutely no surprises there. The fishing trip was rather non-productive fish wise - they say they saw at least 15! but they enjoyed their time away as I also did! I haven't done any scrapping all week - to much other work to do but I have just purchased my pre-pay to get some photos developed meaning I can do some next week. I have been mulling over what to base my abc album on for the for keeps competition if I ever get around to ordering some of the alp...

Had a fantastic labour day yesterday. Sat at Waitiri Creek Winery listening to a Jazz band (Continuum) fromm Whangarei, eating scallop salad and enjoying 'Harriet Rose' (a wine). My daughters ran around going for lizard hunts in the rocks, enjoyed a whitebait fritter sandwich with garlic aoli and a hokey pokey ice-cream. It was a fantastic sunny afternoon. Dh arrived home (after cleaning up from the Jazz at work) and informs me that he, the chef & his fiance are taking my daughters away fishing in Naesby! So I am now alone in my home. Since getting home from work I have cleaned the sliding door windows, hung out some washing and am now back on the computer but I really should be doing a bit more housework. I have really enjoyed reading some blogs lately from some scrappers - am loving the Heidi Swapp Jeans that I'm seeing on some of them. Must give this a go! I have a few projects on the go at the moment - mini album, mag submission topics, scrap canvas of my son...

Kia Ora Greetings from Arrowtown, NZ. I'm sure I live in one of the most beautiful parts of New Zealand! I've just decided to explore this blogging thing because I enjoy reading other peoples ones so much I thought I'd add to the collection! This will be a brief first post as I need to tidy up our home after a quick trip to Dunedin (three hours drive) last night for my dad's 51st birthday dinner and I plan to head out to my husband's work (Waitiri Creek Winery) to hear a Jazz band that is playing there - and to 'scrap' the ocassion as a magazine is asking for sumbissions on 'enjoying the fruit and wine produce of NZ'. The title of my blog site comes from my main choice of activities (scrapbooking) and my children's initials (Katya, Ethan and Alicia - KEA) I'm a mum of three, my eldest daughter started school in June so now I only have two at home -an almost four year old daughter and son who is two and a half. The main focus in our home ...