Sunday, November 27, 2005

if I had a magic wand...

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

altered clipboard

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.
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Thursday, November 10, 2005

Playcentre

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 tables at the church and may have to hire some! We have some donated spot & challenge prizes from Nik Naks in Cromwell (I'd love more suggestions for these as I'm new to this and so are some of the people coming!). Check out our informational blog for this at www.wakatipuscrappers.blogspot.com - yes now I run not one blog but two - a bit funny that I only learned how to blog a couple of weeks ago.
We looked at another house today that would have been great for us but there are water damaged skirting boards in the two bathrooms (the house is only a couple of years old!) so it just makes us a bit more disillusioned about the whole idea of buying a house and maybe we'll just stay put for now.
Enough from me, must sleep, work tomorrow, drive to Dunedin tomorrow!

Friday, November 04, 2005

Michelles Blog Challenge

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!

humidity

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've finished). I also came away with some mica which I've never used before and I'm on the hunt for ideas (google here I come).

When I got home with my photos I sat down and matched them with cardstock but that's as far as I've got. I've also purchased some clip boards that I'm going to alter for Christmas gifts. Thinking of Christmas, I made a list the other day of the bits I need so will have to order some canvas from www.artsupplies.co.nz next week or wait till I get to Dunedin next weekend and go to Warehouse stationary. Also spotted some great A5 card packs at www.cardmakers.co.nz which I intend to order this week too - really should do my Christmas cards!

With Ethan coming home tomorrow I am removing his 'blanket' - he hasn't had it for the last two weeks so I don't think he needs it. This means I have also had to talk to the girls about removing theirs too. The are currently cutting out the shapes on them to make into some art for their walls, a layout is on the cards for this one - "I can't live without my blanket" - I'll have to sneak some of their shapes for it before they get glue on them.

We have our school fair tomorrow & Jase has agreed to bake some chocolate espresso shortbread (one of my favourite biscuits) tonight as each family needs to provide some baking and these keep really well.

Should stop procrastinating and get on with some scrapping!
Ka kite ano!