It's been one of those days...

Tuesday

COMMENTS CLOSED - congrats Kirsten N NSW!

Tuesday - today has been spent avoiding the pantry and working on my Big Picture Scrapbooking classes. They aren't far away - I promise! The silly season and broken collar bones and blue bottle stings and trips to the beach and enjoying summer far too much held me up just a touch, but they are nearly done now. I'll be both releived and proud when that one happens.

The kids have been away today resulting in an altogether too loud volume of music coming from the radio. I'm hoping the neighbours were also away because it also resulted in an altogther too uncoordinated spate of dancing in my home. By myself. Just for a minute.
This song by Shawn Mullins came on and I was taken back 9 years to when I was extremely pregnant with Jacob. It was about the last time we had a summer this hot - 1999 and I was neck deep in prenatal depression, soon after to turn into a nasty case of postnatal depression - another story really. But as soon as I heard this song it took me back. It was one of the number one songs and it was played a lot. I found solace in it being played extremely loud at time, as I did again today. I'll be downloading the song and putting it on CD and scrapping *something* about that. I like to keep my scrapbooks real, but I also don't like my kids to find negative stuff (about themselves)- I'll be putting my thinking cap on about how to attack this one.

So. Links. Jo KNeller is giving away some stuff on her blog. The giving bug is going around.

I see Elsie has details of her new book on her blog. Her book is actually a recipe box full of 5x7 cards - interesting concept!

Scrapbook Savvy interviewed me last week and the link is here. (Reading it again to see what I said that will come back and bite me....)

Layle has posted the entire Providence line on her blog, again, sign up for giveaways!

I posted a heap of NEW Queen & Co CHA releases on this 2peas thread. Keep an eye on the Queen & Co blog where I'll be posting layouts using the new products and after Feb 3rd I'll be giving some of this product away!

Thanks for the comments on my last post - it's still open for comments for the giveaway.. so leave a comment if you haven't. I saved one of the comments as it sparked some journaling in my mind - thanks 2sweetmom for your words.

Oh and another link - This blog has a book club and this month they did layouts inspired by my book. I was especially blown away by the one called "With Love". Amazing inspiration in that blog post - support the girls and click through to visit their blog!

And todays giveaway! (I have more this week, so keep on checking back!)
It's older Queen & Co product but it's still gorgeous and I want to give it away to someone - leave me a comment, whereever you are from - I'd love to hear from you.

laters.

Monday

COMMENTS CLOSED - WINNER IS JULIE (Perth- Life Happenings blog) Email me with your address, Julie!

It's a holiday Monday here in Auckland and I'm soaking up the peace and quiet. We've been to the beach and back, stayed the night and everyone is relaxing after a busy beach day yesterday.
BUT I was lost without my desk. More specifically, I was lost without my computer that sits on my desk. But even more-so, after a week of scrapping 16 hours a day I missed my scraproom. I sat on the beach yesterday in the glorious sun with the cicadas rattling out their summer symphony and the waves crashing on the beach and thought of layouts. I swear if I could digitally create layouts in my mind, I created at least a dozen yesterday. I saw a t-shirt walk past - no doubt there was someone in it but I didn't notice that part, I was too busy trying to memorise the design - but I was lost without my notebook to draw the design on the front of the shirt. It seems I am addicted.

On the way to the beach we travelled out the Bombay Road, and just as you get to Pukekohe East you look left into a huge crater - except it just looks like a farm really, but it's a massive valley. Abby yells and I wish I could show the excitement in her voice on my blog "Oh my GOSH! LOOK! I can see the WHOLE WORLD!!"
She then grabbed Braden's arm and said "Look! Look! and it has a racetrack in the bottom! - Braden! have you ever been on that horse track in my whole world down there?"

And as if my heart wasn't melting with oh-my-God-that-is-SO-cute already, Braden's answer...
"Yes Abby I have! And last time I was there, I won!!"

Oh man. So cute. It was for her. He had no interest in the horse track at the bottom of the random gully really, he just did it for her.

Anyway. I'm loving scrapping again. All is well.

SO another side effect of the CHA work I do is that all of a sudden I get new product. Lots of it, sucks to be me, I know. BUT it makes me want to clean out. Gather things, Give them away.
So I figured I'd give it to you guys. I did a few giveaways before Christmas, so I'm going to carry on.

So the first giveaway is some Queen & Co felt. No packaging, because being on the DT doesn't mean we get luxuries like packaging but the felt is what counts. I'll give this felt away to someone I randomly pick from the comments on this post. So leave me a comment and I might draw your name.
And remember, spread the word, I have more to giveaway this week so keep checking back and spread the word I'm feeling generous.
I'll give it a few days.

Ok other stuff - Scenic Route it releasing alsorts of cool new products at CHA - new types of products for them including buttons and stamps. Exciting - for images of the new stuff and some sneak peeks of one of the new lines, Providence, go see Layle's blog. She is promising big giveaways too.

Ahhh the season of giving really does not stop at Christmas. Leave a comment.
laters

Friday.

I'm exhausted. I've been missing in action from everywhere except the scraproom. The rest of the house misses me. The cleaning misses me. The sunshine misses me. The supermarket misses me.

And I'm feeling it - I do this every CHA season. I start to feel like this whole hobby is crazy. I'm here in New Zealand and I'm cutting up coloured pieces of paper to glue to other coloured pieces of paper and courier them to the USA to go in a tradeshow. It blows my mind, I'm tired and spending hours a day in the scraproom and sometimes I wonder if the stress is worth it. I ask Paul. "What the heck am I doing?".
His answer "Dude if I had $1 for every time you asked me that... I'd have like $18 by now" and he walks off.

Men.

But anyway. I have a short moment of wondering why I stay in my stiffling hot room for days on end cutting and glueing, cursing and eating nothing but rice crackers and water (wait, that is because I'm counting points again - not the fault of scrapbooking).. and then something like this happens.

Abby comes in, grabs paper from the kids stuff, draws a pic and says "Look, it's you and me! We are hugging! And it's an A for Abby and a M for Mummy".
And in particular I love this part...
Awwww... look... we are hugging...

And my first reaction? I didn't know what to scramble for first. My camera to take pics. My notebook to write it down, my papers to start scrapbooking. To tell the story. Because I'm afraid of how fast time flies and that I'll forget some of this gorgeousness.

And THAT is essentially why I take coloured pieces of paper and glue them to other coloured pieces of paper.

Because I can.

Crusing the internet... I admit

Crusing the internet... I admit I do my share. I take time while eating meals usually - is that bad? to cruise the internet. My home page is the NZ Herald, which is basically the online version of one of the countrys biggest newspapers, currently I'm watching for news of Tropical Cyclone Funa and whether it will reach us, but I also have other regular stops in my day. I have a few blogs I visit, and I admit I'm not a daily visitor, I usually catch up a month at a time. And I usually skim through the unread topic titles at 2peas, to see if there is anything I want to read (hey look there are new calls out for Memory Makers Magazine!)

One of my newest regular-stops-while-eating-lunch-or-breakfast is a new video blog created by Leah Fung (of BHG Scrapbooks etc fame) and Johanna Peterson (BHG Lifestyle TV). It's called Leah's desktop diary. I just caught up with the 4th video about a card making buffet. The 2 ladies are relaxed and fun and I know Johanna and she will be entertainment all by herself with the slip-ups she will make - sorry johanna! as they show you tips and techniques. They have competitions too. A cool idea. Add it to your favourites. I have them playing in the background as I scrapbook. Although they are only 10 minutes long. I need hours. lol

Exciting mail in my inbox. A million little things is having a sale from Tuesday onwards.. Kiwiscraps is also having a sale which started yesterday. 50% off sizzix. Of most interest to me is that they have 30% off all their patterned papers. All of them. I nearly clicked the shop now button - except then I looked around my room and realised I have enough patterned paper to pave a road from here to Wellington to actually pick it up and that I perhaps did not need more. Some of you might though. lol.

I also got an email from the owner of Bachcare to say I'd won a weekend away in a competition they had. YEA!!! SO COOL! It might be good therapy for the boys to head back to Hahei - getting back in the water might be a good thing. We have used bachcare for 4 years now, every summer we rent a bach and these people take care of finding us a bach (there are billions on their website) and looking after us while we are away. Right now I can hear the northern hemisphere saying in unison. "What the heck is a bach?"

Happy Birthday to Shauna - for her birthday she is packing up for 3 weeks and going to Reno, NV for alternative Cancer treatment. If you get a chance, stop by her blog and which her the best of luck. We need positive thoughts wrapped right around the world for this special lady.

Abby's arm is 100% better. Doc said to let her go bike riding, trampolining, climbing ladders, wrestling with her brothers, fishing with a net off wharves and jumping on bouncy castles. All of which we diligently stopped her from doing whilst she had a broken collarbone. ;o)

Laters

Yesterday was a great mail

Yesterday was a great mail day. I haven't had one for a while, and infact I accused the housesitter we had while we were away of stashing the courier parcels away and selling random scrapbooking stuff on the black market. He assures me there were none. Yesterday made up for this. I love those days although usually they are inflicted by a shopping spree about a week prior but we try and forget that minor setback as we open the parcels, right?

I have currently on my scraproom floor, I swear one day I'll get a bigger office, new Queen & Co products being released at CHA in the 2nd week of February. I'll be working on booth layouts and posting them here before the show.

I have currently spread all over my dining room table, I swear one day I'll get a bigger scraproom, other new product from BasicGrey. Am i allowed to say that? I dunno. I'll hear if not. I'll be sharing those layouts before the show as well. I figure in about 2 weeks you'll see a flurry of new layouts from me.

Scenic Route stuff is missing in action. It really was stolen en route from the US. Well what else could possibly have happened. I still wait wistfully at the gate as the white courier van drives past me each morning in the hopes that he will hand me my missing box of Scenic Route. I haven't seen the new Lynden yet - oh and it's not a CHA release! If you have seen Lynden and assumed it is one of the CHA releases - noooooooo! There is more to come!! Lots more! Just not to my house, apparently.

I see the Prima design team has been announced. if you were like me and read the DT list on a message board and didn't visit the Prima site, it's well worth visiting the site as they posted some of the entries. Amazing inspiration.

I see Prima also started a new website, PrimaHybrid. And I am so computer illiterate that the thought of mixing computer with paper scares the pants off me but for those of you that head that way - you might love this link. I read somewhere that someone referred to Hybrid scrappers as bi-scraptual. I don't know how PC that is but it cracked me up. laughing is good, right?

I'm going to link ScrapScene again because I'm surprised at how many people don't know what I'm talking about if I mention it. Seriously. Did ya like that Grey's Anatomy 'seriously' slipped in there - new season starting soon in NZ! Seriously. Go to the site and sign up to have it delivered to your email each day. It's my own scrapping newspaper right in my inbox - read diligently each day as I sit and each my dry weight watchers cereal and milo. lol.

Big day for me. I need to take Abby to the fractures clinic. I'm crossing fingers things are OK. It was so hard to keep her still during the healing period, I hope it all healed properly.

Ok layout share. Another Tarisota project. This one was a simple layout for me - by simple I mean not so many layers etc. Despite it's apparent simple design, it still haunted me for a day or two until I finally stuck it down. It's titled Finally fall because during my visit to Canada in October I finally got to experience Fall. The touch of Autumn we get here in my part of New Zealand is nothing --- nothing compared to what we experienced in Vancouver. very cool.

Wish me luck for the fractures clinic.
Laters

Back to it

Back to the grind - Paul is back to work today and I'm flying solo with the kids. We had a really busy weekend with Lucy's birthday, as well as Jessie's birthday (we ALL loved her bouncy castle) and far too much bad food and good drinks. The 6am alarm was (as it is on a monday morning esp one after not having an alarm for 3 weeks...) a fright..but this marks the start of a whole new year. Back to it. I postponed all my new year's resolutions til Paul had gone back to work. Now I guess it's time to face reality.

We are safe home now but not until we had one last disaster in Hahei.

The boys were swimming beyond the surf, goggles on, diving for stones and shells and any other exciting creatures they could find. I was on the beach with Abby & Paul when I hear screaming. Not just screaming but help-me-I'm-dying-here screaming. From 2 boys. Split second reaction to reliase they are mine.
I look to see both boys holding their arms in the air and the screams are bone chilling. It took me another split second to realise (as I am running to the water) Blue Bottles.

(This pic taken on the beach later that night - the one that was washed up after jacob was stung was easy 3x this size).

Jacob had been stung across the hand with a blue bottle. Braden had tried to help by picking the embedded tentacles off his hands. Which resulted in him getting stung too.

Half the beach gathered around the screaming boys - half in curiosity - half with well meaning advice. It all resulted in a scene that ended with Jacob going into shock, large welts forming and his hand/arm swellng, and as a result, an ambulance attending. Braden was fine after the pain subsided a little. And actually by the time the ambulance got there Jacob was pretty Ok. The ambulance guys took him for a ride around the block anyway, gave him (and 3 other kids that were at the bach!) soft toys and Jacob's favourite? they blew a surgical glove into a balloon for him!

4 days later you can still see the welts where the tentacles were embedded into his hands. (Hard to see here but very visable IRL). BTW in other parts of the world, these are known as Portugese man o war.

So that was the end to our holiday. We are glad to be back and hope it doesn't stop the kids from loving Hahei, because it is one of our most fav places on earth.

Prima DT calls must be going out soon although I think they got like kabillions of entries. Good luck everyone!

I'll leave you with another of the layouts I created for the latest Tarisota Kit - clearly yours. The gallery goes up on the 8th of every month and this month I celebrate 12 months with Tarisota.

I'm in love with the red/light blue combo right now -add brown and I'm in my happy place. You'll be bound to see me play with this combo lots of the next month or two..

laters

Beach Days

Sunscreen, hats, beach towels, Mr Whippy Icecream, rock cods, 'fwimp', friends at the bach next door, sand under foot all day - beach days are what has kept me from my blog for the last week or so. It's a time of year that we all look forward to and it's sad to see it come to an end. A lot of the pics I took, I did so with the thought of making a double layout with lots of tiny snapshots and just one-word prompt for memories, perhaps as I have written in the opening sentence.

One of my favourite things would be fishing off the wharf at Ferry's Landing and Abby lying on her tummy with a net scooping through the water, she brings it out of the water and screams 'A fwimp! A Fwimp! I have a Fwimp!" Of course she is meaning 'shrimp' but the line of people waiting to catch the next ferry (which goes every 10 minutes, so there was a lot of them!) thought she was so cute as she tipped them from her net proudly into the bucket. And on a sidenote, it's amazing what a girl that broke her collarbone clean in two 10 days beforehand can do.

Another fav pic, well actually series of pics, was late yesterday afternoon. Abby found this stick and flower on the walk back from the beach and decided it was a microphone. The kids all showered outside under the solar shower and afterwards Abby sung her little hart out dancing around on the deck.

Lucky for me I created an album before summer started to house some of my fav 07-08 pics. The whole album can be seen here at the newly uploaded January Tarisota Gallery.

Last note - scrappy stuff - I see Scenic Route has released a mini line they have come out with. It's called 'Lynden' and details can be seen on Layle's blog, along with a giveaway. So run on over and leave a comment! Nothing like a new line of Scenic Route to get the mojo pumping.

I have also just put up details of Queen & Co's new mini line - A Valentine's line - it can be seen on the blog here.

The full range can be seen here on the Queen & co site.

ok. Places to go.. fish to catch.. then we are on our way home...
laters

It's possible this weather may

It's possible this weather may just last *knock on wood* despite my predictions we were enjoying an early summer and that it would end just as abruptly. Yesterday we enjoyed a high of 29.9 degrees at 2pm according to our local weather station data. (that's about 94 degrees?). The kids put the sprinkler on the lawn, put on swimming attire - note the sling - and enjoyed the heat. For a short time. Since burn time over New Zealand is running at about 8 minutes right now.

I have thousands of these pictures dating back years. These aren't even good ones, as far as good sprinkler pics go, but I never tire of taking them.

Thanks so much to everyone that send Abby their best wishes. I read every comment and always take on board any of the good wishes, hugs and advice you all send in times like this. I love the Kia Kaha she was sent yesterday :o)

She has done remarkably well. I know it hurts. I can tell because she goes quiet. And refuses to move. But if I ask her if it is hurting I am met with a snappy "No it doesn't!" . If you knew Abby you'd know that is typical. Pride the size of Africa. No way is she admitting anything hurts.

Scrapbooking... Did you know Queen & Co released a mini line for Valentines? The whole range can be seen here. It includes some mini felt. high on the cute scale.
Yes there are still great things in store for CHA winter, which is Feb 10th- 13th. it's only a little over a month away so I expect we will be releasing images in about 3 weeks. Each CHA seems to come around so quickly.

I know it's old news, but I see Junkitz has closed doors. The owners will be working for Inque Boutique. A curious move.

A hint for those that want to keep track of all the competitions, design team openings, scrapbooking scene news and a whole tonne of inspirational links, check out Scrap Scene. I signed up for scrapscene about a year ago and now every morning when I wake up I have an email from Scrapscene with a bunch of links in it. One of the most important scrapbooking resources for me right now.

Prima Dt call closed last night. Good luck to everyone that entered.

I'm working on Tarisota this week, (the new kit has just gone up on site) and next week I'm working on Big picture Scrapbooking classes. For those of you that are registered with big Picture SCrapbooking, it's not long until you get that email outlining my classes :o)
And for those of you not registered, you should. There are lots of free resources on there.

Hubby's been fishing. My washing smells like smoked fish. The passionfruit vine is overflowing with fruit that will soon start to ripen. I scratched my brother's name on this one anticipating that he may actually come home in time to eat it :o) Anyone else name their fruit? lol. I've accidently left the togs and towels on the line , it didn't get dark til 9pm but it'll be right, the sun will be up again at 5.30pm to take the night chill off. Not that there is a chill. Anyone else sleeping on top of the covers?
I love summer.

Laters.