Category: Uncategorized

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 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 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

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 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.

I’m loving it. The sun, the casual days, the wandering over to the neighbours for a quick drink and wandering home as it falls dark about 9pm. The sleeping in until 8am because we were all awake til 10 or 11 the night before. Even the kids.

I’m not loving the fact that my inbox is totally neglected. I’ll get to it – I promise. I’m not loving the fact that Christmas food was designed before calories were invented and so it all is the most sinful food out there. But that doesn’t stop me. I’m not loving that the work is piling up but the thing I’m not loving the most?

The broken collarbone on the eve of braden’s birthday – a trip to the wave pools planned for his big day. X-rays at 8pm and trying to keep a ‘slink’ on a 3 year old while trying to keep her off the trampoline and out of the wave pools. Those are the biggest challenges this summer so far.

Who knew little bones broke so easily. The story behind the collar bone breaking wuld go well on an episode of “When good piggybacks go bad”. Funny thing – when we went into the A&E and I suggested she might need an x-ray (one look at the fact that one of Abby’s shoulder was hanging way lower than the other and that it hurt really bad ..they sent her straight through…) they assumed that it was a trampoline injury!
“no” – I said – “Piggy back incident”.
“oh.. that makes a change!”. She said.

So it’s a quick drive-by post this evening. No scrapping pics to share. Hopefully after tommorrow. I have around 20 people here tomorrow for the annual Howard scrapfest… About 12 ladies and 7 guys.. we are sending the guys off to the local shooting range to get rid of a bit of testosterone before they come back and cook us dinner. Perfect.

Laters

We had a rough night on Thursday night. Like a responsible homeowner and mother I have probably twice the smoke alarms I probably need in this house, which is good. Except when the batteries start to go flat. Why does this always happen at night?

I was fast asleep when I heard the first ‘chirps’ of a failing smoke alarm battery. I was dreaming crazy dreams – you know how the dream always incorporates the crazy sound somehow – but finally I woke and realised what it was.

So I do the half-alseep-trying-to-find-the-smoke-alarm-that-is-chirping thing. I cross fingers it is not in one of the kids rooms. I don’t want to wake them trying to get the battery out. I tip toe around, staying motionless everynow and again waiting for the next random ‘chirp!” that it sends out. Eventually I find it. I still half asleep, balance on a chair, take the alarm down, take the battery out and creep back to bed. Crawl in, glance at the clock, it’s only taken me 30 minutes to find the freakin thing, and close my eyes ready to drift back off to sleep.

Chirp.

You are freakin jokin. I’ll cut the long story short by saying that apart from freaking myself out standing in the dark, on a chair with the moonlight streaming in on the scary looking Santa thing that I was sure was going to turn it’s music on really loud and it’s head would start spinning physco style while I desperatly tried to get the alarm down off the ceiling, it all went well. 1 hour and 15 minutes after the chirping first woke me, I crawled back into bed.

It seems that once one of them starts to warn the low battery thing, they all follow suit pretty soon after. Only a crazy woman would have gone to bed the next night without replacing all the batteries in all the smoke alarms. But guess what I did. I had a rough night last night too. Luckily last night I didn’t have to go into the room with the scary Santa thing though. I swear he looks so friendly during the day. At night. Scary.

lesson learnt.

Anyway – I love that so many people put up their hands and said they’d love to have a copy of my book!!! I have a copy here all ready and here are some pics of the way I picked the winner. Yep I printed out all the comments – here is Braden jumbling them up, and then holding a winner, which he picked by closing his eyes and rumaging through.

So the winner is Alison Molumby – I have emailed Alison and YAY!! I’ll be sending it off soon!

Oh – as a note. (And I’m only mentioning because I was asked in the comments several times). If you are in Australia, you can order the book at Scrapboxx and you can join in on the challenges they run in the forum based around my book.
In New Zealand you can buy it at Kiwiscraps or Scrapbook Outlet .
If you are anywhere else, it sells at Amazon it runs for about $13.00 USD on there so is super mega cheap.

Thanks for entering everyone – this girl is off for a nana nap.
laters.

Local honey – that seems to be the consensus on the Hay Fever thing. Although there are many many remedies there that I will continue to refer to, and if you suffer hay fever and want to know some natural remedies, check out the comments to my last post. Thanks ladies! Ironically it has calmed down over the last few days. Fingers crossed it stays away. And ain’t that Murphy’s Law?

We have a winner for the rub-ons, I randomly chose ‘Siobhan’ 10.09am and I have no way of getting hold of her – hopefully someone will direct her this way :o) I’ll pop this lot of rubons in the post ASAP if youi can email me your address! (Email link in my profile).

So. I have a book to giveaway.

‘That’s Life’ has been a huge part of this year for me, from the release mid-year, to the classes I taught at Crafting Connection, to the upcoming classes I will be teaching on Big Picture Scrapbooking in the new year, ‘That’s Life’ has been integral to it all. So I’m givin that sucker away. lol.
So here is a copy. Ideally I’ll be able to give this away to someone in time for Christmas but seeing how I want this to be open to everyone the world over and seeing how the guy in the big red suit comes in 6 sleeps, this may not be possible :o) Miracles happen at Christmastime but I don’t think NZ post believes in them so we will call this a new years pressie.

So, leave me a comment and in a few days I’ll randomly pick one and send this book off. If you already have a copy, leave your name anyway, I’ll send it to a friend as a gift. With a happy New Year’s message in it. Or something.
It’d be awesome if you spread the word too – shamelessly admitting it’s a great chance to promote the book.

2 days left of school. I can’t wait. I will therefore not be responsible after tomorrow for getting anyone anywhere on time with togs and towel washed and dried, lunches made, drinks prepared and frozen from the night before, homework done and clothes not on backwards. Thankyou to the God of School Holidays for blessing us with 8 weeks holidays. Yes. I’m serious.
One son sent off with teacher gifts yesterday and one son being sent off with a prized Venus Flytrap plant for his teacher today, I’ll make sausage rolls and deliver them hot for shared lunch later and apart from making sure they get home today and back to school tomorrow. I. am. done. hello summer.

Just a quick layout share today. This one was in SM, it was a product challenge so I was only allowed to use this product, although I did sneak in the blue cardstock as everything else was 7 gypsies Black & White?! Journaling says how much Abby missed her Nannie and Grumpr when they were away in July. She used to “Ring Canada” and ask for them to be sent home now. lol.
I have this in my 2peas gallery also if you’d like a closer look.

laters

Hayfaver. Enough already. Antihistimines make me doo-lally. Hayfever makes me grumpy. I have the Christmas spirit to get into but hayfever is hindering that somewhat. Although hubby tells me that if I drank the Christmas spirit I might forget the hayfever. So thoughtful. And so wise.
And so happy. Because he went fishing twice at the weekend. He asked me to post this photo for Vaughan to see.
Reason #254 that you should come home, Vaughan… (reason #1 being that we miss you and #2 being that the lollie jar is full of purple lollies).

The latest issue of Scrapbooking & Cards today is out, it’s a Canadian mag and it’s fabulous. I have an article inside this issue – simple, detailed expert – using the same pics in different ‘levels’ of scrapping (meaning time spent and product used etc!) using the same products. I used the BAsicGrey Figgy Pudding, which I love – but didn’t use it in a Christmas sense.

Here is one of the pages from the mag – there are 2 more in the article, you can see it all online here They have the whole mag available online – how cool is that!, my pages are in the 2nd download.

Prima has a DT call I see – I’m loving their products lately, I especially love the Iron Orchid Designs stuff, Prima is essentially known for their flowers but they do wicked-cool paper, ribbons, rub-ons, stamps etc. Anyway, DT call – including internationals! That alone earns them a tonne of respect. Details here!

Ok down to the nitty gritty, I’m giving some stuff away with it being Christmas and all – so share the love by linking others to this giveaway post… I’ll be giving away a copy of my book later in the week, but for now I have this small pile of rubons, they include some from 7gypsies, Rouge De Garance, Fancypants, Deja Views, some acrylic letters from heidi Grace and some imagination Project stuff. Leave me a comment – any old thing, any comments that have cures for hayfever that don’t include antihistimine are favoured, lol.
Anyway. Say Hello. I’ll pick a winner in a few days and send this stuff out.
One can never have too many rub-ons.

laters

Yes, this post is an ode to the cranberry, sales of dried cranberries must have tripled in Pukekohe. My family has never seen me in the kitchen so much as I find it neccessary to try all and each recipe that has been posted – “What’s for dinner tonight Mum?!” “Oh – Julie’s Apricot, White Chocolate & Cranberry Slice, and for breakfast we get to have Trace’s Chrismtas Cranberry bars…”
It was met with enthusasim for the first day, now… not so much.
I’m kidding of course, but I have to say I have enjoyed printing out each recipe – thanks so much for those of you that posted recipes – they are printed out and just waiting … there has been no Christmas shopping done, the ingredients for ‘White Christmas’ sit and stare at me longingly as I prepare the next cranberry recipe..

Here is the first one I tried, basically melted choc with thickened cream heated through, crushed arrowroot biscuits – note to self, get all air out of bag before crushing the biscuits under the car tyre, seemed so logical at the time – chopped apricots and cranberries. I’ll be wearing trackpants and a large jersey yo Christmas day because that is all I’ll fit. lol.

Clustermaps – fun to see where the people are logging in from, but perhaps embarrasing that Jacob knows where more of those dots are than me. What continent is what? Look of disgust from my hubby at my total geographical ditziness.
So I’ll treat this as an educational aspect to the blog. If you don’t know what I mean, scroll down to the bottom of the right sidebar to see the world map. So interesting. Vaughan I wanna see a dot from England.

Tarisota Gallery – the kit this month had a door hanger in it. We figured Santa didn’t need a door hanger to tell him we want him to leave pressies, as if the big flour circle on the lawn with the carrots and can of Steinlager in the middle won’t be a clue on Dec 24th so I decided to make a door hanger for Jacob. He already had a note on his door that said “Please do not disrupt, knock before entering” so I made him a hanger that said the same thing.

According to Trina we need to sign up for the SBO newsletter because something big is happening soon?

BIG news for some NZ ladies, joining the Fiskars team – the post is here on the Fiskars blog which has regular comps running all the time I found out. So anyhow, congrats to those NZ ladies!! It’s incredibly cool that the market is there in NZ to have such a fab team of ladies out and about promoting Fiskars and Scrapbooking. THAT is very cool in itself!

Thanks for the congrats on Big Picture Scrapbooking – I’m excited and it’s anothe example of scrapbooking in NEw Zealand growing, as we have a NZ retailer involved, which means it’s being catered especially for US. Go us. It’s a long stretch from 9 years ago when I started scrapbooking and would have climbed Mt Everest if there were Pooh Bear stickers at the top and they were Acid Free.

And now I have too much stuff. Apparently. Because over the next few days I’ll be doing a post to give a few things away. Including a copy of my book which has been sent to me for promotion. Heck, I’ll give that away too… Check back in the next few days for details.

laters