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Never in my life have I known my kids so keen to eat Weetbix for breakfast. I mean we’ve always been a Weetbix kinda family – but something has found it’s way out of the Weetbix packet and possessed my children. We need to buy boxes and boxes of it apparently.
Yes – my kids have been bitten by the ‘All Blacks Stats Cards’ bug. We don’t even watch the rugby in this house (well Ok, yea, the World cup we will, but we are a Rugby League family) but this doesn’t seem to stop my 2 boys needing more of those cards.
Sadly Jacob got keen before Braden and started madly collecting them, and now Braden has become quite the sad little monkey as he has just clicked on to the craze.

So if any of you have families that eat Weetbix but don’t want the cards and don’t know anyone that wants the cards, please consider sending them my way? Actually I have heard you can sell them on Trademe, so I might be pushing my luck. lol. I was going to take a photo of Braden doing his best puppy dog eyes please pose.. but I forgot. And I gave him Claratyne for an earache. And now he sleeps like a sleepy thing that is really really sleepy. lol.

I don’t think I shared this layout when I did it. It is Abby watching Paul cut a tree down a few months back. Of course in true 3 year old fashion, she totally knows better than him how to cut the tree down, and the pics are of her waving her hands around directing him in the fine art of tree-trimming.

A few quick things to finish off – Liz (with baby Oliver) – I’ve been trying to get hold of you! Email me! nic.paul (at) xtra.co.nz . And if I don’t answer you, that would be because of the xtra-email-system-from-hell. Half of NZ email users are nodding their heads in agreement with me right now.

And a quick linkety link link – Fab Ms Lee Longmire told me about a new challenge blog starting up. It is international and launches at that link on Sept 1st. I’ll be checking.

laters

Wanted: One cure for the common cold. Argh! When will the sneezes stop? Abby, not me – I control my attitude when I’m sick, Abby just turns into a ball of “no” and grows a thousand prickles. Both the other kids loved hugs when they were sick, Abby does it true poltergeist style. Love the girl. Hate the attitude. Can’t wait for her to be better. Six days til spring, right?

Love this time of year. Apart from spring being nearly here, it is the time when they announce the new Memory Makers Masters. It’s hard to believe I’ve been part of this for five years. I entered in both 2002 and 2003 and remember those call days vividly. Because I did not get one. lol. In 2004 I got the call and 3 years later they just announced a whole new bunch of Masters.
I just about flipped when I read Amelia McIvor’s name – Amelia and I shared a year of fun (insert raised eyebrows smilie here)on the For Keeps elite team.
The full list of masters can be seen here:

Scroll down and you will see Danielle Q from Aussie was a runner up – man how hard would that be? Out of 600 entries you were within a place or two of getting in? I’ve admired Danielle’s artwork (visit her blog, really, she does amazing stuff – not just pages) for a while and spent a little time with her in Sydney in April. I had not long sat down after jumping around the room happy for Amelia when I scrolled down and had to jump straight back up there in excitment for DanielleQ. lol.

Have you checked out Emily Falconbridges blog lately? That is the cutest little bubba! Anyone else see how much she looks like her Daddy? Those of you that were at Freestyle in April can just imagine the whole David Attenborough thing about now…

A blog to keep an eye on – The Memory Makers Books blog. They have techniques, book reviews etc on there, but quite a few competitions to win stuff too. No-one really knows. So shhh don’t tell anyone. lol. Scroll down about 3 posts and there is a “post a comment’ type competition to win a book. There aren’t hundreds of comments – so go visit…

I feel bad. no pics. It’s been stopping me from updating. I promise to post pics tomorrow. Of something.

laters.

Hump Day. Would that be because I discovered 2 unmarked speed humps down a side street here in Pukekohe today? no. Although the surprised “WHAT was THAT?!” remark from the back seat of the car indicates it was certainly a memorable experience.

Would it be because it is Wednesday, and that is halfway to the weekend, hence getting over the halfway hump? Perhaps.

Or perhaps it was the dragging-my-knuckles-around-like-I’d-had-no-sleep feeling I can’t shake today. Starting with sleeping through the alarm and culminating into a nap on my scraproom desk, head on arms, one snore short of drooling on the Scenic Route layout I was working on. I’m sure that gave you a gorgeous mental picture there ;o)

I’ve been working hard lately. Keeping warm mainly, lol, I should just light the fire, but I’ve been burning the candle at both ends trying to manage the business accounts, 3 kids, scrapbooking commitments and a tadpole that is trying it’s hardest to turn into a frog despite it being the complete wrong season. OK so the tadpole isn’t so troublesome. Amusing perhaps.

I’ve got Crafting Connection Sneak Peeks though. And I hope you all beleive me when I say I just love all these classes. I have new CHA products from alsorts of companies including Queen & Co and BasicGrey. I have FancyPants designs and CherryArte, Scenic Route and other various gorgeous bits and pieces. I’ll copy and paste the info from the KS forum here.
Thanks for checking these out –

YEA! FInally some sneak peeks! I worked hard over the weekend.
I see David has loaded them on to my page on the website.

Confessions

Scrapbooking isn’t just about the events and the moments. It’s also about showing a little of our personalities so that those that read our pages in the future know who we really are.

The best way to do it? Join Nic on a journey to unearth those funny little habits and quirks that in turn paint a picture of our personalities.

You’ll walk away from this class with a fun project and new inspiration about the personal stories you’d like to scrap.

Conversations

Inspiration doesn’t flow easily for everybody. We sit with our scrapbooking supplies around us, we have the perfect photos of the subject we want to scrap, yet where are the ideas for the journaling? Where is the inspiration for a title? Often we find ourselves adding a quote or not journaling on our page at all, when we really wanted to tell more of a story.
So where is the story?
Through her writing of “That’s Life” Nic has enjoyed discovering many methods of undigging the stories we could potentially tell in our pages. Join Nic to discover one way of finding inspiration in the everyday and complete a project to help you implement the idea at home.

and Constant Reminders

Not only do the things you do and say form your personality, but so do the little things around you.
Grab 6 photos of items around the home that are distinctly ‘you’ and join Nic in this project based class.
The result will be a mini album that was ‘clearly’ ;o) a lot of fun to make!

Website details are here.
So are we excited? heck YES – this is going to be awesome. I’ve designed the classes to be informative and inspirational. The cool project I’ve designed for each one is just an added bonus really….

As usual I woke fairly early this morning with the sound of a little person at the side of my bed “It’s morning, mummy! I looked out my window!” I’ll be excited when the switch to prefering to stay in bed happens – my 8 year old sleeps in until 10am – can’t wait til the other little people in house do, so I can. I’m sure at some point around 10 years from now my hubby and I will be having the conversation about how we spent at least 10 years being woken by little people. Will we remember what that was like? And how cute they were back then. And how perhaps as teenagers they are not. lol.

This is an article about why we need to hand in our old cell phones to the telecom shops etc. Thanks to the person that sent me that link!

Pet owners – a blog dedicated just for you.

Glitter Fontastics on the Queen & Co blog. And a really cute owl made out of felt flowers etc. A submission from the UK. Very cool. I really enjoyed seeing some creativity from the UK< we don;t see much of the scrapbooking scene over there.

Canada – only just over 7 weeks til I travel to Canada for CSC4K. Here is the class schedule for London, where I will be teaching 3 times…. and Toronto where I will be teaching 3 times. If you click on my class names you will see sneak peeks :o).
I’m still trying not to think about Canada too much. For fear I burst with excitment :o)

Classes that are up on Aussie Scrap Source for pre-order now. If you want one of these kits or want to take one of these classes, there are 2 retailers in New Zealand that currently hold the classes or sell the kits. Scrapbook outlet sell a variety of AussieScrapSource kits and have had mine there, so email them… and Kiwiscraps have a lot of my classes offered in store. I’m not sure if they sell just the kits, but you can ask?!

Ok so new ones coming up for September:

Sweet Child Album:
Discover how easy it is to make an amazing mini album from a few sheets of patterned paper. This child-themed album is created from the bold BasicGrey Color Me Silly range and decorated with embellishments that include the much sought after Queen & Co felt ribbon. With an abundance of tips and tricks, this class is all about learning simple album construction, but the end product is a stunning bold album that suits any young child themed photos, girl or boy, that any crafter would be proud to display.

Getting It Done:
It’s time to relax those rules and put those extravagant embellishments aside for just one minute. Enjoy scrapping a whole event, a whole month, or even a whole year in one layout! Learn how using fun patterned papers, basic design and bold geometric shapes can create a stunning layout with a design you can use over and over for future layouts. (Beginner)

Ok my mission for this week? getting sneak peeks out for Crafting Connection classes. Watch for those.

If you have time, click some of the links on the sidebars. I forgot how much amazing inspiration you ladies post on your blogs. Like this one. .. and this one... who has been dabbling in some amazing amazing amazing digi… and scroll down for layouts on this one. Love this lady for her freedom of just getting down to it, using minimal products and creating very cool layouts.

Laters

Power surges. Of the electric kind. Not of the energetic-getting-layouts-done-kind. Actually a power cut even. All of 20 seconds but enough to totally ruin my evening. I had a night’s work writing an article and organising photos for the layouts for it – not to mention a full inbox – and 20 seconds without power meant 2 hours of trying to restore the computer.

It’s up and running but everytime it restarts it tries to fix corrupted files in the CHKDSK and gets locked up. I sounded like I knew what I was talking about then, right?! Not so. lol. I have no idea. I wrote it down for my computer guy.

Glitter Fontastics on the Queen & Co blog.

Another layout from Tarisota.

BasicGrey Four you is now back in stock. Full kit or instructions only.

Looks like the crops are back, up central Auckland way –

Talking of crops, I’m going to join in with hundreds – heck thousands of people around the world and hold a crop ,in conjunction with Kiwiscraps to support Breast Cancer Research. Details are here. it is in the early stages of organising but if you are in Pukekohe for that weekend, come join us :o)

lastly – Barb – thinking of you
Laters.

By now a lot of you know that the little things often fascinate me. Those that have read my book most certainly know that it doesn’t take much to amuse me.

Yesterday I was amused by something the guy at the telecom shop told us a while back and I only just thought about it. He told us to bring in our old phones and put them in the bin and they are taken away and any that can be made to function are donated to 3rd world countries. At the time I thought it was a good idea, we have several old cellphones kicking around the place. Then it got to bugging me. What would 3rd world countries do with cellphones? Hey it may be a huge slice of naivity and ignorance on my part but the telecom guy was indicating the type of countries that often need aid in the way of food, items to help with schooling and medical supplies to help break some of the epidemics that currently run rampant in those sorts of places. And cellphones?

Anyway. More things that amused me over the past day. My hubby studying. When I met him I never thought I’d put those 2 words in the same sentence. Proud of this man.

Jurassic park. My kids built this together. All 3 of them. I don’t know how long this creative play lasts but I’ll enjoy it while they are young.

Something else amused me – but I’m not going to post pics here was Abby – I was busy today and came back into the lounge to check on Abby and there she was in her togs (it’s winter) and she has a toy machine gun around her neck and she was stalking the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Disclaimer: Paul bought the $2shop machine gun when he was looking after the kids one Saturday. Not my choice of good educational play equipment. Abby did look cute in her pink togs stalking the T-Rex with it around her neck though.

Hey – Tarisota BasicGrey Four you – I’m told that you can buy just the instructions for the four layouts now…

Should be a good mail week this week, I have lots of goodies arriving to create final class samples for Crafting Connection with. CHA felt from Queen & Co for a start… it’s about time I showed you all sneak peeks, they won’t be far away if the mail week is as good as I anticipate.

Hey – I have to say thanks to those of you that have taken the time to leave a review on Amazon. I often get emails about my book, but it’d be really cool if you left reviews if you feel you are up to writing a few lines. Click the Amazon book link to the right

Productive. Yes productive. That was thhe word I was looking for. Although finding the right word was not exactly an enabling factor – I woke on Wednesday morning and felt like I’d been run over by a truck. It was just a cold though and finally this morning I feel back to normal.

So as usual, even though I was feeling like.. trying to find a nice word, nope there isn’t one, even though I was feeling like crap, the day carried on as per normal. Motherhood isn’t full of “Thank You” and “Wow you are doing a great job” and I think that is kinda hard on a Mum. And when we are sick, we carry on.. the only difference being that we know that the tissues are in our pockets so we don’t get that nasty tissue explosion through the wash surprise when we go to hang out the washing. Unless you are like me and forget to take them out of pockets and that happens anyway.

The kids came home from school yesterday. Braden dumped his jersey in the middle of the floor. Right in the middle. I walked over and pointed… “what ? is this?” He looked at me “Oh, that’s for the maiden to pick up”. And he walked off.
At least I have been promoted from a maid to a maiden at some point recently.

Anyhow – scrapping stuff – Tarisota BasicGrey Four you limited collection sold out. Twice. I’m not sure if the instructions will be available by themselves on this collectiopn but keep checking back. I spent all week on this one. I don’t think Tamar has released sneak peeks so I guess you saw them here first.


And my favourite collection? It’s currently a tie between Mellow and Obscure. And then Periphery. And no Robyn, there was no prize for selling out – what is up with that?!

Regular Tarisota gallery is up too. This is a layout I created for that. Love this pic. It was taken as Abby sat on my desk beside me, she was actually waving a piece of cardstock around while she was looking down at my layout.
Vivian Bonder is guest designer. Flippen love her projects. As always.

There is a cool technique on the Queen & Co blog involving laminating the sassy sequins.

Happy first Birthday to Evana‘s wee boy, Joel for tomorrow.

And Happy birthday to Trina‘s little Daniel for yesterday!

OK, something that people have been asking me about. There are supply issues for my book in Australia but I know Blue Bazaar will have it in stock again very shortly. I hear rumours that Maria at Scrapboox will be stocking it too, so keep an eye out there.

I’m a proud book mama at the moment, it has been floating around 3rd-4th on the bestsellers list for scrapbooking books on Amazon (and trust me, there are hundreds). It has been sitting at about 9th-12th on the bestsellers list for all craft books – there are thousands of those. I’m so proud! Reviews have started popping up if you scroll down on that amazon page, kinda exciting :o)

9 more weeks til Canada!!! woohooo!!!!!
Sadly my brother left Canada yesterday and is now on his way to London :o(

OK, I’m off to a crop and I don’t think the ladies will appreciate me turning up in my night-time t-shirt with my polar fleece blankie wrapped around me. The rest of the house has slept long enough, time to make some noise.

laters

So today has been one of thsoe totally full-on-did-not-stop-all-day-I-cannot-wait-to-crawl-into-bed days where I acheived nothing. Nothing. If you are one of the people waiting on stuff from me, rest assured that I worked on it all day and have absolutely nothing to show for it.
I did, however manage to do the grocery shopping which did include a free dodge-the-power-chucking-toddler-next to-me lesson. I. was. so. close. to. wearing. it. That was the first time today I whispered to myself thank you God.
The second time was when I went past the chocolate aisle and somehow mustered up enough willpower to avoid picking up the new cadbury desserts Boysenberry pie chocolate. Have you tried it? It tastes like Jelly tip icecream. I managed to hook half of the Kiwiscraps Freestyle attendees on Cadbury desserts chocolate in April, looks like I’ll be taking a new flavour to Sydney for Crafting Connection.
Anyone noticed Stacy Julians jewellery in that photo? Love it.

Fast forward about 12 hours and as I said, apart from a sparkly house, a daughter that now knows how to play poker using her brother’s pokemon to wager , 2 happy sleepy children, I hope the other one is happy, he is at Nannie’s house and a semi clean scraproom, I have done nothing.

Join me in hoping tomorrow might be more.. more… lucrative? what is the word I’m looking for? I can’t even think of the word. Let’s hope that I get more done tomorrow. Well, more things that will actually please the people that are waiting for them. I like my clean house but I’m sure some of the people waiting on pages do not really care that my sink sparkles ;o)

Cross fingers for me.
Laters.

oh – Tarisota gallery day tommorrow!!! Wow the months go SO FAST, I swear it was only days ago that the last gallery showed! I guess it was about 31 days. lol.
Ok. Now. My bed calls.

Today we shopped. Kindly my points from my credit card gave me some Farmer’s vouchers, so today we packed up the 3 kids, 6 tamagotchis, 1 little pet shop toy, a few random books, a variety of vegemite and cheese sandwiches and off we went.
Abby needed clothes. Not the ones I chose. Not the ones on sale. I should have learnt by now to suggest the ones I hate, whilst standing next to the ones I love so that when she screams “NO! I want THIS ONE!” and grabs the one closest, which happens to be the one I love, it all falls into plan. But then perhaps that would be bad parenting. Not sure.

So we lasted an hour looking at various stuff before one of us spit the dummy and decided we had to leave. That would be Paul. I don’t blame the poor man, the kids were tired from a must-stay-at-the-neighbours-til-late-because-it-is-his-birthday-and-that-means-lots-of-red-wine-and-solving-the-world’s-problems-with-random-slurred-talk-about-nothing night. I did not drink red wine.
At least Abby slept in an hour longer.

Anyway, I did come home and do some work – enough to have been able to share some fabulous images….
like this…

and this…

and this..

and this..

Which all lumped together in one big pizza box with more embellishments that I didn’t photograph and a heap of cardstock, equates to this.
BasicGrey Four you.
Now this is Pre-Order, the BasicGrey has not even hit the shores of Australia yet, but I have pretty much already designed the layouts that the collection is designed around. So when those papers hit Aussie, it’ll be a super quick turnaround and they’ll be sent out to you, with instructions and colour images for the four layouts. phew.

About 64 sleeps until I fly to Canada. Anyone from Canada that reads this needs to assure me that it will be tropical. Warm. Toasty. And if it won’t be, you need to lie to me.

I haven’t mentioned the Queen & Co blog lately. I was on a little go-slow with updating it after CHA – I was finding it hard to get enthusiastic about posting layout images of layouts that are missing :o(
I just wanted to add a quick update – the layouts have never turned up. BUT I’ve been arranging the ladies on the Q&Co DT to start compiling some tips and techniques, so be sure to check back at the Queen blog when you can.

Lastly – have you heard of ScrapPink? A world-wide weekend of cropping to raise funds for breast cancer research. There are events being held all around NZ in conjunction with the rest of the world. I’ll be helping organise one for my locals, so if you are local, watch for details soon :o)

LAters.

Love the weekend. Love sleeping in until 6am *sigh* and waking to the sound of Ms Three whispering in my ear “I’m awake Mummy!” If she was a little older I would have been tempted to give her a sarcastic answer. I’ll give her a break since she isn’t old enough to know who Sherlock is yet ;o)

I sent in my images to Tamar for the tarisota gallery today. I’m early. Ain’t that a grand feeling. I also created a mini book for the Tarisota Limited edition Inklination this month. Some Rita-Marie flowery stamps.

OK so current mission – BasicGrey .. I have used the new lines already – scroll down for images…… now imagine some of the papers from the four new Basic Grey collections all in one box with a heap of other stuff and how would you like it if I provided instructions on how to put together 4 layouts? One from each line even? Would that be awesome? A box of stuff, a little bit of all the new BG lines and 4 layouts practically pre-made for you? Ok so unless tamar emails me in the next 5 minutes and tells me that was totally classified info and could I please delete that you officially have the inside word on what possibly might be going up on preorder on Tarisota tomorrow. :o)

I had so much more to say and I store it in my mind all day “I could put that on my blog” I think… then witching hour arrives (5-6pm) and the kids overload me with unnccessary information and stress and it all falls out.
Ok wait.. a gem… and I’ll need to put this on a layout (trying to imagine what kind of pic I need for this)..
I had a fairly rushed week. Actually I hit the virtual wall after weeks of burning the candle. It was about Tuesday. I stood in the kitchen with all 3 kids at the bench eating dinner and totally winding each other up. It was one of those nights. telemarketers calling – why can they never speak English? – I give the phone to Abby as they are halfway through the call and carry on cleaning up etc etc. Abby chats to unaware telemarketer. Jacob hitting Braden under the bench, Braden wailing, general commotion, pots boiling over, you know the scene. And I lose the plot. I stand in the middle of the kitchen and grab my own hair and kinda go aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaregh! As ya do. Silence from kids.

Paul finally comes home from work and Braden (6) turns to him and says “Daddy, if you can’t find Mummy later tonight, check that walls for little pieces of her because she may just explode at any minute”. Talk about a crack up.
OK I guess you had to be there. I found it interesting that I had created a visual for the poor child. I hope he recovers. lol.

Ok. Remember. BG preorders on Tarisota tomorrow. I need to win the prize for the limited collection that sells out fastest. Perhaps first I need to email Tamar and suggest a prize for the Limited Edition that sells out fastest. lol.

laters