Tick it off the "To Do List"

Ever since the No8 Wired Dare site went up I have enjoyed watching the challenges and planned to submit a layout - some time....well sometime is now....I finally got around to it.... the challenge was to use birds... there is only one wee bird on this layout but its there....

Speaking of competitions and challenges.....the SBO Christmas Competition was on again this year....and I decided to have a play.......some fab work up on the site for week 1.....week 2 is cards.....crikey those of you that know me know that I am NOT a cardmaker.....but anyway I will have a bash......

Been working with the Lime Tart November Full Tart kit - here are a few sneaks of what I have been up to....as always the kits was packed full of wonderful goodies that all go so well together...

Okay its late and I need to get some beauty sleep...busy day tomorrow....

Halloween Fun

Halloween Night was great fun!!!...as Halloween fell on a Friday this year...we decided to make a night of it and got about 10 families together at my friend Rachel's house (brave women with that many ghosts and ghouls taking over her home -thanks Rach!!!) We had a quick BBQ, games for the kids and lots of the neighbourhood kids popping in to trick or treat.

So here are a couple of pics....first all our kids acting out their various spooky characters!!!

And Kelly R and I, she is Bride of Frankenstein (love how she took down her net curtains for a bridal veil at the last minute to create her costume...that woman thinks fast on her feet)...and I am a Goth Fairy (had lost my wings & wand by this stage and my black lippy had worn off ...but I think you get the picture)

Fiskars Girls Night In

Thanks to everyone who helped in making this a great event and assisted with raising the $1647 (and still counting) for the Cancer Council to continue their fight against the Big C.


Here is my layout created for the event....great to be playing with some pink for a change.

This layout was lots of fun to do....love the fun photo that we had taken at our recent Girls Scrap weekend away and oodles of Fiskars pink to indulge in with a hint of my favourite accent colour - black!!

The new monthly challenge has just been added to the Fiskars blog - you have until the end of November to get your work uploaded....so go on over and see what fun they have in store...as always a great prize from Fiskars to be won.

Fiskars Girls Night In Thursday 30th October

The Fiskars Ambassadors are running a fantastic run "Girls Night In" over at their blog tomorrow night - use the Fiskars Ambassadors link (in the right sidebar) to go to the Fiskars blog and join in. There a lots of fantastic fun things happening all night - so don't miss out and make sure you pop in and check it out!!!

Look out for the Girls Night In blinkie to participate in the Silent Auction that is running - this finishes on 30th October at 10.00am EST. There are some fabulous goodies up for auction - beautifully handmade items plus other gorgeous goodies that have been donated. All you have to do is lodge your bid (in Aussie dollars) on the Lot number that you're interested in and thats it....too easy!!!

Here's a sneak peak of a layout I created to celebrate the colour pink!!! This layout will be appear on the blog during the nights events.

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Where did the last month go - warning long post!!!

Last month has been mad with lots of fun scrapbooking activities thrown in with a crazy busy time at work and my birthday some where there in the middle.

So a quick run down of the last month it started with a fab weekend away with an annual Scrapbooking Retreat with 3 of my fav scrap buddies Margo, Kris & Lou shopping, eating and scrapbooking at the beach - thanks ladies a wonderful time with lots of laughs as always. This photo might give you some idea about our weekend - Bombay Blue Gin, lots of lollies & fruit to keep the healthy eating half of our weekend happy.....I did eat at least one piece of fruit over the weekend on the strict instructions of Miss Kris!!!

I hope we didn't scare the locals too much with trying to get some "interesting" photos taken down at the beach (well we are Scrapbookers!!) - Margo found this log and thought we should try to act like cowgirls on a bucking broncho!!!!...not sure if that is how the people walking that day saw it or not!!!

Then the school holidays turned up and it was 5 days up at Ohope Beach at our BIL's holiday home with a couple of other families for some sun and fishing....well the sun was a bit on the thin side but the 6 kids we had with us had a great time any way - give a kid a beach in any weather and they are happy. Bruce and the other guys got some fishing in, and I celebrated my 40- something birthday (now its closer to 50 than 40 I am being vague on the last digit!!) up there and enjoyed a change of scene with my girlfriends doing some relaxing, reading and shopping.

Got to play with my new toy - Canon EOS 400D while away and loved how I could take this photo out of our car window when my hubby was trucking along at 100k plus....and get a decent photo - love this camera - enjoying learning how to drive it.

I was also thinking when looking at this photo how incredibly luck I am to live in a country where we can ski on this mountain 2 hrs from my home and then we can drive another 3 hours and be at the beach in shorts & t-shirts...I guess that's one of the reasons they call New Zealand Gods Own country!!

I only had one weekend at home and then it was a long planned Girls weekend away in Wellington to celebrate Kelly R's 40th birthday which included a quick trip to SENZ to shop and do a class. We had a ball staying at an apartment right in the CBD which meant we had the shops and restaurants at our fingertips and boy did we give them a workout....the car was so full at our last stop we wondered if we'd get the last parcel in the car without everything else falling out. Thanks Kelly, Charlotte & Joy (who flew in from Melbourne) for a wonderful weekend.

Anyway its a long weekend and time to catch up on a lot of neglected bit and pieces, including my blog.....

So here is one of the layouts that I gave a sneaky pic of last time that was shown in the Lime Tart blog. Due to problems that Philippa has been experiencing in receiving product on time, and the fact that living in NZ I am the last to receive my kit, my work has featured on the blog, rather than the galleries.

Thanks to Tanya for giving me the idea for this title...its a goodie!!

I have been working with the Half Tart this month...so here are a few sneak pics of my work - which you will find at the Lime Tart Zest blog shortly.

A canvas for a change....for some reason blogger has decided to turn it on its side and I can't fix it.....grrr....

Loved the mix of the green & blue patterned papers in the kit....

Using some yellow patterened papers in this one which is a stretch for me...I find this colour hard to work with.....but when you have a large yellow cartoon character in there it works.

Hope everyone enjoys the nice long weekend....

Lime Tart September Kit

My layouts for September are running a bit late as product was delayed in getting to Philippa who does an amazing job of putting the kits together and getting them out to the DT and sent onto the subscribers.....so my designs are a bit late getting up on the Lime Tart website.

Working with the full kit this month and its stunning, right up my alley with vintage looking papers from Websters. Hadn't heard of this paper range before but I will certainly be keeping an eye out for them in future. While they have a vintage feel I think the more modern pictures I have used with them show they can be used in lots of ways.

Vintage layout first up (my Mum Fay at about age 7)......close up shot shows lovely chocolate and pink combo of pp. The wee chipboard birds on a tree branch...just so cute, and the lovely cream paper lace in the kit (there is a green and chocolate brown one as well).

Next layout is with a modern twist - I just love my sons long eyelashes (I can confess to once putting mascara on them when Taylor was about 3 or 4 years old to see just how gorgeous they would have been on a girl....shh....don't tell him he might not be too impressed with this story getting out).....anyway have been meaning to do a layout showing off these lovely long lashes for some time....

Have done another couple of layouts over the weekend....but will give Lime Tart a chance to get them uploaded before putting them up here...but I will leave you with a couple of sneaky pics....

Will come back and post again once I can reveal the layouts.

It's been a while!!!

Where did that 6 weeks go??? My excuse (because I feel like I need one) is that work and life have been busy and I had a pretty nasty fall in the shower a few weeks back which knocked out a whole week somewhere in there.

Have to say my family definitely get this record the moments bit because I heard my hubby saying as the ambulance officers were carrying me out to the ambulance that Jo would probably want this photographed - do you think I should get her camera!!! Well he was partly right, certainly the 1st stage which was me sprawled naked in bottom of said shower would not have been welcome....but the ambulance bit would have been okay.....

Any way I can look back now and laugh...its wasn't so funny at the time as I thought I had broken my leg.

I was forced to stay home for a week but was unable to use any of this time for scrapbooking purposes as I had a nasty trauma to my hamstring & just below my bottom - which meant I couldn't sit for the week I had at home, had to lie propped up on one arm....this meant I couldn't scrap.....darn it all.... Anyway long excuse over, I am just about right and have a new respect for those non-slip rubber mats you are meant to have in the bottom of the shower!

So onto some scrapbooking news......thought I had better post a few layouts as a catch up...

Sneak pics of layouts that I had posted in July are now well and truly up at Lime Tart so here they are:

Love this photo of Taylor and my Mum.....and we had these cute birds to use in the July kit - so I came up with this title "Birds of a Feather flock together" to symbolish how close their relationship is!!!

This is an old 2005 photo of Taylor with a bear he and his Gran had just made (on the right).....I thought about this photo when I saw the wee quotes in the July kit and this particular quote

was by Winnie the Pooh...so perfect for this photograph.....don't get to use pink very often with mainly scrapping my boy...but I think I got away with it with using the black cardstock and ledger paper!!!

The kits had a great set of mini quote notes in it....so designed this mini album around the rest of them called "Quotes to live by"

Taylor and his great mate and cousin Michael having a great laugh together


My favourite photo of Taylor as a baby asleep in his cot so "Dream Little Angel" seemed like a great title for this page!!!

Great quote about friendship....so used a photo of my scrap buddies at a weekend away.

Using the August kit I finally scrapped the first of our photos from our Aussie holiday.....Taylor with his Super Hero mates.....so the title is "When I grow up I want to be a Super Hero!!!"

I also did a step by step project for Lime tart this month and decided to embellish this CD holder to keep all Taylor's portfolios that come home on CD from his Digitial Year 6 class (a sign of the times)

Finally....I'll leave you with some work I've recently done for Fiskars for the August challenge which was using paint...

A layout showing the beautiful sunsets we get at "Our Happy Place" - our summer holiday spot - Kawa Kawa Bay.....its feels great to have a bit of sunshine today and feel that those summer days might not be too far away....

So thats the end of a long post from me and I won't leave it so long between posts again!!!