Let the Swapper Beware

This is not my usual style of posting, however, I have to admit after participating in a swap on a forum board, I have decided not to particpate in any more. Check out the pic of what I received, I only wish I had photographed what I had sent now.

I am a little disappointed, as due to the fact I already subscribe to SM, to received another magazine freebie is a bit crappy, especially when we are all scrappers and all probably got the magazine.

Anyhow this post is short and sweet as I have to go to lunch at work today for our little Christmas thingy. The kids (Mel and Zak) have been really good while their sister has been away at her dads and we are also doing some present wrapping and lighting outside. I have to borrow the neighbour's ladder as Dave threw out my rickety little step ladder when he last cleaned out the garage.

Take care and tata for now. I will be trying to get on again before Christmas.

Retreat LOs and other Stuff

Hi there all. Glad to see that I am getting visitors to my blog now. I thought since i had an hour or so to spare between all the stuff that is going on at this time of year to show you a couple of things I did at retreat. I must say its the best run one i have been too and would recommend going to another one when they hold it. I for one am definitely going again.


Its a bit skewy but here is the result of the christmas LO class we did at retreat. I chose some photos from a big family christmas we had in 2004 when i had (it seems like it anyway) 100 people at my house (just joking LOL). AND where I tried to "poison" my soon to be sister in law LOL. Its alright, we just got her out of action for half of the day. (sorry Peta but we can both see the funny side of that one and all because of that lovely dublin milkshake, next time i will have the right icecream LOL).

Yes very simple, but very effective. This actually was done on the Sunday morning after a sumptuous brekky. I am so glad this was done at this time as we were all a bit brain dead by then. LOL. And I always thought those sticky embellishment thingys you see looked very $2 shoppish but when they are on a page, it really does something to it (referring to the star and reindeer).

Here is the "mega" 11 shot double LO, please excuse the quality of the shot of the LO, as I am not feeling 100% today, and I wanted to get them on.

My camera is amazing these photos at see world are taken in rapid shot mode with the big lense on. I was up the back of theatre thingy so that i could stand up and not have heads everywhere. I basically did the LO up there and added the photos, the caption (care of the cricut) and the journalling at home. An awesome way to get a lot of photos on a page and have space, PP, journalling and ribbon.

I must be feeling a little off, I have been wondering why these images are taking sooo long to load up ..... duh perhaps if I compress them it might make it quicker!!

Here is another one. I had this finished the day after I came home from retreat!! I basically come home from work, sorted some dinner out, finished this LO (only needed a photo) and crashed out. I was one very tired girl believe me.
At retreat, I had thoughts on making this photo sepia, but the colours match perfectly, anyone would think i matched everything to the photo, the photo looks so cool with it all. This is Mel and her best friend Courtney from up the street, out the front of my house.

Finally, I did this on the Saturday night after we had some fun and games. It took me a very long time to do this one and I am very proud of it. One of the few LOs of me that I can like. LOL

I have a few more to add photos too but with Christmas coming up and I expect next week at work is going to be huge. Supermarkets and Christmas. I am going to take it as easy as I can this weekend. We have decided at the last minute not to go on the cruise thing this evening as we are both feeling a little poor. Not from too much christmas already but Dave seems to have caught Zaks little bug and I hope I am not getting it. I am just tired from a hectic week at work.

See you all later.

Check this out!!

One would think that with a whole weekend of scrapping coming up, that I would just chill out today to be ready for leaving tomorrow. First, I dont have to work in the morning which is a huge bonus.

Now on we go. I couldnt resist doing this today. I went out to the scrapbook cupboard the other day and they were organising this class. There was only one lady in and she was going to cancel, and I said what a way to relax before I go away, I'll join in too. This is what I came up with on short notice.

My son and my nephew. I love how it turned out. It was done with a blank jigsaw. I am going to do another page and see how it turns out and post it up here too.

My next post will be after I get back from the retreat. Only one more sleep to go. I hope I can get to sleep tonight as I am very excited to go. Although after a big week at work, I am really tired so sleep may not be an issue.

Until, we cross paths again, take care and remember...........

"If you cant be good....... be good at it" LOL

I am Packed already !!!!

Hmmmm, must be excited. I spent Monday and Tuesday organising "packs" to take with me to retreat so i dont end up taking every thing. I am staggered and amazed that I am so organised this time. Last time when i wasnt working, I wasnt this ready.

So i cant believe that i have it ready to go and in such a compact way. Above is a pic:
Not much really, I dont think, compared to when i went to a retreat at Tamborine last year. I think going to scrap club and a couple of crop nights has helped me compact my travelling "kit".
I have been altering things recently, using mm paints, etc and also my cricut here are some
results from my playing. I have really enjoyed doing these tins and stuff. I wanted everything to match with my runway tote from MM so i closely matched the paint. This is my sewing tin for when i go to crops etc. It holds everything you need to sew with. Needles held up by velcro dots to the craft foam put in the tin to stop the rattling.



The next 2 photos are of my ATC (artist trading card) Tin. I decided to make some ATCs as i am going to retreat and its a good way to pass on contact details, as i am packed to go, it has been a real joy to actually get down and stamp some ATCs and some sponging etc. I have forgotten how much I really enjoy my stamping. I love to scrap too dont get me wrong.

So here is another pic with some of those cards around it so that you can get a better idea.

Well blogger is not cooperating right now but i am going to give it another go and see if it will upload
the image, finally got it uploaded but I also have on more image to upload. As I said, I have had an altered week as well as getting ready for the retreat.




These are my other boxes that I altered, trying to keep the same colours happening. A couple of boxes in my office were looking pretty tired and tatty so I broke out the cricut to make the letters and flowers and adhered them to my boxes. The cricut is unreal and although i havent played much with it yet, I believe this will be a great tool. Here are my boxes and tins together.













Well I think that is enough raving for today. I will be full of news and LOs etc after I come back. Only 2 more sleeps to go. I feel so excited about going as I have paid for this with my work money. I am leaving Hubby and the kids for the weekend. They will cope without me, too bad if they cant. Now to get the washing off the line so that i know that there will be work clothes and school clothes for us for at least Monday. Then i can get some washing done to get them through the week.


Hope you all your loved ones are doing well and cant wait to catch up with you all soon.

take care


tess

Its a dry one LOL

Hi there,

Its been a little bit since my last blog. I have been working a lot of hours recently, starting off thinking the week I am not going to get many hours and end up having to refuse shifts due to working too many hours (am only allowed to work 38 hours before overtime cuts in and they dont want to pay that for some reason LOL).

I have been working on off the page stuff this week. Undercoating and sanding etc. That is the worst part of it I think. Today, I am hoping to get some colour on the boxes etc that I am doing. Its just a couple of things to put my things in at home and I wanted to make the faded boxes look better.

My retreat is paid for so I am really excited about it. They have just about packed all the retreat goodies and kits for the weekend so I am hoping to hear from the lady today so I can get an idea of which photos to take for the kits. These kits include a class and since I havent done many classes since living in Qld, I thought I would take the opportunity to get some learning done. Hopefully this will reflect in my LOs when I get back. Also we are going to be at a Christian Centre so this will be a "dry" camp, but the last turn off we have to make is at a pink pub so may have to go for a wander if I get the time. Sunday we dont even have to leave till 3pm so that is fabulous, with 2 classes being held on Sunday and 4 on Saturday. There is also going to be an "Op Shop Glamour Night". Looks like I will be visiting Lifeline or somewhere like that to get a glamour gown for the night. I want to join in the fun. It sounds so much like what we did at "Stamp Camp" at Penrith a few years back and it was sooo much fun. They will be wrapping it up fairly early so we can get in and do some more scrapping. I cant wait to see our goodies bag. I know we are getting an album and a big Rusty Pickle letter in this bag as the letter is one of their weekend challenges, and a class on Friday night after we all settle in. I just cant wait till the 1st of December. I feel almost organised for it already.

Tonight I am going to "Friday night Frenzy" at my LSS, "The Scrapbook Cupboard", which is on Siganto Drive, Oxenford, Gold Coast. I went last fortnight and the girls there are great to "play" with.

DD turned 15 last Saturday the 11th. The 15yo "girl stuff" well and truly kicked in with 2 massive fights with her this week. I had actually begun to think she had turned a corner but no if anything she has kicked it up another gear. I actually asked her what she wanted me to do the other night and she doesnt know. How can I help her or do anything for her when she doesnt even know what she wants. I know this is a teenage thing as I can remember not knowing what I wanted at her age and just wanted my mum to leave me alone so I could read. Paige has her sport and at the moment she has finished Volleybal and hockey and has nothing to do. I feel she needs this time to chill out as she does soo much hockey once the season starts, she was very tired at the end of this season. On the other hand, she has been recognised at her high school for her work in hockey and received a sports award on Tuesday in the form of a medal. She also came top in her PE class and received a very nice trophy at the awards night last Thursday. PE is not what it was when i went to school. I just did a couple of periods of some sport thing and that was it. She has theory of the sport they are studying and they learn to run tournaments for the sport and also go into injury stuff and history of the game and benefits for fitness and healthy living etc. It is a great subject for her and she does well in it.

Today I am going to start labelling my tools etc so that they are all named for the retreat. LOL its like when i sent my son to school camp a couple of weeks ago, labelling everything in sight for him. Oh also and I have to work and get ready for the crop night tonight and I want to get some paint on my off the page stuff. So I am off to make a start.

What a great day!!

Today has been a great day!!


First of all, I have to move my scrap club for December to the last week of November, which makes it the 25th of November. Why? You ask.......


Because I am going on a scrapping retreat that weekend. After all the weekend tournaments my DH has gone to this year, he didnt even bat an eyelid when I said I wanted to go and needed to go. I laid the deposit down today and I cant wait. The retreat is being run by Scrappidoo Scrapbooking shop at Mapleton on the 1,2 and 3 of December for only $180. I am so excited after talking to the lady today.


I got my DD's layby out today for her birthday on Saturday, and I got some christmas pressies on layby for the kids. They are getting some really cool stuff for christmas let me tell you. Makes me wish I was a kid and had me for a mum at the moment LOL.


DD's phone has died so I got myself a new mobile and she gets mine. My new phone has a 3 mega pixel camera in it so that makes for a portable camera that takes pretty good snaps. It also has usb connection so I can hook it up to the computer and upload photos and apparently its an mp3 player as well. I just have to learn how to do this although with DD around I am sure I will learn pretty quick!!


I went to my LSS shop today, and you wouldnt believe what was there...... yes thats right my cricut was there!!! How exciting is that!!! I have it home now as it was all paid off except for the extra font. Now I am looking at the box and wanting to open it. This is my christmas pressie from my family. I keep thinking well I can open the cricut and play and use it and the fonts can come from my kids for christmas. Does that sound reasonable??? It does to me!


This is the first day of my weekend as I have to work Saturday and Sunday all day both days. Just loving the time and a half for 8 hours on Sunday. The Sunday pay this weekend will be my spending money at retreat as they said they have a lot of stuff just come in from the states just in time to showcase them at retreat. She was also saying that amongst the goodies in our bags will be an album. So now my excitement is almost bursting from me. Finally things seem to be cruising along really nicely with laybys on for christmas, DH getting a bonus just on christmas and me working a lot of public holidays, we should have a lovely christmas this year. I have just heard from my mum and she will be up in Qld for christmas so hopefully maybe my sister and brother and their families and my family will be able to catch up over christmas with my mum. It will be great.


I have to go and keep enjoying my weekend, and get some dinner on and hope that it stops raining a bit to get some washing done tomorrow while i scrap and catch up on some important TV watching (or maybe open that cricut box and have a peek).


take care


tess

This One Didnt Make it to the next round :(

Well here is another LO. It was round 2 of a challenge I was in. This one was entered and I didnt make the cut. The challenge "3s a crowd" and use stamping. Well, I used more than 3 photos so I think that struck me out for a start and stamping was meant to be the focal point of the LO. I thought the kids were enough and I am happy with this LO. It says what I want it to say and that is the main thing.

I have work today but I have the feeling that I will be home early. Time to break out the tripod and try to do some self portraits with the self timer. I have never been happy with any of the results of the self portrait thingy so I want to master it. I have a couple of pages I want to do 1 for my BOM and another for r3 of the challenges. I didnt make it to the round but I want to do the LO anyhow as it has stitiching and the self portrait thing and they are both going to challenge me.

Thanx for taking the time to look and leave a comment so I know you have dropped in.

take care


tess

More LOs

Well i said i had been scrapping a lot lately. Here are 2 more that I completed for the SAM/Elsie Challenges. Has anyone else got Elsie's book? I have and I love it. There are so many good ideas that this book will be coming with me everywhere. I have "down time" this afternoon at swimming lessons for Melanie so I will be taking that book with me to read again. I want to get a "She" book as well. It sounds interesting and should be a good source of inspiration and motivation as well.

I also have a link on my blog to go and have a look at a scrapper with a fantastic sense of humour. It is the Scrap Happy link for anyone that wants to see. This lady is american but she just has such a great sense of humour and her last post about the hanging baskets is a total crack up.

I have to go to work now (darn it, interrupting my scrapping time) so its time to upload a couple of images and then off I go.

Scrapping up a Storm

I havent stopped scrapping. Nearly everyday I have scrapped something or finished off the LO from the day before or at the weekend completed 5 LOs!!!. I am loving the Classes to Go kit - "Garden Path". I have all 4 of them completed and they are on 12 x 12 format instead of the 11.5 x 8 format. This took some going as i had to reorganise a couple for 12 x 12 and change the orientation of them a bit. I also changed the "Friends" and did another family one as after my hard drive crash, I have lost a lot of the photos that I had. I have to find a person that specialises in Data Recovery and see if they can have a look at my old hard drive which is sitting on the desk here and see if they can find them again. Fingers crossed and a lot of money later i guess. Anyhow today I am going to upload my Classes to go Los i did. In the next couple of days i hope to put some of the others i have done up as well.



Oh and my pretty pink "bling" one made me get through to a second round challenge. Although I was happy with my 2nd round LO which i will upload in the next couple of days I dont think i am going to make the 3rd round as there were LOs that had a lot more 'Wow" factor than mine.

I have to go, the darn pupil free day is interrupting my scrapping time. Enjoy my LOs and take care.

More LOs

I went into the past for these photos of the kids. Considering the littlest one has just turned 8 and the biggest one is 17 today they were taken quite a while ago. I just loved watching them run through the sea gulls at the same time having a flash back to watching Alfred Hitchcocks movie the birds. However I love the colours and didnt go to too much trouble as i love the photos. Little Melanie is running with her tongue out. I had forgotten she did this and Zak had his cheeky face on as he was running through the birds going "rah, rah". Jade was even being "girlie" then and Paige she is her "tom boy" self yet again. They had so much fun that day and those days were before the "digital" age for me. Oh well off again to do some more scrapping. Its been bill paying and shopping and school interviews today so not much done that i wanted to get done.

till next time

TFL

take care

tess

Bling

Well my first attempt at really getting into all things girlie. My daughter Jade was up visiting me recently and she is turning 17 tomorrow. These are a couple of the gifts she received for her birthday.

I have kindy glitzed the HS letters and used HS flowers and added gemstones to the centre of them. As the shoes had silver in them, i inked the plain janes chip accents with quick silver ink them added some diamond magic for it to shine. I dont think you can really see it but it looks great in real life and people that know me will be amazed as this is not how I usually scrap. You cant go wrong with basic grey in there somewhere too.

Over the next couple of days i hope to get some time to upload a couple of my latest 12 x 12s that i have finished. I decided to actually open up one of the classes to go kits that I bought from SAM earlier in the year and i have to say i am very happy with the first page. I am off to print some more photos so i can continue to scrap some more things. 5 am start again in the morning so i guess another early night for me.

In the meantime take care

Father's Day, Cut Finger and other stuff

I have had a great Father's Day. The boys have been out nearly all day at the war gaming club. They have only just got home and its been very quiet and he is calm!!!

I did a LO on my stupid mishap with my scissors last Thursday. I am just so lucky i didnt need stiches and things seem to be healing ok. This was something I wouldnt have thought to scrap except someone mentioned I should on the SAM boards. I have used up some scrap ribbon and experimented with rub ons on some twill. This will go in my AAM album that now has a couple of extra pages in it.

I have just completed a couple more LOs for our exchange student album and now I am ready to go on to our second one that we had.

I have a couple of photos laying around of him but the rest are on the hard drive in my computer that is at the doctors. Lucky that I can use the kids computer for stuff or I would be well and truly out of the loop. Anyhow I am just going to upload the last 2 pages of Manami's chapter of our lives and then back onto some more scrapping. It is certainly helping with the not smoking thing. I havent had a smoke since 19 August (my birthday pressie to me and my family).

Ta Ta for now and take care

tess

24th August 2006

What a hectic week it has been. I have already worked more than my 25 hours for this week which is great for my pay next week. On the job hunting front, nothing has happened in regards to some applications that I put in a couple of weeks ago. So I will have to go back again and try for something else. At least I am not feeling as rejected as what I did and also, I am lucky to have a job even if it is pretty crappy at times. I just wish they would realise my worth and give me some permanence (be it part time or full time). I am really tired and havent really had more than 2 days in a week off since coming back from the SAM retreat last October, and often it has just been the Sunday I havent worked (too expensive). Combine that with my early morning starts and I am sure you can appreciate how tired I am at the moment. I just keep plodding onwards though.

I havent had much time for scrapping this week and I need to get to my table and keep busy. It has been 5 days since I had a ciggie. I think today its been a little hard, I am really craving a smoke and I am trying not to give in. I am glad I am keeping busy. It generally takes my mind off it.

I am getting Paige to design a cover page for the album I am doing of our exchange students that have come to stay. We have had 3 Japanese students now, they have all been for a couple of weeks. We have loved having them and look forward to having more of them. All 3 of them have been very very polite and really appreciate all that we have done for them, and we have enjoyed the experience of having a person from an entirely different culture staying with us. I have about 2 more pages to complete of our first student Manami and then I will go on to Takeshi our second student, that stayed with us during Christmas 2005.

Anyhow, I hope everything is going ok in your patch of the world and I will try and keep this updated.

Take care

tess

First Post

Well, I did it. I made a Blog. This wasnt anywhere near as hard as what I thought it would be.
After a hectic morning at hockey with the kids on Saturday (my birthday), with mixed results 2 wins and 1 loss, I got home and raced through a few chores. I then planned my attack for the afternoon, telling DH to organise dinner for the kids and himself. I planned a couple of LOs then packed my bags accordingly for a scrap night with friends. Its something I dont often do due to time (never enough of it) and work hours. I got in the car and cruised up to Forest Lake and spent a few hours scrapping at Hope's house. While there, I took the opportunity to indulge in some much needed retail therapy, where my DH bought me the green MM tote bag for my birthday. I just have to show him it LOL. I almost finished one LO and finished planning a second. These I finished on Sunday and I also completed another 2 LOs on Sunday as well (trying to keep hands busy while trying to give up the dreaded smokes). I really enjoyed playing with my shrinky plastic again. Dusted off the stamps, and the water colours to colour the plastic. Melanie watched in amazedment as they shrunk. I am really pleased with the way they turned out.

We also had a family lunch at Sizzler's. The kids had never been there before and had an absolute blast eating plate after plate of food. I thought Mel would burst with all the desserts she ate.

I think this might be enough for my first blog, so I am signing off for now.

Take care

Tess