It's been one of those days...

A tough day

It's been a surreal kind of a day.  The rain has pelted down in what is totally unusual weather for summer.  We had 14 degrees today, and as I sit typing this I have just heard that the Met Service has released weather warnings of almost Civil Defence standards for a storm to hit tonight.  they are forecasting flash floods and power cuts.  With the way the rain is hitting the windows right now, I believe them.

It kind of matches my mood today.  This past few week have been hard as I've known my dear friend Shauna was losing her battle with cancer.  Today Shauna passed away. IT was a brave fight, but it doesn't make it any easier to say goodbyes.

Those of you that have known me for a while, know how much Shauna meant to me, to so many of us.  When she was diagnosed with cancer in June 2006, I made her an album, and entered in the Chatterbox Make it Meaningful contest.  I sent the album to her last year, when things really started to get rough. 

Shauna was the foundation of my scrapbooking.  She was my mentor and my hero.  She was my encouragement and someone I will always hold dear.  When I wrote my book in 2006, it was Shauna it was dedicated to.
Goodbye sweet Shauna.  Your soft, gentle and loving ways will never be forgotten.

(Pages from the album I made for Shauna, 2006.)

 
  

 

Packing up and leaving the big city

We packed up and left the big city this past weekend.  We hooked on the boat, took the kids and headed for the Coromandel for the weekend.  We knew the weather was meant to be awful, but in efforts to get away from the stresses we are finding ourselves under at the moment, we packed the board games just incase and we left.

We were amazed that once we crossed the Kopu-Hikuai Hills that things were very different, the rain stopped, the heat went up about 5 degrees and everything was decidedly crunchy and the grass so brown!  We had an awesome weekend with the family, took the boat out sea biscuiting, spent time on land doing absolutely nothing, inbetween travelling around the area looking for treasure with our GPS - geocaching, a hobby we discovered 18 months ago.

Here are the kids discovering a cache (not saying where! look at the sun and the colour of the grass behind them!)

Here's one for those of you that love the Pohutukawa tree, they were in full bloom over the coromandels, I don't know if they'll still be there by Christmas!

 

 9 Coromandel geocaches down, many to go.

Monday morning and back to the grind-stone. I shouldn't complain, being busy means there is work.  Both our construction business and my business are crazy busy, we are extremely grateful!
Don't expect Christmas cards though. I'm serious.

Leaving you with another Tarisota layout. 
Yes Abby really said that.
She's an amazing character right now.  Enjoying it immensely.
Laters.

Not drowsy, but asleep...

Today I discovered (again, I vaguely remember discovering this once before but apparently the note-to-self I wrote at the time wasn't clear when I repeated the experience)... anyway, today I discovered I should not take Claratyne, or any of those antihistimines.  My efforts to combat the effects of hayfever were met with a day I hardly remember.  I slept most of it away, and when I wasn't sleeping I was wishing I was.  It's not the ideal state to be in when attempting to clear a large workload, in fact being asleep on the couch at 9.30am is downright embarrassing.  I've written a large note to self, copied Lucy and Paul on it so they remember as well and I will not take that kind of medication again.  Non-drowsy?  Not to all.

So I'm behind in my work, I'm up on stress levels and down on patience.  That's just today though and I've promised myself to wake tomorrow with a clear head and start again.  It's only Monday tomorrow, right?

On said Monday morning (tomorrow is the new Monday, remember) I'm going to turn over a new leaf.  The blog-more-often-because-actually-I-enjoy-it-and-I-don't-know-when-I-stopped-blogging-so-often-but-I-must-blog-more leaf.

Because I really do have a lot to say.

Off to sleep off the last of the effects of taking non-drowsy drugs (with 'sleepiness' as a listed side effect... I ask you? *shrug* perhaps I'm not meant to understand?)  I'll leave you with this layout created for Aussie Scrap Source a while back though.  My first play with Websters pages. I wish I could access their website, it crashes my computer everytime :O(

Laters

Inventing stuff, late nights, birthday cards and Sesame Street.

I often wish I was an inventor.  Someone that dreams up things that would be really cool, and could set about and make it work.  I have no problems with the dreaming up something cool but the reality that a plug-in duster (you know, some contraption that sits in the corner discretely and sucks the dust out of the air, it never settles on furniture... no more dusting.. yea....) is ever going to get made, is another thing.
Today I sat down to lunch.  Seems like a primitive discovery but I've only been doing that for about 6 months now.  Prior to that I might grab something in the kitchen and eat while I was working, or miss lunch altogether.  Now it's quite the decadent affair, with a Continental Hearty Minestrone cuppa-soup and sitting and reading a book for 20 minutes.  Even on the craziest of days.  On an indulgent day I cut open a pita bread, spread a very thin samount of butter on there and add garlic granules.  Microwaved for 2 1/2 minutes and that turns into hot crunchy garlicy bread.  SO yum.  Not so indulgent days involve a bit of canola spray to make it a little crunchy.   I'd like to invent a non-fat butter.

SO anyway.  Today I sat down to lunch and I thought.  THIS is my lunchtime most favourite thing. Most favourite thing, I thought.  That's a layout.  I'd like to invent a camera that takes a snaphot by telepathic messages.  At that moment, cuppa soup in hand, book balanced with pita bread in other hand, I'd want a photo to put on said layout.  CLICK. but no.  In the time it takes me to locate the camera, fuss about what I look like, balance said camera on the arm of the couch opposite my favourite lunch spot, realisation that facing the camera AT the window where I perch myself each day is not going to end up in cool photography technique, adjust all of the above and then take the pic, the moment is gone, my pita bread is cold and so is my soup.  See. Not so cool.

So many ideas, so little time, not enough photos of the coolest stuff in my day. 

Like these.

And these

and the Saturday night that went with them.  Best fun in far too long.
And the bonus? I'm still not as old as Sesame street.  And I'm never likely to be. 

Laters.

(Layout posted today as part of the 2peas Garden, as part of the Guest Garden Girl gig for november)

 

Burning the candle.

"Shush Braden, Mummy's asleep! 
I'm only going to wake her up when Jacob arrives back or if she starts snoring!"

I'm vaguely aware of my head on Abby's shoulder and her little arm around me.  "How sweet" I think dreamingly to myself.  And then I realise where I am. 
At the library.

What's that saying? Burning the candle at both ends.  I can't even tell you how far I'm pushing it right now, and it's not just scrapbooking.  It's life in general.   It's mostly the business my hubby and I have, but it's also the work I do.  It's the kids' commitments, it's end of year build up, it's just everything.  I'm tired.

Clearly.  As I fell asleep in the library on Abby's shoulder within 10 minutes of arriving. 

It's nice to know I have her trained well, and she would have woken me if I started snoring. 
(Takes me back to tertiary education days.  3 hour economics lectures and the agreement I had with my best friend that we'd only sleep one at a time and nudge awake if snoring started.  It was in a huge lecture theatre and really the tutor didn't care if you slept, we were adults, it was our perogative!)
Lucky for me.

Tarisota gallery is up, and looking fantastic.  See it here.  Here is one of my favourites.  Off to try and catch up on sleep.

Laters.

 
 
 

The weekend...

It was the Auckland marathon today.  I've thought for the past couple of years that I'd like to participate in one of the smaller events of the day.  One that goes up and over the bridge.  That'd be cool.  I did try and register this year but clearly I was too late (who would have thought that it'd sell out so quick).  Next year.  Next year is my year.  Congrats to everyone that reached their goals today.  I did walk nearly 9km in your honour.  The streets of Pukekohe weren't nearly as exciting, even with Miley Cyrus on the ipod.

And so another weekend ends. 
* The weekend we planted out the rest of our vegies for summer.
* The weekend my first gladioli flower bloomed - that's really early. I love Gladioli.
* The weekend my doctor told me to treat my sons' 2 infected ears with hayfever medication.  (How's that working for us?  It's not - wonder whether hayfever medication will work for the throat infection he now has as well?)
* The weekend I booked my plane tickets to go to Timaru in February, teaching at Embellish It!
* The weekend I fell asleep at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon reading my latest book, digging to Australia.
* The weekend I am reminded, at 4.30am, why I don't drink wine.  I shouldn't drink wine.

Good things happening this week.  Like the reason I created this layout for LG, the Mum to this gorgeous little bubba.  Stay tuned to 2peas to see why I've been busy creating for Nov 1st ...

And lastly, this is the weekend after the weekend when we went searching for this.
And we found it.
And the kids couldn't have been prouder.

laters

Inspiration.

Inspiration comes in many forms without us even knowing.  I was inspired last week after watching a show on TV called "Eat yourself skinny" to make nacho chips out of flour tortillas.  I never thought the good old CCs would be cast aside for flour tortilla chips, but I did it and I have a new favourite.  who woulda thought.

Inspiration for my scrapbooking pages normally comes from everything around me.  I love watching galleries like those on blogs and on 2peas.  I've always said if inspiration doesn't hit, to find a layout you love, start to do your version of some small element on that layout and pretty soon you are away.

Aussie Scrap Source has been visiting different forms of inspiration and recently I completed an assignment to find an article or something in print as inspiration.  This is the advertisment I chose.

At first it was the colours that got me.  Then there was the huge amount of journaling.  Then the flowers.  The title - the pic on the angle.  The whole thing had so many possibilities.

In the end this is what I came up with, I'll try and put a close-up of the journaling to read.  Hoping you can see the connection!

Have a good one, everyone... I'll be back in day or so with photographic evidence of our trip searching out the cemetary that has William Howard.   I'm now officially obsessed with searching old census records and other family tree type things.  Like I need another obsession. 

Laters.

Searching.

Geneology has always fascinated me, goodness knows I have an interesting family tree, but seriously, nothing compares to Paul's family tree.  Paul's sister (talented scrapbooker Lesley Cooper) emailed me the other day with a few stories of Paul's great-grandfather.

The shortened version of the story is that this lad come out from England in 1875.  He was travelling with his cousin but as they went to board the ship he was turned away, the ship staff telling him at the gang-plank that the ship was overloaded already and he could board the next ship for the 90 day trip from London to New Zealand.  His luggage would stay on the ship he thought he was travelling on though, and he could collect it on his arrival in New Zealand.

Some 90-odd days later he arrived in NZ with nothing to his name.  He went to collect his luggage, only to be told that they were sorry but the ship he was meant to be on was lost at sea, it went down in the Bay of Biscay.  Paul's great grandfather started his life as a lad of 17 years old trying to start a new life in a new country with nothing but the clothes he stood up in.  By all accounts he was lucky to be alive.

And so it starts.  William Howard went on to have 12 children and died in his early 70s.  He was a very well respected man in the district.  At his time of passing he already had 42 grandchildren, most of his children went on to have 5-6 children each.  That was in the 1930s and since then his family has extended in a huge way, and spread throughout the district. 

I sat on the couch the other night re-telling this story my amazed 10year old.  Even at 10years old he could grasp the fine-line feeling of "If he got on that ship, none of us may have been here".  Life truly is a series of sliding doors, and this story is a fine example.

We don't know where William Howard is buried, but we know where his funeral was held back in the 1930s.  Lesly still has his a copy of his carefully typed out obituary.  Sometime today we start to search, camera in hand, great-great chandchildren in tow.  To find the gravesite of the man that started it all here in NZ.  Wish us luck.
laters

Barking noises, fun links and Prima.

A barking noise greeted me as I woke this morning and my first thought, as it would be when one hears such a noise, was ..we don't have a dog?.  On further investigation I discovered that the barking was coming from Brady's room.  He's been a little down for a few days, I guess now we know he was habouring a few nasty gremlins.  Nothing a few days on the couch with a nintendo won't fix.  I'm just hoping the awful headaches I've had for 3 days now don't turn into something similar.  Because I don't have a nintendo.  ;o)

I haven't welcomed the new design team members to the Aussie Scrap Source blog team yet.  Happy days as Janine K, (and isn't her new bubba just gorgeous!), Kathie Link and Louise Nelson join us.  Welcome ladies!

A page call for Ella Publishing here.  It involves a sketch, might be fun.

A DT call for Collage Press here.  You only have til the 21st, so be quick.  I'm a fan of Collage Press myself, so I watch the blog with interest!

A favourite layout, I spotted at 2peas... Ingvild really is amazing. 

And lastly, I joined the Prima Design Team this week.  I was already on the educators team, but joining the design team takes my work with Prima to a different level, it kind of completes the circle.  Things as an educator should become easier and clearer to those reading my blog, as I'm bound to have more posts with Prima layouts and products.  Nothing like a completed circle ;o)
(and just a note, they have a giveaway for Internationals, go leave a comment on the Prima blog for a chance to win a product pack)

Here's the layout I created with the ballerina-Pjs conversation....
Laters.

South Africa, Ballerinas and lost teeth.

I've been blog surfing this morning.  Among other things.  I came across this blog on my travels.  Mel from Kaisercraft recently attended the South African event that I was originally meant to travel to.  Her write-up of the trip is amazing and makes me wish even more that I had been able to attend the event.  My favourite part of Mel's blog though?  This quote.

When I stand before God at the end of my LIFE, i would hope that i would not have a single bit of talent left, and can say " I USED EVERYTHING you gave me"

Oh so true and something to think about.

Tracie Hudson also attended the same event.  Her write-up is lovely also.  It makes me look forward to next year even more, when I'm due to hop on the big plane and head over to South Africa to teach.  Bring it on.

Congrats to Trina and Heidi for their winning pages on the Prima blog today!  Go kiwi!

A short post from me today. Abby told me when I asked her to get into her pajamas the other day that "Ballerinas don't wear pajamas".  Silly me, what was I thinking?  It's something I need to get on a layout before I forget. 

Here's a layout from the latest Tarisota kit.  These pics taken at the start of 2008 when Brady lost both his two front teeth.  The lovelyLG edited the pics and I've been scrapping them over and over since.  I promise I'll move on soon. 
I'm so enjoying getting the story back into my pages.  I'd slipped for a while and scrapbooking started to lose it's gloss.  A friend encouraged me to start telling more stories like I used to.  I've started doing so and all of a sudden scrapbooking is so much more important again.

Now to find those ballerina in pajama embellishments. ;o)

Laters