Monday Scrapping Goodness

I thought I would mix things up a bit and blog on a Monday instead of Sunday. Truth is, I didn't have any photos taken yesterday so I had to wait until today to take some. I didn't get home from work early enough to get daylight shots (my preference) but I think the ones I have taken will do.
This past weekend saw me packing up my gear and heading into my LSS for a crop night with some of my friends from town. Like most crop nights, I did far more talking than scrapping. I have decided that getting part of a layout done is better than not getting anything done at all. I surprised myself by getting almost two layouts done. Yeah I know, pretty pathetic compared to super speedy scrapper Donna (man can that woman scrap!).
This is the first layout I managed to do:


I love this chipboard bird and flourish from Dusty Attic. I misted it with Tattered Angels Chalkboard mist and then did a light spray with pearl mist. Will definitely been looking for more chipboard like this to add to my stash.

Oh October Afternoon, how I love thee. Yes, if you haven't already guessed it by now, October Afternoon is perhaps my most favourite line. I love the paper, I LOVE the sticker embellishments ... I LOVE IT ALL!!!
Layout Number 2 ended as a work in progress. Although I have already photographed it (usually my sign that it is done), I feel that it needs more, probably on the top right hand side. I have been playing with it a bit but can't come up with anything I am happy with. It wasn't until I photographed the layout that I realised how similar in design it was to Layout No 1.

Loving experimenting with material on layouts lately, although I think I really need to get something that is NOT gingham. I have four different sets of material all in the same gingham pattern left over from about 12 years ago when I first started teaching. I bought them so that Mum could make some skirts for me for work. She made two but I have enough material for two more.
I also actually managed to do a layout tonight. Scrapping during the school week is almost unheard of for me. Normally I am either too busy planning, marking or just trying to wind down to be bothered to scrap. Last night however, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to finish off some Year 11 English marking and plan the week. The loss of sleep was worth it - my week is pretty much organised and I am all up-to-date with marking. Yay! So I did this as a little reward to myself - the challenge for Out of the Hat challenge website. Donna, one of the ladies who I scrapped with on Saturday night is on the design team. For the challenge we had to make our own journalling spot, use twine and include a number in the title. This is what I managed to come up with:
I made the journalling spot by tracing around the backing board of something from Jenni Bowlin. After cutting it out, I used a fine script stamp to lightly stamp on the background (I inked up the stamp, stamped in onto a piece of paper then on to the cardstock so it was quite light). I finished the journal spot off with bird stamps from Grant Archival. Not too shabby if I do say so myself lol!
I wanted to take some of the 'blackness' off the Heidi Swapp verb sticker so I added a few coats of Tattered Angels Glaze. Looks so much better in real life.
Well, I think that it about all for tonight. Who knows, I might even manage another layout in the coming days ... it is nice to dream lol.
Hope everyone is well. Take care.
S xoxo

Another weekend gone

Yep another weekend has passed and I don't have a lot to show for it, except for piles of clean clothes stacked neatly in the drawers and hanging in cupboards. That's right, I spent most of the weekend dividing my time between the washing machine, clothes line and folding table. Who says I don't share the love around lol.

I did manage to find the time to scrap this early this morning while the first load was on. It is based on Anthea's March Sketch over at Scrapbook Savvy. Very simple but I love it. Simple is definitely my style I have decided.

Next is some showntell which I forgot to show as promised in my last post. This was my take on Sar Ward's Blind Scrap Challenge at the February CyberCrop at Savvy. If I learnt one thing from participating in the Blind Scrap it was that I SUCK at following instructions :-o
Last of all, a 'just because' layout. I haven't scrapped many of the photos taken of our wedding (about 3 layouts in almost 13 years). I knew that I wanted to use the Prima vines on a wedding page but could just never get it to work the way I wanted. In the end, I just gave up and did the layout.

Nothing else to report. Mitch is back of to his Orthopaedic specialist later this week for a progress check with his legs. He is back up on his toes again so we need to work out what the next plan of attack will be. Let's hope the week goes ok.
Until next time.
S xoxoxoxoxo

The weekend that was ...

... busy, busy, busy. I:

• did a truck load (Lachie would probably say it was a B Triple Road Train's worth of washing - that kid has farming on the brain) of washing, folding and ironing
• did a stack of planning for the coming weeks at school - happy with the tweaking to my Modern History unit for the Year 12's
• took the boys to Milo Cricket Saturday morning and then to soccer sign-ups (why oh why did I cave ... cricket season is almost done which means that Sat morning sleep-ins were going to be mine again but alas with soccer starting, that is no longer the case
• watched the first crops of the summer season get harvested
• went through over half a tank of fuel driving back and forth around the farm, dropping the boys off to the headers, picking them up, taking lunches over for everyone, helping move gear from one paddock to the next
• listened to my little farmer boy recount all of his adventures in the header, road train and chaser-bin (a large grain bin towed behind a tractor)
• took myself off for a little photoshoot over where Tony and the others were harvesting
• DROPPED MY CAMERA FROM THE TOP STEP OF THE HEADER :-( I think it is ok - took a few shots after the 'fall' and all appeared to be working well. I guess time will tell.

Some random farm photos:

This is a cotton boll. It starts off as a little square, then a flower and finally the boll emerges. Eventually, the crop will be defoliated (sprayed out) to kill off all the leaves and dry the bolls out so they crack open and let the cotton be seen.
Photo Two: A paddock of cotton - this crop is still over a month away from defoliation. The crop is looking ok for a dryland crop and considering the terrible start to the season with the flooding. Photo Three: one of the paddocks of sorghum which was harvested today. If you look real closely, you can see where part of it has actually being harvested before I got there. This paddock actually spent a great deal of time underwater during December and January due to all the flooding. The yield is not all that great but at least there is something to harvest - a lot of farmers don't even have that this year.
I also participated in my first cyber crop in over twelve months at Scrapbook Savvy which helped my confirm my earlier suspicions that teachers are the WORST people to get to follow instructions (well this teacher is the worst anyway lol).
I completed three of the challenges - the blind scrap (the instruction one), Kerryn's English 101 challenge and Anthea's Maths Challenge. I can't show the LO for the Blind scrap just yet but here are some pics of the others.
Kerryn's English 101 layout: we had to have journalling that added up to at least 100 words. I wrote about how I have finally come to accept the reality that I will never have a little girl and that pink will never live in our house. We also had to have a poem - I chose the nursery rhyme, "What little boys are made of" - seemed to suit the theme well.

Anthea's Maths Challenge: we had to scrap to Einstein's E=MC2 equation. Each element was a different part of the equation. I loved this challenge and I am fairly happy with the result: If you are interested, you can follow the links above to read the details of each of the challenges. You can also head over to my gallery at 2 peas for more detailed pictures of each of the layouts.
Wow so that was one massive photo overload. If you are still here, congratulations on actually making it to the end. I will be back in a few days to post pictures of the Blind Scrap layout. Hope you all had a great weekend too.
Cheers,
S xoxoxo

... and we interrupt this to return to normal programing ...

Yes believe it or not Telstra has actually come through for a change - sorry Telstra but you really do leave a lot to be desired for us country customers - and I have a brand new modem. What was supposed to be at least a week with no internet turned out to be a few days which is awesome news for me!!!! Here I was thinking that I would be lost in a deep black hole of no technology forever (ok a little over-dramatic but for a moment, I thought the world was coming to an end hehehehehehe).
Modem arrived this afternoon and was very quickly installed. Weekly swim club interrupted my progress so I am only just getting back to reinstalling now.
It was a busy weekend on the scrap front - 4 layouts which for me is lots of scrapping at once. Yes I know that I will never win any prizes for the speed of my scrapbooking but at least it is 4 more pages done.
Layout One: Mitch and Lach's new school shoes for the 2011 school year (well hopefully they will last a semester. Both boys have large feet for their ages and I can tell I am going to be kept poor buying shoes for them. There is nothing better than pristine new school shoes:


Layout 2: Ready 2 go. I didn't think I was going to get the boys to cooperate long enough for me to get some 'nice' back-to-school photos. Not perfect in the professional sense, but they are perfect for me. The layout is based on this months Scrap the Girls sketch - yes I know it was for STG but when you don't have girls, you just have to make do LOL:

Layout 3: Simple scrapping is what I love best and there is nothing more simple than this LO:

Layout 4: This was a MAJOR cause for celebration - the arrival of my very first Scrapbook Savvy Monthly Kit AAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDDDD it arrived within 2 days of me ordering it. Cannot get better service than that IMO. I ordered the 'We're Savvy' kit and I am totally stoked with its contents. I have only done one layout using the kit so far but have a few others planned - just need to find the time to do some scrapping:

Not a lot else to report - the start of the week has been very quiet, except for the exciting news that SM picked up one of my double layouts for publication - first time ever for a double!! Here's hoping the rest of the week stays quiet so I can squeeze some scrapping in somewhere.
Chat soon,
S xoxoxoxox

Telstra ... why oh why do you do this to me?? no net for a week

Telstra ... why oh why do you do this to me??

First Scrap Shares for 2011

Wow, who would have thought that it would have taken me this long to get back into the scrapping swing of things. I went to a crop night at my LSS on Saturday and worked on two layouts - who needs to scrap when there is talking and gossiping to be done??!! Between catching up on everyone's news from the Christmas/New Year period and telling them about my time in the States, time flew by.
The first LO uses one of the pictures I took when the boys were busy burying each other in the sandpit (see previous post). Love this photo. Think I am going to have to enlarge it and frame it for my wall somewhere. Very simple layout - great way to break the scrapping drought.


The second layout uses pictures from Lachlan's first day of school this year. My little baby is in Year One (where has the time gone???). He was so excited to be at school again, ready to learn. As always, he was super excited to pose for the camera. Good thing he let me go overboard with pictures because his older brother didn't want to have a bar of it. Totally love the stickers from October Afternoon's Report Card collection, especially the one with the space for handwriting. It will be great to look at what Lachie's writing used to be like.

Nothing else to show. I am in the middle replanning my scrap area and am contemplating the idea of moving out to the formal dining room/lounge (which we don't really use as the formal lounge). Upside is that it has more room than my little office and I am out with the family; downside is that the room is all open-plan so no dividing wall between the two areas so I have to keep it super tidy - the house is not ours but comes as part of DH's job package so can't make any structural changes. I have moved my desk out for a trial run to see if I like this new set-up or not - only time will tell. Any tips/ideas greatly appreciated, especially from those of you who live in a rental/work house and have successfully created a scrap space in your family areas.
Cheers
Sarah xoxoxo