Nothing says you're on holidays quite like ...

*** warning, picture heavy post ***

...
1. Playing in the sand:

2. A cute sand-covered bum (one of my new fav pics): 3. Taking a little bit of home to the beach (when was the last time you saw a header at the beach?!):4 and 5. Play time in the spa and competitions to see whose shirt can get the fattest (love my little Michelin Men): 6. Playing 'What colour is my tounge?' each time the boys have Icy Poles:8. Lots of laughter at the things Lachlan says. On this day he told me he was wearing Chocolate Lipstick (aka Chocolate Drumstick):Yep we are on holdiays and while I can't say that I have been loving every minute of it (find it very hard living in the confined spaces of a 2-bedroom apartment when we are used to 6000 acres of wide open spaces), it has been good to spend time together as a family. These holidays there is no planning, no daily agenda - we have been taking each day as it comes and just going with the flow. We have been doing lots of walking, catching up on reading (think I am up to book number 5 for the holidays) and lots of sitting and looking out at the ocean.
I have managed to squeeze a bit of scrapping in late at night after everyone has gone to sleep. Not a lot mind you, just enough to keep the creative juices flowing and to justify the mini spending sprees at the local scrap shops. I was also lucky enough to go to a class at one of the scrap shops here over the weekend but that is still a work in progress as I didn't have any suitable photographs with me at the time. Here are some pics of what I have come up with so far. I have another one started but don't think I will get back to that until we go home.

Layout 1: Bribery (Sometimes you just have to):

Using a busy patterned paper such as this one is soooo far out of my comfort zone it is not funny. However, after seeing Crystal Goulding at work recently, I knew that I wanted to challenge myself to do it. While I have been doing quite a lot of painted backgrounds of late, I have not done it on such a busy background. I have to admit that I am fairly pleased with how it has turned out. Not sure it is up to Crystal's standards but it is another one for the album lol. And of course, no layout is complete without October Afternoon papers and embellishments. The papers on this layout are from the 5 and Dime Collection while I bought from Scrapbook Savvy. You HAVE to do yourself a big favour and go buy some.
Layout 2: Sneak Peak

I am just giving you a sneak peak of this layout. I may show you the full layout in a future post. The pictures in this layout are from our recent photoshoot with Zoe from Captured by Zoe. If anyone in the Dalby area is reading this and you are after some family photos, would highly recommend Zoe. We are stoked with the photos we purchased. Zoe is based in Brisbane but comes out to Dalby on a regular basis. We had a ball going around to different spots on the farm for our pics - look out for some in a post in the near future.
I think that has me updated for now.
Take care and thanks for stopping by.
S xoxo