Bee all that you can bee

The Etsy shop on offer this week at Etsy Inspired Challenges is Bee Things who make some gorgeous silk-screen prints.

I made this card for the challenge: 

I used this shirt from the shop as my inspiration piece:

I stamped and coloured and cut out each bird, flower and butterfly seperately and then pieced it all together in a heart shape.

What's up with me making all these heart cards lately? I don't know! But I guess I'll have my Mother's Day cards sorted :)

I even had a couple of shapes left over for the inside.
Voila

It's time for some Fried Green Tomatoes

That's what we're cooking up over at From Screen 2 Scrap this month!
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it (and I urge you to do just that!!) is to take the movie poster for Friend Green Tomatoes and use it as your inspiration to base your creation upon.

There are a bunch of great prizes on offer, including a random prize draw, so come on - what are you waiting for?

Oh yeah..... the details :)
You must scrap about an important woman in your life. With mother's day just around the corner, many of the DT girls scrapped about their mum's. But of course, you could choose to scrap about a grandmother, a sister, a close friend, someone who inspires you, whoever! 

And who did I chose? Well, I actually scrapped about myself. I know, how conceited does that sound?! But I think too often as mothers, as wives, or just as scrapbookers in general we tend to focus on everyone else, and can forget to record the important things about ourselves. I know I don't have too many scrapbook pages about me, but I have ALBUMS filled with pages about my beautiful kids! But in the future when those kids are looking though the albums and remembering all the moments I'm sure (at least I hope) they're going to want a little bit of insight into me too :)

So I made the journalling the focus of my page, and just wrote and wrote and wrote whatever came into my head. With no advance plan on what I was going to write, it just quickly flowed. I actually hoped I could fit more on, but I ran out of room! (you can click on the image for a closer view if you would like to read any of it)

And oh yeah, there is additional optional criteria if you want to play along too. 
1) Have a green title - 1 pt
2) Use Green and Red as 'feature' colors on your layout - 2pts
3) Have a tomato on your page - 3pts (can be a teeney weeney one!) 

So I didn't quite make a tomato fit on my page. But I used the row of tomatoes from the movie poster as my inspiration for the row of circle embellishments across the top of my photo. And I got the other two criteria covered :)

So a simple layout from me for this month. But a meaningful one.

Can you believe I actually did this month's challenge twice though! On purpose!
I've never done that before. I don't usually have 'practice' runs at my DT submissions. I just go for it.
Unfortunately what happened when I just 'went for it' was that I didn't double-check the criteria and so I ended up putting a red title on my page instead of a green one. Now I know it's only optional so it wasn't the end of the world. But when I realised that my layout wasn't really conveying the message I wanted combined with the fact that I had only met one of the optional criteria I just thought "oh why not, I'll do another one!" So that's what I did.

I will still share that layout with you.
Another day :)

Right now though, go over to From Screen 2 Scrap and check out all the other gorgeous and inspirational layouts from the Design Team. I'm hoping to see some lovely entries from some of my blog followers this month. Leave me a comment if you enter. And if you are entering for the first time, don't forget to tell Shazza I sent you!!

A Week in the Life - Thursday

So much going on today - I tried to capture most of it.

This is what helps me crawl out of bed in the morning, at least I mean, the thought of this helps me get out of bed. It's two very lively little girls that wake me up every morning. But once I get them both fed and settled I can sit down with my (homemade bread) toast, a cup of coffee and my blog browsing. Love it.

So while I'm doing that Munchy is usually curled up on the couch watching cartoons. Today it was a Barbie DVD.
I also had the postman ring my doorbell this morning (which I love, even though sometimes I'm still in my pajamas) because it means the delivery of some scrappy packages - yay!! Today it was a load of October Afternoon yuminess. It made me very happy.

Out of nowhere she said "can we make cupcakes today?" which actually sounded like a good idea once I remembered that we had Home Group at our house tonight (it's usually at our house since we lead it and all!)
Shortly after this photo one of my friends came around so we could work on her resume before a job interview she had this afternoon. So I put the cupcake-making on pause.

Except, while I was busy with that, I hear Munchy in the kitchen 'making' the cupcakes herself. She decided to simply through everything in the bowl all at once and just stir it up.
I explained it didn't quite work that way.
But at least she had all the right ingredients in all the right quantities for cupcakes so I figured it couldn't turn out all that badly.

And apparently they weren't too bad after all.
They certainly looked pretty enough once Munchy had sprinkled them with butterflies.

 After that, I went on a cleaning rampage through our house. Vacuumed, mopped, steam-cleaned, washed, scrubbed..... you name it, I did it. Knowing that a whole bunch of people are coming over to spend the night at your house is a big motivator to my cleanliness :)
And lucky for me, Moodle slept through most of it.

Most of the time Munchy can be quite shy, but once she feels comfortable then she's quite the entertainer. Here she is singing a song for everyone at Home Group and playing along on her piano.

And me.
Thoroughly exhausted by it all, but enjoying the feel of my freshly cleaned carpet :)

A Week in the Life - Wednesday

I didn't think I would wear down this quickly, but I only took like 7 photos today, 3 of which was today's scrapiness that you can see in the post below!

But in justification, it's not that I've lost interest, it's more that with Munchy at day-care again today, and Moodle either crying or sleeping (both of which don't make very interesting photos - well maybe they do, but I've already taken photos of them before!), and with The Man only being home for like 30mins today (he came home from work, ate the dinner I cooked and had to leave for Music Team meeting for church) there hasn't seemed much to actually photograph.

 But maybe I'm thinking too literally and should stop trying to photograph the 'events' and try to photograph those everyday 'moments' that make up my ordinary life. Will try harder tomorrow.

 Took The Moodle into the shower with me today. Mainly because she was crying (and not sleeping) and it was like 11am and I really need to have a shower and get dressed in order to feel slightly sane. I'm not one of these people who can comfortably hang out in their pajamas all day. I even tried to give her one of those soothing, calming baby massages afterwards.
She cried.

 I see tonnes of scrapbook pages by Julie Fei Fan Balzer with photos she's taken of herself in the mirror. Thought I would give it a go.
But in the meantime go and check out some of those pages like these ones here and here.

I was able to watch the second half of this after finally getting the girls both settled in bed.
Don't ask.
Lucky I've seen it already.

Today's scrapiness

Although I'm a week behind taking the photos for Ali Edwards 'a week in the life' I'm a (little) bit ahead in the actual making of the album.
I'm totally into the whole recycled thing at the moment and am going with that look for my album. It's a bit arty, not too many real scrapbook products here.
I like it.

This is what I've been working on today. Doing a few random page decorations (will add the journalling later) and all the page headings.
I've half done the covers too.

A Week in the Life - Tuesday

The Man is on a bit of a bread-making kick at the moment. We don't have any store bought bread in the house (unless you count the mountains of English muffins in our freezer - but that's another story), and he's trying to perfect his bread recipe.
He sets the bread maker on a timer so that it cooks overnight and is ready when we wake up in the morning. I must admit, at least when I wake up at odd hours of the night for The Moodle fussing it's nice to smell freshly baked bread :)

Tuesday is Munchy's day at child-care, which she absolutely adores. And even though I'm still a full time stay-at-home mum we've kept her in care because she loves playing and socialising with her friends there so I think it's good for her in some ways (and good for my sanity too!)
She usually eats breakfast there, but today The Man was running very late (alarm was still on silent so he slept through it) so she ate it at home.

The Moodle had her grumpy-pants on for most of the day.
She gets frustrated at the things she wants to do but doesn't yet have the ability to do. Like here where she really wants to put all of the giraffe in her mouth at once. And for whatever reason, today she chose not to sleep properly, or eat properly, and spend a lot of time screaming instead.

So with all that going on, do you think it was ok of me to declare that this morning's bed-hair was socially acceptable enough to wear just as it was? And not put on any make-up?

A scrappy Easter album

I finished off my Easter mini-album over the weekend and managed to get outside in the sunshine yesterday and do the photography.

I posted the front and back covers here, and I do like them a lot.
As far as the pages go, I'm a journaller so ultimately all my pages get covered in my scribble.
But I'm really happy that I was able to use up all my scraps of my Studio Calico papers and the Material Girl line from Cosmo Cricket that I had hanging around, and a pinch of Sassafras Lass and Scenic Route Paper Company for good measure!

Bunting, embroidery floss, typewritten labels, fake washi tape and Martha Stewart butterfly punch.
My place of happiness
:)

PS - you can click on each picture for a larger view if you're interested in the journalling or just want to see more details. 

A Week in the Life - Monday

Yes, I know I'm a week behind the rest of the world who are doing Ali Edward's Week in the Life. But since I was away last weekend/Monday I didn't think to really start it on time. And although she specifically said you can make your 'week' start on any day, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I'm going to try and keep things on track via my blog, so my apologies for all the personal photos and stories that (hopefully) are going to appear over the next week. I'll still aim to post some crafty things too.

I was allowed to sleep in, and even better than that, while I slept The Man and Munchy did the washing :) So when I awoke in the bright sunny day they were outside pinning it on the washing line. Well, one of them was working and the other was twirling her umbrella.

And yes, she was wearing tracksuit pants, a skirt, and a fairy-skirt too. It seems she had been playing dress-ups previously.

Trying to capture some smiles on camera for the first time. Because although Moodle smiles all the time (she's a very happy baby) I can't seem to capture it on camera, because everytime she sees that little red light she's all like "oooooh, what's that?" and has this surprised look on her face.

Plenty of sister-bonding time. In fact, Munchy loves Moodle so much that most of the time I actually have to try and prise her off her sister rather than have to worry about the sibling rivalry.

Quite often Munchy likes to actually get into her toybox to play. It's either that or pull all of the toys out so she can see which ones are on the bottom.

Moodle still has four naps a day (she likes her sleep) but there's always a lot of 'quiet time' too. Where she's awake, but content to just stay in her crib and smile to herself before hopefully falling back to sleep again.

So Munchy found her little plastic box and declared she was going bug hunting. After 10mins outside I went to check on what she was up to and she stated that she couldn't find any bugs, so decided to collect buds instead. Hhhhmmmm

Yes, she was stripping our camillia trees of all their unopened flower buds.

And counting to see how many she had collected. Quite a few I'd say.

Yes, she really is in the middle of a growth spurt. I can't seem to keep up with enough clothes that fit anymore. Everytime she gets dressed I have to remind myself that it's one more piece of clothing that needs retirement.

Other things about today:
Public holiday - hence why The Man wasn't at work.
Munchy's first dry night. I know she's old but we've been quite slack about letting her still wear nappies to bed at night. We finally took the leap of faith - and it was absolutely fine!!  In fact, she declared today "I've finished toilet training now - I know everything there is to know about it"

A little taste of

You might have noticed that I'm in the middle of a blog overhaul.

This is only the beginning.

:)

No photos??!

The current challenge at BASB is to "put those photos away" meaning to do a layout without using any photos. On first impressions this seems like a difficult task - I mean, the reason we scrapbook is to preserve the photo in a pretty way right? But on deeper contemplation, I think the reason why many of us scrapbook is actually to preserve the memory (among other things).
And as far as page design goes, it's easy to scrapbook without a photo if you replace it with something of a similar size.

So I took a collection of little drawings No.1 Girl did and use them instead of photos - easy peasy. I already have a 8.5 x 11 inch album dedicated to keeping her art in, so now I've just made a more formal layout out of it instead. This is a double spread - which is another first for me in this size.


I used the same washable markers that she drew her drawing with to create the background. I can show you how if anyone is interested?

Oh, and I think these kites might become my new go-to embellishment instead of (or more likely, as well as) the current bunting obsession :)

Scroll down to my last post if you're checking for the winner of the April blog candy.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

It's time to announce the winner for the April Candy Showers giveaway.


Why use the Random Number Generator when you can have so much more fun this way?

So in true random fashion, I let No.1 girl pluck a name out of thin air.

And the winner is.....

Amanda Jane from Paper and Pixels. Please contact me via email (address is over in my sidebar there on the right) to let me know your address and I'll get your goodies out to you shortly.

Thanks to everyone who entered and left lovely comments and their suggestions. They will all be taken on board when preparing my next candy.

So don't forget to check back next month for the May Madness giveaway.

:)

Trying to be a True OG

It's alright - I don't know what that really means either. But I know I want to be one!!

So I found another new-to-me challenge site from the XOXO Girls. It's a scraplifting challenge, and I so dearly wanted to play along last round but simply ran out of time. I got around to it this time though and have scrap-lifted the amazing layout by Jennifer Matott which you can see here (along with all the other layouts you can choose from).

I was inspired by her use of long ripped strips of paper running across the length of her layout, and so did a similar (but quite different) thing with mine. Nearly everything in my layout is from Lily Bee Design's Audrey collection, and although these colours are quite out of my comfort zone I had so much fun putting this together, and will definitely be using more of it (I hardly made a dent in my stash of this collection because I was lucky enough to win 2 of each paper and all the embellishments - which is a LOT of black and white and jewel colours to play with!!)

I started off with this large white flower from the Audrey collection, but found that it faded into the background when I used it just as it was. So I CHANGED IT UP, which just so happens to be the current prompt at CP4U :) I threaded a length of orange embroidery thread through the inside of it to match the other colours in my layout and make the flower stand out more.

I also edged my Maya Road kraft envelope in some Peach Delight Glimmermist, and generally splashed it around my layout a bit for some more orange highlights. Inside the envelope I have hidden all my journalling on the story of Girl No.2's labour and birth, which I thought was something that definitely needed recording - but wasn't something that everyone wants to read about (and plus - it's a bit of a long story. Which is ironic given the labour itself was really short!)

I had also planned on doing some whimsical stitching running across the entirety of the layout too. But I did something to my sewing machine and suddenly it doesn't sew anymore :( The needle still goes up and down, but it doesn't seem to want to pick up the stitches. So that's why you can still see the needle puncture holes on my layout if you look closely!!

If you want to play along with the XO Girls you've still got a bit of time - the current challenge doesn't end until the 30th, and the prize is a kit from Snobby Walrus, which means if you're into Graphic 45 and 7 Gypsies (and let's face it, who isn't?!) then you'll want to win this! Go and check it out.