100 Years.... and a winner!!

Can I tell you a little secret? It's something I don't usually admit to very freely....
Once upon a time I entered a showgirl competition.
And won!

It was something I entered in order to support my friend who was entered, she didn't want to feel alone. I never thought I would actually win! And even though this was 12 years ago, it still came back to "haunt" me this year when they celebrated their 100year anniversary and invited all the past showgirls back for the party.

We had a parade through town, we got to feel like royalty as we sat on the back of a float and waved to people watching. Hheeee!! My family came to watch of course. The girls squealed when they say their Mummy on the back of a truck :-)

You might recognise this sneak peak that I revealed during the Scrapz.biz blog hop? This is the full reveal of the page I made for the "What's Cooking" challenge that I hosted last week

Lots of mix and match of products here for this page. You can click on each thumbnail to be taken directly to the Scrapz.biz store to purchase the same supplies if you like.


Supplies Used:

InLinkz.com

and now, the moment you've been waiting for.. The winner of my candy from last week's Scrapz.biz blog hop is......

MELANIE H. !!!!

Melanie, please contact me either by email (address is on the right there) or PM me on the Scrapz forum to let me know your postal address and I'll get your goodies in the mail ASAP.

I'll be back to post the sneak of my next challenge later.

Peace and Quiet?

When I first saw the journaling criteria at Once Upon a Sketch this time around I was a little bit stumped for a moment. You see, the challenge says "journal at least 2 sentences on an embarrassing / awkward / uncomfortable moment. A moment you remember for all the wrong reasons!" and I'm a pretty easy going kind of girl - I don't embarrass too easily.

But then I remembered this awkward moment that I experienced a little while ago.....

I was performing an emergency Caesarian late one night and being on-call I had my phone in my pocket (on silent of course!) Now usually once the baby is out and the mother is cuddling it it's pretty quiet in the operating theatre whilst we finish the rest of the operation. But all of a sudden I hear a voice.... the voice of my husband!..... and it's coming out of my pocket!!

I hear him saying "Natalie... Natalie? hello? Why have you called me?"
It seems I had leant against the table and not only managed to speed-dial his number - but put him on speaker phone too!! If the whole theatre didn't hear him in the first place they certainly figured out what was going on as I awkwardly tried to lean down and speak firmly into my pocket "Hang up the phone!!"

Oh dear! Not my most professional moment :-)

So if you've got an embarrassing story to tell - why not scrap about it? It's very therapeutic :-) Along with the journaling criteria you also need to use this beautiful sketch. You can go and catch all the details on the challenge at the OUAS blog here.

We've got a fabulous line-up of Guest Designers for this challenge including my very favourite scrappy-crush Julie Fei Fan Balzer! And the mother-load in prizes including a chipboard-lovers dream package of Imaginarium Designs chippies. Not to mention you get to check out everyone else's funny stories too!

Scooter Love

My eldest daughter recently just turned 5. Isn't it just ridiculous how fast they grow up? For her birthday gifts this year we really had to sit down and think about what we were going to get her. But eventually we decided on a scooter.

And not just any scooter mind you..... a pink Dora scooter! She loved it as we knew she would, and immediately took it out for a spin around the lake.

 I made this page to capture these memories, but also for my 'Fetch a Sketch' challenge at Scrapz.biz. This challenge runs all month now, so there's plenty of time to enter to win some incredible store vouchers. You can find out all the details here.

And while we're on the topic of Scrapz.biz and amazing prizes.... have you joined in on the blog hop yet? If not, you really should because it's a bunch of fun and there are a tonne of prizes to be given away! See my blog-hop post below for all the details, and to start your journey.

Supplies Used

InLinkz.com

Scrapz.Biz Blog Hop

Hi and welcome to the the very first Scrapz.biz blog hop! I'm the first stop along your journey so I just want to wave a giant hello to everyone!!


Can I tell you how excited I am to be joining this Design Team? SUPER-EXCITED! I'm joining some other incredibly talented girls who you'll get to meet along the way. But just in case you don't even know who Scrapz.biz is then let me fill you in.....

We're an Australian online scrapbooking and craft store stocking all the latest ranges. See something you like? We'll ship it all to you for a flat rate of $5.95. Don't see what you're after? Then ask our friendly boss-lady Heike and she's sure to help you out.

We're also the home of the Ticklez kitz. Every month a new kit is released featuring a bunch of the newest papers and a huge assortment of gorgeous embellishments. And if it's inspiration you're after then look no further than our brimming gallery, or hang out in our friendly forum. We offer plenty of free tutorials for fun new techniques to try, or simply spend the day chatting away to our regulars.

At Scrapz.biz we love a good challenge, so not only do we have regular competitions but now we're pleased to offer you a new challenge every day of the week (well.... Monday to Friday at least!) Weekly challenges are something that have been around for a while, but we're shaking it up a bit by adding fresh and exciting new concepts and the chance to win even bigger prizes! Starting from October, everyone who enters one of our daily challenges will go into the draw to win a great big voucher (or two) at the end of the month. The more challenges you enter, the more chances you've got of winning. Simple right?

To get you in the mood, here's a little sneak of today's challenge that I've designed.

This is for the "What's Cooking" challenge where I give you a list of 'ingredients' that you need to include on your page. This week's challenge theme is "Driving Force" and for today's challenge the ingredients are:
* something travel themed (interpret that as you like!)
* part of your title or some journaling on a tag
* something fussy-cut (like my clouds in the sneak above)

To find out how to join this challenge and all the daily challenges, follow the link here.

Now onto the details of how you can win just for joining us on our blog hop. All you need to do is leave a comment on this blog post as well as the other blogs along the way. You'll also need to leave a comment on our Facebook page. We don't want to tire you out so we'll just be hopping along one stop a day to correspond with this week's daily challenges. Here's the schedule in case you get lost...

Monday 10th Natalie's blog with her "What's Cooking" challenge (you are here!)
Tuesday 11th Sheree's blog and her "Scrap a Rainbow" challenge
Wednesday 12th Aga's blog with her "Fetch a Sketch" challenge
Thursday 13th Shell's blog and her "Scrap Right Now" challenge
Friday 14th Chloe's blog and her "Noteworthy" challenge

So once you've finished the blog hop and left a comment on each stop along the way, make sure you go over and 'Like' us on Facebook and leave a comment there telling us what you thought of the journey. Then you'll automatically be entered into the drawing to win a $20 voucher to the store.

AND..... if you're a follower of my blog (or even if you just became one) please let me know, because I'll enter you into a separate draw to win some very yummy blog candy.

Tomorrow you'll be off to Sheree's blog to see her "Scrap a Rainbow" challenge. Happy hopping! 
The blog hop closes on Monday 17th October so don't forget to come back and check if you're a winner!

In the Beginning

I'm constantly amazed at the way my children's minds work. They surprise me with saying the funniest things as they try and figure out the way the world works.

I'm not sure if it's because Munchy thinks her Daddy is really old (!!) or if she was getting confused about the Creation stroy, or where she got this idea from, but out of nowhere she asks him, "When did God make you? Were you the first person God made?" What a funny little Munchkin she is :-)

I cracked open my Boardwork kit from Studio Calico and made this layout to document these crazy everyday moments. I made sure to add some book paper, fussy cutting and hand-stitching with embroidery thread because that's the criteria for this month's Scrap-it-Lah challenge.

You know I always add sewing to my layouts - if for nothing else I feel more confident that my pages will hold together! And whilst I love the look of hand-stitching on pages I'm generally too lazy to do it myself. So thanks to this challenge for pushing me in the right direction :-)

And I couldn't resist this happy smiling bright and fun photo of Munchy which captures her personality perfectly. Yes, I'm still working my way through a bunch of holiday snaps! More coming soon I promise.

Come back on Monday for a real treat. Scapz.biz is holding thier very first blog hop and I'm up first!! There'll be plenty of inspiration and a tonne of prizes along the way so make sure to mark it on your calander.

Mid-Week Sneak

I told you how we're starting to do daily challenges now at Scrapz.biz rather than weekly right? So today was my first day of setting the rules! Yeeeeee!!! And the first challenge for me was 'Fetch a Sketch' which of course involves supplying a sketch......

.... and a page to inspire you. I also get to choose added criteria to go along with the theme which is "On Your Bike" this week. This doesn't mean you have to scrap bike pictures though, and instead I've got some recent photos of Munchy's new scooter which she received for her birthday. My added criteria is to include something on your layout which has a sense of movement.

If you're a little confused, or just curious then you can check out my full challenge and page along with some ideas on what 'a sense of movement' means over here :-) Every challenge entry goes into the draw to win one of the monthly store vouchers. Whooop!

And speaking of sketches......
The October 1st challenge is up at Once Upon a Sketch. The journaling challenge is to WRITE  2 noteworthy (to you anyway) events of the past week. Your journalling can be as long as you wish. There is NO limit to how much journalling you include but in order to qualify as a winner for this challenge, we must see AT LEAST 1 SENTENCE of journalling on WHY each event was noteworthy. 
It's to go along with this sketch

And apart from just checking out the challenge you really need to go over to the blog and see everything that's happening. For a start we've got Julie Fei Fan Balzer as our Guest DT this month!!! EEeeekkkkK!!!! One of my all-time scrappy idols! Then there's all the new DT announcements! And of course, all the information about the prizes on offer this month, including this prize pack from Nikki Silvils (among many others!)

So plenty of things to keep you occupied right?

World Card Making Day

was yesterday as most of the scrapping world would already know, so of course I celebrated the occasion by whipping up a few cards.

This first one was just an interesting way of using up some odd bits and pieces in all the colours of the rainbow :-)

And then of course I couldn't help but play along with some of the fun WCMD challenges happening at Scrapz.biz this weekend. This one is for Heike's 3D challenge and I'm using the delightful Clementine collection by Cosmo Cricket (get ready to see more of this in the near future.... I loveit!!)

InLinkz.com

And this is for Kerryn's stamped tag challenge. I altered my tag with stamps, rubons, Glimmermist and Tim Holtz Distress Stains. I made a beautiful mess! But loved every step of it :-)

Did you make any cards this weekend?
Don't worry, you've still got time to enter the challenges at Scrapz.biz and be in the running to win some fabulous 6x6" paper pads. See all the details here.

Excitement.biz

I am super-excited to be able to announce that I am now a Design Team member for Scrapz.biz!! Wooo hoo! They're a fabulous online store with a great community on the forum, inspiring weekly challenges, monthly tutorials and a talented new Design Team (can I say that? Hhmmmmm)

Now I didn't have any newly created projects to show you to celebrate this occasion (don't panic, I've got lots up my sleeve, just none that I can show you yet!) so instead I'm sharing a bunch of older layouts which just haven't made it on my blog before.

And whilst you're browsing here let me tell you about some of the exciting things happening at Scrapz.biz so you can anticipate what's going to be popping up on my blog in the near future.

Right now as we speak we're celebrating World Card Making Day! There are 6 card-making challenges to inspire you with the chance to win some fabulous 6x6" paper pads by Crate Paper, My Mind's Eye and Fancy Pants. And to help you get in the mood, there's also 20% off all stamps, inks, embossing powders and acrylic blocks. You can find the coupon code for the sale by checking out The Buzz (which is our newsletter).

And starting on Monday we'll be hoping to inspire you with a different challenge every day of the week (Monday to Friday). A weekly challenge is nothing new to Scrapz.biz but the Design Team have decided to shake it up a bit and there's going to be fresh challenges and a different format which I'm really looking forward to. And everyone who completes a challenge will go into the draw for the monthly prizes of some very generous vouchers.

So much news hey? Why don't you sign up to the Scrapz.biz Facebook page to keep up-to-date?

PS. Did you notice how many of these pages I just shared incorporated the word 'Sunshine'? Ha!! I didn't realise how much I love and scrap this theme until I saw them all here like this! It seems I'm a little predictable hey? :-)