Living my dream

More Tarisota shares

Thought I'd share some more of my creations from the gorgeous, scrummy July Tarisota Kit. Can't say it enough. It was full of beauty, colour, richness.... so so sooooo loved playing with it.

I made these bags using my own templates. They are tiny, but really cute. Perfect for that special treat that you might give someone 'just cause'.

This is a little booklet I made to put in the glovebox of my car. It has all the current emergency details I or someone else might need should there be some reason I can't tell them. I know its a bit morbid. But hey, its cute and means details are there, just in case. 

And off topic, I just have to do a big shout out to some teenage boys that helped me today.

Long story short, the kids and I caught the bus to their daycare today. We all got on the bus and before we sat down the bus driver took off. Matt was luckily in a seat (right at the front) and I was following Dan and Sarah who wanted to sit right at the back. Well as soon as the bus took off, it rocked Sarah and Dan and they both fell. Dan would have had a big fall onto some sharp steps, but these two young boys stopped him hitting the ground. They stunk of cigarettes, and had hoodies and stuff so were not the type of guys I would have thought would care about a young child. I know very generalised from me and a lesson relearnt today. Because, these kids were nice. All the way through to their stop we chatted to them and they talked about their young nieces and nephews. That saying "you can't judge a book by its cover" was never truer.

So a huge thank you to the boys on the bus who saved my son from a nasty accident! You guys rock!

Alrighty, time for sleep. Later.

Fiskars Birthday Bash

Today is Fiskars 10th birthday in Australia. Yep today! And next month, the Fiskars ANZ blog has been running for 1 year. Wow. Two huge milestones! To make it a fun birthday the ANZ leads have decided to throw a big party. There are already a couple of challenges up on the ANZ blog (click here to see them), but come Saturday and Sunday we're going to be having a heap more challenges, games, inspiration, and fun!!!!

On Sunday we've also lined up the 5 USA Lead Ambassadors to come and visit and have a 'live' chat on the blog. Here are the times around the world if you'd like to join us:

12 pm Melbourne (Sunday lunchtime)

2pm Auckland (Sunday afternoon)

7 pm Los Angeles (Saturday night)

10pm New York (Saturday night)

3am London (Sunday morning)

The way it will work is we'll be online at the above times and will 'chat' with them in a post on the blog. Just keep refreshing your computer to see more, new questions and answers. Can't wait!

And no birthday would be right without prizes and you can bet your boots we've got a HEAP of prizes to give away during the weekend.

So do come and join us and don't forget to tell all your friends!

Tarisota

I was absolutely gobsmacked and stoked to be asked to work with the Tarisota July kit as their guest designer. And what a kit it is! I made heaps from it, and still have masses of product that I can keep using.

So thought I'd finally share a few of my projects with you....

This photo of my sister was taken a year or so back. And I just love it. It was nice to be able to do a tribute LO to her.

This month there was a really interesting item to use. An embroidery hoop (well two actually). I sat there when I first saw it thinking....what can I do with this? Then it became obvious. When I was pregnant with the twins Andy and I painted them pictures for their bedroom. We hadn't done that for Daniel. So I decided this would become his 'painting'.

Yep, two pictures of nursery rhymes. Humpty Dumpty and Twinkle Twinkle. He now points at these whenever we put him to bed/pick him up from his sleep and we have to sing the rhymes to him. LOL! They've been a huge hit.

Ok, gonna go now, but will be back with more in the next few days.

Chicken Coop

I just had to tell you about this cool chicken coop that can be found and brought on Trade Me.

My brother in law made it with a group of young boys that he teaches/mentors. All the details are on the link.

But the aim was to teach the boys how to come up with an idea, follow it through to completion (including making plans/building and selling).

They have done this with a chicken coop and are now selling it on Trade Me. I'm incredibly impressed with what they've done and just wanted to sing out and let people know as its going for an incredibly cheap price right now.

Take a look here http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=165697254 and pass it on to anyone who might be in the market for one. You won't be sorry.

The auction closes later tonight.

Saturday Sketch day

We have been having a busy family day today. First swimming with the kids. Which was great. They are all such water babies. Daniel can just touch the bottom of the pool and with his water wings hes able to get around safely by himself. But the thing he likes most is playing 'tada' where he climbs onto the side of the pool, throws his hands in the air and says 'tada', then flies through the air into the water. Totally cool! Matt and Sarah like to do a few more 'big kid' things. Races are their main game. I'm still deciding whether its worth beating them or not?

Then we went and picked up some plants we'd ordered at Kings plant barn and came home and planted them. We now have an apple, plum, lemon, grapefruit and lemonade IN the garden, plus a persimmon and 2 raspberries waiting to be planted. Yeah. We'll do that tomorrow.

We're also waiting on a nectarine, a different plum and apple, plus maybe even a peach. So cool. Can't wait for them to grow and develop and fruit. How cool is that going to be?

Anyway, onto the sketches for today....

Here's my first one. Done for SBO.

And here's the one I created for Fiskars

Would love to see a link if you do anything with them!

Have a great evening and rest of the weekend.

Shattered

Last night I didn't get much sleep. For whatever reason I just kept waking up. Normally that would be fine. However, today I woke up to 6 young children. Yep, my kids had a sleepover with their cousins. And this morning I woke up to 6 children. It was fun. But I was tired. But hey, we made the most of it. We walked up to the local cafe and had a fluffy and some morning tea which was fine except for the guy at the next table who saw a woman walk in with 6 kids and said out loud "oh God". I was mortified. But for once stood my ground, and said 'Oi!, its not that bad' and I think he got a bit embarressed for being overheard. Then we stopped at the local school on the way home for a play on their wonderful playground. Love school holidays! LOL. Then we got home, went for a wander down to see the ducks, collect some eggs and play in the mud. By the time my sister came to pick up her gorgeous girls, I was shattered, but we had fun.

I'm in the middle of doing some scrapping so must go see if I can stick it down. But take a look at No 8 Wired! Theres a new dare and we're up to number 50! yep! No 50 and still going strong. We even have some cool guest designers for this one! And a wonderful prize from Danielle Quamby. coolio.

Later.

LO's to share....

here are a couple of LO's I made a while back but forgot to share.

This one has a heap of stamping on it. The black journaling spots are stamped, as are the swirls (with embossing powder). I also stamped an image onto a transparency, then covered the back with beads so you could still see the image, but see the beads through it. And last bit of stamping was the flower which was actually from a potato. Had to give that old trick a whirl.

Those two beautiful girls are my nieces. Its been so wonderful seeing them grow up. Still can't believe they are teenagers.

Unfortunately one of my children attacked it with a red pen the other day. And there is now a great bit red mark across the main photo. I'm still to see if I can resurect it. Hmmmmm?

I created this one with some YUMMY Fiskars product from Cloud 9. Its called Chocolate chalet and so just seemed to be perfect for this LO.

This one was a record of Dan's first birthday. We got photos taken by our wedding photographer for the twins first birthday so got some done for Dan's too. We had a lot of fun with this photos session. Nat is an incredible photographer and we enjoy her company as well as the photos she takes.

Hope you're having a good week.

 

How to get rid of the winter blues

Create your own sun!

The other week when it was really nasty, the kids decided they wanted some sun. And how do you get sun if its winter, wet and cold and miserable? You make it yourself! So they did. They created about 20 each and put them up all over the house. Mainly in their bedroom and ours. I forgot to tell Andy and when he pulled the curtains open in the morning he asked what it was and just about melted when I explained it to him.

It made me realise (again), just what cool kids we've got.

Have a great Tues.

Winter weekend bliss

If I thought scrapping with my buddies for a day wasn't bliss enough, then going out yesterday in that beautiful weather on our boat made the weekend absolutely primo! I had forgotten how much colour is out there in the water. There were great big green, red and yellow bouys. There were yaghts with wonderful bright coloured spinakers, there was the blue sky and blue/green water, the green grass of the islands around us and of course the yellow sparkling sun. Divine!

We went for a cruise out to Rangi, stopped for morning tea and watched some people fishing - we weren't organised enough to take our own gear this time! Then kept going around Rangi and Motutapu, then under the harbour bridge and back to the dock.

Love sitting watching the water flow out behind us. Love the spray that comes up. Love the contrasting white and blue.

Sketches and stuff

Whoops. I went out to a crop yesterday and didn't get home til late, so missed putting up the Sat sketches yesterday. Eeeeek. But here they are now, better late than never huh?

This first one was done for the Fiskars ANZ blog - it reminds me of a skull and crossbones now that I see it on the computer, but it certainly wasn't my intention. I like the idea of using lots of different colours, pictures, stuff to make it interesting.

I also created this one for SBO:

And I see one of my friends Raewyn has already completed this sketch! Wow, this chickee is sooooo fast! You can check it out here.

So, at the crop yesterday I got to scrap. But it was really funny. I sat there most of the day twiddlying my thumbs, then right at the last minute my LO started coming together. I didn't have time to finish it then, so finished it today.

Its for Lesley's CJ, so Lesley, if you're reading, don't look any further (although I think you saw most of it yesterday!). Lesleys topic was 'Beauty'. Which I struggled to find a photo that would work, then I realised that alot of beauty for me comes from memories photos bring. So that's what I did it about.

These CJ's have been going for about 12 months and now I'm onto my last one. Its been a long journey, and heaps of fun! I can't wait to see mine. Yesterday it was just 2 seats away from me. But I was good and didn't look. Even though I was really tempted.

I grabbed out some old BG (Periphery range), threw some embellishments at it and some yummy Hambly transparencies and tada. It was finished.

Alrighty, I have a million things to catch up on and too many emails to reply to. I'm going to start tonight. Lets hope I can get through some of them!

Hope you've had a good weekend.