Toad Stools in the Garden

The rain has stopped at last, almost. I say almost because every now and then , when I look out of the window its drizzling again, but I think the worst is over for now.
Yesterday Andrew, Camden and John R ( Cams friend) braved the flooded roads and went to town to the movies and to stock up on grocery's, just in case it snows!
The roads were not much fun as there was still lots of flooding and many of the side roads were closed.

The lovely thing about the rain is that there have been no nippy frosts, and these little toad stools have popped up in our garden. I could not resist a photo or two. This ones my pick of the bunch.

I'm busy scrapping at the moment. Ive lots to do as Tuesday is our big reveal at SBO. So far I've done one page !! Best I get back to work!

Art Doll

Here are some photos of the Art Doll I made for the swap over at Glamour Girl Swaps

My doll is made from a little bit of this and that, as you can see!

Wet wet wet

We have had one wet day in Duntroon today, and still the rain is pelting down!
I ventured out to take photos, but my camera battery went flat, so only managed to get a few.

We live just up that side street, to the left. I'm pleased our house is on the way up the hill, and not down at the bottom.!

This photo was taken about 15 minutes after the top photo, the water level is still rising now!

Just for fun...I was taking a photo of our dogs looking out into the rain, but was distracted by my reflection!! LOL

Here I am peeping out from under my brolly.I don't do many 'me ' photos...for obvious reasons!

Well, we will see what tomorrow brings, maybe no work , or school again??

Hope the weather is not too nasty for any of you. keep warm!

Heavy rain here

The rain has arrived...in force! Camden is planing on the school bus NOT running in the morning due to floods, and Cody has his fingers crossed that the road between here and town will shut so he wont have to go to work. Me... well I'm thinking today's walk to school (my place of work) called for the umbrella...tomorrow I may well need gumboots as well!
Tonight Andrew and I have been to Kurow to attend a Lions Club meeting and dinner. We were the guest speakers, well Andrew was really, I was moral support. We have the same again tomorrow night, this time at the Lions club in Oamaru. I'm not a fan of public specking so will breath a sigh of relief when its over with! On saying that though, we had a very pleasant evening and enjoyed lovely company.

Here is the card that made up my Scrapbook Outlet portfolio...

I have cut and layered flowers, and leaves cut from Bo- Bunny patterned paper.

I've added pearls, ribbon, thread and a sparkle!

A wee reminder...

Don't forget to have a go at this months challenge over at Up2scrap... there is a lovely prize waiting to be won...you still have time to enter!!

Art Doll

I hope you are having a lovely weekend.

Our boys, plus an extra, are taking part in a hunting competition this weekend, so I have been most of the day in the kitchen...lucky me!

Tonight I have one very cute little Art Doll to share with you.

This doll was made by Karen, and I was lucky to receive her after taking part in an Art Doll swap, through the Glamourgirls Swap Site, take a look at this...

Told you she was cute! Thank-you Karen, I do love her!

Another page

Wow...I'm having a little trouble finding time to blog, life seems to be super busy at the moment. I have taken on two extras mornings a week at work now, and although the hours are not huge it is just surprising how much time has disappeared from my day! I have to get up earlier to get hubby organised and am still tiring to get my crafty stuff done in the evenings...but nights and mornings are beginning to merge into one, so I am going to have to re- think my time...maybe I will have to skip cooking tea :-)

YesterdayI received my Up2scrap brief, so plenty to do there, I also have my SBO brief just around the corner.
Here is another LO that I submitted to SBO with my design team entry. The photo is of my sweet little niece and was taken several years ago. I photoshoped this a little to age it , and to minimise the clutter in the background!

My love for layers is shinning through once more!

I have used a long string of beads on this page, and of course lace and rub-ons, by Webster Pages.

I have coloured see through flowers

using alcohol inks, and popped them under paper flowers.

The bottom of this page had little flowers printed on it, so of course I just had to add to them as well.

Toga'ly Beautiful

This is a Lay-out I submitted as part of my portfolio to Scrapbook Outlet

This photo is of Aimee dressed up ready for this years Toga Party, she looked gorgeous in her sheet, hence the title...Toga'ly Beautiful

My background was created using patterned paper, tissue paper and mod-podge, which I painted over and sprayed with Glimmer -mist, the little embossed looking 'rounds' were made using a Crafty lady mould and 'Light as Air' paper clay.

As you can see (above) I have a little of my background paper showing through.
As usual, I have loaded my page up with textures, layers of lace, fabric, flowers and a little more paint....

...and chipboard

..and yes, a little more paint again!

Thanks for looking ...and DONT FORGET to get your Up2Scrap Challenge entries in before the end of the month, looking forward to seeing what you have all come up with.

Team Completed

The rest of the Design Team at ScrapbookOutlet have been announced. Here they are....
...Sharon Newport
...Jane Hambly
...Michelle McAuthur
and last but by no means least...Nik Wilkinson, whom I was lucky enough to meet several years ago when picking up a trade-me purchase.
I'm looking forward to working with all seven of these talented ladies.

Meet the first half of the team

So far the new Design team for The ScrapbookOutlet stands at four, four more names are going to be announced soon , so keep an eye on the forum. In the mean time, I'm thrilled to be on this team along with Megan, Ruth and Vicki..

At this stage our entries have not been posted. We had to submit two scrapbook pages, a card and an off the page item. My Off the Page item was on the SBO face book page a little while ago,(thanks Raewyn for sending me that link) so I think I can share this with you.

People have asked if it goes, and yes it does. Poor hubby was a little horrified when I first showed him the end result...The radio belonged to his dad, who passed away several years ago and although it has spent the past couple of years in my craft room I guess it still holds memories of Barry. Andrew looked less concerned when I plugged it in and it still went, and he decided his dad would have been quite chuffed with the result.

I have used a chipboard owl

Stickers, buttons, twigs, craft wire and the Bo- bunny leaf paper again

This little bird was sent to me from Louise, when I was lucky enough to win her blog candy.And the butterfly sticker come all the way from Germany, from my lovely 'blogger friend' Renate.

Flowers of all varieties adorn my radio, and yes, it has been painted and crackled.

Now I am waiting patiently to see Megan, Ruth and Vicki's entries, these girls are super talented so their work will be gorgeous!

A little news

First up I have some exciting news that I am now able to share.. I have managed to make it onto the Scrapbooking Outlet NZ design team. That is super cool, I will now have another reason to scrapbook!

This afternoon I finished my LO of the rather cute photo I found amongst the archives of Uncle Christopher.

I did try to keep things simple and uncluttered, but then I just had to add a little bit of this...

and a little bit of that...

so my page is looking a little on the busy side ...

as usual...

I cut the leaves from Bo-Bunny paper.

bunched a strip of denim fabric and added a little stitching...

.... then added a few Craft Creation pearls to finish.

Thanks for looking :-)

Now I'm off to bring in the washing as the sun is disappearing and I can feel Jack frost in the air.

Just for Fun

Tonight I have been scanning my way through a large cardboard box full of old photos.
Its a long slow job but one that has to be done, there are a whole lot of precious memories in this box that need to be preserved!

This one particular photo really made me smile so I thought Id share it! The wee boy in the photo is Andrew's brother Christopher. You just have to laugh at his cute wee face don't you!

And of course, this photo 'screamed' to be photoshoped...just a little bit...

Hmmm, now I feel a scrapbook page coming on!

Mothers Day

My children all treated me well on Mothers day. Cody gave me this lovely reminder of spring, and offered me one of his venison sausages for breakfast, which I politely declined :-) How sweet of him though, his sausages are very precious to him and he does not offer them to just anyone!

Aimee sent me this card that she had made, along with an apology for only being able to find a red pen,LOL- shes not the worlds most organised person :-) This card is truly an Aimee made card, and I love it.

Aimee also sent me this gorgeous bracelet

Camden took Andrew for a drive to town late this afternoon and brought me home a lolly-pop :-)

Didn't I do well!

Thanks to you all my wonderful children

This afternoon I took time out to do what love to do, here is the result

At this stage my journaling is a little sparse, but I need to visit an uncle of Andrew's to get my facts straight before I add anything else.

This photo was taken in the very early 1900's (approx1909 we think)

Its kind of strange to think of that little boy and girl not being around any more, they just look like they should still be out there on that swing, I wonder what life was like for them, and what they were like?

This little angel button felt 'right' for my page, it kind of represents these two children who are not here any more.I scavenged through my supply of 'accent jewelry' and added a part of an old earring, just because I like it!

I hope all you mums out there had a wonderful mothers day

Here's a poem I found that I though you might enjoy...

A Mother...

When your a child she walks before you to set an example.

When your a teenager she walks behind you to be there

should you need her.

When your an adult she walks beside you so that as two friends

you can enjoy life together.
author unknown

Grape harvest

Today we spent most of our day taking part in the 2010 Harvest Fundraiser

We were with this wonderful group of people, most of whom were giving up their spare time to help raise money for the 'Connecting People' programme.This was made possible thanks to Ann and her partner Jim from Ostler Vineyard.
The sun was shinning (for most of the day anyway) the company was bright and friendly and the grapes were tasty. It felt great to be contributing to this worthy cause, and to be giving a 'little something back.'
The Connecting people programme is a support network, set up through Burwood Spinal unit for families of people with spinal impairment.

Autumn Arch

Look at the beautiful Autumn Arch card I received from Robyn Pitcher.This was the result of a swap through Glamour Girl swaps
Robyn has lots of layers and textures and this card truly has an autumn 'feel'.

Thank You Robyn P, I LOVE this card.

Tonight I was having a wee blog hop, as I often do, and come across this highly touching story of one remarkable woman...

One day your on top of the world,your life is going just as you had always hoped. You have a great family, a loving husband, an adorable son, and now the second child you had always hoped for. Your are a seriously talented scrapbooker, take a mean photo and have an incredible knack for leaving your friends in hysterics

That was Linda Burnasakorn's life. In the blink of an eye she was in ICU fighting for her life, after what appeared to be the flue. Over the next several months she fought to overcome pneumonia, collapsed lungs, multiple infections, internal bleeding, organs on the verge of shutdown, blood clots and so much more.... if your keen to read of Linda's plight and also be in for a chance to go to Greece for free then read more HERE

Be in to win at Up2scrap

Check this out......

Its the very cool prize up for grabs this month at the Up2scrap Blog.

I got to choose the subject for the blogs challenge and have made it very simple for you !! I love Dr Seuss quotes, and have many favorites so have decided to base my challenge on that.

Check HERE for details

Here is my sketch, which is the first ever sketch I have drawn up using photo shop, it took me some time to work it all out, in fact it took me longer to do the sketch than my actual page!

I have had these photos of our dear son engrossed in 'Lester and Clyde' for a couple of years now. I snapped these when the rest of our family were cleaning out the shed. Cody found this book, an old favorite from his younger day amongst the many treasure hidden away in the many boxes that still adorn our shed walls. He was so 'into' the story, chuckling away to himself that he didn't even notice me taking these photos.

These photos always make me smile and so does the Dr Seuss quote I have used on my page...

The more that you read

the more things you will know

The more that you learn

the more places you'll go.

I must add that Cody took his time reading this book, that could be because he was not that 'into' helping clean out the shed??!!

Here is another quote I love from Dr Seuss, and funnily enough I have used another photo of Cody to go with the words. ... you can find it HERE

Hope you can join in with the challenge and that your page puts a smile on your face.

I had a lovely day today in the company of my dear friend Robyn.

and as Dr Seuss would say...
Today was good, today was fun, tomorrow is another one.