And yet another week comes to an end.

Not quite sure how it went so fast but another week is over and it’s Friday again.

So what have I done?

A bit of creating for Fiskars … can’t share any pics yet though.

A bit of planning/preparing/shopping for Movie night at Rally … it went well. Although I now want to see the rest of Kung Fu Panda … all the bits I didn’t see while making popcorn for hungry movie goers.

I did catch the end though so I think I got the general idea … and I noticed the Panda guy has just as much trouble climbing a flight of stairs as I do these days!

A bit of wedding album stuff … yes I finished the big album but I had lots of pics left over so came up with a brilliant idea of making a mini album for her parents to keep at their house … a fabulous idea if it wasn’t for the time it’s taking me.

A bit of shopping with Janine.  In fact we managed to spend the whole day on Wednesday exploring Newtown … op shops, second hand shops, a fabbo fabric shop and a cool shop called Juniper which had some very inspiring handmade items. Best buys … a nice warm jacket, some good thick canvas fabric (dreaming of a canvas album), a ball of very cool wool in an awesome blue/green colour which matches my new jacket perfectly.

A bit of knitting … yep … somewhere between Wednesday and Thursday I found time to knit my blue/green wool into a scarf. Unfortunately it’s a bit short so either I need to invent a way to make it longer or I may just unknit it and use the wool for something else … still thinking about that.

A bit of scrapping. Last week at crafthouse I put together a whole lot of page kits using mostly Fancy Pants stuff  … no instructions but just lots of yummy perfectly matching papers and other bits. Each ‘kit’ has enough stuff to make one typically layered ‘Beverley’ style layout or add some cardstock and maybe some alphas from your stash and make two or three layouts. Anyway … I decided I ‘needed’ to take a kit and make up a layout.

‘Scuse the bad layout photography … not much natural light around this morning and since taking the photo I then decided to add a little more stitching to the rip in the bottom left corner … but you get the general idea right? This particular kit comes with a whole thingy of embroidery thread … so plenty of stitching possibilities.

It was nice to work with happy, cheerful summer colours … oh sun how I miss you!

And that about sums up my week. Of course there was a bit of housework (not much actually), a bit of parenting, a bit of netball coaching, a bit of cooking … all that general stuff one tends to do every week.

Yay for the weekend.

Today

Grateful for … the rain (netball is cancelled)

Enjoying … french toast and banana for breakfast with my girls (boys are at soccer (in the rain))

Wearing … my new winter pyjamas (nice and warm)

Feeling … just a little bit tired (late night scrapbooking … had to finish the layout!)

Dreaming … of a weekend trip to Sydney to meet up with the SOF team (dreams are free right?)

Inspired by … Donna Downey (have you seen those aprons … I simply have to make one!)

Wishing … I could get my hands on a Prima Canvas Album (and a bunch of other prima stuff)

Making … cupcakes, again. (For baby Liam’s first birthday party this afternoon)

This layout is one I’ve been pottering on all week … haven’t been real enthusiastic about it and not really happy with the end result … but the photo’s cute!  I’ve used the Prima Build a Page Sketch … not that you can tell after all the stuff I’ve got on there!

Enjoy your weekend

It’s quiet round here

… so what’s been keeping me quiet?

Well … besides an icky little cold … I’ve been working on this:

The single most biggest paid scrapbooking project I have ever worked on. My cousins wedding album.

Such a huge job … which I probably underestimated just a tiny bit when I first agreed to work on it last year.

From getting the photos printed in different sizes, organising them into some sort of order, picking out papers and other bits and finding an album to work with … to actually scrapping the photos … I guess you could say a fair bit of time was taken on this project!

I am now really, really hoping that Karen and Malcolm will like it … when I figure out how to get it to them in Aussie.

What else has been happening?

Rebekah and Alexander are performing in J Rock tonight, which is the primary school version of Stage Challenge. I’m officially over practices and notices and all. Hopefully they’ve had a good day today … they had to be at the venue at 8.30 this morning for dress rehearsals and other activities. The concert is at 6.30 tonight … so it’s a big day for them.

I’ve been spending a bit of time at Kiwiscraps lately, designing and packing project kits. The down side to being there so much is that it’s really hard to not notice yummy stuff arriving in at the shop … and some stuff simply must come home with me!  Like this … and this … ahhh Fancy Pants! The on a whimsy journal pad is especially cool … will be used on a layout or two in the near future no doubt!

Don’t think I’ve shown you these yet either:

I decided that it would be a good idea to teach the Rally kids how to finger knit … and then of course I needed to find a use for a long string of finger knitting, so I made brooches. We’ve also been making sherbet and marbling paper … it’s been a busy term. Next Rally night is our annual movie night where we transform the church lounge into a movie theatre and break out the pop-corn, jaffas and fizzy drink. The kids bring their friends and families and just generally have lots of fun.

Right … Jessi and I going to grab a bite to eat before the concert so I’d better go convince her to put some warmer clothes on.

Wanna see inside then?

So this box arrived at it’s destination today … now I can show you what’s inside.

A completely fat free cupcake … that’s gotta be good right?

It started like this:

And ended up like this:

And then there was this box:

Which had an equally fat-free cupcake which looked slightly different.

This one was delivered over coffee on Wednesday.

Now … if only I could invent an edible fat-free cupcake … that would be cool!

And the box … totally inspired by the amazing incredible Sarah.

Shhhh … it’s a secret.

Wanna see?

Can’t show you what’s inside until it gets to it’s destination later this week …

But I can show you this layout:

Which was on the Fiskars blog a while ago. Yep that’s me when I was 19 … now I’m all grown up with boring brown hair.

And this layout:

Which was on the Paper Pesto blog recently … I’ve rediscovered my stash of rubons since doing this layout … specially like the idea of putting them on accetate and adding bling. Photo of the grown up me complete with family was taken last year by Deb Scheib.

Don’t you hate it when you can think up amazing, incredible blog posts but when it comes time to actually write them all the words disappear? Maybe I should just give up on the words and just show you pretty pictures. Only sometimes I don’t have pictures to show you of all I want you to know about … like the cupcake crop of the last post, I should have mentioned that Rhonda had set up the tables with pretty cupcake party stuff … and there were pink lollies and chocolates and she made yummy cupcakes too and the whole room looked amazing … only I don’t have any photos of all that, so I forgot to mention it.

I also keep forgetting to mention that I’ve discovered I only get e-mail notification of some of your lovely comments … half of them sneak by me only to be discovered later … and then I can’t reply to them by e-mail. Very annoying, must look into that one day … has anyone else had a similar problem and solved it? Let me know if you’ve got answers! Don’t stop commenting though … I love your comments … even the ones that call me insane!

Congrats to the new SBO design team … so exciting to see some of those names. And did you see The Sketch book have something to keep you busy this week? Blue skies and sunshine today … I like this weather much better than Sunday’s snow showers. Catching up on washing, sorting the house, packing parcels to be posted, writing project instructions and planning todays netball training session … okay, back to it.

So…

the cupcake crop went well.

I made cupcakes. (Surprise!)

Royal cupcakes … cos it’s Queens Birthday and all.

I embossed the crowns using a cuttlebug embossing folder and then curved them over the handle of a wooden spoon.

I also made a couple of cupcake layouts as inspiration for the day.

This one was from an idea found on You Tube.

Except I cheated and just used kindy glitz over the alcohol inks instead of dimensional magic and glitter. Those swirly stamps … are ones I won from Chris a while ago …. love, love, love how they stamp … so nice!

I also made another layout … more in line with my current favourite techniques.

The swirls are basic grey rubons which I put onto transparency and then cut out … made it easy to move them around and put them over several layers.

So besides demonstrating alcohol inks yesterday I also had time to do some creating. I started with the Up 2 Scrap trend sketch for this month.

It had to be a not square page so I used another shaped paper to trace around onto my basic grey paper. Jessi seriously does like to dress up like this for school. In fact we had tears in the car on the way to school this week because she’d forgotten to put on her lipstick and we were too late to go back for it … I don’t know where she gets it from … it’s so not me!

The cold, wet weather everyone was talking about has arrived today. It was seriously snowing at our place a few moments ago … not enough to settle on the ground but it was definitely floating around in the air. Earlier in the week the view from my house looked like this:

and this:

Not so fun living in the clouds!

Hope your long weekend is going well for you.

Insane, obsessed, addicted …

… or is this normal?

Just how many cupcake papers should one have in the cupboard?

Speaking of cupcakes … I’ve been playing lately …

There’s an all day crop at Craft house this weekend with a bit of a cupcake theme … that’s gotta be good right?

In other news …

Jessi is now toothless in the front … has a nice little lisp going on.

The kids are taking it in turns to get the tummy bug so I’ve had not much sleep for the last couple of nights, Mt Washmore seems rather insurmountable and I’ve been stuck at home for two days … fun!

Paper Pesto Stuff

As I mentioned a few posts ago … this …

box of goodies came to my house this month. Aptly named gypsy trinkets it truely was a box of pretty sparkly treasures to play with.

First I did this:

Yep, a boy layout! I quite like how the shadow photo on the graffiti wall turned out … a different look at least.

Then I did this:

Photo taken the same day as the shadow one above. Jessi and Alexander were walking along a wall … actually Alexander was inching very carefully along … Jessi had already run and danced her way to the end and was on her way back again! I quite like how the photo gives a hint of those personalities. The envelope unfolds to reveal a letter I wrote to them both … a bit soppy really, about their personalities and why I love them and all that … I expect it will stay sealed until some day in the future when they might need to read it.

And then I did another layout which looks a little bit like this:

Can’t show you the full layout yet because it hasn’t been revealed on the Pesto Blog yet.

Same with this one:

Gotta say … those rubons were super nice to work with though!

And then I made a set of cards with the bits I hadn’t used yet …

I even got carried away and made matching envelopes for the cards!

So yeah … I’ve been busy lately.

Keep watching the blog for more work done with this kit … the other fabulous designers will fill you with inspiration too. And if you want to buy your own kit and make your very own works of art with gypsy trinkets you could go here to order one.

High Tea in Wellington

Gotta tell you about this fab place I went to last week.

Martha’s Pantry is a fantastic little cafe at the end of Cuba St in Wellington, that serves high tea in the most perfect way.

Fancy looking china teapots with cute knitted tea cosies. Tea strainers … because the best tea is made with loose leaves.

This was the best cup (or 10) of green tea that I’ve ever had. I’m not generally a tea drinker … a good strong coffee is more my thing but this was high tea and coffee doesn’t come in tea pots … and it was good tea.

And there was food … lots of food. Our high tea experience started out as an early morning tea but it did me for lunch and afternoon tea too … good value really … and they even offered to pack up the stuff we didn’t eat in a box for us to take away. (No we didn’t take them up on that option.)

And then, if that wasn’t enough there was lots of very cool handcrafted things for sale. A few minutes of studying these shelves filled me with all sorts of inspiration to make stuff … crocheted flowers on hairclips, funky little pencil cases and bags, flower brooches made with ribbon and fabric and other such scrapbooking supplies. Oh and the aprons were very, very cool … just like the ladies were wearing behind the counter … only cleaner. So a perfect little housewife apron is also on my list of possible sewing projects … should I ever stop scrapping long enough to work through the list.

Do you think it would be wrong if I went and had high tea every week?

Fiskars Update

I’ve had a few things up on the fiskars blog lately … thought I should share them here too.

Going back a month or so … this was my Easter project …

A little game to keep the kids busy on the plane when we went to Invercargill.

More details can be found here.

Then there was this Mothers Day gift which we made at rally last week …

More details here. There have been some amazing Mothers Day gift ideas posted by the other ambassadors too so it’s worth a browse through all the posts that have been made lately.

And then there is also a focus on Book of Me layout ideas for the month of May … so much inspiration on the blog!

Here are a couple I’ve done:

Thinking about the games played as a child.

And this one about teenage social life.

As you can see I’ve been loving the blues and greens lately … these are ‘Ink by Steph’ papers and should be found at Spotlight.

I have one more BOM layout to go up on the blog later in the month but keep checking it out daily for inspiration from the other ambassadors too.