A Creative Life

Have you ever had weeks where you feel completely 'mojoed' out?  I seem to be in one of those slumps! I hate it, but for some reason, pregnancy hormones and me dont seem to mix when it comes to creativity!  By the third trimester when pregnant with Kaitlyn, my scrapbooking became completely non-existant!!  Dont worry, I have not yet stopped scrapping, but it all just seems like hard work right now!  I dont have those wonderful mental images of layouts that often come to my brain, so it all feels very forced!  Hopefully I can work through it and get the mojo back before the next 6 months are up!

I have only been managing one layout a week at the moment and that is because I have to for the Color Combos Site! LOL! Luckily I have a few layouts already done for Prima, so that is good.  One went up on the blog this week.  I am not one for scrapping pictures that I have taken indoors with a flash, but I need to get over that when priceless moments need to be recorded and how cute is this little girl caught in the act of taking Mummies chocolate biscuit and sipping her hot drink!!

Lots of Prima goodness on this layout! I just love those felt matties all cut up on my layouts and i have kept the backing as well as it is a lovely Kraft colour, so I can make double use of it!

Changing the subject completely....this little bubby I am carrying is very quiet at this stage!  I am yet to feel a strong kick!  Miss K gave me a great big solid kick (make that 3 in a row that even Paul got to feel it and I could see a little ripple under my skin!)  right at the beginning of 15 weeks and she kicked me hard all the way through.  Ethan gave me a solid kick while I was hospitalised at 15 weeks with a threatened miscarriage and ultimately found a great spot under my ribcage to take out his baby aggression later on, and Cameron was kicking me at 14 weeks.  Lachlan, being the first kept his kicking undetectable until I was waiting for my 18 weeks scan, but this little baby, no big kicking yet! Sometimes I feel a little concerned as I am halfway through week 16 now, but then I take one look at my weight gain and tell myself not to worry, all his energy is going into growing, not kicking!

The kids went back to school this week and Paul went back to work! Talk about bringing reality back with a big fat thud!!  It is full on rushing in the mornings again, complete with me nagging for the kids to get ready on time, stop talking, eat your breakfast, get your shoes and socks on, brush your teeth!!  You know the drill, I am sure that it happens in most households!  I keep dreaming that one day they will all be self-motivated and I can just get up and quietly get myself ready in the morning!  O'kay, I might be dreaming.

Now, just a little teaser for my parting note......I'm working on something really great, with a couple of extremely talented ladies.....and it is going to be wonderful, and anyone in Adelaide, or willing to come to Adelaide can be involved!!  Soooo exciting!  TFL!

So...Pink or Blue?

Well, only 7 of you guessed the right one! But dont worry, I would have guessed wrong as well, as did most of my friends! So rather than keep you in suspense lets get straight to it........ drum roll please.....it is a bundle of blue, it has a Y chromosome, I even have the letter from my genetecist to prove that there is both an X and a Y chromosome to this one.  Somehow that makes it very official, no chance of error.  Dont ask me what deluded my brain to think that it was possible to have another bundle of pink, but after having one beautiful little girl, I really did think that it was possible to have another one, but my past record really should have reminded me that she is just a miracle! LOL!

So the winner of the RAK was ..... Naomi Cox!  So Naomi can you please email me (email addy link is just under my profile pic) with your address details so I can send out a lovley box of goodies to you. As you can imagine, there will be a lot more little baby blue layouts in the future!

Now you would think that I would have plenty of boy clothes for this little baby, but no alas I got rid of them all once I knew Kaitlyn was going to be a girl! Besides my youngest boy Ethan will be 6 by the time this bubby comes along, in fact the baby is due on E's birthday! I have already had a little spluge on buying baby boy clothes, because a girl just has to do what she has to do!!

Onto scrappy related things, there is a promotion between Tattered Angels and Prima over on the Prima blog at the moment and you could win a fabulous prize of Prima and Tattered Angels products. They really do work so well together!  Here is my layout using a Prima Paintable and then going spray mad with Glimmermist!  So much fun and so very theraputic if you love to delve into the slightly arty aspect of scrapping every once in a while.

 I sprayed the paintable with glimmermist first and then cut out the flowers. Rather than waste the rest of the paper, I used circle punches to cut out circles and basically used the whole sheet on this layout. The Tattered Angels chipboard elements were also coloured using Glimmermist as was the felt voila.

 

THis weeks colour combo challenge was such a pretty one over at Color Combos Galore with the Guest designer being the wonderful Ronda Palazzari  (love her work) and this was my take on it.

 

The journaling reads....

In many ways my sweet little girl it is all your fault! You are just too adorable, too cute, too much fun, too delightful for words! So it is all your fault that I got clucky again! I just didnt want to lose all those delightful elements  your baby days brought to our lives and now that you are a toddler I just miss them so much.

Dont worry sweet girl you will never lose your place in this family, you will always be my special little girl and no new baby will take my love away from you. You are a one and only, just like your three brothers are special and unique also.

I am afraid you will have to share my attention a little more, but we still have a few months before that happens. Lets enjoy it. Lets have fun together, giggle, play, have fun and enjoy the few months we have when we are alone together while the boys are at school.

I know you are going to dote on the new baby when he arrives. You adore your dolls, so how much more fun will it be for you to play with a real baby! I think I will have to be vigilant so you dont over hug the wee baby, but I know you will love being a big sister!

With all this change, just remember sweet little girl, that you are always very special to your Mummy and Daddy and all your brothers. We love you to pieces!

Unfortunately you cant read it from the pic I took of the layout. But now you get the idea of why I would have a title saying it is all her fault!  Really, how could anything really be her fault! LOL!  The only thing she is guilty of is being way too cute.  TFL

Certifiably Crazy!

That is what I think I must be to venture down this road again!  You see, I dont think that anyone in their right mind would actually think it was a smart/sensible idea to have 5 children, but somehow I got it into my brain that I wanted just 1 more little baby!  Seriously, what was I thinking??  You see, I know that my little Miss K has a lot to answer for here.  she has been a pure delight, a ray of sunshine that just made me want one more little bundle of cuteness, as I was missing those adorable baby moments so much!  Yes, only someone who is certifiably crazy would completely gloss over the fact that adorable babies grow into demanding toddlers (but I adore this stage) and then into know it all school children and finally moody teenagers! But the journey is worth it!! :) :)

So what I am really trying to say amidst all this ramble is that our family of 4 children will become a family of 5 children in October.  I am 14 weeks pregnant!  I am already getting that rounded belly (mostly because I have been a complete pig and eaten way too much and gained far more weight than I usually do by this stage of pregnancy!) Now I know what i am having already (opted for some early testing since I am no longer a spring chicken) but I thought it might be fun to have a RAK on guessing whether it is a boy or girl.  Obviously with only 2 options for this, I will then put all the correct responses in a hat and draw one out!  So guess away! 

We only told the kids on Thursday night and you should have seen their faces!  They were sooooo excited!  You would think that they might be a bit over siblings but no way, they cant wait to meet their new family member.  I had to remind them that it was still 6 months away!  They were just so excited it was adorable. Camerons face was just priceless, he was grinning from ear to ear and ran over and put his head on my tummy to see if he could feel or hear the baby! I assured him, not yet, not even I can feel it just yet, but it will be very soon as  the last 3 I have felt their first movements around 15 weeks.  So our family has some exciting times ahead!

I also had a layout up on the Color Combos Blog. This is my take on CCG117.

  This little girl has me wrapped around her little finger like you wouldnt believe. I could just smother her in kisses all day long!

We also had a lovely time away camping for Easter! The older boys became river rats they were in the water so much! Who knows how many times they went out on the G-Force, but there was barely a moment that they werent wet in their bathers.  Ethan feels the cold a bit more so he spent his time between the water and the embers of the camp fire! Miss Kaitlyn spent her day chasing around the 5 different puppy dogs that were their. That girl is seriously addicted to puppy dogs, except she has a few confusion issues and called them a horse to start with!  Eventually we got her to say each of the dogs by name, which was very cute.  They all fell asleep in the car on the way home which meant that Paul and I had a lovely quiet trip back! Will post some pics once I have got them off the camera!

TFL and have a great week.

Off the Page!

The FK elite team work has certainly stretched my creativity! I have never been a cardmaker or an off the page kind of girl, but lately I seem to have been making a lot of mini albums and other off the page sort of stuff for my elite team contributions.

Mind you it was a little dissappointing when a transparency mini album I created for the magazine only showed the front cover!!  All that work for the inner pages and they just show a cover, my goodness, I could have just created the covers and saved myself a whole lot of work!  It was hard to photograph this one as there are different sized pages in it, but you will get the idea.

 

                    

The funny thing is, I hadnt photographed the front and back covers myself! I had to go back and do it before finishing off this post!

I also had a decorated box and fridge magnets in the mothers day issue of For Keeps.

top of box

Front of box

These are the fridge magnets I made and I ended up putting pics and a quote in them. So I am all set with a mothers day present for mum! Yay, never been this organised before! Plus I have made a matching card as well.

  I figured it would be nice if it all matched together and mum has decorated her house in these deep plumish tones, so I know it will go with her decor. Hope she doesnt visit my blog (she is pretty computer illiterate so I think I am safe).

Havent been doing much scrapbooking this week, in fact I think I have only done 1 LO! Very unlike me and I wont be doing any over the Easter break either as it will be quality family time!  DH is on holidays for 18 days, yippee!  I might even remember what he looks like after a couple of weeks of seeing him.

Have a great Easter. TFL.

What? Boy Layouts!!!

Can you believe it, a post with only boy LO's!!  What has gotten into me?  I always find it far more challenging to do a masculine page. It always comes down to how I am going to embellish the pages and I find it hard to give it that touch of my style without compromising the boyishness of the page. I can sit and dwell on these boy pages for a very long time, moving the tiniest details from one spot to the next, hoping that it will just work at some point.  With feminine LO's it is just so easy to bung a flower or a flourish on it to finish it off! It just makes me realise how few boyish embellishments are in my stash!

This page was for the Colour Combos blog, CCG 116! I still haven't missed a combo since I started, even when I find it a challenge, I keep going as I believe the challenge of it helps to extend your creative side. As can be seen by the colours that I had to use, it had to be a boy LO!! I was forced I tell you! FORCED to do boy pages.

   

This next one was for the Prima Blog. Just love the bright happy colours of this layout and the lovely Prima decorative edge paper. I am also in love with their little collage stamps, they are wonderfully versatile and a great option when embellishing boy pages!

 

Lastly, this was another one for the Prima site but was for their Build A Page sketch at the end of the month. The fabulous sketch was provided by Anam and probably lent itself to a feminine LO but I couldnt resist playing with circles of circles! Also just love the fact that the viola felt I used to embellish this has circular elements in it as well! I have used all 3 of those in the packet, just loved them. In fact I love all their new devines that they have just released, great for those boy pages!

 

Funny things that happened this week.... my oldest 2 boys are absolutely car crazy right now, love nothing more than to watch top Gear or to play spot the car while driving to school!  They have taken to a new game now.... get Kaitlyn to say as many different car names as possible. This is the conversations I hear as I drive the car....'Kaitlyn, say Hummer....ummer! Porsche....orshe! Ferarri...fari! Mercedes....merdes!  I cant even remember all the different car names they had her saying but it was Oh so Cute!

Far cuter than when I tell her off, she now turns around and tells me "stop it! Not nice!!" No you stop it Kaitlyn, you are being rude". Miss K "stop it!!" Add to this an outstretched hand and a very determined look on her face!  Defiance, you got to laugh to ease the frustration! TFL!