A Creative Life:

Fleeting Moments

I realised today, just how fleeting moments in life are. I was talking to my 92yo grandmother, we often have long, deep conversations, and it occurred to me how much our memories falter us! Now at 92 my Grandmother has an excuse but I wasnt referring to her! I was referring to me! LOL!! I was thinking about my memories of my great grandmother, which I discovered were rather scant despite being 5 when she died. You see I was telling my Grandma she had to stick around for at least another 4-5 years so that Ashton and Kaitlyn would always have memories of her!!!! Sure that would make her 96 or 97 by that time!!! So then I told her she had to make it to 100 for a nice even number!! We had a giggle about that! Kaitlyn adores her "Granny" and I really want her to be able to remember the fun she had with her for the rest of her life, but lets face it, those memories from when you are very young are not the easiest to recall. They really have a special bond so I must insist my Grandmother aims for the century milestone.

My parents also had a first this week. They have finally gone for an overseas trip!!! They are going on a Biblelands/reformation tour. 6 weeks of travelling for a couple that have never before stepped outside of Australia!! I am so happy for my Dad especially as he has longed to travel overseas for a very long time and has worked so hard all his life. Mum has resisted, she worries about what state her garden will be in on her return!!! No I am not joking!! My Uncle and Auntie are going on the same tour so at least they will have good company as well.

Onto scrap related stuff! I have created a LO for the latest palette on The Color Room. I really loved this fresh and unique combination. Light and bright!

I added Marvy velvet puffy marker to the petals of the large flower. I just love the way this gives that velvety texture to the petals and besides, it is soooooo much fun watching it "grow" when you blast it with the heat gun! LOL!

I also had a page up on the Prima Blog. A flower filled page, well it is for Prima!!!

I love all the pastel colours in this one. The background paper is a funky umbrella paper, but the reverse side is this glorious pastel stripe that I adore! Have used quite a few sheets of this paper, so imagine how upset I was when I accidentally spilled a bottle of irridescent medium all over a sheet! Waste not, I got out a paint brush and tipped most back into the bottle before brushing it all over the page, hence why you can detect a slight silvery glitter on the page! Looks much better on flowers that medium! LOL!

I am still battling to stay on top of all my scrap deadlines. I seem to be taking longer and longer to complete layouts, which is not so good when I seem to need to do more and more of them! So it is back to the grindstone for me!! Once again, thanks for stopping by!

09:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

There is a Tooth!!!

Finally, a pesky little tooth has pushed through Ashtons gums!! I hope like crazy that one pesky tooth pushing its way through will help ease the discomfort that my "lil guy" (as I call him quite often at home) is experiencing and let him sleep better! Mind you, I expect it will probably be a case of status quo until the second little tooth pokes it's way through as well. Hoping, dreaming (if I could sleep long enough for that) that this might help with the sleep issues. He is the latest "teether" of the 5 children. Lachlan was the only other child that was 7 months before cutting his first tooth. Ethan came in as our earliest teether, at a rediculous 3.5 months of age!! Seriously, not a good thing either when you are breastfeeding!! Ironically he was the best sleeper of all my children, so maybe getting through all that pain early means a more settled baby earlier as well.

Ashton has also mastered the art of his baby walker! It is very cute watching him scoot around, forward, backward, sideways in his walker. His little feet going like crazy! Totally adorable! It also means that he is happy for a bit as he can get around. Crawling has yet to be added to his skills!! He has managed to progress from turning himself around in circles on the floor, to pulling himself up onto his knees, just!! Not that our slippery floors help with any crawling antics! Soon enough, this aspect of mobility will be mastered, but in the meantime I will get all excited by the little porgressions towards this milestone.

Well.... now that I have recorded those little details of Ashton development, how about i share a couple of layouts featuring the little guy! Both were for Aussie Scrap Source. The first one, I decided to go for a simpler LO for me. I also tucked my journaling in behind the photo. Had to record a couple of things so he knows a bit about himself as a baby when he is older!

Then another LO featuring Jenni Bowlin Bingo cards. I had a lot of fun using them on this layout.

Just recording his height and weight at 5 months of age on this LO. The sad thing about this, is that it was the last time I recorded these little details!! 2 months have passed and I have not weighed or measured him again. I think this is a reminder call for me to get him to some scales soon! I am sure he has a LOT more weight on him now because he has a ferocious appetite!

For all of you who have been through the pre-teen, early teen years and survived, I commend you!! I am learning through experience that this particular age is no picnic. I have a VERY surley eldest son, who also doesnt seem to be learning from me just telling him off and getting annoyed at him. He is losing that 'need to please' that young children have which makes it quite easy to make them sorry for their actions! So Lachlan entered a whole new world of "pain" today! He lost the right to play the X-box for a whole week!! It started out for just the evening, but his refusal to speak respectfully to me, by yelling at me, argueing with me, slamming doors, punching walls, and screaming at me for good measure, ah you get the picture. Each time I just calmly said, 2 days, 3 days, 4 days.......up until we got to 7 days and much anguish on Lachlans behalf. I was so pleased with myself, once I repressed that first impulse of "how dare you be so disrespectful" and embraced just calmly adding days of denial to his punishment, I had to repress smiling at how silly he was! Aparently I dont listen to him, no I heard him, I just didn't think his answers warranted the actions that started this spiral of behaviour. Apparently Ethan making a noise that annoyed him and not stopping when asked warranted him twisting Ethans arm. See I heard him I just disagreed! LOL!! I dont know what leaves me in more dispair, the "right now" dealing with this sort of behaviour, or the thought of 4 more children in this phase to deal with after Lachlan? Hopefully I will learn a few things with each so by the time Ashton gets there I will be an old hand at it!

Ahhh, enough waffling about the trials of having children from almost teenager down to teething baby! Thanks for stopping by!

09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Dedication

My best friend Kym has a blog and at the end of last year I will accuse her of sorely neglecting it. Then somewhere in the new year, a switch must have been flicked in her brain, a new resolution, but she began blogging with a vengance. I don't mean once a week, or even a couple of times a week, I am talking the everyday variety complete with pictures!!! Now this is no small feat! I know how difficult it is to open this page up on my blog and get my brain, and fingers into motion to do a post. But Kym is truly dedicated and first it was 30 days of a picture a day and now she continues on!!! I am so impressed!!! But with my state of "awe" at what she has done, comes a sense of shame from me. You see, I get her post in emails, which is great as I can read away without having to go to her blog, the only problem with that is, she never knows I have read them, because I cant leave a comment like I would if I had opened up the blog and read it "there" in its "flesh". So Kym, just know that I do read all your posts and I will be a better friend and actually open up your blog and comment, not just read the posts on my email!! Promise!! LOL!

So now I am enthused to try and keep this blog updated a little better. It seems that a week passes before I have had time to blink and I realise....hmmmm...I haven't updated. It isnt from lack of projects to share here! I usually "have" to do around 4 LO's/projects per week, so there is not a shortage of those to share. My time management seems to be the issue, but I plan to make more lists, prioritise my life and restore order to my chaos. Well, lets just see if that comes to fruition!

Projects I can share this week, include my "Fashionista" mini album for Miss Kaitlyn that was on the Prima blog. When Kaitlyn was a baby I kept all her clothing tags and created a mini album documenting my frienzied shopping sprees on girly clothes. Well now there is an extra child in the house and a "jobless" Mummy who has to be fore more budget conscious, so I have made a lot more pretty clothes for Kaitlyn now. This album documents some of the clothes I have made for her and I thought it was a good follow on from her first mini showcasing the "purchased" clothes.

This week on The Color Room, sees us back in "His Room". I adored the colours of this palette. They are so fresh and "boyish" that I had to do a LO for little Ashtons album. I adore the Prima "Donna Downey" leaf stamp so much, but love to stamp it on cardtock and then cut around it as it gives a lot more freedom when designing a page.

I also used the sketch for inspiration on this palette. I just loved the design of this sketch so had to use it!

Each time I create pages for The Color Room, one of my goals is to use older product that has been in my stash for ages. This time I used some My Minds Eye Rubons and a tag, along with some older papers, old Lil Davis alphas that I made darker with timber brown stazon and some more of the Chatterbox large brads. I actually really like those brads, they just add some texture. And if you peek closely there is also some really old netting in there as well. This is one of my favourite parts about pages for The color Room, no constraints on product, how old it is, what manufacturer, just getting the colours right. Just love the creative freedom it allows me.

I also want to record more of the kids. Maybe even kidnap Lachlans video camera and record some of their antics in little videos and share a couple here! Like Kaitlyn and her cute dancing!! It is great to do the scrapbook pages but I am finding I dont seem to have enough room to record all I want to, so a lot doesnt end up on my pages like I would like. I figure if I can at least keep some of the antics updated here then I have a chance at keeping better records! Well lets just see how that goes!

Once again, thanks for stopping by my blog.

08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

A Busy Week

It almost feels like a blur! Yes it really was that busy!! Yes I am that sleep deprived! After only 11 hours sleep in 3 days, I was looking forward to a couple of nights of uninterrupted sleep when I travelled to Sydney to teach at SIA (Scrapbook Industry of Australia). Really, I WAS day dreaming about full nights sleep! Well I boarded that plane and flew to Sydney, it was all going to be great. I even got to room with the fabulous Nic Howard and catch up a bit, it had been about 4 or 5 years since we last saw each other. Then we discovered our room had a fundamental problem! It was literally on the main road and all night trucks went by, creating quite a loud rumbling noise and despite both of us being exhausted we failed to sleep much at all. In fact at 4.30am we gave up on sleeping and tried to chat for a bit to pass the time and the frustration of not sleeping!! Aaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!! Is it too much to ask for a bit of sleep!!!!!

OK, breathe Janine!!!! Well that is what I have to remind myself to do! Thankfully there were other great things to take my mind off the sleep deprivation! Like meeting Suz Doyle , our Aussie Scrap Source DT co-ordinator for the first time, as well as fellow DT member Nic Finlayson , and other great scrapping girls I hadnt seen in a long time or had only met online, Evana Willis , Kim Arnold , Lisa Warren , Jo Kinder, Tiff Sawyer. Also got to meet the fabulous Becky Fleck, who was heaps of fun! Saw Heidi Swapp again, I have met her on 3 seperate occasions now. To top it all off I got to meet Adam from Prima! Obviously I had to give him a hard time!

I really enjoyed teaching my classes to the lovley ladies that attended. I think after such a long break from teaching it was really enjoyable, to share, teach, and just have fun! Everyone seemed to love the method I taught for adding that little extra pearlescent glitz to flowers! That was the general consensus for the class! It really is sooooo pretty!!

Now...onto the Color Room we had some pretty pastel inspiration. However, I saw grey where others moss green! Funny thing is when I see them up against each other here, I see the green and the grey is oh so grey! Mind you, my creamy colour is far less creamy in the LO than on the palette too, and I didnt think it was that far off when I was holding it against my printout! LOL! Oh well, here is the palette:

It was also Mothers Day this week! I got spoilt as per usual by my kids (insert DH as we all know who does the gift purchasing!!). Of course i got those adorable handmade gifts from the kids, like the little ceramic pots from Ethan in pink and purple, a couple of hand painted glass candle holders from Lachlan, a cute card from Ashton with his little handprint on it....you get the idea. But then came the purchased gifts! Now one i had definately hinted at! Even threatened to cut all my hair short again if said item did not find its way into my hands, and yes I was very serious, I only have long hair for my DH benefit! He loves long hair, I am perfectly happy with my locks being short! So... I got a hair straightener! Unlike my cheap and nasty one, it actually straightens my hair beautifully! I was very impressed by the results! It was quick and simple and now I will be able to do my hair in 10 mins instead of the hour it was taking me before to wear my hair down! YAY!!! Now if only I could smooth the wrinkles from my face that quick and simply!! Imagine that, a face straightener!! I guess they would call that botox!! LOL!! But the gifts didnt end with that! I tell you, he spoils me!! I also got a very smart looking cordless hot glue gun!! Ah the man knows his way to his wifes heart! Add to that a bunch of tulips as well! I adore tulips!!

OK here is the proof that my hair straightener works!! Yay!! Now please note this is me without a spot of makeup on! LOL! Dont worry I ran a flawless skin action over it so I looked a little less wrinkly!! Yes of course I am that vain!! I also changed it to B&W as that is more flattering as well!! I mean, seriously it is impossible to get a good shot of yourself while you hold the camera at arms length!! You feel soooo stupid to smile and who knows what angle your chin will be at!

Look how straight my hair is!!!! YAY!! I didnt even do anything to it before I ran the straightener over it! Before I would blow-dry with a large brush to straighten it and it took me forever without half as good results!!

OK I did make a couple of cards for Mothers Day as well, one for my Mum and one for my MIL.

This one was for my Mum. I think it may be one of the nicest cards I have ever made! I dont think I am that good at making cards, but I was happy with these ones.

And this one for my Mother In Law. I used a sketch by Lydell Quin for Palette 2 on the Color Room! Just adored that sketch and didnt use it on the LO but it was fabulous for this card!

I also took a couple of pics for the Color Room Banner this week. We had to change our banner, in the process of obtaining approval for images one lady was totally happy for us to use her images for inspiration pics but not in banners or sidebars unless we paid royalties for them so I took a couple of pics of pretty lollies in pots. I did attempt my own cupcakes, but decided that I am not very good an decorating the jolly things! I can make beautiful cake parts but I lack the finess with icing that is required for the task. I will enlist Lydells help soon for this task, she is much better at cake decorating than yours truly! But here are a couple of "sweet" pics!

I am still having dreadful nights with Ashton, he seems to be consistently bad through the nights and I am usually up at least 3 times per night to him. He sleeps less now than he did as a newborn!! It is definately cementing the fact that he is the last baby EVER in this house! I am too old for nocturnal feeds and it is time to re-claim my life! I have barely managed to scrap this week. Even today, I am doing this post rather than scrapping and it is my "sacred day of scrapping" when the two littlies are in childcare! Oh I have heaps of projects I should be working on but no "mojo" to do them. So I procrastinate! On that note, I will go and attempt some scrapping! Thanks for stopping by my blog!

02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Prima and Tattered Angels Blog Hop

OK, dont fall off your chair! I am posting twice in as many days! Very unusual for me these days! Why the special post? Well Prima and Tattered Angels have teamed up for a sensational Blog hop!! You can see the wonderful creations by the Prima girls on the Prima Blog and the hop across to Tattered Angels Blog to see their creations!

Here is my creation for the Prima blog.

It was a more vintage feel that I created for this page. I havent done a lot with the pastiche range, but I really love this range as well. I didnt have the exact colour of glimmermist to match in the blue on the pastiche papers, so I just sprayed the background and the lace with a mix of Moonlight and Turquoise Blue. I used 2 of their masks as well to give me a lovely swirly movement across the page. I also used a mix of moonlight and latte to create the brown colour that I sprayed across the text part of my Prima paper. Lastly I coloured some Innoscense flowers as well to set it all off.