Latest pages

I finally finished my album for the Stories in Hand class I'm taking. I made it out of Kaisercraft chipboard, and inside are a ton of pages with journalling prompts.

Stories in Hand

I decided to sign up for Jessica Sprague's Stories In Hand online class. It's all about collecting the stories in your life and recording them. I am really loving it, and have achieved quite a bit with the journalling prompts we've been given. I've recorded six stories so far, and have even managed to scrap a couple of them:

Great news and a layout

I got an email today inviting me to be on the Creative Team for Sabrina Dupre at Shabby Pickle!! Woohoo! I'm quite excited about this, and can't wait to start playing with her designs. Check out her shop HERE. I'm still on Sya's CT as well, and I think the two will work together nicely - Sya's templates and Sabrina's kits.

Speaking of Sya's templates, I did another LO today using her "Gimme More Space" template set:


Credits HERE.

Successful first week

Brooke's first week of school went off without a hitch. I can't tell you how RELIEVED I am that she is happy there. She comes home all excited about the things they did each day, and the friends she made. We expected her to be quite tired at night, but she hasn't actually been too bad. For the next two weeks her school is having Education Outside the Classroom (EOTC). They will do crafts, go to the pools, spend a day at Murphy's Bush, make and fly kites, and have a school Top Town event. I've volunteered to be a parent helper on 3 of the days, so I can see Brooke with her friends. Elisa is going down to my Mum and Dads for a few days during that time.

I completed another layout last night. This one is using Sya's Gimme Some Space template set, and Megan Turnidge's Snow Day Kit:


Credits HERE

In Brooke's own words....

My day was great. I made a friend called Callum, and I did skipping with him. And he taught me how to skip. Next week we are going to make some kites. And hats and a tent outside our house for homework. And....I did things that were smaller and bigger. A ladder is taller than me. I am smaller than a ladder, a tree and a slide. I am bigger than a leaf. I am bigger than a broom and a brush. I am bigger than a school bus.....actually I'm not....I'm smaller than a school bus.

I made another friend called Chloe. I wasn't scared at school, and I didn't cry at school. I am looking forward to going to school tomorrow.

And that's all I want to say.

First Day of School

I wasn't sure how this day would go - Brooke starting school - but I really didn't think it would go this good. Brooke woke up happy and excited, couldn't WAIT to put her school uniform on, and showed no sign of anxiety at all. Being the good Mum that I said I would be, I packed her a nice Bento-style lunch with lots of colour and variety to encourage her to eat more. I also slipped in a little note for her to find at lunchtime. Now this is the first school lunch we've done, so we're still working out things like quantity and volume. If she wants more or less in her lunchbox she'll let me know.



Today she has cucumber flowers, apricots, cheese bells, mini tomatoes, teddy bear biscuits, crackers and some number shaped biscuits.



Dinosaur shaped sandwiches (selection of vegemite, nutella and honey), and a few mini marshmellows and yoghurt pebbles for a treat.



Strawberries from our garden, and an apple.



And it all fits into her new lunchbox. We have a drink that usually fits in here too, but they keep their drink bottles in the class with them, so that's been put in her school bag side pouch. So, not bad huh? It's a far cry from the boring old lunches I used to make, and it makes her feel special. I do the same for Elisa at home for her morning tea and lunch too. It's amazing how much more she will eat when it's presented in a fun way.

Here is our wee poppet drowning in her school uniform:




They can wear any shoes they like, so Brooke chose pink jandals this morning. She wanted Mummy AND Daddy to drop her off at school today, so we all went. I'd expected a few tears at the least, but she was happy as mud to be there, and after putting her bag away and signing in, she gave us all a big kiss and cuddle then sat herself down on the mat with the other kids. Hardly even glanced back at us. She did better than me. As we were walking back to the car I couldn't help a few tears at my little girl being all grown up.



...and with her teacher...

I hope she'll be OK today. She's not used to going a whole day without us - even when she was attending the Playcentre Kiwi Kids session, it was only two and a half hours, not six. Lots of prayers have been said though, so I'm sure she'll be more than fine. We'll see come 3pm.

Layouts again

I told my sister I would do a "Baby's First Year" Album when her son was born. I've done a fair amount of pages since he arrived in April, but I really do need to catch up some more, so... I've decided to concentrate on that for the next few weeks. Here are a couple of finished ones. I've done more, but I'm waiting for journalling to finish them off.

Moving on...

So we sold our house on the Friday, and put bought a new one less than 3 days later. Now we have a residence in-zone, Brooke can finally start school! We did our 2nd pre-school visit this morning, and she will start properly on Monday. We got her school uniform the other day, and she looks younger than ever in it, but so very cute. I will take pics of her wearing it on Monday morning. The handover date for the house is mid December, so I'll drive her to school and back until then.

Other than all the house deals going on, it's been pretty quiet for us. DH is on leave for a few weeks, and the girls and I have enjoyed spending quality time with him at home. We all went rock climbing yesterday, and we go swimming a couple of times a week, so Brooke is more than happy. Elisa just loves having Dad around fullstop - it doesn't matter what we're doing.

I had a blast on Digital Scrapbooking Day on November 1st, scoring lots of freebies and shop specials. My first layout here is with the kit
Panda Zen by Liella at Sunshine Studio Scraps. I think it's just the cutest kit:


Credits HERE

And I couldn't resist doing my Visiting Teaching Handout for this month with the kit too. I used one of Liella's quick pages for the first page which is 5x5 inches and the cue cards (made myself) are 2x3 inches. I'll punch a hole in the corner and tie them together with some ribbon. They're off getting printed at the moment - I can't wait to put it all together.

SOLD!!!

Our house, which has been on the market for several months, sold yesterday. We didn't quite get what we wanted for it, but it's OK. We've yet to put a bid on another house, though we have two firm favourites we're deciding between. They're close to a great school for Brooke, and are about 300 metres apart. You'd think we'd be more excited about the move, but we've loved living where we are, and will miss the neighbours. BUT....schooling for the girls comes first, and we need to live IN-ZONE in order for them to attend that particular school. So...the next few weeks will be interesting as we see what prices we can negotiate for the new house. Fingers crossed.

The girls spent half of last night coughing, poor things. No one got much sleep. I'm guessing it's going to get worse before it gets better too, so we're preparing for a few quiet days at home.

It's Digital Scrapbooking Day today too, so I've been checking out all the online sales and freebies. I so wish I could just buy it all, but with the NZ dollar as it is, the conversion to US dollar still makes things pretty expensive. I've managed to find a few good deals though. :)

Here are my latest scrapbook pages for Sya's Blueprints, using her new Get Boxy template set which is part of her latest Grab Bag


You can see them close up HERE

And here's another one I did for a challenge at Natural Designs in Scrapbooking (NDISB):

Credits HERE

Oh, I almost forgot. I entered a challenge on Sine's blog last week, and won! We had to send a link to one of our layouts we think would make a good template. I sent this one in:

And now it's been made into a template and is for sale in her store!

That really made my day. I also got a gift certificate to her store for winning. :D