What a week....

Hi Girls,
It seems like forever since I have been in blog land and had something to say. It has been very busy in our house, my parents have been away, so that involved Doggy sitting and being short my baby sitter for two weeks. I have been cleaning out old bits and pieces of baby stuff to sell at baby and kids markets. That was today and it was great, sold lots and made some money for the kids upcoming birthdays!
In my scrapping world I have had lots going on too. I had a period of a good 15 months or so where I could not bring myself to scrap, I am not sure why but I had no creative ideas while I was pregnant and I had no time while Katelin was so little - or should I say I spent a lot of it sleeping. So I feel the need to 'catch up'! Only because I feel there are important things in that time that I would like to scrap. I spent time late last year getting organised and having printed off all the photos I felt I needed to scrap, now I am working my way through the pile. I have finished 2006, and it was such a nice feeling! I have about four months in 2007 to scrap and about the same in 2008. So I am making progress, but I am also repeating layouts and choosing quick ones to get the pages done a little faster. I find it easier to repeat layouts, especially when they are in different albums usually for different kids too. It is quicker to just rewrite in the same word doc. I also like to see how different I can make the same LO look. Here are a few layouts about early 2007, and my baby shower for Katelin, it has been so fun to revisit this and read all the kind words of my friends. The first one is a special photo of a good friend of mine, we happened to be pregnant at the same time twice, with both our first and second babies.



















This LO is an Ali Edwards overlay from designer digitals and I am loving them for getting pages done quickly. This second one is using another of the overlays and it is of my best friend playing with Noah, they were having such a great time.



















This page doesn't have a lot to say but it is still an important photo to me, this helps to get down the details quickly and capture the memories. Next is my best friends little girl Rose and Noah eating cake at the baby shower, these to little people are so gorgeous!



















You may also notice I have been trying not to use white as my base for all my pages at the moment. I find it a bit of a challenge but I am really happy with the results. Often I do this when I have run out of white and I can't get to the store. It is also good to use up some of the other colours hanging around in my stash!
This last LO is a few weeks earlier when we went to visit Rose and Tracey and Dave at Nelson Bay. Rose and Noah are such great friends, they get on so well and it is so lovely to see.


















This one does use white but I am happy with the colours and how it turned out. This is a lift of one of Lee's LO's you can read her posts here.
I hope these pictures and words give you some inspiration this week. I will share some more soon. I am working on a few things. My Nan has been visiting and she has been sharing stories of my pop immigrating from France, how she met him and how when my mum was small they lived in Underwood st Enmore paying 15 shillings ($1.50) rent per week. I hear that this is a very affluent street now! So many pages can come from these stories - important facts for my kids to learn - I also have some serious photo tracking down to go with these stories too - Nan says they don't have a wedding photo!
Here are two pics that make me smile at the moment. The first I found on my camera, my kids love to snap there own pics. I love the toes!













This last one is of my little girl yesterday at a birthday party - This is what it is all about!



















Three more things I want to share, Ali Edwards has posted an inspiring LO about her gorgeous baby girl, I can't wait to use it somehow.
Second Lee from RW is proposing a scrapping getaway in July for more detail subscribe to the RW newsletter here.
And last of all but by far the most important my week has also been taken up with the news of a close friend in our mothers group being in hospital, after a week of uncertainty it looks as though it may be a brain tumor, more diagnosing is yet required, by a wonderful miracle I happened to visit Tara Whitney's site with this amazing link, please visit and do what you can to support.
Go and take 5 minutes to do nothing but give your kids undivided attention and a few extra hugs.
Shannon
x

It's the simple things....

Firstly I want to start this post with some very exciting news! One of my good friends, who has a young family like me, has started on an exciting journey buying a company, that I and many of you frequent - Remember When Paper Company! I am so excited for Lee and want to do all I can to support her.
Remember When stocks the full range of Bazzill papers. Lee is currently restocking many of the colours and patterns, she also has some fabulous new products such as Dotted Swiss. There are some favourites being bought back like Bazzill in a Box, and to celebrate Lee is offering 10% off until the end of March. But the best bit is that Lee has decided to stock American Crafts products, so it now makes her my one stop shop for all I need. Pop over and visit her site, show her some support and you might just be suprised at what you find!
Onto my post for the day, it is the simple things that bring the most joy. Today I took my kids and our friend and neighbour and we caught the train to Brooklyn, we had such a fabulous day in the sun, and to watch the kids so happy at a simple train ride and a play in the park made me realise it is the simple things that make you smile.
I have popped by Di's blog today and I saw the simple things that Di has captured that mean so much. Also Jo is working on a special little project, which while not simple on its own, the idea is simple. Capturing your family in their everyday life, the things I enjoy everyday and would love someone to capture. Jo got the idea from Tara Whitney and while I would LOVE to be able to have Tara do this for me, the idea is much more important and makes me want to have a go myself - or get someone else to help so I am in it!
While this post is a little cryptic with all the links, if you go check out a couple I hope you will be inspired to capture your own simple things, and with that in mind here is my page.













While I was working on my page I wasn't sure about it, I thought perhaps it didn't have enough, that it was too simple. But I am so happy with the result. It is all about simplicity. The LO looks good and it focuses on the most important part, the photos. When I see this it takes me back to that day and makes me smile on the inside, it was just a simple trip to the beach but such a happy memory.
Take a look around this week and treasure the simple things.

Scrapping cause the pics are cute!

Ok so I know the idea is to have a story to go with the photos. Mostly I do. But there are a few pictures that are just required to be in the scrap album because they are cute and they make me smile. When I started scrapping I wanted to capture the stories of my family and our lives. I feel like I have done that fairly well. There is just one problem, I have about 6 months of photos of Noah that I just took because he was cute. When I started scrapping my ideas for photos changed and it was from then on that I usually had a story to go with the photos.
I am just now getting to scrapping some of those early photos. And these photos are from two different photo shoots we had done. I felt they needed to be in the album because these photos really do warm my heart.
This first one is of my two boys and I love it so much, so I used it to write a bit about their relationship. Sorry I took several photos of this page and this is the best - still wonky.


















I am really happy with how this turned out. On that note, I have a new theory on how to scrap photos that I really love. As I too have experienced the disapointment of photos I really LOVE and not being able to do them justice when I scrap them. Now I return to my old LO's and pick one that is a favourite and that I think will work with the photo. That is what I did with the above LO. I will share the original page next time. Here is the picture of myself and Noah that goes with the above one.



















Love how this one finished up too - another copy of one of my past LO's which from memory was originally lifted from Nicole who did a 8.5 x 11 and I adapted to 12 x 12. This one I talked about my relationship with Noah. Onto the next photo shoot we did. I know I had a few trust me my husband was not thrilled but they were so worth it. This page was of Noah with one of his favourite toys at the time, Tinga the stuffed tiger.



















This page I talked about all those cute photos and how I had to scrap them because they are special and make me happy.
This last one is a favourite. I guess because bear is still such a big part of Noah's life. When this photo was taken Noah recently after he started carrying bear around a lot, but it is the esscence of how much he loves bear and that is just what he used to do to bear at the time the photo was taken.



















So these are all pages I was working on last weekend and they have taken me a week to finish because I have not had a working printer. Oh and I have not gotten to scrapping the photo's of Noah's room as I have spent the week trying to sort out printer issues - it is impossible to scrap without a printer in my house - especially when you don't like your hand writing much. I do write on a few pages though. So try looking through your old LO's for some new inspiration this week and happy scrapping.