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