Some Layouts and Bunny Ears

Well perhaps I should have taken some photos of my Easter layouts from last year and shared those. Instead I am sharing what I have been working on during Easter and this past week. I didn't take a lot of shots this Easter, I am trying to catch the moments, not so much the events. So there are a few of the egg hunt, but mostly of Noah and Katelin sharing. It was beautiful to see. I have some great video footage which has captured what I want for my journalling. Here are my bunnies this year, we made ears at mothers group.






































I am inspired to take more bunny type Easter shots after reading Jo's great post at RW, hop on over and check it out! I love the idea of taking one each year as they grow!
Now my pages I have been working on. I am happy with them as they are somewhat my own. I started with an idea of a page in my head, usually one I have seen before and I just worked it out on the page. They all came together really well and I am pleased. I usually sit for ages trying to put a page together on my own, and these ones were quick. I love that. When you are playing catch up you have to make the most of your time!



















The first one is one of my all time favourite shots. I love the page and the photo just makes my heart smile. I am a little unhappy with the journalling. I can get the words on the page, but at the moment I feel a bit repetitive and that I am not getting the impact I want with my words. I was so inspired by Tara Whitney's post, apart from her always amazing photos, her words just got across the message so well. I need to think a little more about my words and try being a bit different.



















Before I go further, yes the pages are straight in real life, just not my best photo taking. While on things being wonky, my printer died a few weeks ago and I have been borrowing my parents. It does not like cardstock and prints slightly crooked on it. Now I am worried about getting a new printer and it doing the same. Does anyone have a printer they love? Mine is a HP and was great till it stopped working.
Back to my page, I tried to channel Tara a little here with my words, I am happier with this one and it really was all about the story this time. I love the page but my words just don't have the same impact as Tara's "this photo makes my HEART BURST INTO A TRILLION PIECES OF TINY HOT PINK GLITTER." taken from her blog post linked above.




















I love this one, it is loosely based on a page I had seen Ali Edwards do. I just made the photos and letters work together, and some hand written journalling to fit where I wanted it. This one is all about the moment and the title says it all. Love how this turned out.



















This last is the same as I shared last week I just did one for Katelin. I have had many photos lately which are a sequence telling the story so this has been a great way to get them all in. Love how the page turned out. And I am really loving pinks and oranges at the moment.



















Lastly this is Noah wanting to read Katelin her bedtime story the night before last it is moments like this that melt your heart. Got it on video too, will refer back to the video for my journalling.
Also I wanted to share that I love the way Ali Edwards just shared her Easter Sunday on her blog, such a great way to tell the story and get the words down, and then refer back to when scrapping the page. Enjoy the week.

Happy Easter ..... Eggs and scrapping!

Well I know it is Easter but it has been quiet time at home just our little family this weekend. Something that we needed I think it has been a long time and lots of busy weekends lately. So hanging at home means spending time together and playing lots. It also means some quiet time for me while the kids have rest/sleep time. So I have been organising my photos on the computer and editing and finally printing some of my first shots of 2009! I know I know April is half over! But I have been scrapping madly, just older stuff and I have really been enjoying reliving the moments.
When was the last time you just sat down and looked through some of the memories you have created? It is really great to do. I have been doing it a bit, working through the old shots, organising the albums and taking shots of some favourites to upload to my flickr gallery.
Anyway onto the few things I want to share with you. My favourite page of the moment. I love how it looks but I am particularly proud because it was my own idea, it came out of my head and onto the page and I still really like it - doesn't always happen like that!



















It really is all about words, pictures and glue for me and some good cardstock thrown in. The more simple the better. I love it! I am thinking of making the top strip a scalloped edge, with the Fiskars threading waters punch, when I get it, it is on order.
Next is my page on Noah's room which I promised a couple of posts ago. I decided to go with the same LO as for Katelin's as I would have done them the same if I did them at the same time. I will do a different on for Noah's room when he first moved in. I haven't done that yet.



















I am pleased with how it turned out and that his story is captured. Now onto my collages of the last few days. Nicole suggested a collage idea and she posted about it here. So I tried using photoshop to create what I was going to try manually and I love how it turned out.



















It took a little while to create this first one, but I have saved it to use as a template and it was so quick to change out the photos. It is an 8 x12 photo, obviously I have covered some of it with cardstock, I wanted the width and not so much height. I think it looks great and it captures the moment of the day well. My last two are using the same collage structure one is just rotated. The first one is a direct lift from Nicole's post above.



















I Love the colours and how well they all worked together, I am so happy with how it turned out. Sorry the picture probably doesn't do it justice! And I am so pleased with the collage option as I have so many pictures at the moment that are a series with a story to tell. This was Katelin climbing into her empty suitcase (as most kids seem to do) when I was trying to pack for our holiday. And the last one is same idea, rotated and scrapped on 8.5 x 11, also from Nicole's post above, I just used a collage picture instead.



















These pictures are of Katelin and how she likes to lay down and do snow angel type movements in the sand, I think she likes the feel of it.
I have to say I love how quick these are to scrap once you have done the work in photoshop, especially with the handwritting! And I love the Bling paper RW has at the moment, it is not shown well in the picture but it adds a whole new dimension.
Hope you have all had a great Easter and I am sure many of you enjoyed chocolate eggs for breakfast like in our house.

Quick Post

So I said I had been flat out with parties and organising etc. Well I think I have it all under control now. I have a tea party venue booked. Invites are being written out and finishing touches ordered. Non party at the beach is easy, only requires a cake, have made invites for that. Booked one night away for wedding anniversary - and well Mothers day is not my job. I think I have sorted what I am getting my Mum and Mum in law - no sharing in case they pop by. I will do a post sharing the cool things I have found for Kate's party and the invites next.
Since I am being quick I just wanted to share the few layouts that I did at the same time as Noah's second birthday ones, but obviously they are for Katelin. Mostly so you can see the different colour schemes. I have been trying to highlight the person that is the focus of the story and I am pretty happy with how they turned out.




















This first one is of my daughter and how I was feeling about her. I like how it turned out. Sorry the pic has some reflection on it, we were running out of light.




















This next one is of Katelin being held by one of our close friends, so I decided to write about how special she is to them and how she is included in their family, I hope it helps her to understand who they are to us, and I love the photo. Love this pp I have been using the reverse side it is pink, and this side just happened to be the colour I needed, but this is the last of it and the store has no more :(




















This one above is just simple, not sure if I like it, one of those that had the right idea in my head but didn't make it onto the paper the same way. I have done a LO of the same pic about Noah being a big brother and I love how it turned out. I am just waiting on some letter stickers to finish the title. Otherwise I would have shared that too.


















This last one went into our family album as it is one of the first pics of all four of us together as a family, I really love the colours here, they are loosely related to some Sharon just posted here. I really like the colour combo.
And on that note Sharon here are a couple of pics of my lounge room and the mat. Hope they give you some inspiration or at least confidence in the rug. Also I have been working on LO's of Noah's room. I just have to get them printed and then I will share.
Sorry if there are any grammatical errors, the kids are now climbing all over me wanting their dinner. Gotta go. Happy Easter to all.

Some recent favourites

This week has been insane, and I feel like I haven't got much scrapping done - but I have - just not as much as I could have. I haven't been feeling very creative and I haven't had the time either.
For some crazy reason I thought it would be good to have two babies born around the same time. I had good reasons, same maternity clothes, same neutral baby clothes as they would be roughly ther same size at the same season - now these were perfect ideas and it is how it worked out. However someone forgot to tell me that this also means their birthday's are close together FOREVER! And they are closer than I thought they would be! Two weeks exactly apart. So I have been preoccupied planning their birthday's not quite parties as such. So start with one tea party for a two year old (morning tea at a cafe and taking tea set) add in one tenth wedding anniversary the following weekend, and don't forget Mothers Day that same weekend, then finish with a 4 year olds party the following weekend. We are having a bring your own lunch gathering at our local beach - no presents required! As you can imagine May is a busy month in our house every year - none of those events change and Mothers Day is always thrown into the mix. But it is fun! Once it is all planned that is.
So I will just share a few of my recent favourites. I am also trying to upload pages to my gallery. I have been taking photos of pages as I do them and adding them in, as well as older pages from the current album I am working on. I am making slow progress.
At this point I will add in a disclaimer, pretty much all of my LO's at the moment are straight lifts of Nicole or Di's work. Sometimes I change them, sometimes I reuse a page of my own which originally may have come from Nicole or Di - this is why sometimes I forget their origins!
This first one is of Noah's second birthday (Note we are about to have fourth birthday!) There was no time for scrapping then, one new baby, home for 1 week, hold two year old party - think I was insane or still on a hormonal high!



















I am really pleased with how this one turned out. I have also been having fun with the colours. Here is another from the same day - different story though. I had a lot of little things noted down that had changed since Noah turned two.



















I am happy with this page too. I have also scrapped a few pages today from this same day. 2 for Katelin's album and one for our family album. I have had such fun choosing different colours for the same photos. I will try to take some pictures tomorrow and share - bad light today and camera was flat! Lastly this is a page I had wanted to do justice to and I am really happy how it turned out.



















I Love this picture so much and I have been wanting to do it for a while. Black and white is always fun - choosing any colours you want. I let the pp I chose guide me. Funny thing about my LO was that a few days after I did it I happened to watch an episode of a current renovations show that I had taped from a few weeks ago. It has a feet picture like ours, hung on a wall the same colour as my cardstock (lakeshore, in case you wanted to know) and feature canvas' with a similar design to my pp. It was so strange for me to see I said to my husband that looks like my LO - blank look in reply. After I showed him he agreed.
So hopefully I will have a quieter week this week and I will make some more progress on my catch up scrapping. I do have to try and get some current shots printed too - so I don't continue to stay behind. Hope your week is creative.

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.