Happy Birthday Miss T

What a whrilwind of a weekend and week it's been and it's taken me until now to recover and take a breath.

My precious girl, (middle child) Tahlia turned 4 on Saturday and I just can't believe how fast the time has gone!My little girl is definitely a big grown up girl now.

At the start of her birthday week we were able to get a ticket to the recording of Hi-5. They record the song for the start and the end of the show whilst the kids dance and sing along. Tahli was in her element and loved every minute of it. No parents were allowed in so we had to watch on TV's outside the studio door. Randomly they asked if it was any child's birthday and Tahli put her hand up. The Hi-5 gang sang Happy Birthday to her and this gave her the biggest smile for the whole time they were filming. At the end of the song one of the Hi-5 girls Casey lifted Tahli up and all we could see on the TV screen was them waving and blowing kisses to the camera. I so hope this makes it onto the show, it looked very cute. This season of Hi-5 airs 30th of Aug.

This was her off year for a party so we did seperate family things and just had 2 close friends over for dinner, which was so much fun. Of course I still let her pick her cake out of the traditional cake book....you have to have a made cake in our household. Dora's pink castle was not very hard to make at all and my DH helped put the smarties on (he wanted me to say that...and yes that is him commenting about himself in the comments section of my posts :) Tahli had a great day and in following in her mothers foot steps got a Fisher Price digital camera,I'm looking forward to seeing the great shots she will take.

And when you're 4 and it's your party you can wear what ever you like... sequins and all.

Sweet rainbow dreams.

Just a quick post tonight to show you all the cutest photo.

My girls share a room and often hang out and have little chats and lots of giggles after the light has been turned off and they have had their kisses goodnight. I think it's so cute and has really given them that special closeness that you get when sharing a room with your sister, in saying that I'm not always a fan when the party is still going on at 9.30pm.

Anyway, the other night I went to check on them before I went to sleep and this is what I saw.....

...beautiful rainbow legs hanging over the top bunk! So I did what we all would have done and ran to grab my camera and turned on the light (My girls are never affected by light or noise, once they are asleep they are asleep) and captured this moment.

LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!

A finished project....

Those of you who know me well will do a double take when they read this heading only because I have all the best intentions for finishing the projects I start but sometimes they sit half finished. (like my 52 weeks project inspired by Nicole's blogging days at Remember When....it is so nearly finished and WILL be finished, just a bit more printing, stay tuned). Well this was the quickest project I have ever started and completed.

I bought this cool circle frame from my local scrapbook store, it's by Karen Day Designs (12x12circles frame) and my 1 and 3/4 punch was the exact right size for punching my photos straight out and sitting behind the chipboard. The actual square frame that it's in I had to paint white as it annoyingly only comes in brown and black, so when you only have white frames happening brown and black will just not do.

Here is the close up of the circles before I put it in the frame. I was actually tempted to keep it in a plastic sleeve and put it in my album as I guess that is it's original purpose, but it just fit too perfectly in the frame.

This little project was so good for using up my printed photos that were laying around waiting to be scrapped. I got inspired to use them or I never will. I liked that I got to use so much of the photo for eg, in the 3rd row from the bottom the photo of Nick and I was the top half of the photo and the hands at the other end of that row was the bottom. That happened in a few photos and I just cut all the other bits out ready to use on another page.

Also I have been hoarding some cool rolls of Heidi Swapp ribbon that I finally used it's blue with brown writing saying "memories". That just reminded me of something that makes me laugh, I'm such the queen of buying product and never using it, so this year I'm using all the scrapping supplies that i have been hoarding...who is with me?

My favourite stamp at the moment is still my family stamp that I had made for all my Christmas cards. I modelled it from the 7 gypsies observation stamp and it just happened that our names fitted perfectly. I added in the Est 2001 as the year we were married. I ordered it as a self inker so it sits right along side all the 7 gypsies stamps on my scrapping desk. I love the neatness in that

Today whilst I was scrapbook shopping (even though I just said I have way too much product already) I picked up some fun new things, one being the Fiskars threading water border punch (which I am busting to try out tonight), some Maya Road chipboard albums for some ideas that are floating in my head, some cool new stamps and pattern papers. Thanks to the girls in my mothers group for the voucher you gave me :)

One last thing...I'm after a wooden letter a written like this in that font probably about 20cm tall, if anyone comes across one can you email me and let me know, a is just an impossible letter to get and especially written in this font.

Thanks everyone for your encouraging comments esp on my last post it's been cool to read them all and yes that was my DH leaving his mark about how gorgeous he is :). Please continue to leave a comment so I know you have stopped by.

I have some very cute photos I'll be posting soon...stay tuned.

Precious things.

Firstly I just wanted to say that my heart goes out to each and every person affected by the Victorian bush fires that are happening at the moment. I am overwhelmed by the confronting images of tragedy that I am seeing each day on the news and saddened by the stories of loss. I am praying for this crazy moment in time to be over so those affected can start to heal.


I have been poring over some old photos (i have so so many unscrapped) that I have in storage boxes and have been finding little gems! Isn't it just the greatest when you find a photo that you totally forget was taken and it just brings back heaps of memories of that exact second in time. I love the way our brains work in this way, you are looking at a photo but you can also recall odd details like smells, music that was playing or special words that were said. This makes me want to scrap faster (as I know I'm way behind) because I never want to lose the thoughts that flood back from one single photo, the quicker I get them down the better.


I found at http://www.aliedwards.typepad.com/ these new journal cards that I hope will make me scrap faster. Here is a layout I did using the cards. ( my scanner chopped off the side, it is actually java cardstock all the way around). Good times tag is Heidi Swapp index tab.

journal words read :
It was Byron Bay in Jan of 1998, It was about 10pm and we were having dinner at the noodle bar. I can still see myself sitting across from you taking this picture. It was stinking hot and we sat out on the footpath and I can smell the Byron sea air combined with flavours of our yummy dinner & the night street air. As I look at this picture. I can hear very funky buskers playing next to our restaurant & see ourselves doing a bit of a dance in our seats. You were eating chicken Laksa and we were laughing about the way we say Laksa 5 times fast. We were definitely in love and held hands over the table. We talked about bands and our favourite songs the whole night. The streets were packed with people having fun, it was noisy, so noisy and we were just loving the atmosphere….such good times.

I also found these cute picture of each of my kids having a loving hug with their "wraps".

I can't wait to scrap these all together.

This crazy life...

I thought seeing as scrapbooking is one of my passions that I would put some of my pages on this blog. So it is only fitting that I put up as the first scrapbooking page for you to see, my favourite page and the page that inspired the name for my blog. There is totally nothing fancy about this layout infact it is very normal and boring (or "simple" which is my style). It's the journalling that I love and the photo of me. I hardly ever say that I love photos of myself but I'm learning to as they capture the person I am at that very moment. In years to come I would hate to think that I didn't make it into any photos at all.

Journalling reads (incase it's not clear)

This photo is so very me, When I look at it I feel like I really see myself, The spirit of me, The me I was when I was young kid and had not a worry in the world when I would play my imaginary games for hours at a time, the me I was during my twenties when I felt like I had a crazy life (in a good way) and saw bands with Nicholas every weekend and danced in mosh pits and loved it. The me I am still now under all the stress and worry that I’ve had this past year. I am still in there. This photo was taken by my three and a half year old
middle child Tahlia. She didn't want to be in a photo, she just wanted to take them, she was, because of this having a tantrum, so to turn her mood around I gave in and gave her my SLR and pulled some funny faces and won back her smile and in doing so she captured me. I hope this is how my kids see me, a fun, crazy mum who will do anything for them and
especially anything to make them smile. When I look at this photo I want to be that fun spirit every day. I still want and have a slice of that crazy life I had, we just added 3 kids to the mix to make it even better. As my stress subsides this me will come out in all aspects of my daily (crazy) life. I can’t wait to see her more.

MORRIS IMAGES

It is without question that I love photos and I especially get excited about photos of my kids. With this in mind I can't believe that I haven't had professional photos taken earlier so then I can be in the photos too without always being behind the camera. So girls here is your "note to self" get photos taken! It's so worth it and now I can recommend someone local who is really creative and awesome with the kids.

Click on http://www.morrisimages.com.au/ you can check out his site and browse the galleries for all his creative photos and different types of shoots that he offers.

Morris took the feet shot thats on my banner, thank you so much I love it!

Here are some of my other favourite shots

I can't wait to put some of these up on my wall, I'm now in search of cool white frames.