Documenting our lives 2015 #1

It's been a while since I have posted anything scrapbook related.Yes, I am still scrapbooking, just not as fast as I used to. There always seems to be something more important to do - eg. paying bills and cooking meals - not to say that scrapbooking and project life are not important, they are.

This week one of my layouts was featured on the new Big Picture Classes blog. A US website established by long time scrapbooker, Stacy Julian. The site has been around for a while, but recently it got a revamp, they teamed with a distributor in the US, and they have moved to a subscription based model. You pay $10 a month, and you can do as many classes as you want, over a range of topics including Scrapbooking, Photography, Digital, Art Journal and Mixed Media, Cards, Mini Books and DIY. I rather like this model, as I can do as many courses as I want, when I want. Keeps me inspired.

Anyway, here is the layout that was featured, and if you want to see the write up, click here. The idea of this layout was to complete it in less than 30 minutes - just what I need at the moment!

Here are some more layouts I have completed over the last couple of months:

The following layout was also part of the 30 minute layout class. The idea was to use a technique you do not often use, and complete the layout in 30 minutes. I chose to use my mists like water colour and emboss some stamped fish on this layout. The layout is of Jasmin representing her school at the AIS in the Northside Swimming Championships.

Another layout from the 30 minute class. The challenge for this one was to just use a lot of bits and bobs. I went back to 2013 to document one of our trips down the coast with friends to put in Jasmin's albums. I have a few layouts in her albums of when she was younger (baby/toddler) and our trips down the coast with friends, so wanted to include this one - where she is a bit older so that she could see that the tradition continued.

This layout was from a rainbow course. Yes - you use the colours of the rainbow to scrapbook some layouts. One of the lessons involved stamping on to rainbow coloured papers. I thought it rather fitting for documenting Eliza's hair on Crazy Hair day at school.

Another Rainbow course layout. This one used the rainbow colours with a circle template and water colours (I pulled out my mists instead - I have a much bigger selection of mist colours than water colour paints!), to which embellishments of the matching rainbow colours were added. Once again - I decided to take the rainbow theme and quote Jasmin who has often said to me - "I hope Eliza dreams about Rainbows and Unicorns tonight Mum!".



You might of guessed already, that the following layout also was from the Rainbow class. I simply used the colours of the rainbow to create Polaroid frames for some pictures of a fruit picking day. - I tried where possible to match the frame to a colour in the photograph.



One of the lessons in the rainbow class also covered using the colours of the rainbow on a Project Life layout. Yes, I am still doing Project Life. I'm often two - three weeks behind, but it's all good. I'm still enjoying documenting our lives in this way. So here is a rainbow version of a Project Life layout:



The following layout was from one of Jen Gallagher's classes. She features tools and products, so that you can use some of your stash. In this particular lesson she covered using paper pads and punches, I used the techniques to complete a layout for Eliza's album of her 9th birthday.

This next one is from a journalling class. This particular lesson was about writing for your target audience. In this case it is a layout for Jasmin's album about this year's school camp - so the target audience was Jasmin.  When she got back from school camp she told me in some detail all about it, so I decided to write the journalling as if she had written it.

I also made these card fronts as part of a watercolour card course. All I have to do is stick them on to the front of a card, as I need.

This next one was from Jen Gallagher's class - this time on using ribbon and rub-ons. I haven't used either of these materials in a while, so it was nice to pull out the stash and use a couple of items.

 

The next couple are monthly summary pages for my Project Life album:

Till next time!
Di :-)

August Project Life and a Layout Share

Here are my August Project Life layouts. I have almost finished the September ones as well, only the summary page left to do, so I will share those soon as well.

Here they are (it was a big birthday month)

The Summary page:

Week 31 - Main events during this week were a Trivia night on Friday for Di (the team she was on won), Jane and Evan's combined 30th birthday party in Goulburn on Saturday, and then a pre-screening of Guardians of the Galaxy at Hoyts with Mel and Kate, followed by dinner at Chong Co Thai.

Week 32 - Some lovely weather, so much bouncing on the trampoline. Jasmin started her cooking project, making a Lemon Jelly Cheesecake as a birthday cake for Dave.  We went back to Goulburn for Chloe's birthday where we also had the cheesecake for Dave. Di also went to another trivia night this week!

Week 33 - At the beginning of the week we managed to have a meal with the girls at Jamie's Italian. They were very impressed with the kid's menu which came on a flick master. Di scored a second dinner out on Thursday with her ex-Aussie Scrap Source colleagues at Trev's in Dickson, and then Dave turned the big "46", so we went out to dinner with Dave's family at Belluci's in Dickson. His sister made him a very impressive R2D2, and Jasmin and I helped construct his R2D2 Lego over the weekend.  Jasmin made pasta from scratch as part of her school project, as well as a slow cooked Bolognese sauce.

Week 34 -  Bookweek this week, and the girls went as Red Riding Hood and the not so big bad wolf! They looked adorable. Jasmin even made choc-chip cookies for her basket, which she handed out to all her class mates at recess.  Jazz went to a sleepover birthday party on the Saturday night, and on Sunday we all traipsed over to Woden to the Brick Expo - a huge exhibition of Lego. Jasmin ran in to two of her three besties at the exhibition, so she got to spend some time looking around with them and then building some Lego. There were some very impressive displays, and there were some Star Wars characters you could get photo with as you were waiting to get into the exhibition.

Week 35 - A games night with Eliza's best friend's family on Friday night. They always provide dinner so Jasmin and I make a dessert and take over some gaming snacks and drinks. Wade is a master of games, so it is always a fun night. We also enjoyed a trip back to Goulburn to spend with my sister and niece - and her best friend, for a girly weekend. We watched movies, did facials, painted our nails, played games and ate lots of food (and consumed a little wine :-) ). We also popped in to see Bailie for her 8th birthday.



I had an extra page to fill in for the month (the back of the Week 35 page) so thought it would be nice to put in a few of the pictures of Jasmin doing her school project - learning to cook. The pasta and pavlova were two of my favourites - and I could not have done a better job!

Layout Share

I've also found a little time to do some scrapbooking pages - which hasn't happened in a while. I've managed to finish all of Jasmin's New Zealand pages for her albums (which I do a separate post on), but have also completed some 2013 layouts to go in her album.

Pictures of Jasmin at her cousin Anthony's wedding to Naomi (affectionately known as Omi to the girls).  The top picture is a picture of Jazz and Eliza with her younger cousin Annie, and her second cousin - Bailie.
'

We haven't managed to make it to Wyangala Dam yet this year, so it was nice to do a page from one of last year's visits to the Dam at Easter time. The weather was fantastic so we got lots of water and sun time.

At the end of last year one of her best friend's moved away (she is a Defence child), Jasmin misses her heaps, but continues to Skype her on a regular basis. It will be nice for her to look back on some of the friendships that she has had over the years.

Jasmin's birthday is only a week before my Sister's birthday. Jasmin had a school friends birthday, but also got to share a cake with Aunty Hellie at her birthday. I made the cake, thus it was a fairly simplistic affair - a lady bug!

Last year Jasmin started violin lessons at school, and has continued them this year. I'm not sure she will continue them next year, she mentioned the other day that she didn't want to do any outside of school activities next year, as she just wanted to get through her first year of high school (she is expecting a much bigger homework load).

Off to play with Eliza - think we will take the chalks outside and do some drawing, it is a stunning day!

Di :-)

July Project Life

Managing to just keep on top of my project life layouts. Here are my layouts for July:

Di :-)

May Project Life

It's hard to believe that we are almost half way through the year, and I have almost completed my Certificate IV in Accounting!  Only have three more subjects left, which I will do part-time until the end of the year on account that I have a new job as Corporate Manager for a small IT company starting next week. Off to do another two exams tonight, so I thought I would have a little break from study and post these layouts from May.

Here is the summary for the month.

You can tell that I didn't really take a lot of pictures this week, on account that there are a couple of very casual pictures taken on a Sunday night when I realised I only had some pictures of when I cut the hedge for the first time (couldn't even hold up a cup afterwards!).  So both Dave and Jasmin were gaming and Eliza was sitting at the coffee table finishing up her homework. I even had to print a picture of the movie I went to see just to fill in the blanks LOL. It was also a great opportunity to document what we are currently listening to, reading, watching and so forth....

Week 19 was a little more exciting - Jasmin and I went to her High School Open night. She is very excited about doing science and woodwork (of all things). As you can also see it was cold enough over night for the girls to start wearing onsies! Jasmin hasn't had a lot of spare time lately on account that it takes her until about 5:30pm every night to do her homework. Not one to miss out on some gaming time, she has quickly learnt to multi-task and her daddy found her pairing socks whilst playing SIMS 3.  It was a big week for Jasmin - she also got to go to her friend's 12th birthday party, which was at the rock climbing centre in Mitchell.

During week 20 Mark and Michelle came up for a visit from Sydney. We went to the Batlow Cider Festival in Batlow with them. There wasn't really as many cider stalls as we had hoped, and I think a lot of the local producers missed a big opportunity to sell apples and apple related products at the festival, so after we had lunch we headed across to Tumut (about an hour from Batlow), to visit the Liquorice and Chocolate Factory. The girls were most pleased to make giant freckles, and Jasmin managed to win the Liquorice bowling competition.

Eliza was particularly helpful during week 21 - helping me to cook dinner on several occasions.  We also managed to catch a movie, go to Aunty Marg's 70th birthday dinner, and have Mel and Kate over for dinner and a sleep-over.

Week 22's big event was a trip to Burrinjuck to a friend's 50th birthday party. Burrinjuck is near Yass, and our Dave Dave (as opposed to our Tom Tom), managed to take us via a shortcut that didn't end up being a short-cut on account of a creek bed being flooded and our poor car would not make it across. I had to do a 50-million point turn as there was just no where to easily turn around and we had to back-track, arriving at our destination an hour later than we should of. We all had a good time though - and the girls especially loved the camp fires and toasting marshmallows. Dave and I got to catch up with our friends from school and Steve of course!

We also managed to go to the cinema to see Maleificent which I thought was rather good - a re-telling of the Snow White story from Maleificent's point of view. Angelina Jolie did a wonderful job of playing Maleificent!

Since I had a back page left at the end of the month, I decided to restrict myself to one page for my Kitchen Kapers summary this month - so slightly different format since I didn't have the same amount of space to work with.

Have managed a couple of layouts as well, which I have included below. Fairly clean and simple ones, given my lack of time.

Thought I was being rather clever with my title on this layout!

I have started working on the New Zealand pages for Jasmin's album, now that I have finished Eliza's pages for her album. The sketch class I am currently doing at Big Picture Classes helps out with the inspiration, so I hope within the next couple of weeks I will have most of her pages done.

Till next time.
Di :-)

March Project Life

Well, I am back on track with my Project Life now, with a brand new sparkly Epson PictureMate photo printer.  I'm yet to do my food pages, but thought I would post the rest now anyway.

The cover page.

The Calendar Page:

Week 10 - the big event this week was Jasmin's school camp at Borambola - which is apparently about an hour out of Wagga Wagga. Although she had a head cold when she went, she had a great time. She enjoyed a few different activities including rock climbing, archery, raft building, kayaking and swimming. Jazz and Eliza normally sleep together every night, so Eliza was very sad to go, and volunteered to be her teddy bear, if she could hide in Jazzy's suitcase :-). While Jazz was away Eliza craved our company - I spent some time watching her bounce on the trampoline, as well as Dave and I playing many board games with her.

At the end of Week 10, Dave had his fourth operation, and Eliza was only too happy to hang out on the bed with daddy watching you tube videos!

Week 11 - taking it very easy, with Dave recouperating from his op the previous week. We managed to catch up with our friends Mel and Kate with a lovely lunch at Cafe Injoy at Federation Square. It was a bit cold and windy so instead of going to Cockington Green we decided to have a play-date at home instead.

Week 12 - our new dishwasher arrived - YAY! I have been handwashing dishes for the last month, and it's wearing a little thin, as is doing everything around here at the moment! On Saturday we went over to the Gold and the Incas exhibition at the Art Gallery with Aunty Margaret - there was a lot of gold!  Saturday night Eliza went for a sleepover, so Dave, Jazz and I went to dinner at the H2O restaurant in Nicholls (it has replaced the Italian restaurant).

Week 13 - Not a lot happened during the week, except for hair appointments to het our hairs cut (and mine coloured). We drove back to Goulburn on Saturday for Darien's birthday and to meet our new nephew Hugo. Afterwards we had to drive right back to Canberra to take Jazz to a birthday party and sleepover, which meant that Dave and I had to play with Eliza - Pictionary Man to be precise.

Exams finished this week, and I had a spare two days - which were not spent lounging around like I would have liked, but spent catching up on housework (half the house anyway!) and trying to put together last year's tax (Yes, last years! Which is still not finished).  No rest for the wicked!

Well, that's another month in the Turner household. Just have to do the food summary when I have a spare moment...

Di :-)

February Project Life

Yes, I am still doing Project Life. On account of my photo printer dying, I managed to get a little behind (almost two months). At the end of last week I received a package from Snapfish with enough photo's to finish off February and do my summary page and Kitchen Kapers pages for February. So I am now only one month behind.  The good news is that my new photo printer also arrived at the end of last week, and I am hoping to find some time this weekend to set it up.

So here are my February Pages.

The Summary Page:

The Calendar Page:

As you can see I went back to school in February - managed to do two challenge tests to get exceptions for two subjects (called courses at CIT). Amazingly - you still have to pay for the subject even though you passed and don't have to do it!

The Week 6 layout which included a visit to the Multicultural Festival - a chance to try all sorts of ethnic food. I also did an extra layout to go in the album, with some more details.

Week 7 - The week of Valentine's Day. Dave and I don't really make a big issue of this day, but Dave does buy all of his sweethearts (which thankfully includes me, as well as our girls) some chocolates. We also go out to dinner - this week it was a day late, but who cares?  We also got to enjoy some delicious Jazz Apple Cup Cakes at Jeff and Fiona's place. Ona bought them from Belconnen Mall, apparently they are now located across from K-Mart.

Week 8 - a few trips out this week, including an excursion to Canberra's Deep Space Centre (on account of Eliza's unit of work at school), and dinner with Dave's friend Eduardo and his gorgeous family at Chang Co Thai restaurant. Very much an Eliza week this week with Eliza finally mastering the tying of her shoelaces!

Week 9 - the girls had their swimming carnival - not a spectacularly warm day, some drizzly rain but humid. Last week Jazz bought the note home to say she had been selected to compete in the next level - the North Gungahlin Swimming competition at the AIS, as she came first in the Breaststroke! Very much a Jazz week this week - she did an artwork on herself in oil pastels for school, she was keen to play chess with dad (and then found an online chess game to play with a couple of boys from school online). I also tried out my new skills in completing a fish-bone plait.

And finally my two food layouts for the month - the weekly menu's as well as a selection of photos and commentary from my Kitchen Kapers posts.

There ends another Project Life month. Now that I have a replacement photo printer I hope to have the March pages completed soonish, and have them posted on line as well.

Di :-)