Layout Share

Five layouts to share today, completed over the last three weeks. These are all layouts to go in Jasmin's album, of her in New Zealand at the beginning of last year.

This first one contains pictures from our stay in Rotorua, including the Wai-o-Tapu thermal wonderland, Lady Knox Geyser, Mitai Moari Village and Hell's Gate.

After Rotorua we drove to Wellington, stopping at the Huka Falls, Lake Taupo, and the Craters of the Moon on the way.  We also stopped several times to take pictures of Mt Ruapehu.

After we crossed the Cook Strait we stayed at Picton, and visited the Marlborough region and it's famous wineries.

The Marlborough Sounds were spectacular - we drove Queen Charlotte's Drive from Havelock to Picton and saw the Pelorus and Queen Charlotte's Sounds.



Jumped forward a bit to do the layout for the Moeraki Boulders which we saw on our last day driving up from Dunedin to Christchurch.

Now to finish all the other layouts, hopefully over the next couple of weeks.

Di :-)

A very quick layout share

Before I get stuck into my study for the day, I thought I would share some recent layouts. These have been few and far between lately, being knee deep in study. I am doing a sketch class at Big Picture Classes at the moment, just to force myself to find the time to do some layouts - I really miss scrapbooking.  I am also on a mission to try and use a few of my supplies which have built up over the years, before I purchase anything more!

So here they are.

This first one contains photos from the school holidays. I think we had about two days at home in total - this was one of the them. It was such a lovely day that we walked down to the lake near us. Something that we used to do a lot when the girls were a bit younger. If you take bread down to feed the ducks they come for miles - and there are a lot of them. As you can see from one of the photographs, the black swans also come for a feed. They are huge and they are not afraid to come right up to you. We saw five swans this day.

This next layout is for Jasmin's album. It's all about chess - she loves to play with Dave, and she has been threatening to teach me how to play for a while. I think even Eliza has picked up how to play from Jasmin.  I was sitting watching a show with Dave, so I had a little time to sew the chess pieces on to the right hand side of the layout.

This next layout contains some pictures from a morning visit to Nan Bo's place, during the last school holidays. The girls love to visit their Nan - I thought the main picture was such as great picture of them, I couldn't resist scrapbooking it.

Hopefully I will have some more layouts to post next week after my exams are all over!

Di :-)

Scrapbook Layouts - Eliza in New Zealand

On the Easter Long Weekend, we had a wonderful four days at Long Beach with our friends (I will post some pictures of the quaint house we stayed at a little later on). I also took some scrapbooking with me, and managed to get through it all. My aim was to finish some New Zealand pages to go in Eliza's albums. I create a photo book for each holiday that we go on, but I also like to add some pages to the girl's albums which focus on pictures of them doing different activities in the holiday location. I had previously finished the Auckland and one other page, but have also included them here for completeness.

So here they all are (in order of the holiday locations):

 

Next job will be to complete the pages in Jasmin's album!

Six on Saturday

1.  WOW!

We are having a day at home. The girls are still in their PJ's amd it's 3:15pm in the afternoon.  They are in the study playing Minecraft together - Dave is in the study too playing League of Legends. I can hear Jasmin suck her breath in every time Dave swears! I have done absolutely nothing all day (except a couple of loads of washing, change a couple of beds, drink a couple of glasses of wine, surf the internet and do a couple of pages of our New Zealand photo book - *** sigh ****).

Gratuitous picture of New Zealand:

Have been working on the Franz Josef and Fox Glacier pages today.... this is a picture from Sentinel Rock of the Franz Josef Glacier - we did a one an a half hour return walk to the glacier - with stunning waterfalls on the way!

2.  Scrapbook Layouts

I have been a little busy - I'm not sure doing what - but I have only done a couple of pages in the last two weeks. Here they are:

Surprisingly they are pictures of New Zealand. The first one will go in one of the girls albums, the second will go in Eliza's album as they are pictures of her in Auckland.  I just noticed that both of them are rather pastelly (is that a word?).

3.  Helpful Homework

Eliza has to do helpful homework this term (in addition to her projects and other homework). This week she is helping cook dinner every night.  I have always worried about what would happen if I wasn't here (I know very morbid!), but the thought of the girls eating take-out every night does not make me feel very happy at all.

Now that the girls are old enough, over the last couple of years I have been teaching the girls what constitutes a healthy diet, and giving them some kitchen skills. As a result they know their five food groups and have an idea of what each food group contributes to their well-being, they can cut ingredients using knives using a variety of techniques, and they can measure out ingredients to help. I think I need them to start cooking reading a recipe without me.

Jazz always jokes about watching Jamie Oliver 15 minute meal episodes and just following along and doing what he does ( *** inner smile ***).  I think if I was to pass on (by accident of course - as I have no intentions of going anywhere) then they would probably be OK, and Dave would probably be eating more vegetables, chicken and fish and perhaps less red meat (the girls aren't huge fans - although they are rather partial to Asian dishes with good quality cuts of steak).

Anyways - here are a few pictures of Eliza helping this week.

Eliza helping make lamb meatballs for Minted Lamb and Risoni Soup on Monday:

Eliza topping and tailing green beans for Honey Mustard Beef Stir Fry on Tuesday night:

Eliza making sugar syrup for home-made lemonade on Wednesday night:

Eliza cutting up salad vegetables for dinner on Wednesday night to go with the grilled fish and home-made potato wedges. We had very chunky salad that night!

  
Thursday night Eliza wasn't feeling well so she didn't help with dinner (she was on the lounge fast asleep). It was so unnaturally quiet - you can always hear her talking or singing normally.

Friday night she prepared the chicken for Pesto Pasta with Rosemary Chicken - she added fennel seeds, rosemary, salt and pepper to chicken breasts and pounded them until the were thinner).

4.  Family Movie Night

Another great family movie night - watched yet another Superhero movie - Fantastic 4. Dave bought the blu-ray with both 1 and 2 on it.  The girls are really enjoying the superhero movies - and really enjoyed watching the second Wolverine movie at the Cinema last weekend.  Jasmin did a movie review on Wolverine in her homework last week as well - "It was amazing! I give it 4.5 stars out of 5......".

5.  July Project Life.

 A summary of our July. Highlights included Fiona's birthday. Week 1 school holidays in Goulburn for the girls, eating out and movies for us in Week 1 school holidays, Disney on Ice in Sydney, the girls doing the grocery shopping and Nan visiting week 2 of the school holidays.

Week 27 highlights - Eliza's special day at school - "the olden days", Fiona's birthday (my sis-in-law), new hair colour, a visit to Nan for her birthday, and dinner out at the Asta in Goulburn.

Week 28 highlights included - the girls spending the first week of the school holidays in Goulburn, Dave and I going to the movies and eating out, dinner at Phil and Janene's and Disney on Ice.

Week 29 highlights included Nan coming to Canberra to look after the girls for a couple of days (many board games were pulled out and played with), dinner at Soju girl on Tuesday night, hail on Saturday, making cupcakes on Sunday.

Week 30 - was cold and foggy, the girls made dinner on Saturday night, Jazz made mains and Eliza dessert. Family movie night on Friday night and board games on Sunday (it was a quiet week!).

6.  Reading

A couple of books since my last post:

I always enjoy the Preston and Child books - for one thing they are well edited, some books just astound me with the number of spelling and grammatical errors. The Book of the Dead was the third book in a Trilogy, and it had a satisfying finish and a surprising end. Neverwhere was just way too short - not a bad book, but not enough guts to it. Peter F. Hamilton is always a good read, and always a "big" book to read (thank goodness I listened to the audio book - otherwise I would be likely to donk myself in the head falling asleep in bed reading and it would hurt, a lot). Yes, I am a sucker for the J.R Ward books - great erotic romance with Vampires and plot LOL! She covers one characters story per book, and amazingly she manages to introduce new characters every couple of books - she could make this series last a while (which is OK with me!). The Diamond Age - disappointing - I did not enjoy it as much as Reamde, the end was a little lack-lustre.

Hanging out for summer

I must say I'm hanging out for summer already! It is so cold here, and will get to -5 overnight later this week. I think I'm feeling so cold, that I have been using summer scrapbooking products on my layouts and in my project life layouts!

I felt very honoured last week - when Twopeasinabucket had my layout as their featured layout.  I just had to take a screen shot LOL:

Here is the full layout.  The layout was of our long weekend at the coast with friends @ Long Beach. I had so many pictures that I wanted to use, so I did! I managed to use 18 small photographs and 12 tags - putting a nice dent in my tag collection.  We always have such a wonderful relaxing time when we go to the coast with friends.  We had a couple of BBQ dinners and our traditional fish from the Bay on Saturday night. The kids really enjoyed playing on the rocks near the beach, the boys managed to even catch two fish on the Saturday (which they threw back in), and we managed to get a decent amount of reading and wine drinking done!

Last week Eliza was most excited to bring home her very first project assignment (Mum is never quite as excited, as it means lots of work for her too!).  They had a choice of four different things they could do - all linked in with the 100 years of Canberra theme that they are working on at school.  Eliza decided that she would select the option which involved building a 3D model of an older building in Canberra.  She selected Lanyon Homestead, so we thought it may be prudent to go on a little family adventure deep south to check out the homestead and take some photographs. I think she has her work cut out for her :-) Anyway, she is allowed to get help from her parents, but she has to do all the painting, cutting and glueing herself - it should be interesting to see what she ends up with!

I had never thought to go and look at any of the heritage buildings in Canberra - it's not normally high on our list of sights to see, but I'm glad we went. It was a lovely little outing, and was an opportunity to talk to the girls about the house I spent half my childhood in - a 150 year old stone house built by the convicts. The bonus was that it also only cost $15 for the family to visit the homestead, and there was a lovely tour lady there that spoke to us about certain aspects of the house and who used to live there.

I think the back of the house looks more challenging that the front!

Needless to say we won't be building all the other outer houses!

My proof of life photograph for the day!

Getting a daddy huggle.

Eliza I think you have your work cut out for you - and it's meant to be handed in in week 10 :-(

Every year we have a combined birthday for my Dad and Mum's cousin Barbara (well we have for about the last five years anyway!). The bonus is that I guess we only have to make one trip back to Goulburn in June rather than two. There is exactly 20 years difference between the two of them. Barbara turned 87 this year, and my Dad 67. It's only the last couple of years that dad has really started to age - I guess that's what a bad back and lots of pain will do to you, but he is a real trooper and never complains.

As per usual - there were a couple of little girls around to help them blow out their candles. Unfortunately after the candles were blown out Chloe had to be whisked away to the doctors and ended up having a seizure and being taken to hospital - she had thrown an allergy to the eye drops that she was prescribed on the Friday.  I often thank my lucky stars that we have never had any serious incidents with the girls that have needed hospitalisation (except Jasmin's skittle up the nose incident of about 2005).

I was super proud of my eldest one this week - she got into the finals for rostrum speaking at school - she was one of three students from her class. She had to do her speech in front of the high school on Monday. There is no way I could have done this at her age! She didn't get into the next round - but it doesn't matter, it was such a good experience for her, and a bit of a confidence boost as well.

I have been keeping up with Project Life - I have posted my week 23 and 24 layouts below. Used a 3 x 3 sleeve for the first time.

And finally this week, I leave you with a handful of other layouts:

Until next time xxx