Final update for 2007

So much to say and so little room and time.

We had a lovely Christmas. My Mum arrived last Sunday and stayed with us until yesterday when we delivered her to my sisters for the week. Isaac and Mum are very close and it is lovely to see. Isaac is such an affectionate cuddly kid and Mum loves the obvious signs of affection. Tobyn on the other hand is not all that open with his affection. He will sidle up to you on the couch and snuggle in but not run with open arms. His 3 cousins are the COMPLETE opposite, e.g. when we met Mum at the airport and we had to call the 3 wayward cousins back because they had gone past the security barrier! Issac is somewhere in between the 2 extremes and it is lovely to see.



Christmas Eve was fun getting Isaac to do his first get ready for Christmas. Although he wanted to eat the carrots and not leave them on the ground. Isaac was so excited he didn't sleep very well. He woke around 11pm and was so excited he didn't go back to sleep and ended up in our bed. I think this might be the last Christmas Tobyn 'believes' in Santa. He has made a few comments about conversations with friends. And even though I got Santa to call him the other day he has still got a few questions. After the phone call he did say 'that proves that Santa is real and I am going to tell all my friends.' His friends must have said how could Santa send an e-mail and why would he anyway, obviously making Tobyn think. I am rather sad about the loss of innocence.

Christmas morning was fun with the boys opening Christmas sacks a quick b'fast and off to Church. After Church we opened the big prezzies. I got 2 really cool scrappy bags from my boys, all ready for scrap camp in April, yay. Mum loved her calendar I made even though it isn't quite finished. The boys faves would be Tobyn's PS2 and wooden sword and shield, and Isaac's couch and mike the talking mower. Plus the many books which are always hits.




It was all a bit much for Steve and he fell asleep.



In the afternoon we went to my sisters and had a lovely Christmas dinner.

We have had many evenings since playing buzz junior and having lots of laughs.

For me it has been a rough Christmas because I have pneumonia! I had high temps prior to Christmas and didn't think much of it, then the cough came and came and came. Finally last Friday I took myself to the Dr and was diagnosed and prescribed 2 lots of anti bots. I am starting to feel better but today i am off to take Isaac as he has an awful cough and is very sleepy.

Back from the Dr's and Isaac is fine. The Dr can't hear anything but did give us a script for anti bots if we think we need them over the next couple of days.

I hope every has a safe and happy New Years whatever you may be doing. We are staying home and getting an early night, boring stuff.

By the way

Thank you for all the kind comments about my tiredness due to Isaacs unsettled routines. He has done a lot better the last couple of days and last night I had a full nights sleep. I do however have some sort of illness, hot and cold, dizzy and headachy. Maybe just because I am so over tired, but hopefull with a few more good nights and help now Steve is on holiday for 2 weeks things will get back to normal.

Merry Christmas and all that goes with it!

Wow long time no blog. Life has been hectic in the Gregory house the past couple of weeks. We have had birthdays to go to, prize givings, babies arriving, presents to make, christmas shopping to do, and the list goes on and on!

Some highlights in bullet point (hopefully to make it more succinct, if that is possible for me LOL)

• Adam, Steves nephew turned 3. He had a wild animal party. He was adorable and so polite! I got some gorgeous photos but haven't had a chance to edit them yet. The boys had a blast.
• Tobyn had an issue at school...he is at times very unfocused and does things without thinking. While at speech and drama one of the other boys shoved a baseball bat through a concertina door on a bench and knocked a whole lot of present s the teacher and children were making. Tobyn wanted to be nosey and pushed the door to see what they were doing and knocked more on the floor. The big issue was that when asked he said he didn't think he did anything. We hope that hehas learnt his lesson and realises that it is best to own up straight away. After lots of thinking down by the tree and in his bedroom he finally opened up. We told him he had to write an apology. And the next morning I asked him to apologise to the principal. He did this very well and when she was talking to him he listened well and I was proud of him for doing that. We also warned him that if this behaviour didn't change then the play station he has been working hard towards all year wouldn't be coming. Need less to say he has changed dramatically and we are seeing the old sweet, thoughtful kid again.
• Tobyn had his prizegiving. He was in a speech and drama piece and a dance and singing piece. It was LONG. Since when did a primary school prize giving need to be 3 hours long? We had Isaac with us too, poor little guy. He did well though. I did take him up the back away from people when he had dirtied his nappy and they were announcing class prizes. Then I left. Tobyn did so well on stage. He is usually very self conscious and doesn't like doing things in front of people ut that night he was confident and happy and obviously enjoying himself.
• I made a calendar for Steves Mum. Ran out of time to take photos though. It turned out pretty well, I am sure she will like it. Steve did one of the months and I think he is pretty proud of himself.
• I made a diary for Tobyns teacher. When I gave it to her she had tears in her eyes. I was thinking, don't cry because then I will bawl. Fortunately she kept it in check. She LOVED it and said this is too good to have at school this is going to be my home diary.
• Tobyn got a great school report. His academic report is excellent. Though I think I would like to see more effort next year. He does the bare minimum and does very well, imagine what he could do if he put a lot more effort in? Some of his essential skills, otherwise known as life skills needs a bit of work. This didn't surprise us. For example he needs to improve his listening skills, using time effectively, and settling into his work well. But the teacher comment was great and I am proud, "Tobyn has made fantastic progress in the last two terms. His work ethic is where I would expect it to be for a student at _______ school. He has become more self-reliant and confident, focussing less on the negatives of his situation or others. He interacts with the class in a positive way. Tobyn is a 'clever cookie' and is beginning to believe that within himself. Hopefully Tobyn will continue to practise his basic facts in the holidays and work on his speed and retention. Keep the great attitude going Tobyn and you will go far. I hope he takes all this on board and improves even more next year. He would like ton win a prize next year so hopefully this will be the motivation he needs. Steve didn't knuckle down at school until he was a similar age and ended up Dux both of his primary school and high school.
• I have been asked to do a fundraiser for a local school. I was showing a friend some photos I had taken and she asked if I would do some with their school. This is an area I have wondering about for a while. I think I take some pretty good photos and I could fit into an affordable niche in town. So I have a lot to think about in the next little while about business, prices, and getting a portfolio together.
• And lastly, I got a couple of awesome family photos on the weekend. I have never tried this before and I think they turned out pretty well for a first time. I set up the tripod and put a couple of toys on top of the camera which the boys thought was hilarious. For the one where we are lying down Isaac had fun!!! I ran to lie down for the first couple and then he joined me and we got the photo. I am thrilled and I think I look pretty OK, which I don't normally like my photos!

So finally I don't expect I will get in here again for a couple of weeks. I have my Mum arriving from Christchurch on Sunday and we will be busy enjoying her company. Have a wonderful Christmas everyone and thanks for visiting my blog this year. See you again soon.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra First Snow

My favourite Christmas music. We first heard this in the States the first year we were there. The 2nd year I bought the CD and played it in my car every trip I made to the neo-natal unit. Now when I play it it brings back all the precious memories. I love the whole CD but this is one of my faves.

Tired, tired, tired!

Another week gone and another week closer to the holidays, yay. I am in need of some rest, breakfast in bed and sleep ins. And Steve is as well.

This weekend was the coming together and presentation of the Children's Christmas service. Steve has been wanting to get the Sunday School to put together the story "Christmas in Exeter Street" for few years now. This year we were asked to do the Christmas kids service because Kaila is due to have a baby any day now. So Steve jumped at the chance. The story is about a family in England getting ready for Christmas. The Grandparents arrive and bring a Christmas tree, cranberry jelly, cats etc. The Ministers roof blows off and they arrive on the doorstep and bring a carol. The children's friends arrive with sleeping bags and stockings etc, etc. There are neighbours, fat men, wives and children, Uncles not seen for years, friends and a cat. The Sunday School has been low in numbers this year so he co opted a few adults for parts. As there are many parts. In the beginning we thought we weren't going to have enough people, but as the time went on it was a bit like the house in Exeter Street, they kept on coming and in the end there were lots of car children and the minister ended up with 6 children instead of 3. Saturday was spent getting the set together. This included moving our house to the Church...well part of it anyway. Some photos to show you how it looked...







Saturday afternoon we had to have a rehearsal and I thought it was so chaotic and was worried that it wasn't going to come together. I was the lead role and was so flustered. It also didn't help that Isaac was difficult. Sunday morning and it all came together really well. The prayers helped, trust in the Lord. Everyone thought it was a great service and an awesome message. The kids enjoyed themselves and hopefully we will see them all back in the New Year!

Isaac is not coping with all the routines being changed with everything that comes with the Christmas lead up and end of school year. For 2 weekends he has missed day time sleeps and had late nights and now we are paying for the fun. Last night the time came where I had to be tough. He has been waking at 3am for a couple of weeks now. He doesn't just wake, he is WIDE awake and doesn't ant to go back to sleep. So last night I had to do the controlled crying. He really did not like me not talking to him and just taking him by the hand and putting him back to bed. It probably only took 30 mins, but it felt like hours. And today it feels like I didn't get any sleep last night. Hopefully tonight he does well, especially because Steve is not here tonight!

Yesterday I finally got to make my house feel a little more like Christmas. Our tree is very eclectic this year! Every single decoration has meaning and I wanted them all on the tree. Tobyn put most of them on and it looks pretty crazy, but I loved it and this is what Christmas with kids is meant to look like in my mind.



And Steve thought he would get a photo of me by the tree, YEAH RIGHT!



I have been working on Christmas gifts. I have to finish the calender for the in-laws this week. I have 5 more months to do, well actually Steve has to do one of those, LOL. We are going down to Paraparaumu for Steve's nephews b'day on Sunday and we want to take all the prezzies with us. We won't be seeing them again until after Christmas.

A couple of cute things Isaac said over the past few days...

When seeing a security guard wearing a hat, outside a bank..."There's a pirate" and he couldn't stop looking at him. I told the security guard what he said and he laughed.

On listening to the beautiful chorus of birds, "birds singing" then we heard a chicken...book, book, book, boooookuk.....Isaac said "a monkey"

Have great week everyone, ciao for now

Thankful

I am so thankful that I have a wonderful family and many wonderful friends. Though sometimes I take it all for granted.

Yesterday was a day to remember how thankful I am . We celebrated American Thanksgiving, a week late, but that was OK. I tried out some American recipes with NZ ingredients and this year they worked. Last year we had some very interesting American dishes. But thanks to some new ingredients in town some worked well.

Our menu:

Snacks:
Nacho chips and guacamole
Chips and kiwi dip.

Main:
Chicken (mainly because I couldn't bring myself to pay $45 for a turkey!)
Dressing. AKA stuffing, but when done out of the bird it is dressing. Glen is vegetarian so we tried to do everything other than the meat so that he could eat it.
Sweet potato casserole. This very sweet dish has a crunchy sugar and pecan crust on top.
Bean casserole. This dish last year was very weird but this year I found dried fried onions and it worked!
Roast potatoes (for Tobyn)
Mashed potatoes.
Carrots.
Green salad.

I did the carrots and roast pots because I knew Tobyn wouldn't eat any of the other veges.

Dessert:
Pecan Pie
Apple Pie
Cream
Ice cream

Notice no pumpkin pie? Amazingly there wasn't anyone American or not that likes pumpkin pie, so why bother?

We had a lovely time with our friends. Of course I was so busy I didn't get very many photos!
The girls are 5 and 3 and they get on so well with our boys. Sophia and Tobyn just disappeared off and quietly played together. It was so nice having a quiet placid little girl around. it makes a huge difference to the normal rowdy boys. Isaac and Vivi are partners in crime. They are very close but because they are both extremely mischievous they do get into trouble together. Nothing really bad but oh so cute!!!

A lead in to some of the happenings of the day. We don't have a front fence. We have been waiting for the landscaper to bring the digger and make the paths down our hill. He said he would do it back in June!!! And he doesn't want us to put fences up until he has done it. So we have had temporary plastic fences on the deck. Fortunately we have a pretty big deck but it does prevent Isaac from going down into the grass. So Steve decided he would put up temporary fences elsewhere to allow the kids to have access to the grass. All good in principle. But Isaac wasn't used to the freedom Iguess. This leads me into a few 'events' of the afternoon.

1. Isaac got under the deck and couldn't get out easily. I think he followed the cat, but then he said 'it's wet' it took lots of coaxing and a chippie to get him out. Steve wasn't going under, he did that last week when he lost some washers under there and he doesn't fancy going under ever again.

2. I was in the kitchen and I heard a few yells from the adults in the lounge. Then I heard a splat and Isaac crying. I ran to see Isaac sprawled on the ground with his ride on on top of him. He had gone off the steps. One of my biggest fears when Steve removed the fencing from the deck. Thankfully Isaac is a tough cookie. He has grazes on his head and a bruise is coming out but he is OK!

3. While whipping the cream to go with the dessert my magic bullet came to pieces! Cream EVERYWHERE!!! And because I do it in the cupboard I had to take everything out from the shelf and ones under it, ARGH.

4. We found this site in the bathroom when we couldn't find the little people. They were in the shower together and Vivi had made herself a little chair, or throne as Kaila said, out of handtowels.



Isaac was sitting down next to Vivi when we found them. It was so cute.

Unfortunately Kaila dna Glen and the family are moving to Auckland in February. We will miss them so much. But we wish them all the best for there big move. I said to Kaila, next year we will have to find another American family to celebrate Thanksgiving with and she said, we will have to meet in Taupo and celebrate there. What a brilliant idea. I had told her we could meet at Steve's families lake house from time to time, but what a perfect plan!

OK off for a busy day now, Church kids service practice, Steve's work kids party, and Steve is taking Tobyn and a friend to a magic show this evening.

ciao for now

Number 8 wired challenge

First of all thanks for all the lovely comments for my rock star layout! I love the layout and I am glad that so many others love it too. Sometimes a layout just works and that happened with that one. It doesn't happen all that often where I totally love my layout.

Speaking of layouts loved or not, here is my layout for the latest number8 wired dare. The dare is to visit the resene website and find a colour palette and use that as inspiration for a layout. This was so much fun and I spent a long time just perusing the resene website. I chose this particular colour palette because it was simple but quite different to anything I had done before. Only problem was it called for a girl layout. So I flicked through my albums and came across these adorable photos of Meggy. This cute wee girl will be 10 in a couple of weeks time! The mark on her forehead is not on the layout, something happened when I took the photo. I might take it again tomorrow and replace this one.

The layout



The inspiration for the layout.

http://www.resene.co.nz/homeown/decorating_inspirations/272.htm


I might even have another go at this challenge, I enjoyed it so much.

This weekend we are celebrating Thanksgiving. Late? Yes. One of the families we celebrate with had dance recitals last weekend. This time 2 years ago we were in the States and had already celebrated one thanksgiving the year before. It is so much fun and very much an American tradition. Because Isaac was born in America and is an American citizen we feel it is our duty to make sure he learns some of the American traditions. The challenge in the coming years will be remembering what the traditional foods etc are. Thank goodness for American friends and the Internet LOL. Also finding American friends to celebrate with. This year we are again celebrating with Kaila, Glen, Sophia, Vivi and bump, plus Glens Mum who arrived from the States today, and the 2nd family, Christina, Lily and Ivy. Lily and Ivy are 4 and 2 and as yet Christina hasn't celebrated thanksgiving with them. I can't decide if I am going to go with the $45 traditional turkey or the less traditional but much cheaper chickens? Update and photos next week.

Friday night we have family fun night at Church, Saturday we will also be putting up the Christmas tree. Sunday is the first big rehearsal for the Christmas children's service. So a pretty busy weekend and they only get busier from here on in til Christmas. Fun times ahead!!!

Tobyn is doing really well at school at the moment. He got a certificate in assembly last week for great effort and self discipline towards his school work. He was so chuffed. Soon I will do a blog post all about my big boy. I seem to write so much about Isaac. Partly because I have more photos of him. Tobyn is terrible about having his photo taken, but I did get some good ones the other day like this one:



and this one,



isn't he adorable?!

until after the busy weekend, thanks for visiting!

Music in Me Challenge/Rockstar

I really enjoyed this challenge. I have missed the last 2 music in me challenges so this was great to have the perfect photos. It just so happened that Isaac got this drum set from Aunty Fee and Chris on Saturday and he loved it as soon as he opened it. It took me a few hours to realise that I had the perfect photos for this challenge and couldn't wait ot get onto it. For a while the layout was looking pretty Christmassy, but after a bit of fiddling and some great inspiration I LOVE it! Thanks Neen for the challenge!

Final entry for Louises blog challenges

The final challenge for Louises blog challenges. This week she asked us to scraplift a layout of Dallas Foleys http://dallasnz.wordpress.com/ I pretty much stuck to her design with a few extras. I am very happy with the end result and this is another layout to add to our America Album.
Thank you Louise for the challenges. I have found it hard to find the time and inspiration to do these challenges but I am glad I did them, another 4 layouts for my albums. Plus there were so few people that were able to do the challenges in the end that I just couldn't pull out as well.

A lovely day!

4.15am Friday morning and I could hear the rain pelting onto the roof. Argh, I don't want it to rain. I had to get up at 5.15am to get ready and be at school with Tobyn for 6.10am. I was going on a school trip with him to Wellington and I really didn't fancy driving in the rain. Oh well, thems the breaks.
A couple of weeks ago I made the big decision to go on a school trip and leave Isaac with Aunty for the WHOLE day! I knew I had to do it sometime and they were short on transport so in a way the school helped me make the decision. Aunty was more than happy to have Isaac for the day. Isaac has been getting easier and easier to leave, but I was still worried that a whole day without Mummy would be hard. More on that later.
We arrived at school. Got instructions and piled into the cars. I had Tobyn, Ricky and Tobyn's teacher in my car. Fortunately it stopped raining shortly after we drove out of Palmy (no jokes here please LOL) We had a lovely drive into Wellington. The boys behaved and didn't distract the driver too much. And we only encountered on small traffic jam in Wellington.
The kids were going to Capitol E where they were learning how to make a music sound track and put together a newscast. The children all had jobs for the newscast. Tobyns job was an acting one, he got to be the new Mayor of Palmerston North, complete with collared shirt and one of Dads old ties.
The parents were allowed to what they wanted, either stay or go. I chose to stay for the first little bit and got to see what they were doing with the music. It looked AMAZING! I wish the parents were allowed to have a play on the computers too LOL. One of the Dads has said he is going to get the software for his son for Christmas even though his son doesn't know. I think Daddy must have liked it too! These kids got such an amazing opportunity!
After that I went and browsed the Wellington shops. I am not a big shopper, well at least not on my own, I could spends hours shopping with someone. But I had a nice time for the time I did spend shopping. I managed to find a few books for Christmas presents. I got a BBQ one for my brother and sister in law, a historical one for Tobyn and a monster story book for Isaac. I also got myself a scrap booking creations mag went and bought a coffee and sat down and had a read. Ah the bliss of sitting in a coffee shop on your own, not having to worry about whether a 2 year old is going to spill something or choke on his food, or make too much noise. I then went to Kirkcaldies. I knew the Christmas shop was open there and I wanted to browse. Kirkcaldies is a big posh department store in Wellington. I was surrounded by beautiful clothes and smells. I just can't get over how they can justify charging so much for the wares in this store? The Christmas shop didn't blow me away like it did the first time I visited a few years ago. But I still managed to buy a new decoration for each of us
I phoned my sister to see how Isaac was doing. Fine, no problems! He was sleeping when I called and had apparently not wanted to go home for a sleep he wanted to stay at Aunty's and play with Jono's cars. Was he missing Mummy "I don't think he even realises you're not here" *sob* that's not what your meant to say. LOL.
After I had done enough shopping for one day I met up with Pip. I haven't seen her for a year and I miss her company. How can a year go by when we live only 2 hours away from each other? Only now they are moving further away down to Christchurch. Although this is actually a good thing for us because my Mum lives down there and if we go down it is always for a week or 2. Anyway we had a wonderful time catching up over lunch and 2 hours was not long enough!
Pip is the 2nd 'old' Friend I have caught up with recently and I really treasure these friendships and I have made a vow to myself that I will nurture them a lot more over the next year!!!
After my wonderful lunch I headed back to capitol E and watched the last take of the news cast. Tobyn was great, he got his lines perfectly!
The trip home was nice and easy, no stops, no traffic jams. I had a great conversation with Mrs Treder and got to know her a lot better. I was amazed at how much we have in common! We share the same b'day month, though she is a year younger than me, we have both been married for close to 15 years, they had there anniversary in August, ours is in January. We both applied for teachers college when we were 16 and were turned down because we were too young. Though she went back and trained and I became a nurse. We have both lived in the States, both have 2 boys and both our husbands work in scientific fields. I am probably missing something but I was surprised.
When we arrived home Isaac was pleased to see us. He was a little razzed up, tired and hungry as it was 6.30pm!!! He talked all the way back home and all the way through dinner and all the way through the bedtime routine. SO CUTE!!! This morning he has still been yak, yak, yakking. Me thinks he did miss Mummy ;)
WHAT A LOVELY DAY I HAD!!! I will be volunteering more now that I know Isaac is happy to stay with Aunty!

A picture, just because I like to post something beautiful.

Lousies 2nd blog challenge

I am not doing very well with Louises challenges. I leave them until the alst minute and the have to do the layout quickly and of course then I am not all that happy with it. I had to go into town after school to get this photo printed out. Didn't get home until 4.30. Had to get the boys afternoon tea and then choose papers etc. So for a quick layout it turned out OK.

All about Isaacle

I was going to do a big long post about lots of things with quite a few photos but blogger is very slow at uploading pics tonight so I will make this post all about Isaac or Isaacle as he is sometimes referred to.

Isaac is learning so much at the moment and it is so much fun. He loves being in the 'big bed' and will often be found lying in his bed, our bed or the BIG bed in his room. Pretending has become a big part of his play. He is also into imaginary creatures at the moment. He points at things and says cow, pig, sheep, horse etc. and they aren't really there! He is getting bigger feet and I found he nows fits sandles and shoes I only tried on a few weeks ago and back then they were way too big. So yesterday he was wearing green sandles with stars on and he loved them and kept saying 'green shoes' Today he was wearing Thomas sneakers that light up when he stomps. So all day he has been stomping to make them sparkle.
I started kissing booboos a few days ago. Now every time he hurts himself he asks for a kiss, like this afternoon he hurt his nose and came to me and said 'Mummy kiss nose' And sometimes I will give his booboo lots of kisses and he dissolves into hysterics. Too cute.
He LOVES Tobyn and has started calling him 'my broder' This morning I found him knocking on Tobyns door with a peg saying in a deep growly voice 'come out, now'
He loves Apollo the cat and can often be found cuddling him. Most of the time he is really good with him. But a couple of days ago I found him hitting him a little too hard and I had to be Mummy growly lion. He has been good since.
He loves books!!! And will bring books to read many times a day. He knows most of the Hairy Maclairy stories from start to finish. One of his favourite Lynley Dodd books right now is 'Wake Up Bear' and he always jumps when the bear shouts 'Honey'
He is very determined and has a very strong will. But with his adorable sense of humour and his affectionate nature we can usually diffuse issues before they become too big.
He is still very big on routine. As long as we do things in the same way and the same order then everything will be fine. For example night time. Daddy comes home, we have tea, Isaac has a bath, Isaac comes out of the bath and has snuggles with mummy, Isaac streaks around the house nakid then comes back to get clothes on, Daddy takes Isaac and he says goodnight with kisses, cuddles and 'I love yous' to Mummy and Tobyn, Daddy takes him to his room Isaac lies down on the BIG bed and has some of his bottle, Daddy reads 3 books then Isaac turns his music on, gets into his bed and has some more of his bottle, Daddy tucks him in, makes sure he has blankie, floppy bunny, Makka Pakka, Iggle Piggle and any other important toys that day and says good night and leaves the room. IT WORKS!!!

Enough for now. Here are a couple of photos from the weekend. I have converted a colour to b&w and might use it in the Number 8 wired dare this fortnight.



This next photo shows Isaac having a go on the big bike. Steve got it down from the roof on the weekend. Tobyn got this bike for Christmas when he was 2 1/2. Isaac has only just turned 2 so hasn't got the idea of it yet. But he did enjoy being on the big bike.



Maybe I will get to post again tomorrow about Tobyn with some cool photos from the weekend.
I don't have any projects to show at the moment because I am working on Christmas presents mainly, so you have to wait until after Chrissy.

ttfn

A house full of sickies

Obviously I have not had much to say over the past week LOL. We have all been sick in some way. I have had an awful annoying cough. I know it is going around, but I wish it had missed me! Tobyn and Steve have had today off. Tobyn has an ear infection and is now on anti bots. This is only the second time in 9 years that he has had an ear infection so he has done pretty well. But the poor little guy is in pain. Enough about sickies!

Some layouts I have been working on. There are so many things going on in scrappy world at the moment I just can't keep up. There is a DT call, but I have decided not to go for it. I just don't feel confident enough in my work to do it yet. Steve thought I should so I promised him I will give one a go in the next year. SBO have a whole lot of fun going on with challenges and raffles all ending with a gala bash cyber crop at the end of the month. So, the layouts.......

This first one is for Louises week 1 blog challenge. The challenge she set was to not use any manufacturers patterned paper. But we could make our own. It took me all week to come up with some inspiration and finally around 1pm this afternoon I found the photo which inspired the patterned paper. I have used different sized lids and stamped the circles on the paper, representing the bubbles. The colours were inspired by the colours in the bubbles themselves. The circles around the photo I stamped and cut out, just like I would if I had a patterned paper.



This next layout is for the no 8 wired NZ dare blog. The challenge was to use onlt 2 differnt colours. I have used different shades of brown and blue. I actually found this incredibly difficult. I was umming and ahhing about entering it because it is pretty simple. But I love it and it is a photo I love of Isaac.



The last one is for a challenge on scrapbook outlet. No winners or losers you just earn raffle tickets. The challenge was to scrap christmas food. I don't have very many photos of christmas food at all. But I remembered I had these photos of Tobyn making a gingerbread house while we were in the States. I had already tried scrapping it a while ago but didn't like the way it was going. So this time I printed out some smaller photos. I thought I would do a double layout and went to pagemaps for some ideas. I found a sketch, single page that I thought would work and used that. I had it all done and didn't like it. I showed Steve and said I wasn't happy but couldn't put my finger on why. He said the green under the photo isn't quite right and I agreed. It was a darker brighter green like in the top christmas trees. I covered it with the lighter green and I was surprised at how different it made it look. Now I still don't love it but I am so happy to now have this memory scrapped for his album!!!



I don't have any more layouts and I don't have any other news for now so TTFN Until next time...

Black and White layout for Louise's blog challenge

So louise @ http://bigyellowdogblog.blogspot.com/ is having a little comp on her blog. She had a warm up challenge where by we were asked to create a layout using ONLY black and white. I like how it turned out so fresh. Thank you for the challenge Louise.

Most of the materials I have used came from a http://www.scrapbookoutletnz.co.nz kit. Peect for this challenge. Usually I don't use kits for challenges but I didn't have any other only b&w papers! My only disappointment with this layout is that there is a gorgeous tinkering ink patterned paper hiding behind all the stuff I added! I couldn't stop stincking and doodling and then I realised I had hidden ,most of this gorgeous paper. Gonna have to get me some more of that I think!

A great weekend!

Tobyn got on stage for both his dances on Saturday! I was so chuffed to see him out in his black shirt for the Michael Jackson dance! And he did a pretty good job. He did forget a couple of things in this dance, but given he had missed the change for 2 days I can forgive him. I am proud of him for getting out there!!!
Sunday we went to Church for the first time in weeks. We are organising the kids Christmas service and thought it high time to get there and let them know it is all coming together. The kids are excited and hopefully it will be as good as they are anticipating!
Sunday afternoon was spent tidying and scrapbooking. Yay I finally got some more scrapbooking done! And both layouts are for challenges.

This layout is for the Scrapbook Essentials fortnightly sketch competition. It is the first 6x12 layout I have done. Having done the Disney photo I have decided that Disney 06 will be all 6x12. I found it quite hard and I stuck to the sketch. I like how the photos really stand out.



The other layout I will put in a separate post.