The Downside of Holidays is Laundry

I love going on holiday but I am totally over the laundry mountain that goes with it. Combine it with all the bedding and towels extra visitors in the house bring and I am on an endless cycle of wash, dry, repeat! Fortunately, hubby does fold and put away or I might just about have gone out on strike by now.

I have not managed enough free time to make anything since our return from Thailand but I do have a couple of simple layouts I completed just before we went away to finish off one of my Studio Calico kits. I need to finish another one fairly shortly as my January kits will be winging their way this way soon too!

Now this is not a layout that will win any prizes, but it certainly used up some stray supplies including those hexagons that I never thought I would use. I love this photo of Scarlett that was taken outside the museum here before we visited a Wedding Dress exhibition from the Victoria and Albert in London. I think she had more fun running around out the front to be honest! She is growing up so fast and really does think she is just a little adult which can be challenging at times!

This is a very old photo that I have wanted to scrap but wasn't sure how to do it. I really liked the colours of this Amy Tangerine paper and it kinda goes with some of the colours in the photo. Scarlett has never been a good sleeper and we tried all kinds of tricks to get her to sleep when she was tiny. This is photographic evidence of all the things you are not supposed to do with a young baby such as sleeping on their tummy and letting them sleep on soft surfaces but desperation is a powerful motivator and we definitely were in need of some serious sleep by this stage.

I have enjoyed reading about everyone's OLW choices after yesterday's post and am glad to see I am not the only drop out from Ali's class! I look forward to keeping my word in the front of my mind this year. Bring on the adventure!

More Central High Layouts

The pressure is on. All three drawers in my 12 x 12 storage set up have kits in them. I need to finish off Central High so there will be room for my new kit that should be arriving any day. I have completed a couple of new layouts this week and I am hoping to do another couple by the weekend so I can call that kit done and put the remains into my stash and scraps pile. I still have two full pieces of PP and quite a lot of decent sized scraps left at this stage. Those whole pages' days are numbered.

This layout was a total scraplift of a layout by Susan Weinroth that appeared on the Studio Calico blog last week. I loved the way hers looked and took the papers that were available to me in my kit and added some washi , flair and those super versatile Amy Tangerine letters. I also finally cracked open the ribbon that came with the kit. I really loved the PP I have used as the background for this layout. I am so excited to have finally made use of those beautiful Indie Chic chevrons.

I feel a bit cheeky even including this layout as all I really did was cut down the photo, added a couple of pieces of chipboard from the new Dear Lizzy 5th and Frolic collection, added an Amy Tangerine lettering title and a spot of journalling. I liked this patterned paper such a lot that I decided not to ruin it by adding too much extra to it. Still, it tells a story I wanted to tell and that is really what it is all about.

Right I am off to buy a fish tank. My daughter came home from school today with almost a dozen baby fish from her field trip! I haven't the heart to let them die so I will have to go and buy the cheapest tank and pump I can find and give them a chance at life. Here's hoping we can keep the cat away from them! The things we mothers do!

A Stray and Delay

I was fully anticipating a Wordless Wednesday post for yesterday and a finished version of the Starting Point I shared earlier in the week going up today. Funny how life has other plans for us!

Scarlett went to bed off colour on Tuesday night and woke up on Wednesday with a very high temperature. Our 24 hour visitors arrived on Tuesday night and I had a flare up of my IBS on Tuesday night as well! Tet left for Thailand very early on Wednesday morning leaving me holding the sick baby and a house full of visitors. I love my husband very much but sometimes his timing leaves a lot to be desired.

Here we are late on Thursday afternoon, Scarlett is still unwell but brighter, my stomach is starting to recover and our visitors are back home in New Zealand. It was a tough day but we got through it. It helped that I put S on a mattress on the floor in our room last night and went to bed when she did at seven. We both feel much better for 11 hours (off and on) of sleep and her wakeups were all really short as she could see me as soon as she opened her eyes. We are definitely doing the same thing tonight!

I was filing some layouts and found one that I thought I wasn't going to share.   I really liked it looking at it again  though so here it is.

I like the more muted tones in this layout. It seemed to suit Scarlett's expression. I had a play with the mistable arrows for this layout and found a layer of Shine on them actually looks quite striking in real life. The colour I tried to use didn't turn out with quite the density of colour I had hoped for but again the Mister Huey Shine improved things no end. All the papers and embellishments are from the Central High kit with the exception of the journalling spot which I think is from Echo Park.

With luck Scarlett will be back at school tomorrow and I will have a chance to get some scrapping done and finish my Christmas layout. We have had a lovely quiet home day even if she has not managed to nap. I fear the daytime nap is definitely coming to an end. It will be greatly mourned.

Happy Mail and a Starting Point

I used another of Shimelle Laine's starting points to make a further dent in my Central High kit last night. Hubby was watching 'Taken' on TV so I sat with him and made a start on this layout.

I love the green on green floral Kesiart paper so I am trying not to cover too much of the rest of it up once I start adding photos and embellishment. I can say that I have added a photo from Christmas Day last year to this starting point and I have pulled out my October Afternoon Christmas supplies from last year that did not arrive until well after Christmas. I have really had some fun mixing and matching these papers this time.

The mail fairies must have seen what I was up to as I received the perfect happy mail this morning. My order of six rolls of washi from Freckled Fawn.

Here is the  Christmas selection which I think will be a perfect addition to my starting point and very useful when it comes time to wrap some presents.

I also picked up two of their new lines that they designed in house. The bottom roll is potty people and the top is a fantastic selection of hearts and arrows. I love them both!

I was quite taken with the colours in Shimelle's original starting point so thought I would share it here as it is the right time of year for North Americans especially to make use of these colours.

 

I have said it before and I will surely say it again - I cannot get enough of these starting points!

Instax Love

I love my instax camera but not as much as my daughter. If she sees it unguarded she is off trying to take photos with it. She has already figured out how to turn the camera on and how to make it take a photo - she finds using the viewfinder a little more challenging. She and my husband had a bit of a play with the instax over the weekend and I was not at all surprised to see that Scarlett's photo of her Daddy was better than his of her.

I was completely over working on my New Zealand vacation photos so I cracked open my Central High kit from Studio Calico and grabbed the instax photos and sat down to check my Facebook. As luck would have it Creative Scrappers had just posted their new sketch and it was perfect for the instax sized prints. I was in business.

Here is the sketch I was working from.

Now I only had two photos but I did not let that stop me!

I fully intended to just use my new kit with this sketch but I found myself reaching for my box of embellies to find a good range of round shapes for the embellishment column. I included some Amy Tangerine flair from the new Ready Set Go line that was in my add on. I also added a Pink Paislee green button, some MME brads and a Basic Grey number brad from the kit. The flair in the title was from Sasha's Paper Play store on etsy I believe. I also included some SC veneer and the tag and envelope are both from BG's Clippings range. I added a few of the little puffy stickers from Ready Set Go to the paper to add some interest to the bottom third of the page.

I am really happy with this layout and really pleased to be working on something current. I am off to order some more recent photos now to keep me motivated to scrap! I ordered all four add ons with the SC October kit so I really need to get my August and September kits worked through pronto!