Stuck Sketches: Driving

I carried on with the same supplies after yesterday's post and continued working backwards through my saved sketches and my July kit. I found a Stuck! Sketches sketch and got to work.





I initially intended to use this sketch with a portrait photo per the sketch but found I didn't have any in my box of printed photos so I adapted the sketch to use a couple of 3 x 4 shots instead.

This is another very aqua layout. The beautiful geometric background paper is from Pebbles Lakeside collection. I also added in a couple of pages from my 6 x 6 paper pads to stretch my supplies. The pink doily print is from Crate Paper and Maggie Holmes and the fussy cut map pieces are from an older Studio Calico travel line.

I finally got to use one of those gorgeous cars from the October Afternoon Travel Girl line. I added a framed image from the Miscellany from the same collection. I had a couple of the grab bags from Freckled Fawn out so I added the geotag paper clips that came in one of them as well.

 

I love the idea of paper strips for journalling but I never type my journalling so I decided to swap my title into that spot and set it up per the sketch. I am not entirely happy with this and may make it a bit more square. Chances are that it will go in my album as is though as I am all about getting things done at present.

The photos were taken on our trip to New Zealand in July. We popped into the Cookie Time store while we were there and Miss Three was very taken with the decorated mini in the centre of the store. We really had a hard time getting her to leave - not even a cookie bribe was successful!

I feel really good about getting these layouts done. I have used most of the kit and what isn't used is going back in my stash. I am going to open the next bag from the pile of shame and work on the next saved sketch. I have some wedding photos printed and seeing it is my wedding anniversary on Thursday I am thinking I might just try and scrap one of those. I can always reprint the photos if I don't love the outcome!

Practical Scrappers December Sketch : Our Favourite Pitstop

I have been saving a number of sketches over the past month through my Feedly blog reader. I have also been studiously not scrapping or blogging during this time. I have a metre high pile of unused kits in my lounge where they were exposed when we rearranged the room for our Christmas tree. They are an eye sore and a reminder that I need to get stuck in. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion I need to stop my sub at Citrus Twist until I get control of my stash again.

With today being Monday and the start of a new week I decided it was a very good time to start scrapping again so I opened up my saved folder on Feedly and committed to completing the most recent sketch I had saved. It turned out to be the new one from Practical Scrappers.
 

I have a number of 3 x 4 pictures that didn't make it into Project Life that I thought would be perfect for this sketch. As I looked at the examples shared by the design team, the layout by Krissy Clark McKee caught my eye. She rotated the sketch and it really appealed to me.

Here is my take on the sketch, having worked on it rotated 90 degrees. I challenged myself to only use supplies from one partially used Citrus Twist kit and pieces that were lying around my workspace. It came together surprisingly quickly!

I had the July Travel kit add on out and it was perfect for our holiday themed layout. Sadly it is now sold out.

 


 By limiting my supplies it really made the layout come together super fast. The October Afternoon Miscellany Pack was full of useful buttons and bits and pieces. I added the geometric print paper on the right of the layout from my scraps but otherwise everything came from the kit.

I loved using the flair from the October Afternoon line as the colours tied in with the main paper (it is the reverse of the gorgeous car print from this line). The colours are not quite right on my screen but they do look great together in real life!

I kept the title and subtitle in the same Basic Grey font. I love the size and font style with this range of letter stickers so much. It is so versatile, especially in the grey colour way. The enamel dots are from Teresa Collins.

I hope you have been managing to get more crafting done than I have of late. I am not working on a December Daily this year so I do not even have that as an excuse. I am still finding it hard to believe that we are over halfway through December. Miss Three is in school until Christmas Eve but we are having a family break from Christmas through to early January. We are not going anywhere but really looking forward to a bit of quiet time together.

If you decide to have a go at this sketch I would love to see what you have created. Have a great week!

Project Life Catch Up Week 29

This week is the final week we spent in New Zealand. There are slightly fewer photos to share than last week but it is still a pretty full on section in the album. As with the previous weeks, I have used the Dear Lizzy, Amy Tangerine and Maggie Holmes PL Mini Kits with a few embellishments from my stash.

As I mentioned last week, Miss Three loved the winter clothes. She was a huge fan of scarves, gloves and jackets as these are things she never gets to wear in Singapore. I love these photos as I think they give a good indication of her personality too.

One of our favourite memories from the trip was Miss Three and Aunty Anne making gyoza (Japanese dumplings) from scratch. Miss Three had a really good go at making the dumplings and while hers were not quite as perfect looking, they tasted just as good as Aunty Anne's. 

The bottom image in the spread is the view from the playground in Clyde. We loved being surrounded by mountains in this part of the country and we never tired of the fresh air and long views.

While we were down south we spent a wonderful day playing tourists in Queenstown. We absolutely love this town. There is so much to see and do and the food options are really great too. It was a stunning day weather wise which is always a bit of a lottery mid winter. After our adventures up the gondola and wandering around the lake we went to pick up a young friend of Aunty Anne's who came to stay. She and Miss Three got on really well and we stopped in at Arrowtown for an ice cream treat on our way back to Clyde.

We made another stop on the return journey to look at the massive hydroelectric dam just above Clyde. It is pretty impressive and generates a large chunk of the electricity used in the South Island. Sadly that was our last full day in the region and we headed back to Christchurch in one day. We were dreading the journey a little as it is about 6 hours of driving, but Miss Three slept most of the second half of the trip so all was well. 

The final photos in this spread are really special to me. The bottom left shot is of the children from our ante natal group. The group still gets together at least once a month and it was lovely to see Miss Three at play with these children. They got along pretty well and as they were all born within a month of each other (MT is the youngest) it was a fun morning. The other shot of MT with her Grandad is another favourite for obvious reasons.

The final spread for this week is some of the photos from the photo shoot we did with Alpine Image when we visited Wanaka. Tet's sister gave him the shoot and images for his 40th birthday present. It was a wonderful couple of hours spent in the bracing 2 degree temperatures. We got so many amazing shots that we have been a little overwhelmed when it comes to choosing which ones to put on canvas. 

It really was a wonderful break away from reality. It was very hard to leave this time and we have put a lot of thought into how we can get back to New Zealand to live. We don't really have any answers as yet as there is very little work in my husband's field in New Zealand any more. We have been contemplating starting our own business or franchise as a means to get back. Time will tell if we can manage it.

Project Life Week 28

Sleep training Miss 3 is resulting in insomnia for me so this will be an earlier post than usual. I am hoping all the hard yards will pay off on that front but based on last night's effort I can't say I am feeling positive.

Week 28 was the first full week of our trip to New Zealand and it is quite photo heavy. We spent the first half of the week in Christchurch with my Dad and the second half down in Central Otago where my sister and sister-in-law live.

 

We relished all the open space and blue skies. This spread was kept very simple. I loved the little labels from my Life Paper Scrapbook kit. They are so versatile. As you can see we did encounter some snow on our journey south which Miss Three was very taken with. The novelty of tights and warm clothes had not worn off at this stage of the trip either so she happily dressed for the weather.

I decided to include an insert in this week. This side is devoted to food. We really enjoyed the standard of food and especially coffee on this trip. Two weeks and not a bad or even average coffee in that time. Miss Three renewed her relationship with the fluffy on this trip. The one pictured above with sprinkles and chocolate sauce was her favourite and she requested a special second trip back to the cafe in Clyde to have another one.

The rather amazing looking dessert was hubby's Creme Brulee at a Japanese restaurant in Tekapo. We all fought over the candy floss (cotton candy) that came with it. We even managed to squeeze in the kiwi favourite takeaway of fish and chips. 

The reverse side of the insert shares a couple of our favourite activities in Christchurch. We made the trip to the Antarctic Centre and it was an excellent outing. Lots of interesting displays, penguins and best of all, the Haglund ride. This is an all terrain vehicle used in Antarctica that takes you on a short obstacle course style ride. We all, including my Dad and Miss Three, loved this part of the day.

The other highlight of Christchurch as far as Miss Three was concerned was the Chipmunks indoor playground. We ended up going three times in the eight days we were in Christchurch! It was a great spot to catch up with friends who have small children as it has a cafe attached. We have already had to promise that she can go again when we are back in April!

This page is all down in Central Otago. We stayed with my sister in the tiny town of Clyde. It is a beautiful part of the world and I am a bit sad that she is moving into Alexandra next year as we really enjoyed being in Clyde. On our arrival in Alexandra (where she works) we called into school where Anne had arranged for Scarlett to spend the afternoon with her class. She had a lovely time playing games and reading stories with the big kids. It was the last day of term so a perfect time to be there. We went over to Wanaka that weekend to see Tet's sister and her fiance. No rest for returning expats, that is for sure.

Spending time in Central Otago really made us rethink our future. We were quite impressed by the quality of life in that part of the world. Miss Three loved the fact that people had chickens in their gardens and plenty of space to run about and play. The slower pace of life and friendliness of the people we met also reminded us why New Zealand will always be home for us. The bottom photos here are of the main street of Clyde. The middle set is of Miss Three having a massage from her aunty. Anne used to be a massage therapist so knows what she is doing but overall, S was too ticklish to last long.

This last spread is all about Miss Three. She was lucky enough to be lent a running bike while we were in Clyde and she loved it and got pretty good on it by the time we left. She also met a gorgeous and incredibly tolerant Cavoodle who enjoyed being pushed around the pram and showered in kisses. The opportunities we had to get outside and run were frequent and it would be true to say that Miss Three struggled with the lack of play spaces when we returned to Singapore.

Congratulations if you have made it this far! It has been a bit of an epic post. I apologise for some of the bad reflections on some of these spreads - nothing seemed to improve them much. Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Project Life Catch Up : Week 27

Good morning and welcome to Project Life catch up fortnight. This is what happens when you get seriously behind and then have a massive catch up push in your Project Life album. These weeks have formed the beginning of album two of PL for 2013. I am confident I will only need two albums a year and I am comfortable with that amount of real estate dedicated to our daily lives. With me likely to start work again next year this will probably be a much more detailed album than future efforts.

Week 27 was a bit of a transitional week for us. The first half of the week was full of the usual, school, work housework activities. On the Friday night though, we hopped on the plane for a two week trip back to New Zealand to catch up with family and friends. It also happened to be the week that my husband turned forty.

The layouts for this half of the year are definitely very minimalist in terms of their presentation. I purchased the Dear Lizzy, Amy Tangerine and Maggie Holmes' mini kits and have used them almost exclusively with a few stickers and labels from my stash. I have found that the three collections mix and match really well and keeping my supplies limited has really made the process much faster. I cannot rave enough about the Persnickety Prints 3 x 4 rounded edges photos. Having the photos all cut to size and ready to go has saved me so much time. I am definitely going to be sending batches of photos off there in the future. The shipping cost is reasonable and definitely worth it in terms of the convenience.

 

The second half of the layout shows Scarlett helping our gardener at the building we live in. What it doesn't show is that both she and I were drenched from head to toe after she got a bit cheeky with the hose. My phone was lucky to survive that particular adventure. I have also included a shot of the playground at Changi Airport that we love for tiring S out just enough to sleep on the plane almost from take off. We have a couple of shots of family welcoming us to Christchurch Airport. Our plane had such terrific tail winds that we landed an hour early beating everyone to the arrivals hall. It was a nice chance to relax with an excellent cup of coffee and enjoy the sunshine. Fortunately my dad only lives ten minutes away! 

The first weekend home was flat tack. We had lunch with some good friends and their children. It was lovely to catch up and let the kids run wild in the playground afterwards. We had a great dinner with my Dad that night. Sunday included a much needed hair cut for me and celebrating Tet's birthday with a surprise party organised by some of our dearest friends. 

I am nearly totally caught up with Project Life (well to the end of September - I need to sort photos and place an order with Persnickety Prints) so I am hopeful that I will have some new layouts to share soon.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. We had a 40 hour trip to Bintan  as a lovely break to the regular weekend routine. It was a really relaxing break and even though it was short we all feel so much better for it.

Hello Strangers

I feel like there should be tumbleweeds blowing across the screen like in one of those Spaghetti Westerns I grew up watching. I never intended to be off the blog for nearly two months. I never intended to stop creating for nearly two months either but that is the way the cookie has crumbled. I am hoping I get back to normal levels of transmission this week.

There have been a few factors leading to the long silence. We had a wonderful two week trip home to New Zealand. It was just what we needed as a family although much too short. It helped clarify what we really want and need as a family over the next few years but also muddied the waters a little too. We have had major computer issues with our trusty laptop finally giving up the ghost. I am working today on our new touch screen desk top with a 20 inch monitor - a big step up from the little laptop! We have also been dealing with a major dose of the sickies in our house. All three of us have been struck down with a nasty cough and cold that Scarlett picked up at ballet.

The view from the Gondola in Queenstown

I am really looking forward to catching up my Project Life and doing some other creating. I plan to have a crack at some of Shimelle's challenges from last week even though I am too late to join in with the rest of the crew.

How are you all my lovely readers? How have the last couple of months treated you? I would love to hear your news in the comments below. Hope to see you back here tomorrow with a Project Life layout to share.

Just a random snap

I had a spare few minutes earlier this week so I grabbed a drawer of supplies and a photo from 2011 that I really wanted to get scrapped. I didn't really have a plan, I just wanted to spend some time creating.

This photo was from our trip home at the end of 2011. Scarlett and I had a lovely meet up with my old work mate and good friend, Natasha and her daughter Bethany. We met at a very child friendly cafe in New Brighton. Miss Three was very impressed with her first Children's Platter. Bethany was a star at looking after Miss Three (who was then nearly two) but I think she wore her out! It was so nice to catch up with Natasha and for Miss Three to have a big girl to play with.

I still love chevron paper as a background and this grey was no exception. I added  a few scraps from the December and January kits. The journalling card is an October Afternoon one from my stash. I used a few pieces from the new Amy Tangerine collection to embellish the page and another Pink Paislee star .

Sorry for the quiet patch this week. We are in the middle of a long travel stint for my husband and that drastically reduces my creative and free time. I am hoping to be back on top of things next week.

Have a wonderful weekend. I am solo parenting this weekend so I suspect I will need a holiday by Monday morning!

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!

JYC The First Sign of Christmas

I have to admit I was surprised at the first things that popped into my head when I read the Day 2 prompt. I feel like the season is here either when my feet hit the beach in Phuket, Thailand or when we go fruit and pea picking in New Zealand! Neither I suspect are the traditional answers to when you feel the festive season has begun.

I think I may need to take a few steps back to help put these two disparate options into some sort of context. I lived in New Zealand until I was 8 and then in Singapore until I was 15. When I lived in New Zealand going fruit (usually berry) picking before Christmas was a fun family activity before Christmas. When we lived in Singapore, if we did not go home for Christmas we spent the ten days before Christmas Eve in Phuket having a relaxing beach holiday. Both of these things totally scream Christmas to me!

I do not have access to my childhood photos as they are in NZ with my Dad but I do have photographic evidence of the way that we have embraced these traditions in our little family of three. 

We spent last Christmas back in New Zealand.

Grandad and Scarlett picking raspberries

It wasn't hard to find plenty of ripe ones

Taking instruction on the finer points of fruit picking

Scarlett picked all these herself

It was wonderful to see three generations picking together and enjoying the sunshine. The man who owns the place where we pick always tells us to eat at least as many as we buy so it is a pretty delicious way to spend an hour or two.

Christmas 2010 and 2012 will involve a few days in Phuket as we are spending Christmas Day in Singapore. This year will be great as my sister is coming from New Zealand to join us and Tet's brother and his girlfriend will meet us in Phuket too. Our trip in 2010 was much more low key as it was just Tet and Scarlett and me. We stayed at one of the quieter beaches and had a wonderful time. I was thrilled to see Scarlett enjoying just the same sort of childhood holiday that I loved so many years earlier.

It was a hard job spending time under these umbrellas and in the warm waters but we managed to survive

Scarlett loved playing in the sand

She was busy making sand castles at 10 months - she started walking a week after we got home from this trip

The beach air meant Scarlett had lots of great naps

Even though we now get to Phuket the day after Christmas it still feels like our holiday season starts with taking off our shoes and feeling the sand between our toes. I am much more excited this year about going to Phuket than I am about Christmas Day itself.

Do you have any rituals that signify the start of the season? Are they the traditional Black Friday shopping adventures or is there something a little more unique in your family. I would love to know what marks the beginning of your festive season.

Garden Days

Busy, exciting days here at present. The most exciting thing is that Scarlett got up on Monday and said "I am not wearing nappies anymore Mum. Get me my knickers!" We were not going to argue with her and she has done super well so far. She had a little accident yesterday at home and one outside at school but otherwise used the toilet or potty all day. We braved a trip to the mall today and that went really well too. I always figured we would have to let her lead the way and it has been worth waiting. She is exactly 2 and three quarters so it isn't too late in the piece.

We are off to school later today for Scarlett's first Parent Teacher conference. We are really fortunate in Scarlett's school as they keep us well up to date with how she is progressing but it is nice to go in and talk to her teachers and get a good overview of her progress. 

I am continuing to plug away at my photos from last year's Christmas trip and my SC Roller Rink kit. Both are definitely nearing an end! These photos came from a couple of different outings, showing how much Scarlett enjoyed being in the outdoors when we were back in New Zealand.

 

I really was not too sure about such a vibrant background pattern but I found putting a white frame around the floral made it a little less striking. All the greenery in the photos works well with the bolder colours too.

I hope your week is going well. I had my first soy coffee today and while it wasn't as nice as with normal milk it wasn't poisonous either so I guess I will get used to the no milk approach.

A very special elephant

This layout came together really quickly. I pulled the photo out of my stack of photos to scrap and the elephant jumped out at me. I knew I had an elephant or two floating around from the most recent Amy Tangerine collection and everything fell into place.

This layout is another Roller Rink plus add ons effort with the addition of some Tim and Beck alphas, MME word stickers and the yellow airmail washi. The journalling card is from OA's Sidewalks collection and it just seemed to fit the theme perfectly.

I totally got my Shimelle on with the repeating elements in my embellishment clusters. I am so in love with the MME enamel dots. I hope they remain part of future lines as they are so versatile.

The playground shown in the layout was a real part of my childhood and I am so excited it has become part of Scarlett's. We lived on the other side of town from my grandparents when I was little and it always seemed to take forever to get to their house. We always knew when we saw the elephant slide that we were nearly there. My grandparents have moved a couple of blocks since then and the playground is now just around the corner from them. We always stopped and played with Scarlett there when we visited my grandparents. She talks fondly about the elephant slide... elephants are most definitely one of her things.

We have had a few Internet issues this week and so I am very excited to get back online and blog. Our laptop couldn't see our wireless feed and would not connect to the Internet. So while we could still get online on the Ipad and phones it made accessing photos impossible. Suddenly it started working again late yesterday for no apparent reason. 

We have been having a bad run with appliances this week. The bulb blew in our extractor fan and the bulb shattered and cut the wires causing the whole hood to become live. I got a nasty shock off it and then my husband managed to trip power to the entire apartment trying to discover what was going on. Nothing like some unexpected drama.

We have a public holiday here on Tuesday. Hubby has taken Monday off so I think we are off to try out the new Legoland that opened just over the border in Malaysia on Monday. I am hoping that there will be enough rides for Scarlett to go on that she will enjoy it. Although I think she is tiny, (well she is in the bottom 25% for height in New Zealand) most locals tell me how tall she is! Fingers crossed she will be tall enough to have fun.

Have a super weekend!

Reasons to create

The layout I am sharing today is not one with amazing photos but I suspect it will be one that I look back on fondly in years to come. The pictures are of my daughter playing at my grandparents' home. She is lucky enough to have two living great grandparents and she loves spending time with them. The images do not show Grandad Ron and Nana but they do show their living room which tell me so much about them and their lives. 

This is another Roller Rink kit layout with a few October Afternoon and Amy Tangerine bits and pieces from my stash added in. I wasn't sure that I even liked the layout when I finished it but as it has been lying on the table for a few days waiting for me to file it into an album it has caught my eye over and over. I love the way the floral paper frame echos the wallpaper in the photos and the bright splashes of colour mimic the bright ginger jars my Nana loves.

The photos have really got me thinking about taking more place photos. Not so much places we visit but the spaces in which we spend our time. The supermarket we visit, the malls we like, the parks we play in all need to be recorded as these places are as much a part of us as the people we spend time in them with. I wish I had some photos of my late Nana's home. My grandad built it for her as a wedding present and she lived there until she died aged 94. I may have the odd shot taken in her lounge and her back step but nothing more.

Have you recorded those daily spaces in your layouts? I would love to see some examples of such layouts. I am inspired to scrap some people free layouts so we have a record of the places we inhabit right now. I love this hobby as it really encourages me to look at my life in a whole new way.

I hope all my American friends are making the most of their opportunity to vote today. Whatever the result, women fought long and hard for the right to have their voice heard and I feel very strongly that we should never take it for granted.

Learning to Jump

We had a lovely three day weekend. The weather was excellent. Sadly last night, Scarlett started to sneeze and by this morning she was down with yet another cold and cough. This is the fourth Monday in a row she has missed school due to illness! I am starting to feel like a horrible mother. I am also wondering if my very plain minimal fibre diet in an attempt to control my IBS is having a very negative effect on my daughter's immunity. Lots to think about in preparation for my next visit to the specialist.

I only managed to complete one layout over the weekend as tiredness is forcing me to get as much sleep as I can. On the upside I did crack open my new Roller Rink kit from Studio Calico and I really do love it.

 

I really wanted to scrap this single photo of Scarlett's first experience on a trampoline. She was not able to jump before she hopped on and after ten minutes was jumping with two feet together like a pro. She enjoyed meeting our friends' daughter, Maya and playing with her. The photo is a little unclear as it was taken through the protective net around the tramp. They are way safer than the ones we played on when I was a child!

I based this layout loosely on a sketch but in spite of my best efforts I cannot find it on my Facebook feed or in my reader. If anyone recognises it I would love to give credit where it is due.

The materials are a mixture of the Main Roller Rink kit and some embellishments from the Couples Skate and Toe Stop add ons. I also added a little washi from my stash. 

Right, I am off to take a nap while the little one is doing the same. We have had an unexpected guest arrive for the week and so I am going to snatch the sleep I need when I can!

Have a great week!

Using up the scraps

I thought I was pretty much done with my Summer of 69 kit but it was not the case. I pulled out my drawer and found enough floral scraps to make me want to scrap some garden based activity photos of Scarlett lying in my ever growing "To Scrap" pile.

These photos are from three separate outings to the Botanic Gardens and Willowbank in Christchurch. I love the fact that Scarlett is wearing both winter and summer clothing in these pictures - a great indication of a New Zealand Summer!

I added lots of odds and ends from my stash to this layout. I was pleased to finally use another one of the Heidi Swapp flags and the explore one really fits the picture. I added an older OA Sidewalks journalling card, some SC veneer, MME brad and a lot of my last few Amy Tangerine Sketchbook stickers. I love the title lettering!

I have had a rough couple of days with yet another IBS flare up. This one resisted medication which was a first and unpleasant development. Fortunately, we were able to send S for an extra day at school to give me a chance to recover today. I foresee a very quiet afternoon ahead.

We have a public holiday here tomorrow. It will be nice to have a three day weekend!

Pure Joy

I love watching my daughter playing with her friends. Her excitement at being part of a group and her love of all things social is so obvious! Over the course of the weekend we had plenty of opportunities to watch Scarlett at play. She had gym class, a play and dinner date with old friends and a pool party celebrating a class mate's second birthday. It really was just as well that ballet was cancelled this week!

I am frantically trying to finish off the scraps from Summer of 69 and make a decent dent in Central High before my new kit and ahem- four -ahem add ons arrive later this week. I had one piece of quite brightly coloured orange card from the Summer of 69 main left. I decided to use a very old Shimelle starting point as a way of keeping the process simple. I made the starting point before I had chosen a photo which is not the way I usually work. As luck would have it I found a photo of Scarlett with a lovely seventies looking tent in the background. I think the card and the photo were made for each other!

I cut some circles from the SC exclusive paper in the main kit. It is times like this I wish I owned some circle punches! I added an Amy Tangerine flower to one circle. The labels and stickers are either from October Afternoon's Cakewalk collection or the new Amy Tangerine line. I added some sequins to the labels to match the Hello There label. I have become addicted to sequins and just ordered half a dozen types on Etsy and they are winging their way from South Africa as we speak! There is some hidden journalling on the card tucked behind the photo mount. The layout is a little simpler than I initially planned but with the bright coloured background I definitely think less is more is the correct approach!

My aim of blogging every day in October fell at the first weekend hurdle. I really struggle to blog over the weekends as we do not spend much time at home. I am not usually that organised to pre post during the week. Something for me to work on I guess.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and that my Canadian readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

Road Trip Album Part Three

There has been a bit of a long gap between part two and three. I hope it was worth the wait!

I really loved the mix of papers in this Daybook. There was plenty of space to share the little details of the trip. We love this part of New Zealand so much and are seriously considering buying a holiday home there. Now we just need to find ourselves a money tree!

This page on the doily really has not photographed well. It shows the delicious scones we ate at one of the cafes in Tekapo. They were so good we had them two days in a row!

 

I love this photo of Tet's sister, Yaeh, and her fiance Henry. We had a lovely day with them when they drove over from Wanaka. The Amy Tangerine label was just perfect for this shot.

There was a great playground over looking the lake. Needless to say it wasn't just Scarlett who had fun there.

These are the two iconic images from Tekapo. The first is the church (Church of the Good Shepherd) which is right alongside the lake. It is a beautiful stone chapel with an amazing view and some beautiful stained glass. The other icon is the sheep dog statue bearing tribute to the role of dogs in settling this part of New Zealand. 

Here is Scarlett helping us pack up the car on our journey. We hoped she would be okay on the longer car journeys and she was a total star. I think it helped that her new car seat was super comfortable.

I was totally blown away by the wide skies when we home. Living in Singapore there are no long range vistas and I could feel my eyes relax. 

The sunsets were not too bad either.

A lovely shot of father and daughter on the Tekapo shore. 

I loved using the Daybook to record our journey and will definitely use one again for this kind of memory recording. I would love a Christmas style one for my December Daily actually.

I have decided to take part in the Blogtober initiative, albeit a little late. The aim is to blog every day in October and perhaps host a giveaway. This month will mark my 200th post so I am looking to give something away when we reach that milestone. If you would like to take part in Blogtober check out all the info here.