Our Little Fairy Princess

Does anyone else have photos that are almost too special to scrap? I have been holding onto the blurry photo on this page for over a year. In the interests of getting it done and perfection being the enemy of productivity I vowed to get this photo scrapped this week.

Once again it was Shimelle to the rescue with another great and simple sketch.

 

I had every intention of following it and then once I had glued down my four background pieces onto my go to grey cardstock I realised I had actually done something else. Oh well.

 

This really is a bit pinker than I usually scrap. Scarlett had been looking through my kit remains and expressed her love for the pink paper on the bottom left so that drove the colour choices. I loved the giant zigzag patterned paper so felt compelled to use it twice and in a thin strip to help divide the quadrants as well. The colours worked well with the 5th and Frolic bits and pieces and everything came together quickly. I really did not think I would ever use the fox faces in 5th and Frolic but it seemed to work well with the feel of this layout.

 

 I have been beavering away at my Project Life and will share another couple of weeks worth tomorrow. I need to get all our Bangkok photos edited so I can get to work on Weeks 4 and 5 this weekend.

Welcome to some new faces who have started following my blog over the past few weeks. I am so excited to share my work and adventures with you. If you have any questions at all, please pop them in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.

Have a great Thursday!

Coffee and Cake - a Shimelle Sketch

After waking at 4.30 this morning in anticipation of a 5.30 start I was pretty tired by the time we arrived back to our apartment at two this afternoon. I knew I wanted to do something creative after four days away so I checked my Reader for all the sketches I had recently saved for later. Shimelle came to my rescue with this great little sketch.



I searched through a bag of photos from last year and pulled out two pairs of contenders. I think I will reuse the sketch for the second pairing as well as they will not be living in the same album and it was a lovely simple sketch to play around with.

All the papers in this layout were SC exclusives either from Basic Grey or SC.  I pulled out some hessian look thickers to add to the texture of the page. I added some October Afternoon number washi and a variety of stickers and chipboard from the Dear Lizzy 5th and Frolic range.It came together really quickly.

Coffee and cake have always been my go to comfort foods. My journalling reflects that although my lactose intolerance means the coffees are soy these days, with a bit of planning I can still enjoy the same kind of treat.

Bangkok was a great adventure for us all. I need to gather my thoughts a bit more before blogging about our few days there but I am feeling a lot less pressured about the whole moving issue now. Knowledge most certainly is power.

Have any of you played with Shimelle's sketch? Please post a link in the comments. I would love to see your take.

Letting the cat out of the bag

Well the official announcement has finally been made so I can let the world know that we may be moving to Bangkok by the middle of the year. At this stage we have not really made any firm decision. There are so many variables to consider and the company is being a bit less organised than we had hoped about answering our queries. We are planning on taking a trip to Bangkok in the next few weeks to help us decide. I have been there a number of times but not in the last few years and although Tet goes for work quite often he has not really looked at Bangkok as a potential home for our family.

I am looking at it as a potential adventure and am actually quite excited about the idea of living in Thailand as it has been one of my favourite countries to visit since I was a child. I know living there might be very different and Thai is a very difficult language to learn. I will keep you posted!

I have been working away on another CHA challenge layout on the Studio Calico site. I have to say this is one of my all time favourite layouts. It came together almost exactly how I pictured it in my head which does not happen very often. I was inspired by Sasha Farina's challenge to blog from the heart and everything flowed from there.

I have mentioned in the past the difficulties we have had with Scarlett and sleep. They remain ongoing and while we occasionally get a few weeks or even a month where she sleeps through the night these periods are always short lived and we return to broken nights of sleep eventually. Our Christmas holiday has caused a real regression in her sleep and she is back in our bedroom sleeping on her mattress on the floor although most nights she ends up in our bed after multiple wake ups. It is exhausting and to be honest it has had a really detrimental impact on my health. After almost totally getting off medication for my stomach issues I am back on a daily dose and it is all down to having only three or four broken hours of sleep a night. Sigh.

My journalling reflects on the lack of sleep in our lives. I sure hope it gets better because I did not expect three years of bad sleep when I finally managed to conceive S!

The writing is actually in silver ink but it shows up quite differently on the layout.

I am really excited that I finally got my heat gun out and embossed some veneer for this layout. The glitter matched well with the Pink Paislee lettering I used and the aqua zing is a pretty good match for Scarlett's t shirt in the photo. I managed to enter this in Nik's glitter challenge and Marcy's dress up your veneer challenge as well as another entry into Kelly's use a patterned paper background.

Here are a couple of close ups of the embellie clusters.

The colours and textures really make my heart sing!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I intend to as look what the postie just dropped off!

I can see some Project Life work in my future!

Two New Friends and the Adventure Begins

I have really been missing getting my craft on so I am super excited to have finished a layout I started last month. These pictures are almost exactly a year old so it feels good to get the story told and put in the album.

The photos are of my good friend Caroline and her gorgeous wee boy Jack. We had watched him change and grow online but it was lovely to finally meet him in the flesh! He and Scarlett had a lovely time playing together. These pictures really make me realise just how much S has grown in the past year. Scary stuff indeed.

This is my first layout from the Studio Calico Sock Hop kit, with most of the papers and embellies actually coming from the Poodle Skirt add on that I purchased. I am in love with the arrow paper from American Crafts and the Sodalicious funky patterns I have used for the journalling and photo mat.

Our adventurous year is about to begin with confirmation that my husband's department is being transferred overseas. I cannot say much more at this point but the timeline for decision making is surprisingly short and we will almost certainly be leaving Singapore by the end of June. It is all a wonderful adventure is what I keep telling myself. Let's hope that is the case!

The other big change around here is that Miss S will be going to school five days a week starting in February. She will be at school from 8 until 1 those days so it is a good long session. I am really looking forward to it and I think Scarlett is too. She had a lovely first day back yesterday but was worn out after being on holiday for a few weeks. She has started taking the bus both ways this year and seems to be handling that challenge really well. I am very proud of her.

Right, I am off to have a look at my semi abandoned December Daily. I hope I am not the only one still working on one! Have a wonderful Tuesday.