Category Archives: Uncategorized

Don’t miss it!

Not much fun in our house right now. Thomas is sick with croup and been clinging to Mummy every moment he can. I wasn’t at work on Friday and will be home today as well. Needless to say we didn’t have the best weekend.

The good news is that it is Hybrid Week at MDM Here are the details. Click on the image to go straight there.

Promise I will post more soon.

Thanks for stopping by.

Nicole

MIA

Haven’t been around much lately. I had a work offsite last week which put me out of contact for a couple of days and I’ve just been feeling very tired. I am one of those people who can’t go to be before 9pm, even if I am exhausted. I think it’s all those years of being told to go to bed when I didn’t want to. I am finally “rebelling”.

We’ve also been very busy on the weekends. I seriously thought things would slow down in October but it seems to be getting worse. We had a pot luck at a friend’s house on Saturday with about 5 other families (and their kids). We know most of them from our pre-natal classes when I was pregnant with Thomas so it was fun to catch up again. On Sunday we had second birthday number 132! This time it was for Ethan, one of Thomas’ friends since birth so that was fun as well – but another couple of hours spent with a whole bunch of adults and their kids. It was really a kidfest this weekend.

I am looking forward to Wednesday – my day off and the day when Thomas and I can just hang out. He has been so sweet and funny lately and I am really having fun spending time with him. He even kept himself occupied in his playroom last night while I cooked an entire meal. Haven’t made more than fish and rice in I don’t know how long. Last night’s chicken stroganoff was practically a gourmet meal!

A while ago we tried to teach Thomas to say “No Thank you” rather than NOOOOOOOO! when he didn’t want something. The last few days he has started saying “No ‘Hanks” and i is soooo cute. This morning we were walking down the stairs to his daycare and he said “Oh my gosh! That’s Amazing!” Not sure exactly what he was referring to – but cute none the less. We definitely have a little chatterbox on our hands.

As for the scrapping – I just haven’t been feeling it lately. I have been doing my Stand up and Scrap assignments (actually two for each challenge so far, and then I choose my favourite), but apart from that I have been on a little hiatus. I think with MDM closing I have been looking at how I spend my time. I am actually a little relieved that I will have some more time on my hands – time that I can spend on my other CT projects and on scrapping for myself.
A couple of CT things I have to mention.
  1. Lauren Reid is leaving Scrapartist (don’t worry she is going somewhere else) and she’s having a 35% off sale. Details here and store here.
  2. Dani Mogstad is celebrating 2 years of Design by Dani. Big savings in the store and a fabulous party bag if you spend $5 – and believe me, it is definitely worth it.
  3. Big savings are starting at MDM for the final month. Make sure you keep stopping by to pick up some goodies from the designers and find out where they are going.
Well that’s enough of my rambling today. I’ll finish with a photo because I HAVE to include something visual.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Tuesday.

Nicole

Standing Up

So I signed up for the Stand up and Scrap contest. I have no illusions of winning but could be a bit of fun and may stretch me a little. The first challenge involved brushes and the second one asks you to use different patterned papers. Neither of these are my strength. I am a fairly clean and simple scrapper so I am finding it difficult but I guess that’s the point. I won’t be able to show all of my pages until we’re done.

I do have some LOs that I CAN share.
This one is for the quote challenge at MDM. I kept trying to add more to it but it didn’t feel right so I guess this is it. 🙂 Holly also posted it on the MDM homepage as Masterpiece of the week which is very cool.


This one uses Lauren Reid’s Spookiest kit. I am not a big Hallowee person, but I guess since I now live in America I should expect at least one LO each year that shows Thomas in a costume. This is my first one. I am glad I scrapped it though because I just had those photos sitting there from Oct 2006 and thats where they would have stayed if I hadn’t tried to create a Halloween LO.

This one uses a bunch of Lauren stuff, including her NZ Naturals kit which I love. Very simple and understated with muted grungy colors. Gorgeous. I also used her wonky templates (which I will HAVE to use again) and her new Mistaken alpha. I really like this one and have to create more pages about the everyday things.

So that’s about it from me tody. I have an offsite meeting for work tomorrow and Friday but hopefully I’ll fit some scrapping and blog browsing in at the end of the day. I can’t be away for too long. 🙂

Off to think about the next Stand Up challenge now… hmmmm…

Thanks for stopping by

Nicole

Mojo Kickstart

I am blogging on Mojo to Gogo today for Lauren’s team. Drop by and check it out. Today my little piece is of mojo is some water pics I took with my brand new camera. Did I mention I bought a brand new camera? 🙂

My weekend was nice and relaxing. I really felt like I had a weekend which is very nice. Kei played golf ALL DAY on Saturday. He was gone from 9am to 7pm. Not that I’m complaining, I mean it might be his last opportunity for a while.

Thomas and I hung out at the park near our house. They had an organic baby fair which was fun. Lots of people trying to sell their holistic wares – chirpractors, midwives, lead testing etc. It was a good way to kill a few hours and really tire Thomas out. He took a 3 hour nap when we got home!

Yesterday was quiet and restful. I even took a two hour nap while Thomas was sleeping.

So nothing too exciting to report I’m afraid. I may have some news to share later this week. 😉

Have a great Monday
Nicole

A Sad Day in Digi Land

For those of you who have not heard, My Digital Muse will be closing it’s doors on November 1st. Hollly has made the difficult decision to focus on her photography and retire from digital scrapbooking.

While I will miss the community at MDM, I am glad Holly is making this decision for herself. I am also glad that MDM will not be continuing without her. I just don’t think it would be the same.

I definitely had lot of fun on the team as one of the original CT members. It was my very first CT and I think I grew as an artist and gained more confidence in my abilities. It was also fun hosting the photography challenge. If you haven’t seen this month’s you still have some time to enter and win a GC to spend on all the bargains appearing in the store over the next few weeks. Click here for details. I don’t think I’ll do one next month so get in while you can. 🙂
October should be a fun month on the site with lots of specials and goodies to go around. Make sure you drop by and bid us farewell.

Work continues on my other CTs. I have been on a little bit of a scrapping slump lately and took a rest for a few days. The good news is that I think some of my mojo has returned – just in time for the first Stand up and Scrap challenge. It’s a tough one but I have some ideas brewing. I have no illusions about winning the competition with more than 500 participants, but I will definitely have fun and learn something in the process.

Here’s a couple of layouts I completed this week. I have another that I can show tomorrow with Dani’s gorgeous new kit. I will also be posting over on the Girl Talk blog tomorrow so make sure you check it out.

This first LO is for the challenge on Nancy’s blog this week. It uses a whole buch of photos I thought I had lost in the CF card disaster so the $40 recovery was definitely worth it – especially if I happen to win the challenge. 🙂 Of course I haven’t won one yet, but you never know… Whether I win or not, I have managed to create some great pages thanks to the challenge prompts. I don’t usually use much yellow in my pages but I love this one. So much fun.

This one is for the current challenge with Jen Wilson’s new line. A little more feminine than usual.
Oh, and one of my LOs is being lifted over at JW this week. I won a $5 GC for the honor. Just in time to purchase some of the new goodies. 🙂 I love being lifted. It’s so much fun to see what others do with my basic design. Some of the Lifts with a Twist pages are amazing!

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day and… don’t forget my challenge. 🙂

Nicole

Great News!

My photos are saved! I paid $40 for a program that rescued my photos – even some that I had deleted off the camera on Friday (not that I wanted to keep them but good to know I can salvage if I ever want to).

I am so happy. And the $40 was worth it – even for just this little gem.

I am off to return the card today. I ordered another (different) card through Amazon which should arrive in the next few days and then I can start using my camera again – (almost) worry free.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes. I think it really helped. 🙂

Having a spa night with the girls this evening which should be a lot of fun. I of course won’t get any more scrapping done – I think it’s been about 5 days which is a lifetime for me. Just need to get out of this funk. Hopefully my mojo will return just in time for Stand up and Scrap which begins tomorrow.

Anyway, just wanted to share the good news. Must get back to work now.

Thanks for stopping by

Nicole

Good News and Bad News

The Bad News
I finally received my brand new Canon Digital Rebel XTi and I LOVE it. But there is a problem. The camera arrived on Friday so I ran out right away and bought a SanDisc 4gb CF card so I could use the camera right away. I made sure I did my research about the right card and read many sites that said the Extreme II was a good card for personal use.

On Friday afternoon I played around with the camera and it was working beautifully. On Saturday I had my son’s 2nd B’day party and, when I reviewed the pics on Saturday night I was so happy with the results.

Then I went out on Sunday and took some more pics at a local fountain with my boys. When I tried to review the files that I had just taken I got an “Image Corrupted” message. I looked throught he rest of the pics and about 50% of them were missing – including a whole bunch from my son’s birthday party.

I am devastated. I have since read some reviews on Amazon that mention a bad batch of this type of CF card. I found a card reader at work and I am going to try and recover some of the files tonight. I hope I can get some more of them back because there were some of Thomas eating cake that were so precious.

So far SanDisk hasn’t been very helpful. They sent me an email with a list of “why this may be user error” responses which just made me mad. I am going to try some of their suggestions tomorrow and then send them a nasty message.

I can’t believe it – I have had my camera for two days!!! Anyway, apologies for the long whiny post. I just had to vent.

The Good News
1. I did get this photo of Thomas in his Blues Clues ears. So cute! If I can recover some more photos I’ll share them tomorrow

2. Thomas’ birthday was a lot of fun. The weather held out and the kids had a great time (now if I can only recover the photographic proof). Only down side – someone gave him a gift that is, in a word, obnoxious. It’s very loud and has no volume button or off switch. They are due to have a baby very soon themselves so I may have to re-gift somewhere down the line.

3. I am on a winning streak. My luck in didgi land has been in a full upward swing the last couple of weeks. Good thing too, because my mojo seems to be on a little hiatas right now.

  • I won a weekly challenge for Jen Wilson’s Attire/Accessorize contest which means my LO was voted the best one for that week. You can see the LO here.
  • Then I won some cool photo overlays from Traci Murphy just from posting on her thread at My Scrapbook Art.
  • And then on Saturday night I won a book from Nancy Comelab. Looks pretty cool too, all about sourcing your inner creativity which I really need right now. I also exchanged a few emails with the lady herself. She is such a sweetheart and has been going through a tough time lately. THEN she left a comment on my blog. I was a double winner – well triple if you count the emails.
  • Then I was browsing my blog list today and happened across my own LO at Lifts with a Twist! Yes, people are lifting me this week. I feel so honoured. Click here to see the post.

4. So I have been winning all over the place. What I haven’t been doing is scrapping. There may be a reason for that too, but I can’t officially share it quite yet. It’s also very good news and some of you may be able to guess. 🙂

5. It’s my Mum’s birthday today – Happy Birthday Mum!

So I guess I ended this one on a positive note. That’s me – the ultimate optomist. 🙂

Have a great day everyone. 🙂

Nicole

The big day has arrived!

My camera is coming today – whoo hoo! I usually work from home on Fridays but since I am having the camera delivered to the office I just HAD to come in so I could take it home and start playing. It feels like Christmas.

It’s also grab bag weekend at MDM so maybe it IS christmas. 🙂

We are having Thomas’ birthday party this weekend and the weather is looking a little dodgy. I certainly hope it clears up so we can enjoy our time at our UNCOVERED picnic area at the park. It’s close to home so our house is the backup venue, but I paid to reserve space at the park so I hope we can have it there.

Is this bad? I had someone come in to clean my house on Wednesday. I always feel so guilty especially because Wednesday is my day off and I did spend sopme time sitting on the couch while she cleaned. Oh, and I forgot to give her a tip -ooops! It just doesn’t cross my mind. You don’t tip very often in Australia and it’s certainly not expected so sometimes I forget. I don’t think she did a great job anyway. I am still finding things that she didn’t even touch – like the windowsils in the kitchen. Next time I’ll just clean myslef when I can find a spare 5 hours…

Wow, this is a boring post. 🙂 Best finish it off with a couple of layouts. Click on the image for credits.

This one is for current lifts with a twist challenge. The original is by Davita who is on Lauren’s CT. For a little background: Thomas was given this necklace as a present at his friend Riley’s (he calls it his “Birthday Present”). He wouldn’t take it off for about a week. Then he found a headband of mine, took of his shirt and this was the result.

This one is for the MDM SOTB challenge – to scrap a new place in your hometown. Somewhere you have been meaning to visit for some time.


Well, that’s all folks. have a great weekend.

Nicole

Huge!

This is HUGE! I just placed an order for a brand new Canon Rebel Xti Digital SLR. I can in all honesty say that if I had not become so addicted to digital scrapbooking then I would not have a $700 charge on my credit card right now. I tell my husband to blame the digi scrapping community – especially the enablers over at My Digital Muse with their beautiful photos.

I am so excited! It should arrive by the end of the week – just in time for Thomas’ birthday party on Saturday. Not that I am thinking for a moment that I will learn how to use in just one day.

Anyway, look for some blurry photos on Monday as proof of my new purchase.

Layouts

I have completely lost track of the layouts I have and haven’t posted on this blog. Here are a few I am almost sure I haven’t posted before but please forgive me if any of this seems repetitive. 😉

I created this one for the current challenge on Nancy Comelab’s blog. The challenge was to create a layout about an event in your life without using photos. This was a tough one for me. Thankfully I had a lot of time to think about while I sat in traffic for almost two hours yesterday on my way home (yes, two hours! There was an accident that closed down all but one lane of 1-5).

I forgot how helpful it is to actually have some time alone to think (Now how’s that for looking onthe bright side of rush hour traffic :)). I have been planning to document Thomas’ birth story for…ohhh.. two years. I still plan to write EVERY detail down but I think this will be a great LO to accompany it. It really talks about the roller coaster ride of feelings during his birth. I love how it turned out. Click on the image for a larger view, credits and better look at the journaling.

This LO is using the new exotic adventures kit – a collab by Nancy Comelab, Chrsitine Renee, Tiff Brady and Emily Merritt. Such a cute kit! Click on the image yada yada yada.

I tried something new for this one. I actually used my tablet PC as a tablet and created my own “hand-cut” shapes. I really like the effect. The papers are from Tara Sroka at MDM. Again, image is clickable for more deets.

And this one’s just pretty. I used Dani Mogstad’s Saturday Market kit. The kit is pretty and girly (although I have used it for a boy LO) that I just had to scrap some pics of my favourite flower.

That’s about all I have to report today…and that’s enough right? Thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Nicole