Getting 'Stuck' into my scrapping ...

Friday night is my main scrapping night - I shut myself in my craft room, have the Friday night crime series show on TV and scrap away.  What wonderful therapy. Last night I again concentrated on a couple of sketch challenges - this time for Stuck Sketches. 

This one is for their July 1st sketch.  I am desperately trying to reduce my stash and use up some of my very large pile of patterned paper and embellishment stash - man I could open a store with the amount of stuff I have !  I'm also trying to do layouts using my box of  one-off - yet to be scrapped photos.  This one is a cute photo of Rachel after we had been to the school fete - she had been to the face-painting tent and been done up as a pussy cat just like Sox, our cat of the time.

This one is for the July 15th sketch - again using bits and pieces and old photos.  Gosh I still remember how Rachel would crash in the car on the way home from school, totally zonked after a heavy day in the infants department and there would be my baby, sleeping right along side of her - seems like only yesterday.

Just Scrapping my Boy ...

Continuing on my theme of getting a few layouts done through challenges, I ventured over to Scrap the Boys to participate in the first of their July challenges.  This is a really great site that is now back after having a bit of a break.  It offers wonderful inspiration for boys pages.

The first challenge was to use a portrait shot and record some vital statistics of your 'boy' right now.  Loved how they asked us to included some quirky facts as well - everything about Chris is quirky lol !!  and I managed to use one of those school wallet sized school portrait photos - you know the ones - in packets, in drawers all over the house!  multiplying each year like mice - lol.

The second was to use stamps somewhere on your layout.  Mine are in the title and journaling card.

Small things ...

Outside my window … it is raining, I can hear the water as it falls down through the drainpipe at the corner of the house. It’s a comforting sound.

I am thinking about ... all the things I really need to get in order around the house. Three weeks of school holidays takes it’s toll.

I am thankful for... my back is finally starting to come good. It has been over a weeks since it went out and it has been a very painful experience.

I am reading ... 'Sizzling 16' by Janet Evanovich.  Just picked it up at the library this afternoon after being on the reservation waitlist for quite a while.  So looking forward to getting into this.

I am going ... to go to bed as soon as I finish this post. Tired. Tired. Tired.  We had an electricity cut last night and while it was fortunate it happened close to bedtime anyway when the power finally came back on in the wee small hours - guess which little bunny had to get up to turn everything off that was left running !!

A challenging time ...

Here's a few layouts I have been working on over the last week or so - all for various challenges.

This one is for the monthly sketch challenge over on Scrap the Girls

One for Scraplets

One of Peta on SFS.

Showing a birthday cake over at Scrap Boutique

Challenge #137 over on How Much Is Too Much

Sketch challenge over at Forever Always

Cat capers ...

It's school holidays and I haven't managed to get as much "me" time this week - I wonder why?  I did put together this little layout for How Much Is Too Much Challenge #136 - 4 word title, 5 or more colours and No flowers.  It came out well I think. 

It's all in the eee's ...

Came home this afternoon to find a message written on our whiteboard on the fridge.

Cheese rolling competition – Thursday 4pm. Don’t forget to bring the cheese!

"A little joke",  I thought and asked Christopher what he knew about it.

“Wasn’t me” he says. “Must be Rachel – who else would spell cheese with a double e?”.

After l picked myself up off the floor where I had collapsed from laughing so much I informed him gently that this was indeed how you spelt cheese.

“Oh .....”, he says.

Supersized them ...

Being school holidays I took Christopher and his friend, Jai to see 'Shrek' today, both kids thought it was pretty good and I'll admit there were a few choice moments.  When we got to this scene ...

Christopher leans over and says, "Hey Mum, does he remind you of anyone?".

He couldn't possible mean our rather oversized Mr Zo now could he??

It was a challenge ...

I have been working hard the last couple of weeks - thanks mainly to Peta who inspired me with a blog post a while back about the virtues of doing layouts for challenges.  She's a really busy girl - runs a scrappy business from home, raises four children as well as working and I figured that if she could find the time and incentive to do this why on earth couldn't I?  So I did.  I did 13 layouts for 13 challenges - I may not win anything and that really doesn't matter because I didn't do it for that reason - I did it as a challenge in itself and because I've been feeling a bit flat lately - I was thinking I was losing my scrapbooking mojo.  Doing the layout challenges was fun, it was inspiring and I'm happy to say I don't feel flat anymore. Thanks Peta for the inspiration.