You have to check out this family's Christmas Card for this year - Just Awesome!

http://www.youcantbeserious.com.au/blog/

and

PLEASE visit Lis' blog and see what hard work she has been doing in support of Children of the Forest and if you can help her out that would be fantastic - I cleaned out Gemma's wardrobe again the other day so a bag of goodies is coming your way Lis! Every little bit counts! Oh and I won't be doing the Wishing Tree at Target this year but giving something to Lis instead.

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I'd also like to say good luck to all the Year 12's sitting exams in the next few weeks - Renae has 2 down and 3 to go and then I just can't believe she will have finished school forever. It feels like only yesterday that I was in her shoes - can you remember what that feeling was like? - I felt very weird for a while.....then reality set in!

Sharon xo

Home

Wow! What a week it's been - I've learned, laughed, cried, been amazed, inspired, overwhelmed, blessed and embarassed, but not in that particular order. I seriously do not know where to begin except to say thank you to Karen, the community of Hyden and everyone who attended the Scrappin' Outback retreat last weekend, it was a huge success and a credit to Karen, Amy and their support crew of many, both scrapbookers and non-scrapbookers. I had SUCH a wonderful time! Thanks too to Kath & Kim (you know who you are) - you are both such good fun and I think I am still talking to you. I was in very good company with Lis Cassey and Gayle Smith and between us we taught 8 classes in less than 3 days, Gayle taught 4 in all - a great achievement. I was overwhelmed with the response to my classes at this retreat especially the Mixed Media Sampler. Di managed to get nearly 3 of them done on Sunday afternoon and hopefully everyone learned something they can use again and again.

I must also mention the 6 families that welcomed me into their homes and farms to photograph their gorgeous families - I had so much fun meeting you all. Your open arms made my job that much easier. I have some 3500 photos to get through, which is a little daunting but expected. I will post some sneak peeks up on here as I work through each family. So stay tuned for lots of yuminess.

As I mentioned at the Retreat I am looking at returning to the Hyden area during the April school holidays and already have 6 families names down - so if you are interested then please email me and I will put you on the list and reconfirm again late Feb - early March.

I have managed to get some rest today as my big girl had her Valedictory dinner last night and she finishes school tomorrow - well they have muck up day and are off to the beach for the day! In less than 10 days she starts her TEE and by the 13 November she will be finished school forever - wow this has crept up on me and I'm sure it won't take me long to get around the idea but I'm feeling a little old right now!

So the next month is going to be rather busy around here with editing and end of year dance concerts and school functions - hopefully I will be back with lots more to share in the coming weeks.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Three!

On Saturday I attended a 12 hour crop (I think I lasted about 10 hours) at Tomorrow's Memories - it was a lot of fun and the theme of the crop was "Australia Day" - I'll leave the rest to your imagination! Anyway the girls did a terrific job as always in hosting the day with lots of prizes, specials and FUN!

I was on a mission and managed to get 1 layout completely done and 2 others 90% finished. So this morning I finished them all off and thought I might share.....

I'm sorry if they are a little wonky but the evaporative air-con here is playing havoc with my layouts - they are straight I promise!

The girls started school yesterday - Renae Year 12 and Gemma Year 10 - and for the first time since we moved out to Bullsbrook they have a door to door bus. No more driving for me!!!!!!! You see they are at school in Ellenbrook which is about a 25 min drive each way - 2 hours in the car a day. But no more - the government finally came to the party with School Buses which run right past our front door. Yesterday, I didn't go anywhere and just enjoyed the peace and quiet at home. Very nice indeed.

Tomorrow's Memories have asked me to be their guest designer so I have been working on 2 layouts - 1 down and 1 to go - this afternoon's project. Hopefully I will be back sometime soon with some sneak peaks.

Also the lovely Karen from Scrappin' Outback is well into plans for the next Wave Rock Retreat to be held in Hyden on 27th - 29th of March 2009. If you are interested then please contact her - these weekends are awesome and such good value.

Well that's about it for now - Take care and if you have been sewltering in the heat then try and stay cool.

Proud Mum Moment!

Last night was Open Night at the girls' school. We knew Gemma was performing and Renae was helping out with recording the events on Video Camera. Gemma has been on pointe for about 3-4 months now and I really didn't know what to expect as I had not seen her dance for a while, in fact I had no idea the dance included her being on pointe - she has so many routines that she is part of including Cheer Leading that I just can't keep up! Anyway here is some of what we saw............

Her little solo on pointe in the middle of the routine. I'm very proud of both our girls and their willingness to participate, both doing something that they enjoy. Renae behind the camera (like me) and Gemma in front of the camera performing!

Busy weekend and lots of show and tell!

We had a very busy weekend with Renae's boyfriend flying back in for Boarding School yesterday and to start school today! Renae was very happy to see him again, actually they were really happy to see each other. We went and had some lunch in the city and settled him in at boarding school and stayed to have dinner with him (which I think he was glad about). Today my big girl starts Year 11 (TEE) and my baby is in Year 9 and has enrolled for 8 dance classes a week - so their schedules are going to be very full indeed. I'm looking forward to some routine again...I look forward to the beginning of the holidays but by the end I'm ready for some normality again.

I have lots of creating to show off, firstly here are my 3 layouts using the Paper Pesto February kit which you can check out here.

Secondly I started this frame as a gift for Steve at the Moonlight Scrap at Tomorrow's Memories the other week....I think I mentioned I had no idea what I was going to do until I got there. I spotted this Collections Frame kit that comes with all the chipboard bits and bobs and I have used the Kaiser Scrapbooking "Photo Friendly" range of papers to create a standing frame for my hubby. He loves it by the way!

In my haste to finish it, I left the hinges til last and snookered myself because I had no where to hide the brads as I had stuck everything together....then I thought of the new Tim Holtz Grungeboard hinges that I had purchased from Mistra at MaDscraps.....they worked perfectly - I just put the brads through and then glued the hinges down....voila!

Lastly, here is my I Heart Mirabel........

I had a couple of canvases on hand so I thought I would just play with an idea that has been in my head since Nic asked me to contribute. It didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to but it was pretty close.....the quote on the side reads "Love is a journey not a destination". You can check out the other Hearts here.

Well I think that's about it for Monday....catch you later in the week, have a good one!

School, Weekend, Paper Pesto, Thing, Junk & Kangaroos

Well, the girls went back to school yesterday and all was good except they both discovered that some of their teachers had changed....one in particular they were both looking forward to having was Mr Harris, but now they have Mr Harris' little brother Mr Harris, who apparently looks exactly like the older Mr Harris!

We are really looking forward to this weekend as we are off to Busselton for our annual Xmas in July jaunt. It's forecasted to be wet and windy but I'm quite looking forward to that too (I may come to regret that comment). The girls are pretty excited too as we haven't been anywhere this year since getting home from 3 weeks in Sydney on 5th Jan. This is quite unusual for us but Steve has been working non stop since and the opportunity just hasn't been there for us all to have a break. Sure Steve and I had our 2 day break in Albany recently but that didn't include the kids. So we are all hanging for a bit of space and change of scenery with "old" friends. I'm also looking forward to giving my camera a good working out so standby next week for some photos.


I have been scrapping, I promise, I have been working on some layouts for my submission to FK Elite Team. I have 2 so far that I am really very happy with. Hopefully next week I can work on some more.


Paper Pesto are releasing daily sneak peaks of the August kit on the blog, so go take a look, the kit looks very interesting including a wax seal! Today's reveal looks like my kinda stuff.


I have also been working on a larger project and trying to get it off the ground for sometime now but I find the goal posts keep shifting for me, or should I say I keep moving them! I think this may be indicative of the type of industry that scrapbooking is, it's forever changing and to make this "thing" work I need to focus, but how can you when there are so many new and yummy materials coming into the market place? Anyway, Steve and I had a discussion yesterday and the penny dropped regarding some things that I have been struggling with and I am sure I now have a very clear vision of what I need to achieve. Now I just need 20 more hours in the day!

Here is a sneak peak at one element of what I have in mind.


Now, you may remember sometime back (March to be exact) that I took part in the Artistic Journey Retreat and was lucky enough to do one of Michael de Meng's classes, well I think I have created a monster......Steve works out on site alot doing soil analysis so the types of properties he is working on are quite often future subdivisions, so he finds all sorts of interesting stuff like gear boxes from cars, barbed wire, shoes, tin etc. Well he came home with some amazing items the other day like these........

Now Steve is right into this, in fact when I did the class with Michael, well lets just say that I think he should have done the class not me! He has been itching to get in and put something together and again time is the major issue here, something we both need more of. I do hope he persues this soon because we are going to have to build another shed to fit it all in!




An image I wanted to share with you.....I took this the other afternoon. Across the road from where we live is a vacant 5 acre lot where mobs of kangaroos congregate to feed in the late afternoon sun (when there is sun that is). Quite often we watch the kangaroos "boxing" and commentate the action as if we were watching it on tv. Quite funny! Perhaps you have to be here to see the funny side. Anyway I wandered up there and managed to catch quite a few boxing photos but this one was the funniest.



Thanks for reading this far if you have......I probably won't post until next week now so take care and catch you then.