a New Look ...

I gave my blog a little make over. Now that I know what to do with the title, I will design something more elegant !!! Last night I moved all my digi scrap stash and photo's onto an external hard drive, something that I have been meaning to do for ages now.
For 'My Freedom' the blog prompt was "What is in your suitcase", it was fun reading all my fellow class mates blogs, besides all the normal stuff like clothes and underwear ect... I always ensure I have my hairdryer with me, nothing worse than having fizzy hair on holiday.

Time and Travel ......

Today for Shimelle's 'My Freedom' class, the blog prompt is about what would we do and where would we go if we could travel in time for just one day.
This got me thinking because I would like to do so much. Firstly I would like to travel forward in time, I am not to sure how far forward, just far enough I suppose until space travel is available to us common people. This is want I want to see and where I want to see it :


Then I would like to travel back in time so that I could spend just one more day with my mother, there is so much I want to tell her still and find out about, mind you a day would not be enough. I miss you Mom !!!
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I really love these two topics that Shimelle has given us to ponder about, I have done loads of thinking, now all I have to do is make a note of what I thought about.
Today while traveling into work, I had the time to just sit and think about my earliest clear memory, this has brought back many memories that were stored and filed away. I must be honest, I have always envied my sister because she has always had such vivid clear memories of our childhood, now I know how she retrieves this information; the same way as what I did today by just sitting and thinking about it all.
I can already see that this class is going to be amazing! All I have to do now is remain focused and make the time.

Can you believe it is already July...

I cannot believe that it is July already !! We have been in the UK now going on 8 months, it feels like just the other day we were packing up our lives in South Africa and getting ready to move. The last couple of months have actually been a blur, I think it may have something to do with the fact that it took 6 weeks from the time I got the signed job offer to us getting on a plane headed for Heathrow. When I look back now, it was amazing how Sean and I actually coped with everything. Things are settling down for us now as a family and we just loving every moment being here and making this our home.

I thought I would share two of my LO's that I have done recently. I have made a commitment to myself to do more meaningful layouts, even if they are simple. I really want to capture my thoughts and feelings versus doing just pretty LO's all the time.

Emma is such a little miss, she loves the camera and loves posing for me. She thinks it is a game to see the photo I have just taken immediately on the LCD screen of the camera. Yesterday when I showed her this LO I had done of her she said ' Wow ! Mummy that is beautiful !! '




The LO above is my eldest son Liam, this is the type of LO I want to do all the time when it comes to the journaling, this is what I call meaningful journaling. The journalling portray's my feelings and thoughts.

I joined Shimelle's 'My Freedom' online class today. I can't wait to get going on this, and yes I am going to commit to doing it now and not leaving it for later! I have decided that because I am on a stash diet I am going to make my album from my own stash too.

Crop Night

I went to my first MK Scrappers crop last night. All the ladies just made me feel like I had been part of the group since inception. I think all scrappers are wonderful, there is just something that makes us all gel together. I wonder what it could be ?
Even though I was late (horribly late !! thanks to the train being delayed, my TomTom getting stuck just before I was about to go, the PC running virus scan whilst I am frantically trying to get the address of the crop, note the address was originally saved on the Tom Tom ) I sill managed to get there and finish a quick LO !!! Had lots of laughs.

This is what I achieved last night :



I have started a little creative note book, where I make notes about what the kids say, what I want to scrap about, stuff that inspires me, the source of my inspiration can be from emails I get from my friends, something I see in a magazine or on the internet, can you believe I even went as far as drawing some sketches that I liked.
I have had the intentions to do this for a while now and wish I had started it sooner.

Today is the 25th and it is "Scrap your day". So far I have only managed to put my book together. I have got some photos for April and May but I don't think I have enough because on both days I forgot it was the 25th and what needed to be done. I think I will start my book from this month and work forward from here onwards. Or I could just scrap various photo's from April and May and not just a specific day.
I am happy to be at home today, I am supposed to be working from home, but have no connection into the office so I guess today I am on leave then. On leave means Scrapping!!!!

Here is my LO that I did for the UKS challenge last week, don't you just love my little man?



I need to confess that I broke my stash diet, see what on ! My very first purchase of Stamp n Up products, and I am sure not the last!!

Something different, a card or two!!

I promised myself that I was going to try something different and do a card or two. Well if you are anything like me you land up buying "stuff" with the intention of doing something with it. But sometimes, more often than not the "stuff" gets added to your other "stuff" otherwise know as "stash" and maybe if you lucky you might just use it sometime in the near future. Well that is the intention anyway !!
I have got such an addiction for paper, ink and scrapbooking stash it is not funny. I bought a 'Ranger Clear Resist Pad " ages ago ! Possibly a year ago if not longer, at the time I had no idea what to do with it but the name sounded cool and I had to have it ! Well today was the day I pulled it out and played a bit and this is the results. I first stamped the mask images with clear resist ink on glossy paper, dried it with my heat gun and then coloured in the background with Distress Inks. I must be honest I really really really like the effect !!

Fathers Day !!

I hope all the daddy's out there had a fabulous day !!!

I managed one LO today for the UKS weekly challenge. What I love about these challenges is it makes you think out the box. I would never have scrapped this photo of me if it wasn't for this challenge, it is possibly the only one I have of me as a teenager and would have sat in an old fashioned album for the rest of its days. Have you often thought as you get older that no matter how many birthdays have pasted that you still the same person ,with the same thoughts, dreams and aspirations as you were years ago. Well I know I am, maybe the only difference is is that I am wiser because of life experiences. Other than that I cannot think that I feel any different today to the way I felt 20 years ago. Maybe one day I will get to a stage where I can say I feel old. At them moment I can't.

I do make cards too

Card making and stamping was what I started with. I used to go to a little shop in Parkhurst ( JHB South Africa ) literally every weekend for classes and inspiration. This then lead on to greater things as in scrapbooking. I definitely do have an addictive nature because I have so many stamps and card making supplies over and above my scrapbooking stash !!! I was thinking this morning while blog reading that I really do need to make some cards again. Here is one of the cards I did for the UKS Cybercrop Card SWAP. I used Tim Holtz Distress inks to make the back ground before stamping and embossing the image of the Buffalo.