Bella butterfly

Last year some time I won a name this stamp competition run by Bizzy Bec, now while I have used this stamp a few times I have never posted a card with it on, tut tut. With Bec having just drawn the winner of the next lot of name your stamp comp I had thought I had better get off my slack butt and do something, so here she is Bella butterfly. The photo is at a funny angle because I raced outside in the rain, it was a matter of sit the card on the gardening table, shoot one shot and bolt back inside, it was that wet. Previously I have used softer girlier colours with her but today I discovered these SU papers while searching through my paper stash for inspiration and decided to go with them. I realised after posting this that I had forgotten to put a flower in her hair, I have a tiny brown one that would have gone perfectly, I'll have to add that later. Just paying with this terribly over exposed shot of a pot of ranuculas that is sitting at our front door, crap photo, but the flowers are so pretty.

Some stuff...

A little bit of a redo for this layout, only added a few buttons and stamped the play all day circle but I feel a bit better about it now, it's still simple but at least it feels a bit more finished than before.

Ooops, forgot about the reverse loading for blogger photos. These are some of the butterflies I stamped and embossed with white embossing powder on the layout below.

A closer view of some of the stamping and elements, the heart is acrylic backed with p paper and stamped with the family stamp from the hero arts original definitions set with white stazon. The quote is from an Ali Edwards set embossed with butter zing(love this colour, so soft and well, buttery)

Something a little different from my usual layouts. Used lots of stamping and embossing. It was also good to use older products, the PP is one that has been out for quite some time from MM(except for the background, it's MM too but not so old) and the butterfly and definition stamps from hero arts have been in my drawer for years. the other stamps are Ali Edwards by technique Tuesday and Heidi Swapp. I even used vellum, something I haven't done in ages. It's one of those layouts that looks better IRL, or maybe it's just my photography.

Yesterday we took Seamus for a walk down to the swamp to catch tadpoles (yes, we are a catch and release family, at least they will be released soon, it's good for the kids to see the changes the little tadpole's bodies go through to become a frog, takes longer than a kiss from a Princess,lol)
After catching them with him for a while I layed down under his beautiful wattle tree and enjoyed the feeling of the spring sunshine.

Back again

From our little break. Had a wonderful time, caught up with lots of family and friends, got to rub some beautiful pregnant tummies (two of my nieces and my nephew's fiance are all expecting, one of them less than three weeks away)baby sat my almost two year old nephew, (gotta love a spread out family, my nieces and nephews on mine and Bren's side of the family range from under two through to thirtysix), sat by the river, walked on the beach, drank lots of cuppas, took lots(and lots) of photos and generally had a lovely busy time.

the river mouth, that's Seamus walking towards me, the others boys are in the background.

(not so) baby Xave

In honour of world card making day/weekend...

I did a layout,lol, well at least it involved using paper and glue... a quick, simple page, came together so quickly. Knowing me I will probably go back and add a little, I'm thinking maybe some buttons but for the moment this is it 'cause I have to go pack. I taking the three younger boys plus 1 to the coast for a few days. Bren and Jacko get to bach here while I enjoy strolls on the beach and some fishing(not that the fishing would excite either of them, they are not big fans, me I just love the excuse to kick back with a rod and a good book by the water).
Woo roo till later in the week...
Oh and I decided while I've been typing this that I need to put a tab on the top of the photo block with a date or something on it, mmmm, may be a bit more work for this one. Cheers,
Sue.

How would you spend $250

Check out this comp here. Cottage cutz are giving away a $250.00 voucher from their store, wow could I do some damage with that. I loooove my dies...

Wonders never cease

I made something today, just a little card but it felt good to get into the creative groove again. With three teenage boys in the house it means there is a lot of interest in teenage girls,lol. The boys all have a good group of friends both male and female and we are finding they are being invited to celebrate quite a few birthdays with the girls. Having boys I don't have a lot of teen girl based stamps, heck I don't have many teen boy based stamps either, so when I saw a link to these digi images on Margie's blog I knew they would be perfect for girlie cards. The digi stamps are quite decently priced so ideal for a stamp that I don't plan to use lots and lots, I just can't justify paying for rubber that I only plan to use once or twice (now that's not to say there are not stamps in my stash that have only been used lightly or not at all, just that when I bought them I really intended to use them more that I do ;-) I think maybe I'm not the only one out there???) Any way these are rather cool and it seems a few companies are going this way, pink cat studio and hero arts are two that come to mind as well as the linked company above. It makes it easier for those of us who live on the other side of the world who love our stamps but don't like having to pay huge shipping costs and don't like the wait for them to arrive. Pay and wallah, you have your image ready to re size and print however you want, on whatever you want ,whenever you want, however many times you want, gotta love that. Papers-cosmo cricket border punch-Martha Stewart alpha stamps-hero arts speech bubble die-quickutz
And because I seem to be doing lots of photo post lately, my baby.

just bee hapy

Today I learned how to...

How to use the live view function on my camera. I confess I have had this camera for almost a year now and this is the first time I have even attempted to use it, it will certainly not be the last, at least with macro stuff any way. I love that I can focus on an area, then zoom in and see if I really am as focused as I thought, then take the shot, super cool. It pays to do a little research sometimes... I have actually, after finding out about this, ordered a disk with three hours of tutorials on the 50D. I am visual so being able to sit and watch with my camera and note pad on my lap should with any luck be great and a worthwhile investment. Oh and by the way, thank you Donna for the packet of ranuculas bulbs, they are just starting to flower and I love them...

Yellow ranuculas, the centre reminds me of a cats eye. Red ranuculas bud

I missed the centre focus here when the wind blew but I love these little red flowers so much I have put them on anyway, any one know what they are called?

Just a little yellow daisy laying on the grass

All shot using an 85mm 1.8 lens with an extension tube.

Today I also loaded my page for the scraperlicious challenge
here

Boys 'n water

They just go together...

Contemplating making the plungeAnd they're in
Braving the cold



And then it all broke loose

(this is my favourite photo of the day even though it is over exposed, love those happy faces)


And even small dogs love the mud and water.

Just 'cause I thought the weeds growing on the side of the road looked pretty.

Yesterday we decided it was about time we took a trip out to Mullinger's swamp, a few kms out the road. I had never visited it before and even though the boys had been they have never seen it this full of water before. We packed up lunch, towels and some changes of clothes(I have been around boys long enough to know that there is a natural magnetism between them and water and mud) It made my heart happy to see my two youngest and three of their friends having so much fun and being so free. We did take some yabby nets out with us but had no luck with them which didn't seem to bother any of us too much. I think it may be a little early yet for them to be crawling or maybe it was the excessive noise level that frightened them off,lol. Tomorrow we plan to go out to Bool Lagoon, another largish body of water near home that has been empty for several years but is hopefully filling up this season, and do a little bird and nature watching. I love the feeling at the end of the day when you have had an active time out doors, tired but somehow energised at the same time.

Prize...

Wow have you seen Cathy Z's blog? She is offering a cricut expression plus four cartridges as a random prize for donating to charity water . Wouldn't you just love to win one and know that you are doing something worthwhile as well?

I love the rain...

I kind of figured since my creative output lately has been almost zero that I had at least better put a few photos on here just so things aren't totally neglected.

I seem to have a thing for photographing snails lately, or maybe it's that at least I know they aren't going to rush away on me,lol.

Water is so pretty

Saying hooroo to winter

by making the most of the few cold days left and baking. Seamus and I made banana bread, not sure which is better, the smell or the taste. And enjoying the last batches of rustic winter soups (pumpkin, cauliflower and bacon,mmmm)
We are beginning to see more of this


and then you get days like this that are all four seasons in one day.
Joe competing in the long jump event at the SAPSASA athletics carnival (we used to call it inter school sports) one of five events he was selected for.

An update Seamus

I had a message on the answering machine this afternoon from the respiratory specialist we took Seamus to see in Adelaide last week(he has been dubbed the nice Dr because he was exactly that, the first one who really sat and talked to Seamus himself and didn't ridicule the ideas we had as to what it could be, even going so far as to order extra blood tests on some things we were concerned about). He was meant to go back to him next week to be put under an anesthetic and have a look deeper into his bronchial tract, turns out we can cancel that, he has had whooping cough. Makes me kinda mad because he was tested for this a few weeks into the cough here locally and the Dr told us it was negative, ahhhhh, someone must not have been doing there job properly somewhere. All that time off school, all the money, all of it could have been prevented quite early on if it had been picked up. I am waiting to speak to the Dr to find out more but we are quite relieved, cross at the mess up early on but relieved that it is nothing more sinister, my imagination was starting to run a little on all the horrible things it could have been. Once Paddy has his tonsils out in December I Hope our illness run will be over for a while, we have been to the Dr more in the last few months than the entire 7 1/2 years we have lived here. the kids are generally quite hail and hearty.

On other news these two, my niece and her husband(A photo I took at their wedding early last year)are due to give birth to their first baby within the next few weeks, so very exciting, can't wait. I hope I get to take some baby photos...

The action for the rounded corners with a black border is from here

Bits and pieces

I haven't been blogging much lately, i will use the common excuse of being too busy. have started back work a couple of days a week and it has thrown a temporary spanner in my routine, I will have to get back into the working Mum thing real fast. I also think the fact that I have had Seamus home with me for soooo long hasn't helped at all. We counted today, 72 days since he first started coughing, we have dubbed it the thousand dollar cough, because by the time we add up specialists, blood tests, xrays and Dr's visits it will be that and then some. I don't really care about the costs though. I just want him well again and doing the things normal boys do at this age. He is feeling yucky about himself too, poor kid, he feels tired all the time and gets cranky quite easily because of it, not his normal state of being, he has also put on weight because of his inactivity which is getting him down. Keep telling him as soon as he is back to running around again he will be fine. We are off to Adelaide tomorrow to the ENT Dr to put a camera down his throat. It's been a process of elimination. Paddy will come with us too as the same Dr will be the one who will take his tonsils out. Other than that the rest of us are well, thank goodness, touch wood etc...

This little bundle arrived at my door the other day, gotta love etsy. The colours are gorgeous autumnal shades ( see Coco, I used that word,lol)with little owls and apples and trees. I am going to make a chenille quilt(I think that's the name of it anyway, it's not made of chenille, were you join the pieces gets that effect) 'cause it is quick and fairly easy to make and that is just down my alley. I don't have the time or the patients to do a large complicated project. Bren picked me freesias from our garden, a lovely reminder of the warmer days to come, not that I don't love winter, it's my favourite season but early spring is great too, before it gets too hot and there is still lots of moisture around but you get the odd day to feel the sunshine on your face. The weather never worried me back home when we lived by the coast because even in the middle of summer we still had reasonably regular rainfall adn a fresh evening breeze, here is just hot and dry and I hate hot and dry with a passion, no desert dwelling for this girl.

Lots of blown out areas in this, it was really windy and kept blowing the shade of the tree out of the way and blowing the flowers over,lol, don't care I still think they are pretty.

Proof of organic gardening practices,lol


The coughing boy himself

Saturday night was spent at the Marks' for a final farewell dinner. Our family is going to miss them and I am going to cry. It takes me a long time to make a really good friends, that's me I guess. I envy people who can breeze in and have every one a bestie for life in minutes. I'm not one of those people. Not that I don't get along well with most people it's just that those real, lasting friendships take me time to nurture and grow. Kathryn is one of those people who I have known for several years(four and a half to be exact) but have grown to love and trust more over the last few years, and now she is leaving. I am happy for her to be moving to a new town, that part is all very exciting but I will miss her like crazy. We all had a lovely time Saturday night, the men drank red wine and talked (and talked, any woman would have been proud to chat continuously for that long,lol) the kids hung out, watched DVDs and ate, then Mum's and kids played cards then we all went outside for sparklers.

this shot of Dan reminds me of the lines of that song whose name I have temporarily forgotten "I see the light surrounding you"

three sparklers at once

I could say several not so polite things about Joseph having two heads/faces

but I shall keep them to myself :-)



What a sparkler looks like held still.

Well that's it, think I have caught up with most of what has been happening, can't wait to get back into the creative groove again, after this week hopefully I will have a little time back to myself.

Cheers

Sue.

Oh and sorry if the typing is a little off, my finger and a sharp knife had disagreement last night.

My boy loves to draw...

The Port Fairy light house by Joseph (aged 13)Excuse the quality of the scan, some of those vertical smudgy marks to the left of the light house showed up darker than they are IRL.

Thanks Em

As I was browsing my favourite blogs today I read on Em's that she had tagged me and awarded me with a beautiful blog award, how exciting.
When you receive this "Beautiful Blog Award" you are to list five things you like to do and pass it along to five other deserving blogs.Here are my 5

Well this is one easy thing to list, there are so many things I enjoy doing
-Paper crafts, an obvious one
-Learning about photography and photoshop
-Hanging out with good friends
-Snuggling with hubby
-Spending time by myself, I love company but I also love time by myself.

Hard to narrow it down to just five, another thing that is hard to narrow down is the list of five blogs I love.
I will start with Donna's , I know Em has already given her this award but don't you think she deserves another?
Sandie , my very talented friend, fellow photography club member, excellent cook and all around good gal.
Coco another uber talented lady who lives too far away.
Melissa Goodsell Scrapbooker, cook, sewer, she does the lot and she has the luck of living in beautiful Tasmania, her blog is always an inspiring read.
And last but certainly not least is my good friend and sanity saver Kathryn who assures me is going to blog much more when she moves :-) not that I want her to go, she is so much my go to person, I think because she reminds me so much of my big sister and I am going to miss her beyond measure when she leaves in a few short weeks, thank goodness for the net.

there are so many other blogs that I love to read, you should see my google reader list but it would take pages to write the rest down and we are only allowed five.

Cheers

ETA, Seamus read this post and asked why I didn't add spending time with him and the boys in my list of five favourites, funny kid, had to explain to him that it was only meant to be a list of five and not necessarily the top five things I enjoy most. Any way I thought I had better add a number six for his benefit and publically state that I enjoy hanging out with my boys(most of the time any way,lol)

Is it wrong

That the arrival of this at my front door so should make me so happy, I hope not???After being quite disappointed at the lack of variety at last weeks scrap and stamping fair in Adelaide I came home and did an online order from Anna's craft cupboard Lots of Cosmo cricket and October afternoon goodness, these two would probably have to be my favourite paper companies, their colours make me smile. They were the main things I wanted on our little day trip and two of the many things absent. I didn't buy one single stamp for the whole day, must almost be a record,lol. I must say that Camelot did make up for the craft fair, but still no Cosmo Cricket or October afternoon. I have to admit that i think the reason I purchased these stamps is because of the little camera. I went searching for one the other day, even checked out some clip art and still couldn't find a pic of a camera I liked, until now that is...

these little journal blocks are sooo cute.

Oh, and a photo of Seamus, just because.

Cheers

Í survived

Distressed frame and textures from coffeeteaphotography

the worst bout of flu or any illness for that matter that I have ever had, which either means it was a really bad flu or I've never been truly sick before,lol, whichever, I'm just glad it's over. I really think the decent weather the last few days has helped and the kind words from you girls too(you know who you are). All the boys were back at school today too which is a mega relief.



Wednesday night saw Sandie and I pop along to the first ever meeting of the Naracoorte photo club (the name may change yet, but that is to be addressed in next months meeting) 15 photo enthusiast turned up with a few apologies as well. I am really looking forward to this club and learning along with a group of like minded people. We are a varied bunch ranging from beginners right through to ex commercial photographers and even a photography teacher. I'd like to think maybe I might slot in somewhere in the middle :-) Thursday morning I made us (the group) a blog to share our little adventures on and keep a record of how we develop along the way. Can't wait to see it start to grow as we set (and hopefully meet) the monthly challenges put forth.

In other fun news I'm off to Adelaide on Sunday for a girls day out, shopping, chatting, laughing, eating, all things we do so well. Can't wait. I'm off, still can't stay too long on the computer yet as it is still making me a little dizzy, ahhhh, what if that never changes.

Cheerio

You know it's bad when...

you can't even drag your sorry butt to the computer for days. Our family minus 1 has been out for the count with the flu, and boy what a flu. It's been body aches, tremors, pounding jack hammer head aches, throwing up, constant feeling of nausea, coughing, sneezing, weird fever induced dreams, we had the lot. Bren was the least affected and has thankfully been able to go back to work today and for some strange reason it decided to completely bypass Jackson. I never ever want to be that sick again and I'm quite sure that goes for the rest of the family as well. OK, I really need to go back to bed but just wanted you to know that if I am in contact with you often and I haven't been than that is why. hope this garble all makes sense, still a little spacey.

Popped outside for a while

to try and get a few shots, not the best time of year for this type of thing, too windy and not enough variety in the garden, a few more weeks and everything should be blooming. We have a few Daffodils and Jonquils popping up and of course there are always the daisy bushes, my favourite flower, simple true and honest, well that's how I see them anyway, and there always seem to be a few petunias strangling around from last year.

Daisy Wattle leaf

Petunia

Vintage Johnquills

Hope I spelt that right. today I played with a set of actions from here , they are a vitagey washy set, a look that seems to be popular at the moment and best of all they are free. I've only just started following the blog recently but so far have found it very informative, she is a Mum (a very clever one mind you) not a photoshop pro so I love that she speaks English not Photoshopian(a whole other language that can be really hard to understand) I'm sure I didn't do the set justice but they are really quite cool. A set you have to play with a bit which I enjoy. For some reason my resize and sharpen for the web action seems to be desaturating my images a little at the moment but I am only playing and sharing so you get the idea. This was the ruby red action with red layer opacity dropped a bit.

told ya it was simple...

I may do another one yet but for the time this will have to do. As I said in the previous post I went simple because of the amount of words. The title alone, Is this how the world sees me, because this is how I see the world? is long enough and then you add the journaling, of which I am quite proud, not the words themselves, they are just ramblings, but the fact that I was able to shape it so I could insert the circle. It is not showing up here but the white cardstock is from the bazzill Swiss dot range, love it, so is the aqua but I think that shows up a little better than the white. I didn't use many products here at all, only cardstock, brads, and some black ink, but did use a few tools(love my tools) Cardstock-bazzill swiss dot(aqua, white), Aussie scrap source(black and kraft)

Brads-FTI

Stamps-Stampin up and making memories

Ink-versafine

Alphabet dies-various quickutz

Punches-Fiskars (border punch), stampin up(curly label punch) and EK success(circle).

All done

One of the benefits of staying at home with sick kids (there has to be some doesn't there?) is that I get to hang out in my nook a little more than usual, that's when I'm not running around with anti bacterial wipes trying to kill some of those germs that are lurking around our home at the moment or finding ways to entertain a getting bored ten year old and two coughing snuffling teenagers. any way it means that I have finished my scraperlicious challenge page. This months theme is all about you, which is me,lol. I went really, really simple on this one, no inked edges (yes I hear a collective gasp) no extra embellishments (except for three tiny brads) and only the date stamped. I had lots of words to include in this so I didn't want to overwhelm it with too much busy, it is very simple even for my simple style. It's too dark to share tonight but will put it on sometime tomorrow.
Cheers
Susy