I hate buttons and other thoughts

I love digital scrapping, I don't do it that much, it's a bit like my beading and knitting, but when I do it I really get into it and enjoy it. Today I discovered that I hate "button" embellishments, I have tried and tried to make them work in my layouts and I just don't like the way it looks. I've looked at other peoples layouts and quick pages that use buttons and they all look great, but once I try and use one, yuck! I'm not ready to delete them from my hard drive, they surely may come in handy one day for that right picture but for now, I just hate them.

Another reason that I like to scrap is it feels rather personal and affectionate. I have not shown many of my pieces to those the pictures incorporate so they wouldn't know or care, but when I chose a photo it really makes me think of that person and the papers and elements that would suit them, that reflect them...oh I'm so deep LOL! But take these two I did for my parents, I really tried to capture colours I knew they would like, that suited their personality. I have some lovely glitter kits but they just wouldn't suit my dad and the kit I used was from a French designer, even though we are not French although our heritage stems from there, I think the colours are really him. Whatever, I'm raving on... I did my mothers one quickly and without hesitation (maybe as we are so close), but I have been working and looking for the exact right kit for my dad so it have been in the making for a couple of weeks.


Credits: "Terre d'Argile" Kit by Scrap-shop.fr


Credits: Heavenly Scraps - Chris Young

Reminder post:

Do a book review of "The memory Keepers Daughter".

Happy Birthday Little Man

Where have the years gone and what has happened to my little baby? Who is this big boy with his MP3 player?

Happy Birthday my Little Honey!

Book & Movie review: Running with Scissors

Firstly I just have to show off my new bookmark, it's called a book thong and is basically a piece of string with a few beads dangling at either end of it.


I saw one at Borders bookstore and thought that it was a clever idea but at a ridiculous $14 there was no way I was buying one. I dragged out my beading bag and hey presto, 1 personal book thong for zippo using some left over beads. And here it is doing what it was created for:


Now onto my review. I actually managed to read and then watch the movie based on the book and I'm rather shocked to say that the movie was better then the book.

Running with Scissors is a memoir of Augusten Burrows, simply put that poor man had a very strange upbringing and I can see how he thought it would make a good book. My personal memoir would be boring and on the never ever to be published list! His mother was mentally unbalanced and rather selfish, his father seemed to give up on his odd family in the first few pages and his new adopted family was simply "way out there", like when people whisper to each other, "these people heads are in space... obviously on drugs...not all there...certainly not normal". I almost gave up on the book half way through, but I battled on as I wanted to know what happened to poor Augusten. Well his alive and kicking and seems to have moved on from the experiences of his youth - good for your Augusten!

The movie, had me at a lot of "huh?", "what?", "that's not in the book" and I even check the book twice to see if I missed pages. I've seen movies in my time and movies based on books, and generally they try to capture the story line but miss crucial parts even omit chapters, but to change it completely was a first for me and that is what I felt between the book and it's movie. Yes there was a boy, his mother and his odd adopted family but so many characters were missing, he had a brother - poof gone, One daughter came across as a total loon in the movie, not so in the book, there was also another 2 daughter's in the book - poof gone. But even with all the missing characters it was an easy to watch movie, I doubt I would have watched it if I had not read the book.

I don't think I would recommend either to anyone but each to their own and it could not have been a best seller if everyone thought it was as crap as I did.

Quickly running out of space

Looks like it's time to invest in a new computer as all my digital kits and the layouts that are created are swallowing all my hard disk space and lets not talk about speed! Anyway I tried another very simple piece.


Credits: Kit - "Moody Blues" by Shabby Princess

Little Man Bestie Party

I've noticed people no longer have best friends they have a "Bestie". Today we went to Big Little Man's bestie DM (middle) 4yo birthday party:



This photo is of all the kids waiting to get there little lips on the Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Cake.


and here is Big man beating the crap out of the un-killable Harry Potter Pinata, in the end one of the parents had to rip him in half, eat your heart out Voldemort!

Making Waves

I have been meaning to do a layout with my boys and already had some photo chosen in my mind but could not find any kit's or paper that would suit the theme I was after, so I just made my own! It took longer then I anticipated but it's 100% original and that is what I think I like about this digital scrapbooking. you can take every day items and turn place them into piece where I don't think can be done on the stick and paste scraping.

I'm especially pleased of the fact that I made Big Little Man jump out of the photo!

Digi Scrapbooking

I have been sucked into this new type of hobby, not fully a convert but I wanted to see what sort of styles I can take from the craft to make my yearly Christmas card and this is what I created last night:



It's very addictive as you can add little embellishments, like ribbons, buttons, flowers...anything you can imagine I guess. I'm a little confused on how you take your 12x12 image and print it, do they even sell Scrap photo paper?

Tried a more simplistic style with the use of just a fancy paper and it really turned out nice, I love it. Shame no one else will, showed The Man and he just mad this "humf" sound.



So glad Fella took some nice photo's of us and will keep playing...love new things, but this is a hobby which makes you sit too long and stare at a screen to long and I already do that enough!

The boy's have been slightly dinosaur crazy, I don't know why as Big Little Man is not learning about it at school yet but regardless I have been forced to watch Jurassic Park (a bit scary for them), Walk with the Dinosaurs (very interesting) and Disney's Dinosaurs (cute) etc, making craft, going to the library to get as many book on them as we can carry and even cookies too so I thought it was time to take them to the museum to check out the real thing.

We headed to the Sydney Natural Museum and sadly this was the only Dinosaur on display as they are going to open a new exhibition next year so it looks like we will have to wait. There were not even any fossils or information about them, really disappointing.


So off we went to check out the rest of displays:



Big Little Man found his favourite insects:


Our famous "Funnel Web Spider" #1 on the most venomous list I believe.

Wow not just 1 breed but 7 deadly killers!


Marshall found his favourite too:


I think I like Little mans choice better.

I was a nice day out but a real shame there were not more Dinosaurs to see.

Watch out Martha Stewart!

It's not the Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie or even the 1.609 kilometre High Lemon Meringue Pie but I baked it and it sure tasted great! Why not give it a go, find the recipe at my new favourite blogger Exclusively Food

HB2I

What terrible grammar, my mother would be very ashamed, but it's my birthday so wat eva!

Spring school holidays

Whilst The Man is at work I have knocked off his broadband and here are some photo's from our recent Spring School holidays, they are a cut and paste from another family blog I have, so apologies for poor commentary, may edit at a later stage and tell you what they all are!

1/10
Playground Hunt:
Today we headed out to some new and interesting playgrounds, this one was fun:


Then we stopped at the Asian Botanical Gardens, but couldn't get in as I didn't bring any money, maybe next time. A nice Peacock came out to say hello and then we saw some strange Asian men attempting to fish in a disgusting lake.




2/10
Catch-up with FX buddy's



3/10
Big Little Man had drum lessons

4/10
Play date invitation with some playgroup buddy's

5/10
Took Pop to the eye surgeons

6/10
You have to love play dates! Big Man had a couple of friends over for a swim in the pool.





7/10
Day of rest - needed!

8/10
At the beach with old friends, what a great day out!






9/10
Another drum lesson for Big Little Man and the a BBQ with way to much wine for the adults!

10/10
Visit Teacher in the Blue Mountains.

11-14/10
It was well overdue and definitely time to visit Fella in Melbourne.




"It's great having you own personal walking pram!"

15/10
Back to school - thank goodness!

Curly to Straight

If you have curly hair you want it to be straight...thanks to Fella from Melbourne she showed that it can be done:



I love the Straightened hair, it makes me look so different, sort of changes the shape in my face. As my birthday is just around the corner so I'm going to get a hair straightener of my own, I doubt i will use it much, especially during summer when I'm in and out of the pool but it will make a nice change for when I go out.

Sorry I haven't been blogging much, I have used my net limit and am running on slower then dial-up until the next cycle starts, I never realised how frustrating slow internet can be, how did we ever manage before broadband?

How very un-Australian!

Listening to my favourite radio station Novathis morning the 2 host were in complete outrage and advising people of the new very un-Australian rule the "goodie two shoes" have place on the upcoming Bathurt 1000, and what is it you ask? They have set a limit of 1 (one) slab of beer per person (24 beers), the outrage!! - that's 6 beers per person over 4 days, OMG how is an Australian man to survive?