since September I have had my eldest DD turn 8, I turned 38, I was a month guest Creative Team member for Amanda Rockwell, we had Halloween, we have a new designer at Inspiration Lane, I've had 2 computer screens drop dead on me and I've fallen in love with the Twilight series ....so fairly eventful...all involving many layouts, lol....
here are a few of my favorites :)
This is my eldest DD using our new designer at Inspiration Lane: FruitLoOp Sally's kit Not So Gray Anyway.
Next on the list was my birthday. My DH was on night shift, so was unable to share a birthday dinner with me. I am a bit of a pizza addict and normally I only order a pizza when DH can go pick it up and share it with us, but I was feeling a bit miffed about missing out on pizza on my birthday, so I ordered a delivery of pizza. I got 2 pizzas, one for the boys and one for me and the girls to share. Ailani only ate one slice and she slid all the toppings off, Amethyst had 3 or 4 slices and I had the rest. Within 4 hours of eating the pizza I was violently ill. Whether it was the pizza or not, I don't know, the girls didn't get sick and neither of the boys got sick either, so it is a bit of a mystery, but I spent the rest of my birthday night with my head in the toilet and the next day I spent in bed sleeping, too ill to move. To make up for a fairly atrocious birthday, I was a guest CT member for Amanda Rockwell. I love her designs, they are beautiful and quality products and so I felt quite blessed to be able to work with them for my birthday month. Here is one of my favorites, tho I did 9 or 10 layouts all up
I love this one too, especially as 6 days after I posted this Tinker Bell layout, I won and went to a special movie screening of the new Disney movie 'Tinker Bell' with the girls on the 25th of October! It was great to have a girls day out. It was quite some time ago, but the boys have had a boys day out with their Dad to see a movie, so it was nice for us girls to do it too. Makes for a fun day. Then Halloween came around. Here in Australia kids very rarely go trick or treating, but Halloween is starting to catch on in one way or another. I have celebrated it on a small scale for the past four years, mainly for the fun of it and to bring a bit of joy, I mean, why not! lol! For us, Halloween means "lollies" and scary kids movies and that is about it. Four years ago, I had gone into the city for some reason or other near Halloween and I had gone past a specialty sweet store and noticed that it had really cool Halloween lollies, like vampire teeth lollies and 'blood' lollipops and witches and bat and skeleton shaped lollies. I couldn't help myself and I bought said bags of lollies and decided to host a Halloween mini party just for our little family. Tho I went a bit overboard and I made frozen 'eyeballs' and also a big batch of caramel popcorn and I got Eddie Murphy's "Haunted Mansion" out on DVD for the kids enjoyment. The next year I scaled it down a bit and made my 4 kids a Halloween bag full of treats and made Halloween cup cakes, with purple, green and orange icing with a spider ring on top to hand out at any trick or treaters at the door. The first year we had about 4 kids come to the door, in 2006 I think I gave out about 9 cup cakes, then last year I decided to make full on Halloween treat bags to give out, after seeing a Halloween treat topper layout at Little Dreamer. I made about 30 bags (which included a bag each for my 4 kids, hubby and me) and we were assailed with 25 little kids in one hit! I was happy to give out my bags, that is the whole reason I made them, but it was a bit disappointing to have my little bags gone in one fell swoop! Anyway, we are in a different neighbourhood this year and I again made about 26 bags. This time we only got 13 young teens at the door, so this year I had left overs!! so that was just as disappointing ...I know....I'm never happy, lol... Tho of course we will probably have twice the amount now that word is out, lol! I also gave our trick or treaters another surprise.... this year I decided to get dressed up with the kids! I found a fab pair of ceramic single vampire fangs! I've wanted some proper fangs ever since I first fell in love with Bram Stokers "Dracula" (the book) when I was a young teenager. They have a setting putty that moulds around your teeth to keep them in place, not 100% but much better than the daggy plastic row of teeth that is usually available. I also bought a set of bat wings and ears for each of the girls and I and a new Dracula cape for our eldest boy and we already had a good fabric cape for our younger boy...so we were a family of vampires and vampire bats! lol..here is a layout of me crouching in the doorway, waiting to spook any unsuspecting and un-expecting trick or treaters...they said that we were the only house decorated or prepared to give out treats, lol...so nice to see those happy faces when I flashed my fangs at them, lol!
credits: Here and here is a layout of the girls and I in our bat wings and ears.
and here is a photo that I just love but haven't got around to scrapping... can you tell I love this adopted holiday! lol!
next on the list of events...the 2 dead computer screens...the less said about this the better *roll eyes* , isn't it amazing how a computer put out of commission for even the slightest amount of time puts your whole world in a spin...well, I'm addicted to mine, so it does for me. A very sad affair... at least I was gifted a friend's old sewing machine last month too, so I have nothing to complain about if the computer plays up on me, I can gather comfort in front of the sewing machine instead! lol.
(bg paper by Joyful Heart Designs from her Evoking kit)
And that brings me up to my Twilight obsession. Not sure when I bought the first book. At the non scrapbooking forums at DST I had noticed people talking about a series of books called Twilight. I thought it sounded interesting, as it is about vampires but I thought it would be hard to come by maybe here in Australia, so didn't think too much about it and then I was in KMart and noticed a big display of the 3 Twilight books...(the 4th one came out about 3 weeks after I started reading the first 3) So I bought the first book, it was only $15. I put the book I was reading aside (Ivanhoe) and started reading Twilight....at first I thought I couldn't relate to a teenage girl going to school, but was impatient to 'meet' the vampire...and when I did...I was hooked! I only get to the shops once a week and I read Twilight in 2 and a half days, so I was impatient to get back to the shops the next Friday to pick up the next book in the series. I dropped the kids off at school and got the bus to the nearest shopping center. I did a Meg Ryan from the movie 'You've Got Mail' When I got off the bus, I walked really fast toward KMart, then I stopped myself and tried to walk like a normal rational person, then sped up again and then slowed down, all the while, my heart was racing to get my hands on the second book! I got into KMart.....and they had sold out of 'New Moon' !!!!! My stomach did flip flops, what was I going to do!! and then I silently scolded myself for not getting all 3 books the week before, but how could I have known they would sell out! I thought it was just the women at DST that knew about it! They still had some copies of 'Eclipse' left, so I snatched that up and then went on the hunt to find 'New Moon' elsewhere....there are 2 book stores at the shopping center that I go to, both of which were charging $10 more than what they were selling it at KMart for, but what could I do, I HAD to buy it, so I did and excitedly went home with 2 books, knowing full well that I would read 'New Moon' and 'Eclipse' within the week! Then it was another 11 days before the latest book was released. 'Breaking Dawn' came out and I pre-ordered it! I just love these books and there is a movie of Twilight coming out here on December 11, I can not wait, and the best thing is I begged, pleaded and fluttered my eyelashes at my DH and coerced him into reading them all too! It will be so exciting to go and see the movie with him! He thought they were OK, a bit lovey lovey, but still good. This makes 3 books, or sets of books that we have both read. When we first started going out, he kept telling me that I aught to read 'Lord of the Rings', that he'd loved it and he was sure I'd love it too, but for years I resisted, then of course the movie was soon to be at the cinemas, so I decided to read them before we went to see it on the big screen. Then this year, DH decided to read 'In Cold Blood' : (classic Truman Capote novel that I read when I was a teenager) after watching Bennett Miller's 2006 movie 'Capote' with me and the Twilight books makes 3 books that we have in common. So nice to share a book with someone close to you and be able to chat about it. However, I think I annoyed him by constantly saying "What part are you up to now?" so in the end, I would run over to where he kept the book and look at where his book mark was and find out for myself, lol! And here is a layout I did
And now we are heading on to Christmas! I know this is a clique, but it is so true, that the older you get, the quicker the year slips by. Thankfully, having a December baby, I am in the habit of being fairly organised and the Christmas presents have been on layby since July, so no dramas there, it is really just the food to buy and decorating that needs to be done.Here is my first Christmas layout for the season...using FruitLoOp Sally's: 'So This is Christmas' kit. At Inspiration Lane, they have a 'sneak peek Saturday' with 40% off the newly released kits, fabulous savings!
and that brings me up to date for now. I will try and be a bit more regular, coz it is a PIB getting the images into the right order, or maybe I just don't know how to use Blogger! Goodnight :)
