Road Trip...

I am very tired... have just done a 1100 klm road trip...now I know why they invented planes...much better to fly... I never want to drive anywhere again...my second eldest, who is pregnant and has been living down south decided to move back up north to have her baby... so I flew down to help her pack up and drive home with her in her car...I should be having a nap at the moment but the puppy was crying so i am out the back yard with her... she found an empty coke zero bottle and is playing with it at my feet... the idea of coming outside with her was so she could run around and she sits at my feet...go figure!! so we left my daughters rented flat clean and because she still has 2 weeks left on the lease she is paying rent of course while she has already moved and the rental agency sends an email to remind her that she is responsible for the condition of the flat until the lease date... I hope not too much of the dust storm gets inside the flat... I hope but am not hopeful... it is an older style building that has cracks and wooden windows so I am sure she will get a call to say that her bond will have to cover the cleaning of the flat...now that really sucks... it is not as if she is just moved to the other side of town and could go back to rectify any problems... I just hope she doesn't have to pay too much out of bond to cover the expense... I am not hopeful about that one either...

We had a good trip home... Her car is a manual transmission and i usually drive an automatic so there were some moments when I forgot and tried to navigate a corner in 4th gear... and several times when I started the car in gear! Much laughter and instructions from the passenger seat and I did finally get the hang of it and was able to start the engine and change gears appropriately for most of the trip...

so here I am sitting in the back yard and all I can see is dust!!! It is awful, not as thick as it was in Sydney and not as red but not nice just the same...
Because I am outside i don't have my external hard drive atached to the laptop and so I don't have any layouts to post on the laptop so have added some photos from my garden... the first one is of a vine that grows along the fence and i have no idea what it is called but is very pretty with the bright red colour and the black in the centre... the nest one is a gardenia flower and then the begonia flowers...well actually it is the other way around... enjoy!

Graphic designs...

So these layouts are all graphic designs by me... done with photo shop elements 7

***********FOODOLOGY***************

What is your salad dressing of choice?
Maldon salt, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil

What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
sizzler

What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick of?
fish

What are your pizza toppings of choice?
Pepperoni

What do you like to put on your toast?
cinnamon & sugar, peanut butter, or vegemite

***********TECHNOLOGY***************

How many televisions are in your house?
4 (3 people)

What color is your cellphone?
dark blue

Do you have an iPod?
No ipod. My husband has one...

***************BIOLOGY******************

Are you right-handed or left-handed?
Right handed.

Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
a child!

What is the last heavy item you lifted?
a person (I am a nurse)

Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
no

************BULLOLOGY**************

If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
no, I wouldn't be prepared anyway...

If you could change your name, what would you change it to?
When I was little I always wanted to be a Sally, but now not so much...

Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
definitely not. $10,000 i would give it a go....

**************FAVORITOLOGY****************

Season?
no discernable season in the tropics...

Holiday?
any holiday where i can get away somewhere .

Day of the week?
any day of the week that I have nothing to do...

Month?
no favourites.

***********CURRENTOLOGY*****************

Missing someone?
my family... all of them always...

Mood?
Content.

What are you listening to?
some #$%@ music on my daughters computer and the Nintendo wii...

Current worry?
not having a house to live in when my husband retires soon .

***************RANDOMOLOGY*****************

First place you went this morning
home... I was on night duty.

What's the last movie you saw?
slumdog millionaire.

***************OTHER-OLOGY*****************

How many pairs of flip flops do you own?
too many to count...

Last time you had a run-in with the cops
never

Last person you talked to?
DD

Last person you hugged?
DH

Do you always answer your phone?
Yes

It's four in the morning and you get a text message, who is it?
My second eldest daughter or my son...

If you could change your eye color what would it be?
green

What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonic
no idea what where or who sonic is!

Do you own a digital camera?
Yes

Have you ever had a pet fish?
yes several.

Favorite Christmas song(s)
Away in a Manger

What's on your wish list for your birthday
nothing special

Can you do push ups?
yes if the need arises...

Can you do a split?
Not a chance.

Does the future make you more nervous or excited?
Excited and nervous

Do you have any saved texts?
yes... special announcements from the kids etc...

Have you ever been in a car accident?
yes when i was a little girl...

Do you have an accent?
of course, we all do don't we...mine is Australian...

What is the last movie to make you cry?
'slumdog millionaire'... all movies make me cry but if we are talking about full on sobbing, then it would have to be '7 pounds' and then 'shawshank redemption' for the 15^th time...

Plans tonight?
Scrapping, sleeping.

Have you ever felt like you hit rock bottom?
No.

Name 3 things you bought yesterday?
food, food and petrol for the car

Have you ever been given roses?
Yes.

Met someone who changed your life?
Yes. My husband and my children.

How will you bring in the New Year?

Just spend time together as a family.

What song represents you?
I can't think of any

Would you go back in time if you were given the chance?
Yes. Not sure where though.

Do you have any tattoos/piercings?
My ears are pierced.

Does anyone love you?
hell yeah.

Would you be a pirate?
oh yes it would be fun

What songs do you sing in the shower?'
none... i don't sing out loud at all...not a good sound!

Ever had someone sing to you?
Yes.

Do you like to cuddle?
Who doesn't?!

Have you held hands with anyone today?
no not yet

Who was the last person you took a picture of?
DGD

Are most of the friends in your life new or old?
New!

Do you like pulpy orange juice?
yep.

What is something your friends make fun of you for?

My kids make fun of me for everything!!!

My complete lack of talent...

Just so that you know that I have not very much artistic talent I am posting some layouts that I created all by myself...

The first one is made using Kristin's Smell the Roses Kit and the next one is from Carolyn Kite's Autumn Breeze...then we go back to Kristin again with her It's Spring Kit...Pickleberrypop is the place to shop!! See I lack so much talent that I can't even put journalling on my layouts unless I have inspiration to do so!!

Meryl is a favourite also...

This is done using the Looking through the window kit by Meryl Bartho and is mostly a copy of a layout done by Meryl, I just didn't have all the stuff that Meryl had... Meryl's stuff is available at Digital Scrapbook Place...

Kristin's design are the best!...

These layouts are all copies of layouts done by Kristin's CT and they are all done using It's Spring or Julie both Kits of Kristin's and available at her shop or Pickleberrypop Shop...I uploaded the last one and realised that I forgot to fix the bit where the ribbon comes in front of the twig... have fixed it on my copy so you will have to imagine it on this one... Oh and Word art by Bethany of course... she is the best!!

The dog is clean...

I have just finished 8 days straight of early shifts... very exhausting but nice to be home every night for dinner...lucky I go to bed early these days. One night the phone rang at 2 am... I was needed to go into work early... so did a 12 hour shift on friday, from 0230 - 1430.

So the dog is now clean... but the house is not! Gee things can get out of hand really quickly if you don't stay on top of them. I have a pile of ironing you can't jump over and a heap of folding that is folded but still on the folding table. Also a heap of things still hanging on the clothes line in the laundry/garage. Two people do use a lot of clothes! Maybe we just have too much!

Super Saturday...

I had a reasonable day at work today. Not too busy means not too many sick people I guess. But that can change at the drop of a hat. I will probably get there tomorrow and there will be no empty beds and people everywhere...

I went to the shops on the way home from work and picked up some hamburgers for dinner. they were YUMMY! Gotta love homemade hamburgers! Olivia our 2nd youngest is a Maccas restaurant manager. She is currently in Hawaii at a managers convention! She loves my homemade burgers too!

I washed the dog before we had dinner! She was sooo dirty after digging in the yard. You can really see the dirt on her fluffy white coat.

My husband is in the lounge room watching the football, i.e. rugby league, rugby union, aussie rules and the soccer, on about 5 different stations, hence I am spending my usual Saturday night in the study on my computer. The place I love to be! I don't enjoy much sport on TV.

The layout I am posting today is an older one done when I was learning how to use PSE. I had discovered the 'clone' tool and I had this skinny photo of my daughter dancing at her wedding and I wanted to put it in an oval frame. Well it was too skinny for the height of the photo and I didn't want to cut off the feet so I cloned the extra bits on the sides. Not very well, I might add. I tell myself when I do these things that I will do the next one properly and well, I never do!

The kit is Looking Through the Window by Meryl Bartho (DSP) I think the font is Kunstler Script.

This layout is a recent one done with a couple of freebie kits by Isa Marks and Bia Bonfim with word art by Choukette...

The Very Beginning...

Lets go back to the start... how did this digi business get a hold of me... One of the girls at work, who is right into craft said she had this thing called photoshop elements and had I thought of getting it... she said she was going to use it to do stuff and print it off for her regular paper scrap pages...blah blah blah...long story cut short... she said try it... I did...borrowed hers for a while 'til I got the hang of it...Got totally sucked in!!! like TOTALLY... haven't done a paper page for 7 months...got my own copy of photoshop elements 7 (started with 3!) Now my life is completely governed by the laptop and all things digital scrapping... I even take my laptop to night duty with me so I can scrap when it is quiet!

I have 12 albums that I have done of paper scrapping in my house , plus a few that I have given away for gifts, I have never counted the pages. This took me 5 years to accumulate... and now I have 264 digital layouts on my external hard drive that i display on my digital photo frame. I owe it all to Sue really, and of course to Digital Scrapbook Place... that is where I got my first freebie and today I post my very first layouts done with the Free Welcome Kit.... which combined with the easy to follow tutorial allowed me to produce a rather amateurish first layout... I am still learning and the hardest thing is that all important artistic touch... which, sadly i lack, but with inspiration from other scrappers and the occasional burst i am able to produce something that looks reasonably good... so here are my very first layouts... The group photo layout is of my 50th Birthday dinner party with my husband and all my children, and the another layout, when I was really starting to get the hang of it, is of me my son (25) and my 3rd daughter (21), we all celebrated significant birthdays in the one year (2007)...

Layout by me...

So I finally have a layout put together by me without copying from someone else... well the basic template is the same as many layouts I have seen but I did all the placing etc... the Kit is Smell the roses by Kristin's Scrap Design with word art by bethany again... the photo was taken in Sydney and is of my baby girl Sam...

Olivia is off to Hawaii...

Olivia is jetting off to Hawaii tomorrow 10 days of sun surf and sand (and a whole lot a alcohol I imagine)... Lucky girl... I haven't had much sleep after working night duty last night so I am off to bed but before I go I will post another layout... this one of Olivia holding her little niece Jessie... The layout is a copy of another one of Kristin's CT. The Kit is Kristin's of course ... the victoria mini kit...and freebie word art by Bethany of course

A child is born...

Our nephew and his wife (well his wife anyway) have just had a baby boy... She had c-section on the weekend...He is my sister-in-laws first grandchild. Can't wait to meet him. That could be awhile as they are 1000 klms away. Babies are such treasures and oh so much fun. The layout for today is the birth announcement. I did this exact layout when my grand daughter was born... It is a combination of a great kit Look through the window, by Meryl Bartho and the actual calendar by Bethany Harty as in Elegant Word Art by, and the ducky and weeds is by Carol Harden's Just Ducky Kit...No! I didn't make a mistake... I don't have permission to publish the baby's name so I have blacked it out...

It's Spring...

It is officially spring and I think it was colder this morning than it has been for the last 3 weeks! I have another day off today and I have a million and one things to do... The house is messy and some places are rather grubby. Not disgustingly grubby just slightly grotty. I have no motivation to clean something that only I am going to see and appreciate. It would be nice if there was someone who would say "my! you have been working hard, the house looks fantastic" but that has never happened and I don't suppose it is ever going to happen... Wendy, the puppy is growing and learning to do the right thing. Everyday is a joy with her... she is sooooo cute and follows me everywhere. It is hard work though. The layout for today is an old one I did when Jessie was born. It is a photo of my only son, Julian holding her for the first time. I used Dawn Inskip designed stuff. Daydreamer Kit from PBP and coloured it myself. I use PSE7.The word art was a freebie from somewhere but I can't find it in my files... does that mean I have too many? I have just done a count... is this normal for a digital scrapper...? I have approximately 50 purchased kits...over 100 free kits... 20 alphas(apart from those that came with a kit) 41 quick pages (free) 103 elements (free) and over 50 masks, templates and overlays (free stuff), 80 cluster frames and over 284 different word art downloaded for free!! Obsession reigns supreme!!