39 Sleeps till Christmas!!!

That's right scary aye!!!

And on that happy note did you see that Wellington had their Christmas Parade this weekend - wow it's not THAT close is it?

So much for writing lists and getting things done, Monday & Tuesday I pretty much spent the days in bed sick and the rest of the week was not much better.
Typical when I had something planned for Friday and Saturday Night, but it was not meant to be and instead I was in bed early every night!

But I have some exciting news - our own Diane Hanson has made the Elite Design Team for the Up 2 Scraps magazine!! Congrats to Diane I am SO excited for you, you have much more talant that you give yourself credit for!! Here is the list

# Annelie Maddock (Whangaparaoa)
# Sonya Pickles (Duntroon)
# Pauline McArdle (Napier)
# Dianne Hanson (Timaru )

Congrats to you all ladies - it is exciting with Sonya Pickles and Dianne from our neck of the woods and both ladies have amazing talent, and Annelie who Bronwyn and I had the great pleasure of meeting last year at the Sketch book retreat - Annelie was kind enough to give us both a ride back to the airport we know that three out of the 4 have amazing talent and I am sure that Pauline will to so looks like I will need to Subscribe to the magazine so I don't miss out on all that Inspiration!

Diaine made me a gift which was totally unnecessary but very much appreciated and nearly eaten (lol lots) here are some photos of what she did with an Prima tin!




Thank you Diane - it was so very kind of you and boy do you know me so well, pretty scrapped packaging, chocolate and strawberry lollies from the lollie Jar - YUMMY!!!

So I hope you all had a much better week and weekend than I did and I will start that list again for this week!

Have a good one

*hugs*

Rachel

Busy Weekend?

What did I planned for my weekend?? NOTHING!!! Well that was the plan, I am big into making lists at the moment to get things done - seems it is the only way that I can get anything crossed off! Although I wanted to get a scrapbook page done this weekend as I took some cool photos of my son which just show what he is all about - but it will be on my "to do on Tuesday" list - gotta love Tuesdays my day off work!

So Yesterday I spent the day playing in my room, what did I make - take a look:


and a close up



And what is so amazing about this card I can hear you ask? Well if you remember quite a few post's ago I was asking if ANYONE could help me figure out how i could "digital stamp" and colour with distress inks, and this wonderful lady answered my call and gave me all the information I needed to be able to do it!
Please check out Mina's blog for a HEAP of inspiration! And thank you, thank you Mina I can't tell you how excited I am to now be able to use the images that I brought and also confess to popping over to Mo's Digital Pencil and purchasing a few more! (Mina is also a design team member for Mo).

Now this is what I had while trying to look for an image to "copy"


He was a BIG help!

I also used the new Kaiser Christmas papers to start making my own christmas crackers, I was really pleased with how this turned out and to be honest it doesn't show all that well in the picture but looks much better in real life!


I used the spellbinders Poinsettia nestabilitie, Kaiser Christmas paper, Kaiser Pears, Matha Stewart Butterfly punch, and cut the word "nana" from my Klic N Kut and covered it with glitter.
Inside the cracker is a custom joke just for nana, and HEAPS of lollies and a explosive thingy that spouts paper everywhere!
These are heaps of fun to make and lots of fun on christmas day - no dud jokes and silly hats for the Forrester Christmas this year!

And I want to wish Alvina (our little christmas elf) from Christchurch & Sean Flannery a happy birthday for yesterday!
Then after all that today, I got up and did house work, cleaned windows bathroom, toilets etc, and then started baking, we now have full tins with Chocolate cake, yo yo's, tan square (Marg's no nut slice to our close friends)Lolly cake, & chocolate fudge!!! Better be no complaining there is nothing in the tins for the next week at least!
I also made a chocolate cake for a friend who is in our thoughts.

Righto off to get some cake and perhaps make a start on that scrapbook page!

Take care will be back before the end of the week with that scrap page!

Take care

Rachel



Catch you all again soon!

Send some Love!

I have just come from Katharina Frie's blog, this is the lady that is responsiable for Whiff of joy stamps.
There has been a tragic story and I would love to be able to help spread some love to little Jamie - just think if this was your own child.

Here is some information about what happened:

"On October 4th, 4 teenagers armed with knives broke into a home in a small town in New Hampshire. Alone and sleeping inside were a mother and her 11 year old daughter. These 4 boys broke into this home with the intent to rob and kill anyone inside. They stabbed the mom, Kimberly Cates, to death and left her daughter, Jaimie, for dead in their driveway. It was a completely random act, their home was chosen only due to its secluded surroundings."

Our hope is that everyone hopping around today will stop for a moment and think about Jaimie and her father and what life must be like for them now. One moment in time has changed their lives forever. We are asking that everyone reading this message please take a moment to make a card and send it off to Jaimie. You can make something very simple or much more involved, but please share some words of hope and love and let her know that people do care and want the best for her. Please send your card to the address below:

Jaimie Cates
c/o Mont Vernon Fire Station
Main Street
Mont Vernon, NH 03057
United States

We have over 60 hoppers joining us and some amazing sponsors who have donated fabulous prizes for our Spread the Love Card Drive Challenge!

The Blog hop will end on Monday, November 9th at 10am ET (3 pm GMT). At that point we will draw random winners to receive the prizes offered by our generous sponsors.

Pop on over to Katherina's blog for links to the hop.

Thanks for your help in helping make this little girls future perhaps a better one - just in the knowledge that others care!

Take care

*hugs*

Rachel

Oamaru Crop

Back with a few photos to share with you!

We had an amazing day in Oamaru with the ladies, making flowers and sharing ideas and information.

Here are a few of the pictures



Here are a couple of the lovely ladies making the flowers that was the make n take, they are fun and addictive!




Dallas traveled from Palmerston to join us - Dallas you are a dag and loads of fun!
But also these are two pages that Dallas has done using Glimmer mist and they were stunning, just had to share:



Here is the page of the day winner's pages - congratulations to Nadine (again she is talent on legs this girl!)



Well I think that is about it for now, hope you are all enjoying the long weekend and have had lots of R&R and craft of course.

Catch you soon!

*hugs*

Rachel

Just call us the next Tim Holtz??

I love Tim Holtz distress inks to colour in stamping images, using to distress pages and all sorts!
I also love Tim Holtz handles for using with the inks it just makes using on your pages SO much easier, so because I have nearly all 24 inks and I was blog hopping (as you do) I saw a scrap room that had handles for all the major colours in the distress inks and away on a tangent i went - surely I could have that - as with the add for Mitre 10 - Come on mate it's easy!!
So after talking Jo and Jo's hubby - Sean (and also my work mate) into showing us girls how to turn the handles we spent all weekend making them.
Saturday saw me turning handles from Rimu - wow that was so much fun - time consuming fun i might add.
Then on Sunday Jo rang to skite that she had made 10 handles in 3 hours, so off I went to Sean's garage to make some to but there was no way I could make it work on Sunday it was like a jigsaw puzzle that I could not put together so that left Jo doing all the wood turning and I was head glue them together and oil up the wood.
Here are a few photos:

A very patient Sean on the side!

They are all different and very unique!


Here is Bo and I putting on the velcro and the pad, note that Bo got the dowel handles cause we gave up at that stage lol.



And mostly done!
Where are the photos of Jo? Well she was always behind the camera so I might have to add one later with her holding the finished product and using them perhaps?

Anyway it was a fast way to kill a whole weekend and Bo, Jo and I got 15 handles each - not quite the 24 we were aiming for but hey it was a good start!


Some of the handles that we used in the make and take on Saturday at the crop!

Back later with some photos of the Oamaru crop at the weekend - man that was fun what an awesome friendly bunch of ladies and it was so much fun so thanks so much for that and I will post in the next couple of days with some photos!

Catch you soon

Rachel

The Page!

As promised here is the layout! This one only took about hour and a half from the start to the finish it was very quick - I did get lots of interruptions but it was still very quick.

I used the new vines from Prima, Prima flourishes,Prima Lettering, and the papers are from my minds eye.







Righto off to sort out some more layouts - can you believe I now have a drawer with a label called "unfinished layouts" where did they all come from?

Catch you soon!

Rachel

A Card and a Promise!

Hi all

Well I created a card at the weekend for my very good friend Christine's Grandma's 90th birthday. I was really happy about it as I started copying but in the end it didn't look anything like the one I started out with and I had fun distressing the music note in the background and making the flowers! Yes these little flowers are SO very addictive and SO quick and much fun to make!

Here is the card



and the inside with a swarovski crystal (is that spelt right?) for the inside of the little flower - at 90 you deserve nothing but the best lol



Now a promise he he - I will be back before Wednesday with a LAYOUT!!

Yes about time I got back and did some seriouse scrapbooking - will still be making cards cause they are addictive and you have to use up your scrapping scraps now don't you!

But seriously watch this space the papers are all picked and the layout sorted just got to get "a handle" on it (serious pun intended there will post about that later to - Jo and I - oh ok and Sean have been making handles all weekend feel like that Mitre 10 add "oh Mate it's easy come on Sean give us a hand - Mate your jokin!!!!!!)

LOL with that I will leave you to it and see you in a couple of days with a layout!

*hugs*

Rachel