Saskatchewan Challenge

Here's my Saskatchewan Challenge. No right angles were allowed ~ everything is just a little off kilter. The colours green and silver had to be on the page somewhere ~ I used silver vellum to matte my photo and under my jewelled strip.

Another ScrapCentral.ca challenge

I don't think I explained the Scrap Map challenge I'm doing over at Scrapcentral.ca
We are travelling across the country working on challenges for each province and also for a couple States (we have members in the USA).
Nunavit was the first challenge. That was the Christmas layout of Duncan wearing the stockings. Everything was supposed to be square; no curves, swirls... and we had to use 4 different patterned papers.
Then came NWT. One large photo with gold and bling on the layout to portray their natural resources. That was my Fabulous Northern BC layout.
Next was the Yukon. I did my Tem layout for this one. It had to be a white space layout with only one other colour thrown in.
Then BC. My province(I got bonus marks for posting a photo from my home town). And the challenge was to do a layout picking only from 5 colours ~ I picked red and green. We also had to put a crown in there somewhere ~ Duncan is wearing it :)

This evening I worked on the Albertan challenge. We had to use photos from a celebration ~ I chose my boys' 13th birthday just over a year ago because Breanna somehow managed to delete the 14th birthday pictures when she 'borrowed' my camera chip to use in her new video camera. As well as the themed photos we had to use BRIGHT colours and lots of bling. Here it is...

The yellow streamer and confetti is a 12" Revolution die cut a friend gave me for looking after her place over Xmas. Totally unexpected which made it all the more exciting. I couldn't wait to try it out.

On to the Saskatchewan challenge...

Christmas layout.

These are actually photos from last Christmas(2007).
I thought everyone was in bed when I heard some noise coming from the living room. Thinking one of the boys had snuck out of bed to get some extra computer time, I tip-toed out and surprised Daniel and Breanna making up stockings for Rick and I. The two of the them had decided that Santa wasn't just for kids. They were taking all the smallest presents; that would fit in the stockings, from under the tree and putting together a surprise for us big people.
Duncan snoozed through it all.

I tried another Rachel Ray recipe this evening. I had some Basa fillets defrosted and wanted to try something different so I searched Rachel Ray's site and found this one.
I've tried fish stew before but found the fish always fell apart and got mushy on me. In this recipe the fish is baked in the oven and then added to the stew just before serving. Brilliant! For my croutons I used a whole grain baguette, drizzled on the olive oil and sprinkled with Epicure Spices 'herb & garlic' mix. Very yummy. Another quick, easy dish that my picky, "I don't like fish", kids will eat.

A layout for ScrapCentral.ca's Scrap Map challenge. The challenge was to do a white space layout. Starting with white cardstock adn one photo add in ONLY one other colour. I chose green and used 4 pages from my Making Memories 'Greenhouse' Paperie Spiral Journaling book to create a matte for my photo.

And CHA has begun. So many new and fun products coming out. I just love these buckets from Queen & Co. I can just see a row of these on my windowsill storing all my goodies; Once I've used all the product that comes in them, that is :) Check out their blog for more CHA releases.
Queen & Co New Bucket Kits
Included in this release are new Queen & Co Bucket kits. Fabulous themed embellishments poured into adorable, reuseable buckets! Grab yourself a Bucket of Baby, Boy, Girl, Summer, Magic, Queen or Love. Buckets are overflowing with fabulous embellishments including, big brads, glitter brads, flocked brads, printed brads, sequin flowers, felt flowers and ribbon buckles! Everything you could ever need to embellish your hand crafted creations!

A couple new ones

This is a photo Dad took a couple years ago. I think we were on our way to Tumbler Ridge. I finally scrapped it for a challenge at ScrapCentral.ca There are gold letter stickers on top of the 'FABULOUS' rub-on. They spell out Northern B.C. and show up much better IRL.
Another layout for a ScrapCentral.ca challenge. I just love this photo of Dunc. wearing Christmas Stocking on his feet. He is such a character still, though this photo was taken 10+ years ago.


Rick cut Duncan's hair yesterday. It is so fine and starts looking pretty scruffy and fly away when it gets long. I was giggling when I took this photo. Rick was complaining about how his eyes were getting old and he was having a hard time seeing what he was doing in the artificial light. Duncan was saying, "What? I'm getting my haircut by a blind guy? Eeek!"

We're coming to Victoria

I told Breanna last night that I had booked our tickets and she's pretty excited.

Here's a layout I just finished for the Unforgettable Memories.

It's FREEZING out.

I missed our 5 minutes of warm weather. We warmed up to -3 just like the weather-man said. It happened at 8am this morning. My friend, Melody, got to enjoy it when she drove her son in to work. I slept in. By the time I crawled out of bed it was -22, feels like -34. I missed it!

So instead of getting outside and playing in the snow today I spent another day keeping warm indoors, playing on the 'puter and scrapping. I stumbled across another challenge blog and decided to play along. The blog is Dreamgirls and the challenge is to create a layout using the word "NEW" in the title or journaling. And layout must be Black and White. And handmade embellishment being the only additional color.
For my handmade embellishment I layered gold vellum circles on black paper. Added a red circle with some rub-on stitch corners I've had forever and a white button in the center. All the edges are crumpled and distressed.

And I got to use my new toy for the first time. Check out my Revolution. I actually bought it back in November but just got around to putting it together and figuring out how to use it this afternoon. I love the swirley 12" die (my only die so far)

Happy Birthday, Tanis

I meant to phone, Tan, but just looked at the clock and it's almost 11pm. I'll try and remember tomorrow evening. Hope you had a great birthday. And got spoiled... Your gift is still sitting on my sideboard waiting to be dropped in the mail :( I'll try and get it off tomorrow.

Can you spot the difference?



















Can you spot the difference in the two photos above? A little extra sparkle and shine in the right hand photo maybe? Breanna loves jewellery. She bought herself a couple pairs of magnetic earings, but the magnetic backs kept falling off. She started asking to get her ears pierced over Christmas so today we went down to the mall and got them done. She's pretty excited. She put her Claires bag on the table beside her and waited for her Daddy to notice when he got home from work.

Now we know what to get her for birthdays and Christmas's from now on. Anything shiney :)

Our little house guest returned home today. Apart from the yappiness he was a perfect little pet. He kept Tikanii company during the last 3 weeks of extremely cold weather when they were both housebound much of the time.

And lastly, I've started a winter project of my own. Since Breanna is interested in taking up yarn crafts I thought I'd join her. I found a free pattern on the Lions Brand website that I thought would be perfect for work and dug through the plastic bins under my stairs for some yarn. It's going quite fast. I just started it Sunday night and I'm already halfway up the back.

We are 'wanna be' Athletes

Last year we started cycling to town in September, right before winter set in. This year we are going to start cycling to town in the Spring as soon as it warms up to a pleasant +10 first thing in the morning.
It's hard to imagine it ever being that warm outside when you're in the middle of deep freeze. The average temperature low for the past 25 days is -30. It's -27 right now, but feels like -41 with the windchill.
Poor Tikanii is going stir crazy being stuck in the house. And I'm getting tired of picking dog hair out of my cereal in the morning.

And in other Athletic news... I bought myself a second hand snowboard. Watch for me on the ski hill, zooming past my boys ~ I just hope I'm ON the board and not under it.

Cousins.

I was looking through some old photos and found a few I wanted to scrap. I'll have to pass them on to Auntie Karen the next time we're visiting.
I've already done a couple 4th birthday party layouts, so this page is a collage of bits and pieces from left over photos. The sketch is #7 at Inspired Blueprints and the product is all BlueyeDezines, an Australian scrapbooking manufacturer.

And I had to scrap this photo(I might keep this page for myself). Daniel thought it would be an awesome idea to take the Xbox when we went visiting. I'm not sure Auntie Karen agreed. Even Uncle Bern was having a tough time tearing himself away. My boys are a bad influence. LOL more BlueyeDezines product.

Check out this cutie pie...

Wasn't she just adorable?The pp and felt frame are from my win at Inspired Blueprints. The product was from their sponsor BlueyeDezines, an Australian scrapbooking manufacturer. I just love their felt frames and the frangipani paper is beautiful.


And now she's ten and building her own Christmas presents for her brothers. I had to do a layout of this one for her album. The words I printed on my cardstock after a visit to Wordle, a fun internet program which creates word art using words you type in.