Doesn’t Time Fly?

…when you’re having fun?

I have been “batching it” as a single parent this month and I have to say – there seems to be less hours in the day, for some reason. I mean, seriously – did someone take away an hour or three? That’s the only explanation I have for getting to the end of the day and having no time left to scrap! Or sleep, for that matter, lol.

It’s been a hectic month, as you would imagine, with 4 kids, the dog, the cat, the fish (now sadly deceased) (thank god – one less mouth to feed), the garden, the housework, the school work and the newest batch of snails and hunstman spiders my front garden seems to love to procreate. Eek. Going out the front door feels like running the gammut of the Haunted House at the local circus.

I just sprayed the whole front of the house with “get-rid-of-spiders” type stuff and now I am sorry! Their little bodies are all curled up on my front porch as a testament to my genocide. Eek! It was too much for me, I’m afraid. I went around the back and out the side gate to get the post. I WILL have to go out there at some stage and get rid of them. Or maybe, if I wait long enough, we will have a stiff breeze and it will blow them all across the road. Here’s hoping! lol.

So, scrap wise – there are a few things on the agenda.

Firstly – class this week. We are doing an “All white” project of mine.

It seemed like a good idea, at the time, to have an “all white” page but I didn’t count on the fact that I am a MESS and I attract dirt and other unmentionables to me like a magnet. Keeping the page clean for class has been a nightmare! Anyway, enjoy 🙂

Next thing to show you is my start to the Halloween decorations for the year. The kids are right into it this year – and why not? A bit of fun never hurt, I say.

I call this, “The Bellfry”:

I can finally show you this page:

“Into the Wild” was created as one of my last Masters projects for the year using Karen Foster’s Zoo papers and embies. I liked this one. The papers are kinda cutesy but they work with the calico in the background.

This is a LO with a vintage feel to it that I created for one of our Sat classes. I LOVE the combination of brown, cream and gold. The photo is actually digitally manipulated to look like a drawing and then printed onto canvas:

So, now I am off to publish something on both the Upsy Daisy Blog and my Photography blog. I have been a busy gal this month, with weddings and family shoots non stop most weekends. It’s a stressful but wonderful time to share with people. If you get the time, pop over to my Photography Blog and take a peek.

That’s all from me for now – thanks for stopping by!

Sares x

Some Sincere Thanks

As we speak I am printing out all the Thankyou notes for all of the individuals and retailers/wholesalers that got on board the Memory Gifts Project – all 600 of them! lol

There are certainly too many contributors to mention here in one place, so look out for the postie in the next few weeks while i get this job finished and please forgive me if I don’t get to you – I’ll get there at some stage, I promise!

There are a few of you who have asked how the Memory Gifts have been received and I can say that there have been quite a few “thankyou’s” from the recipients so far but I have to assume that people are still rebuilding their lives and find it difficult to even look at an album, let alone send a thankyou. That day may come – it may not and I don’t care. It wasn’t what we did it for, was it?

There are a few passages from people’s emails and letters that I would like to share with you, however:

“Our family would like to express its delight at receiving this lovely album.   You should be congratulated for the tremendous effort that has gone into creating and organising such a massive project.  The delight I have been seeing on families’ faces when they were presented with this wonderful gift brought tears to my eyes.  Their first new photos now have somewhere special to reside.  I visited your wonderful website and read all about you and was wondering if you could please convey our gratitude to all the amazing people that helped make these albums possible.

 

I am an avid card maker but have never tried scrapbooking.  While things are still very hectic at the moment your album has inspired me to give scrapbooking a go.  It is heart warming to know there are so many wonderful people out there who have helped support us through this difficult time.  Thank you again.”

“To Sarah
I have received one of the thousands of Scrapbooks that you have contributed. I am in grade 6 and love sport.I love it and will have so many good memory’s in there because of you, my sister has also got one and treasures it more than i can say.I am very touched by the way you have lighted up our days and so many people will be smiling because of what you have done and this is not like any other donation it is more and i am so very happy to get it. Thank-you a thousand times and more.”

 

 “I must admit that it was quite emotional receiving my albums, remembering the two I had as an ongoing project for my two children.  After losing all my photos in the fire I didnt know where to start.  You kind of push it to the back of your mind because day to day sometimes is an effort in itself.  This is the incentive I needed to start tracking down some copies of the ones that i had. For this I have to say thank you because I have located some wonderful photos from family and friends…ones that I had forgotten that I had given them. 
 
My husband and I are so very grateful for the time and effort put into these beautiful albums and I am excited to start putting them together along with the new photos we have started to take. Memories will always remain with us even though we lost everything in the fire. These memories we made in the past will forever remain in our hearts and now we can make new ones.  Its the generosity from people like yourself that is so overwhelming.”

 

Give yourselves a pat on the back everyone.

If I had to do this whole project all over again, I would, based on what I read in the above letters. Cheers girls xxxx.

The only other thing to tell you from this week has been the very exciting arrival of my new little nephew Oscar :). I have to say, he hasn’t had the easiest delivery or first week of life, but he’s getting there and we are all doing our best to help. Little man, pull up those socks – it’s time to go home with mum and start your little life, ok?

I wont show you the rest of the pics I took of him – too distressing. I was lucky to get these. But he’s gorgeous – he takes his good looks from his aunty, of course 🙂

And then of course, we had a full weekend of family stuff. This is what we decided to do this afternoon:

What coud be better than a Sunday afternooon at the local down at Salamander bay? Glass of champers, beach, steak, awesome live music and taking photos. Didn’t matter about the crappy weather. James (after promising he would NOT get wet) did a face plant into the water about 2 minutesafter these pics were taken. Picture a dripping wet, screaming kid being dragged out of the water. Not screaming because he was wet, but beause he didn’t want to get OUT. God help me.

One last thing I managed to complete was some wedding ring demo shots – I needed a few more for my website – here’s a few shares:

Happy with that last shot, especially. DH was having a heart attack because he thought we were going to lose both rings and spend the afternoon snorkelling to find them 🙂

That’s all for me folks – lots more scrapping happening this week so there will be heaps to show you next post – stay tuned!

Love to all

Sares xx

 

Surviving

I am still here. Just.

I would like to know one thing, however. WHO ON EARTH decided that our last two terms should be 11 weeks long and not in sync with either Victoria or Queensland school holidays. I would like to shoot that person.

It’s not that we were planning on any long trips – quite the contrary, really. But friends and rello’s have not been able to come to US. And the kids! After two 11 weeks terms they were nutso. I am was not far off myself. When we finally started school break they went even more nutso. Then they got sick.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 10 days. Going nutso and feeding the hungry hoardes.

I also managed to scrap – I found out that I scrap really well under pressure – I do some of my most creative work that way. Here’s a few shares:

Same photo, different treatment. In the second LO I printed the photo as a Polaroid. It also got a much more ” free” treatment.

*IDEA* – Use up all your old, odd chippy letters as a page border or embellishment. Then distress the edges with a bit of ink and sandpaper. (But be careful what letters you stick together! lol)

Spent a bit of time on Tues afternoon this week going on a bit of a Photo session road trip with my girls Debbie and Sherie. Thanks for the afternoon girls – I had fun (as always) even if the kids didn’t co-operate all the time.

And this afternoon we went to Disney on Ice “Disney Princesses” – woohoo Hannah had an absolute ball and even though I dragged the booys with us we all had fun. I’ve never been to a Disney on Ice before, so I was pleasantly suprised at the standard of the show and the costumes. Here’s a few pics from the show:

All in all a good show and I am pretty happy with the pics I was able to get. Can’t wait to scrap some of them!

I’m off to tuck in the kids to bed and potentially have some “quiet” time (ha!) before I collapse into bed myself – night night everyone 🙂

Sares x