31/12, time for some resolutions!

Just this once I will post the same post on this blog as on my photography blog, mostly because it's long and it is both scrapbooking and photography related! 2008 is almost behind us, we’re going into 2009 and guess what, I still haven’t met any extra terrestrials :-O The “new” millennium definitely doesn’t live up to the expectations!

Looking back at the year 2008, even though some great things happened such as moving to this beautiful area in the South West of France, 2008 has been the worst year of my life with loosing my sweet mother in May. I’m glad to go into a new year, even though that won’t change a thing!
It’s time for some resolutions, of course. OK, there is still the goal of loosing the few kilos I have too much, I still blame it on my son although he’s 4 now and I really should start blaming it on myself ;-) But this year I only set “creative” goals, skill developing goals! Here we go!

Photography – I just bought myself a Nikon D60 DSLR (Reflex) camera and my first goal would definitely be to learn to get the best use out of it, using manual (or at least semi-manual) mode! In order to achieve this, I read a lot (I love reading) but I do realise that practice will be the best way to get there. I therefore plan on doing the POTD challenge on Two Peas Photography (cf. post before), which will “force” me to practice every day! At the same time, I hope to learn how to use Photoshop Elements to get the most of my pictures!
Scrapbooking – Last years goal was to make 104 layouts in the year (2 a week!) but I didn’t make it, I came to a (sad) total of 63!!! But, having moved houses and having had all my scrapbook things in a box for 3 months, I am not surprised about that! For 2009, I set my goal on a little less, because I hope to spend time on Photography too ;-) Up till yesterday I thought I’d set my goal on 1,5 layouts a week average, for a total of 78, but this morning I revised my goal and I’ll put my scrapbook thicker on 52 layouts because I also plan on making quite some mini-albums (Richard gave me the bind it all for Christmas!!!). I plan on doing a challenge a week (which means a layout a week) on some of my favourite challenge blogs!
Scrapbook related – ATC holder! I bought myself an ATC holder earlier this year, it is still in the box. I plan on filling the holder with ATCs (surprise) that show my children in 2009. I basically plan on taking one picture a day of them (at least), either the two together or only one of them, and on the ATCs I want to document their year. I’m not setting the goal of making one ATC a day, I’ll probably do loads of them every once in a while ;-) but I really am gonna try to keep up with this!

Well, that would be about it. I do have to clean my house once in a while, and I do have a job to go to!!! Having said that, I do realise that these goals might be a little optimistic, because it does involve daily photography and daily blogging :-O but I’ll try!! See you next year!!

Christmas

Let's start with a layout!

We took this picture of the kids in front of our tree (barely visible!) for some of our christmas cards. Quality could have been better, but we were in a hurry!! :-) I made this quick layout with the picture, craft cardstock (I love that color!!), a lot of felt, a Autumn leaves stamp and the eternal prima flowers! I didn't give it a title, just a little journaling that this picture was used for some christmas cards!

In 2008, I had set the goal for myself to create 104 layouts, which is 2 per week ;-), but I got to 63 and will MAYBE be able to create one more, but not 41!!! I blame that on us moving houses and most of my stuff being in a box for 3 months! I'll set a more realistic goal next year, even though in 2007 I did make it to 104 layouts, I guess 1.5 per week, on average of course, will be OK. So that would be 78 (please correct me if I'm wrong!) layouts, and I also plan on making mini albums, as Richard offered me a bind-it-all for Christmas, a little machine that binds books made from just pieces of paper/cardboard etc.

I offered myself for Christmas a new camera, a DSLR or Reflex camera! Nikon D60 with 2 lenses. I have created a website for this: Linnao's Photography, which sounds quite professional but which is NOT, I'm an amateur trying to learn how to use the thing ;-) But that is a lot of fun. On Two Peas Photography , I not only find tons of useful information, but I also decided to do the POTD challenge, POTS meaning Photo (or Picture?) of the Day. So I'll try to keep up and post (at least) one picture each day on my blog! It will be fun to see the progress after a year! Or at least, so I hope :-)

Again on Two Peas, this time on the Scrapping board, I sometimes do the blog challenge, which for today is "why is creativity important?". Well, I can't say WHY creativity IS important, but I can say why it is important to me. I've only been creative since a couple of years (2 or 3) and it is important to me simply because I enjoy it and because I really like that when you're creative, or try to be ;-), you have a lasting reminder of it, something that not only you but also the people you know can enjoy.

I wish you all a happy new year, a nice celebration tomorrow night and please know that I am very happy with comments!!!

My take on a Scrapjacked challenge

I felt like doing a challenge from a blog this weekend, I love these!! I was very inspired by the scrapjack challenge, that you can find here . I usually don't do layouts with many many pictures on it, BUT I was very tempted by this one as I took lots of pictures last week, when we had snow, but didn't want to use them for several layouts because they all looked quite the same :-).

The layout is quite simple. I used kraft cardstock, white cardstock, grungeboard alphabet (NEIGE) painted white with stickles (Ranger), a flower, felt (both with stickles again), a paperclip from who knows who and my favorite white pen.

The snow is all gone, we have gorgeous weather this weekend with sun and blue skies! I defenately prefer :-) Only 2 more work days and I'll be off for 12 days, gotta love christmas!!!

Thanks for stopping by and for your comments!

Winter's here...

What a surprise this morning to wake up and find this:

Beautiful, on a Sunday :-) I sure hope that during the week we won't have any snow (because I like driving and I like snow, but I don't like driving in the snow), but in the weekend it is truely beautiful!

I have been a little bit active on the creative side these last weeks, mostly in cardmaking, which is a first for me because I never make cards and basically don't really know how to make them. But I tried my new Cuttlebug embossing and cutting folders and I found some sketches here and I managed to make some! A little overview:

I have also made a few new layouts. The first is featuring Naomi and "her" ScoobyDoo. The colors of her clothes (well, pyjama's) were very hard to scrap, because I don't really like to use purple, but the result was quite OK:

And as I really love these pictures, I wanted to scrap them again on another color combination. I therefore printed them out in Sepia to get rid of the purple and made a layout that I framed to put in Naomi's room:

I looooove the picture in the next layout, even though a photographer would probably say it is not a very good picture :-) My little girl looks sooooo big, so grown up! Well, on the biggest of the picture that is, in the other ones she looks just like a 6 years old :-)

And after all these Naomi layouts I obviously HAD TO do an Alban one. Maïté gave me these cute pictures she took during the summer holidays, and I was eager to scrap them, but I honestly am not sure about the result. A little too simple but I have no idea what to add...

That's about it for now! Thanks for stopping by and PLEASE leave a comment to show me you were here! :-)

Autumn is cool...

when it is 20°C and sunny, that is! We are enjoying a long weekend (Tuesday 11 is a bank holiday and we all got Monday off too!!) and the beautiful weather allows us to spend a lot of time outside, in the garden where Richard is cutting trees, in the playground/parc with the kids, life is nice! :)

Well, that is if you don't count the ENORMOUS spider I just killed. The biggest ever! Well, not litterally of course, but really, it was HUGE. And totally invading my scrapcorner :( With a little help from Richard, who handed me the anti-spider bombing material (...) I managed to get rid of it, and right now I am carefully looking around because my mom always used to tell me that they come in pairs... So I tremble.

Therefore, just a quick post to show you my latest creations:

This layout is featuring Naomi on a poney. She is so happy when she ride a "horse". I made this one for a stamping challenge, we had to use a stamp and brown ink. I stamped the cute Magnolia girl, with regards to my happy horseback riding girl. PP Cosmo Cricket and Cherry Arte, letters American Craft Thickers.

And this one is about Naomi in the "pool of balls" or whatever you might call it in English. Can't remember who made the PP and am too afraid to go search to my paper stock, in case spider-man (or woman) is hiding in there... you know, the other half of the pair.

Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a comment!

It's November, that's for sure...

It has been raining all day, almost non stop. A definate sign of November :( This morning, I planned on going to the market, I love the market, but the rain got me hesitating. I finally decided to go, with a big umbrella, and ran into my brother-in-law who invited me for lunch. Okay, why not? We ate at 4 pm :D But never mind that, we had a fun afternoon.


I totally forgot to post pictures of the first snow of the year, which was last week while it was still October, not normal at all ;-) The pictures were taken in the garden where we actually had just a little snow, where I work there was quite a lot, but well, still don't take my camera to work! OK, don't laugh!

Next I'll show you two of the three layouts I made so far this weekend. Only two, because I didn' manage to get a decent picture of the third ;) I really DO NOT like the third, so I'm not even sure I'll show it!

The first is a layout showing Alban on some kind of play-thing in the playground in Figeac. He was really concentrated on what he was doing, I love how he sticks out his tongue when he's concentrated. Too cute. I used WeRMemory Keepers paper, a diecut flower border (don't know who made it), Cherry Arte rub-ons and Ranger paintdabber.

The second layout also features Alban, with a picture taken that same day in the same playground, actually on the same "play-thing". I looooove this picture and quite like the result of the layout, even though it is still a "can do better" layout. Well, I hope I can do better ;), on day...
Prima PP (the cut-out flowers), Bazill CS and ribbon from my stack.

That's it for today! Thanks for your comments!

Back online!

After being without an internet connection for some 10 days, due to the moving, I'm back! The last 10 days were exhausting! Kind of what I expected, knowing we had to unpack 150 boxes, put the furniture in place and live (=work, eat, clean) at the same time! But we did it, and although not everything is really finished, we are settled in! It's a great house, I love it! I tried to take a couple of pictures, but after the good weather we had since beginning september, autumn finally arrived and the light is BAD for pictures!

Let's start with the truck with our furniture and boxes, it was HUGE:

yep, 70m3 is a lot!

Next, two pictures to show the colors we chose for the living room. Don't mind the mess on the table, they come with moving in!! :

I had received a publicity from La Redoute with this color scheme for walls/curtains, so I copied them and ordered from their competition :-D I quite like the chocolate brown, cream/whitish walls with the anis-green curtains, I'll have to scrap these colors too ;-) I'll ask coordinating table cloths from the Pere Noel, to finish it!

The kids both have a room for themselves plus one room they share to play in. That room is a mess no matter what I do or say! So no pictures of that one for now ;-) Their bedrooms are finished furnishing but the decorating still has to be done, they have loads of little posters and images to put on their walls, but that is no priority! Just to give you an idea:

I don't thing it is really necessary which room belongs to which child!?

The kids are on holiday this week. Luckily Richard is still at home so I didn't have a problem for the daycare. This morning they left to visit the grand parents for 4 days, 4 looooong days (for me that is!) but I'm here because I have a job to go to. But well, I'll go for christmas!

I hope to be able to get quite some scrapping done, I have picked out some challenges I want to do, have a couple of pictures I want to scrap badly and I need to inaugurate my new scrap corner. I don't have pictures yet, but will publish these soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

We got our house!

Yesterday morning, we officially became owners of our house! Yay!!! I'm happy ;-)


In the end of the morning, we went to our house, to take a look at it in empty state, and it was quite OK, in good state! We met the former owners there so that they could explain the functioning of certain things, like the heating, and we had a little champagne to celebrate the event! The kids met our new neighbours who have a little girl (4 yo) and immediately made friends, and went to play. They are happy too! :-)



After lunch, Richard attacked the wall paper in the living room, because we decided to change that before our furniture arrives on Tuesday (yay!!!) and I went shopping for food and for curtain rails. Mission not entirely accomplished, but we are not in a hurry! Today Richard will return to the house and he can start putting the paper on, I am sooooo curious to know what it's gonna look like! Myself I will go to the house to take pictures, which I hope to publish here tonight! I took a couple yesterday, please note the blue sky :-D

Good mailday!

Just an ordinary Tuesday, lightened up by GREAT mail! A couple of weeks ago, two to be exact, I 'altered' a journal for a journaling challenge on classyscrappers, hosted by Adriann, who has this wonderful blog, check it out! And just for doing the challenge, for participating, she sent a wonderful little RAK to everybody! I received it today, that was really quick for mail from the US! It was a cute little kit with flowers, ribbons etc, thank you Adriann! This is the journal I made:

When picking up the kids from school, I was able to also pick up my curtains that I ordered. The package was quite heavy, glad to be home with it, but OMG, I love my curtains :-) Our house is going to be so beautiful ;-) Only 5 more days to go!!

D-6, we're getting there!

Only 6 more days to go!! I just suddenly realised that i have loads to do for the move: change of address at the post office, cards with our new address for family and friends and change address at official things such as health insurance... Get a telephone number! :-O Didn't think of that one before!!! And soon after the telephone number, get internet!!! Sometimes I hear horror stories of people without a connexion for like 4 to 8 weeks, can you imagine that?!? I can't, I'm lost without Internet!!!

So yesterday I blogged about the beautiful weather here, to make things more true for readers, here are some pictures! They're not the best ever, but at least they show the blue sky, that's what the pictures are all about anyway!

Have a good Monday!

Weekend occupations and blog challenge

It's the end of a BEAUTIFUL weekend, can't believe we actually had 30° in October! (Celsius!) We didn't do too much, just walk around, play in the garden and the playground, we had a beer in town on a sunny terrace and that's it!

No, not really, as we will have our new house NEXT WEEK, we ordered curtains, an oven and a dishwasher! :-) This all took me quite some time, because the colors of the curtains, as well as the measures of course, had to be Right, the oven and dishwasher had to be ordered for the lowest price possible ;-) so it took me quite some surfing! But it's all going to arrive soon, can't wait!!!! 6 more days and we'll have our house!

I once in a while do a blog challenge from Two Peas :

Challenge for today~ Are you good at remembering dates on pictures? Or do you have to write it all down...

I'm a mess with dates, from really old pictures (well, everything is relative, if you're 35, you don't really have really old pictures...) I don't even really remember the year... But luckily for me, Digital photography was invented and all my pictures have the date in their memory :-) Except for the ones from before-digital, and for these I just don't have the date... Too bad.

That's all for now, wish you all a good week!

It's getting better already...

Even though the blog "look" is not perfect yet, there are some improvements, thanks to the wonderful lessons of Kimberly Brimhall from SisTV! I made the banner myself!!!! OK, not perfect yet, but I am proud :) I have tried to insert a nice background, but lost my columns in the process, so I gave up on that. I also still have to make my list of blog links to blogs that I like, I need to give category labels to my posts, I would like to make diaporama of my scrapbookpages that I like most (well, not gonna put the ugly ones here for everyone to see, am I?) etc. etc. etc. Enough to keep me busy for a while!

A slight problem *might* be that I'll probably be without an Internet connexion for a while. Moving houses means disconnect to the world! :O ONLY ONE WEEK TO GO AND WE'LL BE THE PROUD OWNERS OF A BEAUTIFUL HOUSE!!! We are soooo impatient! Alban mostly because he will finally be able to play with Buzz Lightyear, who's been in a box since the end of August, I know, aweful mistake in planning! Me because we will finally have ALL our stuff again, can't believe how much I miss my clothes, my furniture, my mugs :) and of course my scrap stuff! It's gonna be so much fun, but also so much work, to unpack the boxes and give everything its little place in our new home! Scooby won't know what's happening, moving again! But she'll get used to it and certainly won't be sorry to NEVER see our 8 neighbour cats again :)

I'll leave it to that today, I'll try to work some more on the blog this weekend. No new pictures of layouts to show at the moment :(

Welcome on my NEW blog!

Totally doesn't look good, my blog, doesn't it? Well, I'm taking this class from SiSTV all about making your blog beautiful, fun and readable, so keep looking over the next days/weeks for improvements, like a new banner (personalized, please!), a beautiful background and... I don't know what else yet, the class just started yesterday :-)

Today's homework was making a post about what I want blogging to be for me. Ideally it would be a funny, goodlooking blog with lots of news, scrapbooking, stories about books, films, TVshows, gossip, politics (???) or anything else that crosses my mind, and then really ideally I would publish my blog as a book and make LOTS of money :-) One can dream! Although I doubt that in the current crisis period, people will spend their money on my blog book...
To look a little out of the ideal situation, I basically want this blog to be my communication to the world, whether that is to family and friends who are now 1100 km north from me (I moved!), my neighbour (who I haven't met yet!) or curious blog-spotters on the other side of the Atlantic. We'll move into a new home in 2 weeks time, what better way to share this but on a blog?!? Lots of pictures to share! When we move in, I'll finally get all my scrapstuff back (it's in storage) and I will have lots to show!! That's what my blog is for! The kids are growing up, which means a lot of funny, moving and happy anecdotes.

So, check back often!

A little update on Autumn in the South of France, love it! 26°C, blue sky (OK, a couple of clouds, little white ones) but chilly evenings and mornings. The funny thing is that the trees do think it is fall, and nature shows its beautiful colors everywhere, a lot of RED, bright red that I do have to take some pictures of! (silly me, don't take my camera to work!!) But despite natures colors, we still feel like in summer, which is kind of a strange feeling. But believe me, I'll get used to it! I'll end this post with a couple of pictures, one to show the beautiful blue sky, picture taken 8 days ago, and one showing the kids, as always :-)

Thanks for stopping by!