Sneaks

Howdy,

It's been ages since I shared any new projects so anyone would think perhaps I haven't been scrapping. However I have... really! Its been miserable and wet here lately so I've been scrapping up a storm but most of which is for design team committments so I can't yet share.

But there is no harm in a few sneaks...

And that's not including the 3 layouts I just finished today and the double that remains unphotographed on my desk. Loving the flow of mojo right now and can't wait to share some complete layouts with you all soon.

Don't forget my blog candy. Drawing in the next couple of days :)

Declutter Progress

Hey everyone

To those of you in Australia, HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY!!! Hope you have all had a wonderful day. As its a public holiday here, I spent the day at home as my husband is away, so I started getting into the disaster that is my house as part of my declutter resolution. Now as embarrassing as this is, I thought it might be a good motivator to share exactly what I'm working with. So make sure you're sitting down because it's pretty shocking!

I have always been a terrible hoarder and a pretty messy sort of person. So since I started scrapbooking, this is how my office has ended up:

 Yep there is a desk somewhere under there haha

 Piles of pizza boxes, messy looking book shelves...

 My converted TV unit/cuttlebug station and more piles of pizza boxes and bits and pieces

And that hideous pile of crap behind the door and my handbags on the door lol

So this is the room that I want to convert into a crafters paradise... but with a limited budget due to our current life situation so as much as I want to go out and splurge on an entire IKEA home office organisation station, I have to do it a bit more gradually and cost efficiently. But this is the room at its worst... I have already cleaned a tiny bit of room since this photo this morning :)

There is another room in my house that I have plans for too but I'll share that horror room on another day. I promise you my entire house does not look like this. Just a couple of rooms that I can hide away by shutting the doors haha

Have a great day everyone

Holly x

Simplified Life Week 3 & 4

Hey everyone,

It's been a few days since I blogged so I thought I would join in with the next two simplified life weekly challenges. I found week 3, mission statements, quite challenging. How do you sum up your life really? I can't say I'm great at that. So rather than being overly specific in a mission statement, my motto for this year is to "Make the most of the experiences ahead of me, to enjoy life and make myself and my loved ones my top priority". Simple, but something most of us can probably relate to.

The week 4 challenge involved helping to identify the areas in life that may need more work, based on 8 areas of importance. There is even a cool worksheet on the blog to help you work it out. I worked out my 8 areas of importance are:
- Family
- Health
- Relationships
- Fun
- Friendship
- Creativity
- Organisation
- Relaxation

I am fairly satisfied with my family life, my creativity and my relationships at the moment. My health is going okay too but is of vital importance to me right now. With such a stressful job, I don't always have a good work life balance, being so exhausted when I get home so I do feel I need to devote more time to spending with friends and having fun relaxing and enjoying the company of others. Unfortunately the life of a psychologist tends to be a bit antisocial for me outside of work otherwise lol Organisation is of course a huge focus and area I'm lacking at the moment. I have started planning for that goal though!

So in summary, this year I need to really focus on myself instead of my job and the bigger picture. Time to bring it all a bit closer to home and enjoy the experiences with the people who count the most.

By the way, Simon and I booked a 2 week tour through China/Vietnam in June to celebrate 10 years of being together. Very exciting and not a great way to eliminate our debts which we were almost on top of lol But experiences are worth far more than anything else so its going to be wonderful!

Have a great week and don't forget my blog candy which I'm drawing at the end of this month.

Holly x

Declutter 52 Steps Challenge

Hey,
Yep, another blog post. I'm doing well this week but trrying to get some early 2012 motivation since January is already getting away on me. I saw a great challenge inspiration on FB yesterday and went to check out the blog... 52 step decluttering challenge. Some of you may remember that one of my main goals for 2012 is exactly that... to declutter! So this sounds perfect for me.

You can find the first post here.

So first things first... what are my 2012 organising goals:

1st step to decluttering is creating goals for yourself so... what are my 2012 goals:

1. To declutter my house
2. To keep organised with my scrapbook committments
3. To completely re-organise my scrapbook room/office
4. To get rid of unwanted items on ebay, giveaway or bin them
5. To maintain a healthy lifestyle and get my body pregnancy ready
6. To do all my christmas and birthday shopping earlier this year
7. To have a supply of hand made cards ready to go so I don't have to make them at the last minute all the time
8. To get on top of debts, save money and splurge on an overseas holiday

So these goals are fairly similar to my resolution based post, but a few extras and more specific ones added in. Now to start the actual decluttering process... well... when I get my new office shelf I will start haha That sounds terrible but at least I'll have a plan in my head as the office is my problem room.

Actually, I have already made a couple of big declutter changes in the past couple of weeks, finally getting rid of an old single bed and dresser set on ebay. So easy... and far quicker than  the trading post online option I was trying. I had been wanting to get rid of those items for about 2 years.

Declutter tasks on my list so far:

Clean out wardrobe
Sell spare wedding dress
Sell spare formal dress
Sell king single bed
Sell bookshelves in office
Set up new shelving units in office
Sort books for keep, sale or giveaway
Dispose of old magazines
Purchase another scrapbook paper rack
Organise ribbons & flowers in scrapbooking room
Sell mini net book
Move band equiptment to garage
Move suitcases to garage
Sort storage drums in garage
Dispose of broken or unwanted items in garage
Give unwanted scrapbooking supplies to mum or someone else
Clean out pantry
Sort our laundry pile in spare room
Sort stuff in spare cupboards
Giveaway unwanted board games
Sell or giveaway unwanted console/computer games
Create better storage for christmas decorations
Give back mum & dad's push mower and storage box from garage


Okay, so that is a pretty big and very specific sounding list of tasks I have already planned for 2012. At least by keeping them that specific and putting them in the blog world for all to see, it may actually keep me on track.

Do you have plans to declutter  in 2012? Post a comment and tell me how you plan to go about it.

Holly x

A2Z Scraplets January Releases

Hey there

The new January releases from A2Z scraplets are now on display on the blog with some amazing inspiration from the Design Team here.

Here are my January layouts featuring some fantastic Scraplets:

 Materials: Paper - Crete paper, cosmo cricket; Purple Pumpkin buttons; twine

 Materials: My minds eye papers; paper doily; D-lish scraps flowers; other: flowers

 Materials: Websters pages paper; bo bunny paper; D-lish scraps flowers; other: flowers, silver doily, bling.

Hope you are having a great day. And don't forget to enter for your chance to win my blog candy here. I will be drawing this soon.

Holly x

It's a Simple Life

Hey everyone,

I was having a browse blogger updates from those who inspire me this afternoon and came across a post of one particular bloggy friend who is participating in the 52 weeks weeks to simplify your life challenge, which I had never heard of. I had a bit of a look into it and thought it might be a great way to reflect on the year to come after a rather challenging 2011. I am a little late to start so here are my first 2 weeks worth of topics rolled into one.

Week 1 - Create a list of everything that went “right” in 2011
Hmm... I'll admit this was a bit challenging as there was a lot that went 'wrong' in 2011. But it's not like me to be a total pessimist so here are some things that went right:
# My husband and I were able to travel to a new country for a few days
# My sister gave birth to my beautiful niece Kaleaha
# We celebrated our first wedding anniversary
# Christmas was spent with my entire family
# I was promoted to senior psychologist at work
# I discovered the amazing hobby of scrapbooking at a whole new level and had a couple of layouts picked up for publishing
# I met some wonderful new friends and collegues
# I was faced with some of the hardest moments of my life to date and was resilient enough to have moved through those experiences to become a stronger person

Week 2 - Define your personal Values
Here are 5 of my values that are of most personal importance:

# Family - this one tends to speak for itself with the importance of family and even more so due to our current plans of trying to concieve and start a family of our own.

#Love - Living without love would be like living without air to breath. We all need to love and feel loved and always remember to let our loved ones know that we do love them as life is short and precious.

# Fun - Having fun and being able to enjoy life is of such great importance. Without the ability to have a laugh, to do the things we love and simply enjoy life, it hardly seems worthwhile.

# Achievement - I pride myself on being able to learn new things, adapt to situations and enhance my knowledge. I love to surround myself in culture, knowledge and unique experiences which I feel to be personal achievements with each step taken towards gaining knowledge.

# Honesty - This is so important to me as I am a very honest person and I feel that others should give the same respect in being open and honest with me.

So I'll try and keep up with this throughout the year. It seems like a great way to reflect and very theraputic to share. As a psychologist myself, I can certainly see the benefits of an opportunity to 'simplify'.


Holly x

A2Z Scraplets January Sketch Challenge

Hi all,

The January sketch challenge for A2Z Scraplets has just been posted on the blog. This includes my first reveal as part of the DT for A2Z Scraplets with my January sketch sample. There are 2 older A2Z scraplet chipboard pieces on this layout, including the title and the funky shape in the background.

 The title was embossed in my cuttlebug with the heart design and then painted pink and inked lightly across the butterflies in brown.

This shape was painted pink and sprinkled with silver glitter in some areas for some sparkle.

Materials:
Kaisercraft Bonjor collection paper
Paper doily
Mini roses
A2Z Scraplets chipboard

Hope you can join in with the great sketch:

And be sure to check out the other wonderful inspiration by the new DT.

Have a great weekend

Holly xo

2012 - First Layouts of the Year

Hello

How has everyone's weekend been? Mine has been extremely quiet at home since my husband is still no better after 5 weeks of suffering horrible pain from a bulging disc in his back. Hopefully he recovers soon. So with a quiet weekend at home, it has been a great chance to get some scrapping done. I have done 2 layouts already today.

This first one is something I wanted to create since the start of the new year so I was pretty happy to see the new Get Picky challenge suited my idea. It is a layout reflecting on my goals and resolutions for 2012. I have included some hidden journalling on kraft journal cards that slide out from behind the photo and paper. One lists my resolutions, to declutter, get organised, get on top of finances and remain healthy. The other has my goals... and yes, one of those is to get pregnant lol And hopes of trying to squeeze in at least a mini overseas trip somewhere.

 Materials include: Papers & ribbons - Basic Grey Picadilly range; Prima flowers, AC Thickers; Green tara spray; D-lish scraps journalling cards.

This next layout was a general one with no sketch or challenge in mind. It features a photo of our new kitten with his brother Yoda. For the first few days, we had both Dexter and Yoda at our place as my sister adopted Yoda. Its a very cool picture!

 Materials: Paper, lace & alphas - Basic Grey Picadilly; prima flowers; Jillibean soup kraft alphas.

These two layouts were created using my DT kit from Scrapbooking Haven. Normally such bright colours would scare me but I am happy with how they turned out. There is another I have done with the kit already, but it will not be revealed until 1 February unfortunately. But here is a sneak:

Check out the Scrapbooking Haven February sketch challenge reveal to see the rest.

Have a great day :)

Manor House Giveaway

Would you like to win this? I know I would

You can be in the draw to win by visiting here

Good luck!

1 Year of Blogging

Hi all,
Today is the first anniversary of my blog. Hard to believe it has been a year already. I guess it only goes to show that time flies when you are having fun... with crafting anyway! Don't forget to enter my Blog Candy to celebrate. I'll be drawing this sometime in January:

I have some other exciting news to share that some of you may already be aware of if you are on FB. I am now designing for De-lish scraps. So excited as they have such gorgeous embellishments. And such fantastic prices too. You definitely need to check out the store if you haven't already.

Here is my first share using some D-lish products:

 Materials: Paper - kaisercraft; flowers - D-lish scraps, Kaisercraft; American craft thickers; Scrapware chipboard; D-lish scraps washy tape, doily and heart

This layout is of my husband at a recent gig he played with his band in December. It was a few days after he got back from his month of touring. He wasn't too impressed with the bright green or the flowers haha But its one of my all time favourite layouts and definitely would have been on my 2011 top 10 had I been able to share it sooner :))