Notes from the side of a volcano

Once upon a time she wore dresses ...

 

Pretty, floral dresses that I would sew for her. I was as obsessed with sewing for a few years back then as I am about photography and scrapbooking now. Actually, I keep meaning to haul out the dusty sewing machine and make Daughter-Two and myself some skirts, if I can find some cool material. I have some vintage fabrics that are crying out to be used - and there is actually a vintage textiles fair on just down the road at Alexandra Park on Sept 13th. I shan't buy, but I may go along and be inspired to use the materials I already have...

Anyway, Daughter-One wouldn't be seen dead in a floral dress now. It's black all the time now, which is as it should be. After all, I wore mostly black for years (although I did mix it up with vintage dresses and skirts too).

I just have to satisy myself with scrapping the photos. You can tell why I designed this week's kit:

 

It's in store at Designer Digitals now, along with these:

 

and this week's template:

 

Here it is in use by me, Sam and Amber:

 

 

"Alas, earwax"

The title of this post, in case you are not a "Harry Potter" fan, is a quote from the first book when poor Professor Dumbledore did not choose well from a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.

We have had a bit of a Harry Potter month here, with Daughter-One making me watch all the movies again then go with her to see the latest one in the cinema. And she and Daughter-Two have been reading the early books.

That quote from Dumbledore seems to have particularly caught Daughter-Two's fancy and every now and then you will hear her mutter to herself with a giggle, "Alas, earwax" as she sits drawing or building with lego.

Daughter-One likes to torment her with the fact that when SHE was little and living in England, you could buy Bertie Bott's Every Flavour beans and, although she never got an earwax one, she did often get the dreaded horseradish flavour.

Sadly, after reading the first two books, Daughter-Two will have to wait a few more years to read the rest as they get a bit too much for a very young 7 year old I think.

Meanwhile, I recovered from my migraine only to come down with the cold that Daughter-One has been suffering. So I had her home from school, and as soon as she was gone I was sick. (Mutter, mutter, groan, moan) I think I could do with some magic around here.

Apart from working, all I managed was to have a couple of architects round to give quotes on draughting designs for the house. The stairs will be surprisingly cheap thank goodness. In fact the plans and the building permit from the Council will cost more than the construction. (Mutter, mutter). The retaining wall at the street frontage (which absolutely HAS to be replaced before it collapses) remains a problem. Cutting a parking space/garage will cost a fortune but without it we won't be able to sell the house for much more than we paid. Which means there is little point doing much else to it, such as a new kitchen, opening up the back with French doors etc. But if we DO bite the bullet and pay for a parking space, then we will have to spend a lot on the rest of the house to make it worth what we will have to sell it for. Anyway, we are getting plans done and will get some real estate agents in for quotes about what it might sell for renovated. And everything will need resource consent since we are in a heritage zone and on a protected volcanic cone. Living on the side of a volcano does not come cheap, let me tell you.

I had a lot of fun with this week's new products at Designer Digitals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used "Venice Beach" for my lift of a great page by Aino for the Saturday Scraplift on the Designer Digitals blog:

 

And Laura used it for this lovely page:

 

I LOVE how Crissy and Debbie used the Patterns Petite 4 papers:

 

 

Sarah had fun with the photo textures:

 

And so did I:

 

And the best thing about making templates is you get to use them yourself:

 

 

Mini-kit freebie on Shutterfly Celebrations Blog

I print most of my layouts at home (on Epson Archival matte photo paper), but for a couple of special projects I have had Shutterfly books printed and they really are wonderful. They have some new more affordable softcover options now too, and I am seriously considering just getting photobooks instead of printing at home ..

I found out about the new softcover books on the Shuttefly Digiscrap blog, where you can also download a freebie mini-kit from me (the one used to create the freebie QP recently given away on the blog):

 

Hope you like it!

The house of the malfunctioning parents

I've had a headache for about 10 days, although thanks to the beta-blockers I've been taking it hasn't developed into a full on migraine. Just enough to make me miserable and unproductive. Until yesterday, when it did reach migraine status. Although because of the beta-blockers the searing pain in the head wasn't as bad as usual - which meant that, along with feeling sick to the stomach, I could only feel the most disconcerting sensation of an electrical storm going on in my brain.

Unfortunately Bernard (who is giving up coffee) chose the same day to get a splitting headache. I did the Saturday Scraplift for the Designer Digitals blog featuring a wonderful simple and stylish page, then decided I just had to give up and go to bed for the first time in months. But when I got there, he was already sprawled across the bed. "Are you kidding me?" I said. He just grunted, then proceeded to snore so I kicked him and he staggered off to the daybed in my office. There Daughter-Two discovered him and covered him up with a blanket and surrounded him with soft toys. She spent the afternoon bringing me little love notes and stories she had written, and conveying messages such as "take the dog for a walk" or "get your sister a drink" to Daughter-One.

Actually, I think they both had a lovely day doing what they wanted in peace!

At 5pm I crawled out of bed and surveyed the scene of Bernard still flat out on the bed dead to the world. I prodded him experimentally and he just grunted again so I realised I had to make their dinner myself, which was a challenge. But by 7pm the electrical storm in the brain thankfully subsided, and I was able to eat a little myself. But we were all, apart from Daughter-One, in bed and asleep by 8.30pm.

I did manage to get some designing and scrapping done over the week despite the head's best attempts to stop me in my tracks. You can find all my designs at Designer Digitals.

I revamped my old "It's Elementary" kit, which was very satisfying:

 

Plus these:

 

 

 

Here are they layouts (Click on image to see larger):

 

(That's is my take on the Saturday Scraplift) and here's Daughter-two on the island again:

It's a week of intellectual achievements

Daughter-One just emailed me from school to tell me she had got back her first GCSE result (for English Language - Advanced).

I had a feeling she would ace it, but I was worried I was dreaming given her recent record academically.

But our school-hating, unmotivated genius did indeed ace it - 93% (A*). Is it wrong of me to wish I was a fly on the school staffroom wall right now? Or to want to email her teachers from her last school?  Ah well, I shall just bask in her reflected glory while it lasts. We have the rest of the exams looming in a couple of months and they are ones that require more swotting than natural talent ....

Bernard was away all weekend at the Wordpress bloggers camp in Wellington. I really did not want him to go, as it was non-essential and I have had one or both of the Daughters home for four of the past 6 weeks. (Due to school holidays then various non-life threatening but pesky illnesses). But he kept asking and asking like an annoying child until I eventually said 'Fine. Go. But don't talk to me about it because I can't be gracious about it".

Actually, it turned out to be quite a relaxing weekend without him around, so maybe it was a tactical error on his part.

His absence meant I had Daughter-Two's regular morning cuddle in bed/lecture series to myself. Yesterday morning the subject was "theories on how the universe may end". Daughter-Two favoured the "big Crunch" theory (which says that once the expansion of the universe caused by the Big Bang slows and eventually stops, the process will reverse and all the planets etc will slowly compress back together). Then she said that Dipsy the Teletubbie also had a theory. He thought that a series of black holes would form as stars die and they would join together to make a huge black hole which would swallow the universe.

Dipsy called this theory, she said, "the Big Suck".

And then she burst into helpless laughter.

 

And my intellectual achievement?

Well, I went to the TVNZ quiz night, which was a very raucous affair - and one of the questions was which Teletubby is the yellow one. So, thanks to Daughter-Two, I was able to contribute to my team's success.

We did pretty well. At least we beat the Fair Go and Close Up teams.

It's been much more springlike here, which has helped everyone feel a bit less gloomy. Daughter-Two and I went up the hill for the first time in weeks and she had a great time sploshing in the flooded crater. The new fenceline has been cleared, and I think it will be a big improvement for us to have the boundary fenced and the fence closer to us courtesy of the council. Less bashing through the overgrowth everytime you want to get up the hill, since the cows keep it down.

A lot of bamboo had been chopped down, and now Daughter-Two's room looks like this:

 

(That's the old one-eared English panda that was MY beloved toy as a child. Who would have thought he would have ended up in a bamboo grove in a bedroom on the edge of a volcano in New Zealand?)

Give the positively springlike weather, I was inspired to create a flowery kit for Designer Digitals this week:

  

And I am in love with scrapbooking with papers with bright, bold but small patterns right now:

And another template just for those hard to scrap event and outings pages:

 

And my layouts:

 

 

I never smiled much ..

.. judging from the photos anyway.

I was looking through some old scanned photos and I seemed to have a permanent scowl in all of them. My poor parents.

Actually I think I was just permanently confused and bemused by these strange things called people.

 

I used my new worn strips in this. You can find them at Designer Digitals, along with the two new templates out this week.

 

 

I've finished a mammoth computer-housekeeping frenzy and streamlined my working processes, so am feeling very productive. Hopefully you'll start seeing the results in store next week.

I got some scrapping done:

 

And on Friday I went into the city in order to return some disks to the TV station and took along the camera too. The old deciduous trees along Queen St have been replaced with pungas and nikaus (tree ferns) which on balance I think was a good idea, although how long they will remain healthy by the side of a city street instead of in a damp forest glade remains to be seen.

 

 

Caught the train home - they used to have tree ferns down here in the station too but they died.

 

Got home and decided the photos were too boring so I had a play:

Freebie - and a sale still on!

The fantastic Christmas in July sale is still on at Designer Digitals.

The sale ends at 6am EST on Saturday, so don't miss out.

Meanwhile, over at the Shutterfly Celebrations blog, you can pick up this freebie quickpage from me:

Lifting for the Designer Digitals blog

Every week at Designer Digitals we chose a great page from the member's gallery to lift, and this week's beautiful page inspired me to create this:

 

I love this photo of Daughter-Two (pre hair hack!), and her beautiful wonky face. We never notice it at all these days, only in photos. She's never still enough in real life!

To see the lovely page that inspired this, and the rest of the lifts check out the Designer Digitals blog.

(Everything I used is from a new kit, "Isabelle", which is coming in just over a week).