LSNED 2012

I joined Shimelle for LSNED a few years ago and have yet to complete a year.  Some would say I should take that as a sign and just give up, but I am not a quitter.  Maybe this year is my year?!?!?!?  I already know that a mini album won't work, nor will 12x12's.  So I was stumped as to how I might even give myself an option of completing it until I went here.  Sian is using a photo app and that started my brain ticking over ... I have LOTS of camera/photo apps and I LOVE playing with them!  They are my portable stress-ball.  So why not use one or ten of them???

So I will be attempting to join in to LSNED this year and I will reserve the right to play with lots of photo apps to record my lessons.  First up I will play with Kabaam, a fun comic book app.  My friends and I have used this app for a fun trick or two and it is great for a laugh.  I might even use it all month long and add one box for each day ... but I am not promising anything :-)

Today was not a great day ... it was a Bridezilla day!!!!! A majority of brides are lovely creatures, but some have been bitten by the Bridezilla bug and those need to be avoided at all cost.  Today I learnt that you can not reason with a Bridezilla, you can't dangle sparkly bling in front of them to placate them.  You just need to walk away with a smile and not let their nasty comments hurt your feelings.

I had over eight brides today to assist with invitations.  Three of them were death incarnate.  At the end of the day I sat on the couch in the shop and cried.  I cried for my hurt feelings and I cried for their marriages.  It will take a miracle for their relationships with their future husbands to live up to the unrealistic expectations they have.  If they think that they can still get 10 year old papers, or $30 invitations for $10 then they are setting themselves up for disappointment just with the invitations alone.  You should have seen some of the HUGE files these brides carried.  They want diamonds for the price of glass and their poor fiancés (and myself) cop the brunt of their disappointment.

Tomorrow is Storytelling Sunday and Father's Day (in the Land Down Under).  It will be a much better day :-)

Chipper

P.S.  I should say that I don't usually make $30 invitations, but there are some brides who want soooooooo much that they have quotes for invitations for $30 EACH!!! I can't imagine spending that much on an invite that will probably go in the bin/trash!!!!!

LSNED - day 30

On the last day of the month I learnt a sad lesson. I learnt that the loss of a friend still hurts the same even if you had never met them.

I wish you all the best for your future my friend. I will be praying for you.

Chipper

LSNED - Day 11 & 12

Day 11

"Distress Stain does not dry on everything you want it to, but it does stain your fingers and nails!  Even the lemon I was told to clean my fingers with to get rid of it didn't work.  I have very dark green fingers and ugly green nails!"

Day 12

"First impressions are not always true.  In this case I am talking about the lemon not working to clean my fingers.  By mid morning the colour had almost completely bleached away!!!!! So a much better result than the last time when the colour lasted three days!"

Maybe the lesson I should have learned is "wear gloves when working with stains"! LOL

Chipper

LSNED - Day 10

"Do not leave things until the last minute!"

I am sure this is a lesson that we all learn from time to time, and it is one that I have to keep reminding myself frequently.  You could say that I learnt it good this time around!  I had great plans to give my cousin and his wife a nappy/diaper cake and some baby shower thankyou cards as a gift for their baby shower on Sunday. I did manage to finish them all but not one piece is how I had wanted it to be.  Probably my only saving grace is that I have a Cricut machine and neither of them craft! LOL

Here is what I made them.  I am taking the photos at work and I am surrounded by industrial buildings.  These are the best backgrounds I can get :-)

Nappy/Diaper cake

Baby Shower Thank you cards

I used the Cricut cartridge 'New Arrivals' and cut all the animals at 5in.  That way I could use my matching Peachy Keen stamps for their faces.  It really finishes the animals off nicely and there is no way that I could draw the faces myself!  The cards were cut from the same cartridge and I really had to hunt for generic baby colours!!!  The Princess helped me decorate the cards and she put the chalked cheeks on all the animals.  The Thinker hunted the internet for a baby shower thank you poem for the inside and he found a great site HERE.

So never leave things till the last minute or you end up having to rush!!!!

Chipper

LSNED - Day 9

"Going on a lunch date is just as good as a dinner date, if not better!"

With our one and only employee back from her holidays, The LOML and I were able to grab just over an hour for a lunch date on Friday.  We quickly dropped in on our local Chinese and enjoyed a beautiful lunch together.  It can be so difficult to organise baby sitters in the evening so we don't often go out for dinner.  Although our lunches out are a little faster than dinner, they are just as enjoyable and perhaps even better as I am not so tired!

Chipper

LSNED - Day 8

"Every now and again you have to dream a little."

I did quite a bit of dreaming today :-)  Check out my previous post for just some of it ...

Chipper

LSNED - Day 7

"All you need is LUNCH when you are having a trying morning!"

Especially when it is macaroni & cheese!  Thanks honey :-) xoxox

Chipper

LSNED - Day 6

"Surprising interruptions to your well planed day can be very enjoyable!"

I had my day off planned down to the second (well almost!).  I even got up early to enjoy as much as possible.  My original list has only half crossed off as the afternoon didn't go to plan.  But they were all good changes.  THE LOML arrived home earlier than normal so I had lunch with him.  When the kids came home a few hours later they all had stuff that had to be done RIGHT NOW!!!  But that is the great thing about a day off.  The Extrovert was given a science project that didn't need to be done then.  But as we were home during daylight and the sun was shining, we went for our bush walk to collect all the needed specimens right away.  He had to collect plant specimens from all different types of plants.  He then has two weeks to research about them and present them as a display.  After discussing it he decided to press the specimens.  He photographed each of them after we got home.  Here are some of his photos.

We are even trying to press a slice of the mushroom.  So now all of the specimens are 'pressing' under piles of heavy books, with the exception of the lichen and moss as they are drying in paper bags.

Meanwhile The Princess 'forgot' that she needed a R costume or a helper from the community costume for tomorrow.  Nothing like short notice.  So we recycled an old costume that was in the dress up box and she became 'Robin Hood'!  And of course it needed repairing so out came the sewing machine.

My day ended even better than I had planned :-)  But it is still good to start with a plan, just be prepared to be flexible!

Chipper

LSNED - Day 5

"All things come to an end.  Even four long weeks without a day off!"

Yippee!!!!!!!!  This is the last day of my four week stretch without a day off.  I even managed to get lots accomplished so that I can really enjoy my Tuesday off.  Hopefully I will even manage to create the first 5 pages of class!

Note to self: It is not a good idea to give your only staff member three weeks off in a row :-)

Chipper

LSNED - Day 4

"If I get up earlier on a Sunday, it almost feels like an extra day off!"

I do not like working on Sunday, but our shop is open for 4 hours from 11am till 3pm.  It seems to kill the day completely.  The last few weeks I have risen earlier and sat in my sunny chair with a cup of tea and read for a bit until the kids emerged.  Then we have a delicious cooked brunch and head to work.  It is ALMOST like having another day off!  It is not how I would choose to spend every Sunday, but it is a good compromise.

Chipper

LSNED - Day 3

"Life will never be the same as your favourite childhood book or movie.  Sometimes it is worse. But when it is good, it is better than any story could ever be, as it is tangible and can be felt in your heart and remembered in your mind for years to come."

For most of my childhood I wished for a life like Trixie Belden.  It was never going to happen and it was my dream to create that life for my children.  Oh how childish that dream was!  No matter what rapids the river of life takes you through, the beauty of even the simple everyday things make it all worthwhile.

Chipper

P.S.  While trying to find a picture of one of the book front covers I discovered that there is even a Trixie Belden convention!!!!  Who knew such things existed??? LOL

LSNED - Day 2

"Sometimes friends come from the most unexpected places."

I think this is a lesson that we all need to learn.  This is something that I need to keep reminding myself.

Chipper

LSNED - Day 1

Today was an ordinary day, with ordinary hiccups, and ordinary 'to do lists' not getting accomplished.  Until I went to the primary school Music Showcase to watch The Princess sing in the choir.  Many memories came flooding back during that 2hr show.  Some great, some sad.  I don't think that it is ever a good idea to have a perfectionist teach a perfectionist, especially when it comes to music.  Is there ever any music that is performed or played perfectly?

So my lesson for today ...

"Perhaps there is a chance that I wasn't such a terrible musician after all."

I wish I had learnt that lesson a long time ago.

Chipper

Learn Something New Every Day

I signed up for this class last year but due to life's twists and turns I never even read the prompts!  I still have them all saved (and possibly printed too) and one day I may go back and do them, but in the tradition of moving forward ... let's get ready for this year's 'Learn Something New Every Day' with Shimelle.  A bonus of signing up for this class is that you then get to do it each year for FREE!  Isn't that a great little bonus, it certainly brought a smile to my face :-)

I seem to have a little bit of difficulty completing online classes as I haven't finished one yet.  So yesterday I hopped on the class forum and had a look around.  There was a whole thread about people having made the base of each page in their album to help them get ahead and finish.  Sounds like a great idea to me, so today I racked my brain trying to come up with something that would suit me this time around and not take too much time.  Normally I would go with a mini album, but the more I thought about it, the more it wasn't working.  I love making mini albums but they are so hard to have on display.  The albums are on a shelf and easily accessible, but all of the mini albums are in a box in the cupboard.  However, I will NEVER finish this class if I make a 12x12 page for each day!  So I decided to give the idea some thought while I periodically looked at the next page on my Google reader list.

Which brought me to this page here at some point in time this morning.  I LOVE the idea of this calendar page.  What a great way to preserve a month or year in your life!  Further surfing and I ended up at Shimelle's latest post for 6x4 photo love.  I watched the video while I was eating lunch and that is when my prep for this class all came together.  Don't you love it when that happens!  I decided to use the divided grid idea from the calendar page and do a series of 12x12 pages for my album (and yes, I will probably sew them all together!)  There will be 6 pages in total as I plan on doing a title page explaining the class, with the following 5 pages divided into 6.  Here is the first page ready to go.

Made on Kraft card

I am using Kraft card for the base as I have never used it before.  Might as well try something new straight away :-)  I used some glimmer mist to divide the page and made the little number embellishments.  I have already got out some journalling stamps to make some fancy cards each day and I am ready to go.  Here is what the next double page looks like.  The last page is the same as this one.

It kind of reminds me of a bingo card LOL  Hopefully I have done enough prep to actually finish the class this time.  So far I am finding it very bland having used the kraft card, but I keep reminding myself that I can add colour each day.

It will be an interesting experiment.  I wonder if I am going to like it in the end?  I like journeys, and I am ready to begin this one tomorrow.  I hope the prompts come through earlier this time around.  I really want to complete each day on the day, and not a day behind.  So let the learning begin ...

Chipper