Merry Christmas

We celebrate on Christmas Eve, so I just finished cooking two desserts and I am getting ready to cook a risotto. We are going to friend's house, it is tough being away from our family at times like this, but we still manage to have a good time with friends that feel pretty much like family :)

Hope you have a fun and safe Christmas!

a Ben 10 birthday

photos as promised :)

sorry for the lack of labels,

you can click on photos for the whole story on flickr!

have a great weekend!!!

Happy birthday to me!

Yep, it is finally here, the big three-o. Three decades :)

I owe photos of Mateus’ birthday, it was on Monday, a Ben Ten b-day at the park ~ He loved it!

Busy doesn’t cover how crazy it has been lately. I cancelled all my 30th b-day celebrations, I was just tired and most of my friends were tired too, so I decided that is not how I wanted to celebrate my 30th. I am going to do something extra nice in January once everyone is back from holidays and I am settled on my new place.

Today started off as any work day. Woke up early, went to work, couple of phone calls here and there, it was great talking to mom and grandma, I had a lot of missed calls during a meeting, part of life. For lunch everyone at work went to a Turkish restaurant. I was quite surprised by how cool it looked, never been there before and the food was awesome! Very pleasant surprise :)

I left late from there and by the time I got home it was past 3PM. I organized with hubby for him to pick up the kids, I wanted to get some “me” time and get started with editing the photos of the last few days (over 700 photos). He called me and asked me to check my mail, he sent me an invite to a blog. I was very puzzled, and then I had the biggest surprise of the day. Hubby has created a blog page for my 30th, for friends to leave messages on my birthday, how sweet is that? He has contacted some of my friends a month ago to let them know of the surprise (I am yet to find out how). I think it was the sweetest gift he could have given me, but I did love that he also got some buttons for me to use on my scrapbooking (he hates buttons, so it was an effort) and he got Mateus to choose some too :) I am blessed!

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OK, it wouldn’t be me if there wasn’t any scrapbooking news today, right? :) So, TODAY ONLY my products are 35% off at Little Dreamer Designs.

I also have joined up with Tiffany Tillman to create a freebie, but again, it is only up for 24 hours.

Go grab it at the Little Dreamer Designs Blog.

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I think this is it for me today. I have two new products but I don’t know if they will be uploaded in time for the sale, I will come back with links if they do :)

Hope you have a great day :)

Pencil Lines Sketch 115

That was fast right? I wasn’t gone for too long. I guess I can’t survive long without internet :) This prepaid wireless internet is working great, just can’t get my e-mail to work yet, but soon all will be back to normal.

So, back from the "land of no computers" just to bring you Sketch 114. Special guest this week is the ADORABLE and oh so talented Brenda Hurd, loooove her work!!!

We have a very special sketch for you today, very "Christmassy" and this time we have a special prizes for the digi scrappers that play along. Gift Certificates from me and Designs by Lili. Isn’t it great? Here is the sketch and FREE template this week:

(click on image for download link)

And here is my page created with Lili’s latest collaboration with Emily Merrit: Once Upon a Christmas

Now, I was all done and set up, almost ready to move when Michelle Coleman released her latest Christmas kit: A Heartfelt Christmas. I could not resist and have created a couple of pages with this kit and CD Muckosky’s Serendipity Alpha.

This with with Pencil Lines Sketch 115 (and matching page):

Which made me decide to offer more templates :)

and here are another two pages:

and that was all done before my move :) God knows when I will have time to scrap again LOL

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Moving houses is MUCH harder than I remembered, and I though it was hard before. First of all, no proper planning and a lot of distractions (and parties), second, no keys until 5 PM on the Friday, and third, pouring rain all through the weekend, resulted on today being the third day of our move and there are STILL a lot of stuff on the old house :(

The furniture is here, the computer is here :), there are clothes, kitchen appliances and TOYS everywhere. Everything we need to live is here, but there are still clothes, toys and almost all my scrapbooking goodies left behind. My body shows how unfit I am, and it hurts to breath LOL. But there were a lot of highlights this weekend, and I will come back sometime before Christmas with the photos :)

We were going to have Matty’s birthday party today but we cancelled because of the rain. Hope tomorrow is clear skies for his Ben Ten picnic, he is really looking forward to it.

xoxo

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UPDATE: sorry for the hiccups with my blog posting. I got the title wrong for two of the Pencil Lines Sketches, so if you receive this blog via e-mail or subscribe to it in any way you probably got two Pencil Lines Sketch 114 and two Pencil Lines Sketch 115. Please come to the actual blog to see the actual posts and updates, sorry about that :)

This is it.

We got the keys, we went to the new place tonight. I took a bunch of photos of the boys running around, they are sooooo excited!!! Tomorrow morning a removalist come to get the furniture, we already took a couple of things over. Tomorrow we also have a BBQ at lunchtime and a DressUp party at night. It is going to be THE busiest day! But so cool :)
I am about to take the computer apart to take to the new place and I don’t think I can get back online tomorrow just because it will be busy, but maybe Sunday. I also hope the wireless internet works all right.

So before I go, let me share my latest page for the OLW blog. The word this week is miracle:

I created it using the Gift of Hope kit by Leora Sanford, it is another benefit kit for Ryley, a little girl with cancer. They are going through some tough times, so if you have an to spare, please get the kit, you will be helping and will receive some super cute scrapping goodies to boot ;)

Since my previous page was a big whinge about not getting that perfect photo for my Christmas card, I decided to make a matching page with all the other photos that are not good enough but oh so cute :)

White background on both pages totally inspired by Dúnia, her style is so awesome, have a look at her 2009 Calendar:

simply amazing isn't it? you can leave her some love here.




ok, looks like I am having a hard time parting with my computer :) but I have to get back to packing... see you on “the other side” Have a great weekend everyone!

Where is home?

If you read this blog you might have noticed I am moving houses this week. I was a little sad to be leaving my current home. I really love how cosy it is, and how everything is set up, and all the memories I had here. This got me thinking, does it matter where I live? Where is home? I have moved so many times, I have moved countries and all this moving made “Home is where the heart is” one of my favourite quotes. So I thought it was about time I made an album about “where is home”, for me. Here is the finished album:

Most of my supplies are already packed so I worked just with what was on the top of my boxes. You might notice the lack of buttons which I tend to use on all my hybrid projects. My buttons were too hard to get to, but fortunately, my Love, Elsie stash was just at the top, and the chipboard in that collection is super cute. I was saving it for another album, but that’s ok, I like how this one turned out :)

Here is a little more detail:

home is not a place, it is the people you love ~ family

Home is where the heart can laugh ~ LIVE & LAUGH.

Home is where the heart's tears can dry at their own pace.

home is anywhere we are together.

Home is a feeling ~ love

One of my favourite bits of the album is the “love” word I created out of embellishments. I ran out of letters from my American Crafts Thickers and had to come up with a way of spelling LOVE. Funny how my favourite ideas are always born from limitations of what I have available to work with. The harder it is, the more creative I get. ;)

Another first for me, I very rarely use black and white photos, VERY rarely. I love to blow up my photos with lots of colors, I love how colorful the world is and I am always tempted to leave a photo in color no matter how gorgeous it looks black and white. But this is an unusual project because it has photos of different times of the year, different colors, different lighting situations. So the only way to coordinate them all is to have them black and white. I actually quite like it, and now I am tempted of doing more albums like this, with collections of photos instead of photos of a single event.

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Update: Right now I am getting ready for the Christmas picnic at Matty's school. I have to go to a party or event every day for the next 7 days. Chirtsmas Party at work tomorrow, another Christmas Party on Friday, birthdays Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue and Wed, including Matty's birthday on Monday and my birthday on Wednesday. FUN! but crazy :)

I stopped by the new place today to have a look before the settlement on Friday. Looks like we are going to get the keys at the end of the day instead of early in the morning. This changes my day a little bit, as I had planed to start taking my boxes over before the removalist gets here Saturday morning....

oh, we have organized to have wireless internet while our internet is down the next few weeks, so I WILL have access to the net, just not as reliable.

I better get going :)

House Album Giveaway

It is the time of year for gift giving. Check out the 12 days of Christmas Forum at DST, specially this post here, where I am giving away a Kaisercraft House Album and Template to match:

Playing with paper - Set 4

A friend "reminded" me I haven't created any new page templates for the shop in a while. Well, I am too busy creating free ones :) So here is my latest set of templates, for those who would like to support me (for you, Lu).

Something curious about these pages, they "pair" with the pages I created for Pencil Lines. I like matching pages; they are not double pages, they just "go" together. I think it looks great in my albums :) So, every time I have a single page, I create a matching one. Here are the two pages of the template set above matched with my Pencil Lines pages:

(click on images for credits)

I like them matching like that, can't wait to start putting my 2008 album together and see these on print :)

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I am moving this weekend, can I freak out now?

Pencil Lines Sketch 114

Sketch 114 is up, and here is this week's free template based on the sketch by Sandie Vincent:

(click on image for link)

Reminder: if you do use the template above, don't forget to post a link to your page at the Pencil Lines blog for a chance to win great prizes from our sponsors :)

Here is my page:

Credits: Life in Color kit, Bits of color papers by Julia Makotisnky. Free Spirit Alpha by CD Mukosky. Hollow Alphabet by Heidi Larsen.

All from Little Dreamer Designs. Font is SS whimsy.

Hope you like the free template, have a great week!