Thursday, December 30, 2010

Washed Out

I hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas. I certainly enjoyed my Christmas in Dunedin with our girls who prepared a lovely barbecue meal and desserts together with games for entertainment throughout the day. It certainly wasn't the plastic Christmas they had led me to believe we would be having. We had a lovely relaxing day.

Today I had hoped to be back scrap booking an entry for the Prima December BAP - instead it was a trip to our camp site to retrieve our belongings.
We have camped in this spot for 16 years (my brother & s-i-l for 20 years) and this is the first time it has looked like this - a combination of the recent rain and Lakes Tekapo, Pukaki and Ohau being released at the same time into Benmore which was already full. (Last year just two lakes were released and while the access tracks were flooded our camp site was fine.) The water is now slowly being released at the other end but it will be weeks before his site is going to be pleasant to camp at. We were lucky enough to be on the high spot so had only a small flood in the awning.
These poor friends were not so fortunate - they had a tent and were at home when the flooding arrived so also arrived today to retrieve their brand new tent and all their belongings in 6-8 inches of water. This is also where 3 other campsites had evacuated to higher ground yesterday.

Getting ready for the task of towing through the flooded tracks.
The photographers recording the event.
2 x 4-wheel drives pulling the caravan through the torrent.
Mission accomplished safely and this is where we had come from - the track we had walked several times last week. Well that was our adventure for today. Now we are at home drying out and cleaning everything (the horrible part lol) and contemplating the next part of the holidays at home - we had planned to go camping again on Saturday however looking at the bright side hopefully some more time for creating now.

Trina McClune is appealing for help with the SCKC pages. If you can help it would be truly appreciated. I think they need to be posted to Trina by 15 January so still two weeks to go. Will post pics of my pages soon.

Wishing you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR. Thanks for visiting.

Until next time....
Dianne

Friday, December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a Happy and Safe Christmas.
Finally finished is the Kaiser Flourish Tree. I tried to create a vintage theme. It was just as hard taking photos of it as creating it as I tried many locations, lights and backgrounds but it probably still looks better than the photos depict. The little photos are actual photos of my grandmother, father and myself as children. The one of my grandmother was probably taken around Christmas in England and she is all wrapped up in a hat and muff.

We have just had 5 days up camping and due to not so good weather I was pleased to have taken up some supplies to work on the Southern Cross Kids Camp pages. I managed to get 34 done plus 4 from last year makes 38. Not sure if any more will get created but there is still time yet. No time to take photos yet though so will post them another time.Once again wishing you all a Happy Holiday Season.

Thanks for visiting. Until next time .....

Dianne

Friday, December 17, 2010

The One and Only

Another week has flown by... My title photo is what my house usually looks like at Christmas but not this year. Quite honestly I haven't had the time to put up the decorations even if I had planned to. I am however still working on the Kaiser Flourish Tree which I won two weeks ago - I thought it would be a matter of a quick paint and a few decorations but not so - many hours of pondering and trying things have gone into it so far. Hopefully by Christmas Day I will be able to share some photos with you.

My only other creation this week has been a card using a digi stamp for the Birds of a Feather Craft Together Blog. It was fun but even that took longer than it should have hence it is the 'one and only' Christmas card I have made this year. It is now in the post to a friend who makes me a lovely card each Christmas. Oh I did make two little gift tags quickly earlier tonight but didn't have time to take photos before giving them away.
My Scrap Room looks like it has been involved in a cyclone so plan to clean it up tomorrow and organise some materials to make some pages for the Southern Cross Kids Camps via Trina McClune. I enjoyed creating these little 6 x 6 inch pages last year as they can be quickly done and are a good way to use up excess stash items. I also have a head start with 4 pages already done at the beginning of the year.

Have a good week and thanks for visiting.

Dianne

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Creative Diversions

I should be doing my housework as my reward for doing it is some scrapping time however it is such a hot day some down time and the computer beckoned. This morning my daughter and I went to Strawberry Fair in Waimate - they certainly had a great day for it and there were thousands of people. I am sure the Strawberry and Icecream stalls would have done well but we resisted the icecream and just bought the strawberries - beautiful plump tasty Waimate strawberries (nothing like what we buy in the super markets).
Speaking of creative diversions, three weeks ago I was building a cake instead of a page. After a disastrous cake baking session (I am in desperate need of a new oven, which means a new kitchen as the wall ovens have changed in the last 25 years so that is on the promise list for early 2011) it was Mr Coupland to the rescue where I purchased a couple of uniced fruit cakes, then some fondant icing and home to begin the creation for the birthday which had an 'Out of Africa' theme, thus the elephants. The elephants were made from the fondant icing by kneading the black food colouring in to get the right colour, then rolling it out to cut the elephants using a child's dough shape cutter and then decorating them. I found the cake idea here. This is my take on it.
Back to Scrap-booking, this is a page created a while ago with the lovely BoBunny papers and a Martha Stewart 'around the page' punch together with Prima flowers & crystals and Tim Holtz film strip.


Okay, I have stalled long enough - off to do some chores.
Thanks for visiting. Have a great weekend.
Dianne

Saturday, December 4, 2010

It has been a while...

... since my last post. There have not been enough hours in the day for the past month. I have been scrapping though - helping out with finishing a couple of albums - one for a friend's son's 21st and then a " This is Your Life' Album for a teacher retiring after 41 years at the same school. Both were well received by the recipients and that makes everything so worthwhile. As they were both for males it also gave me a chance to do a different style of scrapbooking for a change - not a flower in sight.

Today I have been at the Embellish It Christmas Crop and enjoyed catching up on scrapping friends and being inspired by the projects and cards everyone was working on. Thank you Tania for a great day and I was lucky enough to win the lucky draw for attending - a Kaisercraft Flourish Tree. On the way home I bought some paint so will show you the finished product when it is done.

I decided to use some 'Karen Foster' Christmas papers purchased last year and scrap a photo from almost 46 years ago when we got a new baby sister for Christmas. Between catching up on everyone and perusing/purchasing the Embellish It goodies this page took 5 hours to complete and it has only got three things on it due to the lovely paper which I didn't want to cover up as it was pretty self explanatory.
Next I was on to the Prima BAP for November - unfortunately too late for the monthly competition. These photos of a friend's grand daughter were too cute not to scrap and worked perfectly with the lovely Prima Papers. And no... it is not twins - just a double take as I didn't have a landscape photo so used two of the same photo to make a landscape orientation to fit the sketch. I used a Martha Stewart Punch and cut out the flower flourishes from Prima Paper. This one went together in half the time of the first page lol.
Have you been to the "Birds of a Feather Scrap Together" site? Pop over to Sonya Pickles Blog to find out about a lucky draw "Birds of a Feather Scrap Together" have if you become a follower.

Hope your weekend is going well. Thanks for visiting my blog. I will endeavour to update more regularly. Take care at this busy crazy time of year.

Until next time .... Dianne