A quick card ...

Evening all :)

Hope everyone has had a lovely weekend ... it's a shame it's over so quickly though ...

Firstly - congratulations to all the Hawks supporters out there, and commisserations to all the Cats supporters! At least it turned out to be a great game. So often Grand Finals can be complete fizzers, but it was a very tight, tough tussle, and was very enjoyable to watch.

Just thought I'd show you the male birthday card that I did - with many many thanks to Tanja for the inspiration ...


I've made a few more cards today too, but by the time I remembered to take a pic, it was too dark outside, so they will need to wait until during the week.

Hope everyone has a lovely week, and GO WEBBER in the Singapore GP tonight :)

Talk to you soon,
Ness.

The Stamp Shak CC is on tonight!

Hi all :)

Hope you've all had a lovely Friday ...

Just a quickie from me tonight - a reminder to you all that the Stamp Shak CC is on tonight.

There's no theme per se for this month's CC - it's been a 'grab bag', whereby all forum members had the chance to submit an instruction, and they were all thrown into a hat, and 3 instructions were drawn out for each challenge.

Here is my sample LO for one of tonight's challenges ... I'm being a bit sneaky and uploading it now (the CC is only just about to start ....), but I'm not going to say which challenge I've done, or what my instructions were, so I don't give anything away :) (Sorry about the crooked pic)



I'll be back again over the weekend to show you a nice little male birthday card I made last night for the Scrapchat september card swap - with many thanks to Tanja for the inspiration.

Have a great weekend!

Talk to you soon,
Ness.

A quick Christmas card ...

Hello all :)

Hope you're all having a lovely day so far! It's been quite a nice day in Melbourne town today, and it's going to be absolutely glorious tomorrow - 24 degrees and fine - so the girls and I are taking the kids to the Warrandyte Bakery park for a bit of a run around ... will be great to get out into the fresh air again.

Just a quick post from me today ... I participated in the Christmas Card swap through the Stamp Shak forum, and here is my little creation. I sent them off to Tiddlypeep, the swap organiser, today, and I'm looking forward to getting my selection back!




Well, my first official order of Stampin' Up! stuff arrived on my doorstep this morning, so I'm hoping to get around to making some lovely new cards with my lovely new stamps in the next few days or so.

I'll post up pics once they're done!

Hope everyone has a lovely Thursday, and go the Cats on Saturday!!

Talk to you soon,
Ness.

It's nearly retreat time again!

Hello all :)

Hope you're all having a lovely weekend so far.

It's been a busy week in the Bradford household ... the year seems to be absolutely flying by of late.

During this past week I signed up for the Very Special Getaway scrapbooking retreat, run by the Remember When Paper Company, in support of Very Special Kids. I went on this retreat last year (my first ever retreat!), and had a great time! I got to meet Tanja in person there for the first time last year, even though we'd been chatting on line for quite a while beforehand ... and we're both going to go again this year. The retreat this year is on the Cup Weekend again, but the venue has changed to the Black Spur Inn ... such a beautiful part of the world up there, I just LOVE the drive through the Black Spur :)

Well, my Stampin' Up! Starter Kit was waiting on my doorstep when I got home on Friday, and it was very exciting rifling through my new stamp sets and all the paperwork. There's quite a bit of reading ahead for me, but it all seems fairly straighforward. And now I need to sit down and make up some nice sample cards ... I placed my first order this morning too, so I should have another box (or 2 - thanks Vicki for helping to flesh out the order!!) arriving on my doorstep this week.

I've also decided that I'd like to see if I can sell some cards and gift cards to local florists etc., and there's also a few craft markets around here - so I'm aiming to make up a little stash and hopefully have a market stall at some stage in the future. If just one person buys a card that I've made, I will be happy :)

I had a quiet-ish day at home with the kids today while Nick was down racing at Phillip Island ... I do enjoy going down to watch him racing, but at the same time it does make my stomach turn watching him drive so fast around the track ... thankfully he didn't break anything on the car, and was able to (yet again) drive it home safely.

I finished off my Christmas cards for the swap at The Stamp Shak forum during the week (will take a pic and upload soon), and tonight I've made a card for the October card sketch challenge sample at Scrapchat, but as it's not October yet, and the challenge hasn't been listed, I can't show you! You'll just have to be patient :) My next item on the to-do list is the LO sketch challenge sample ... I need to decide on a sketch to use first!

Tomorrow is meant to be quite a nice day I think, so we'll hopefully be able to fit in a nice family outing somewhere. And I need some 'me' time too tomorrow - I've done stacks of housework today and entertained the kids from 6.30am until 10.30pm on my own (we had a friend over for dinner which means the kids got to stay up late), and I'm feeling VERY tired tonight.

As a matter of fact, it's actually bed time for me now ... I can't believe it's nearly tomorrow already.

Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday, and I'll talk to you soon.
Ness.
xx

Time for a change ...

Yes, you're in the right place ... this is still Ness's Blog :)

I thought it was time for a bit of a change of scenery for the Blog, so I've chosen a new template for it, and will be working on updating the page elements etc. in the next couple of days, and I'll be incorporating a few Stampin' Up! links as well of course!

So ... you like?? Easy to read?? It's still all getting tweaked, so stay tuned ...

Just a quickie ...

Evening all, or should I say morning all :) I seem to have lost a few hours tonight ... have been cleaning up and organising my scrap room a bit, and was surprised to look at the clock and see that midnight has already ticked over ... oh well ....

I just thought I'd show you a very quick card that Ashton and I whipped up today - one of the ladies that works with me was extremely generous and gave Ashton a HUGE box of LEGO the other day, because her kids no longer play with it - it's even got the instruction booklets and everything - and this massive box of LEGO has just doubled our entire LEGO stocks (and that's no mean feat!). It was so kind of her, so we made her this card today (and Ashton wrote on the inside), and we're going to take her a bunch of flowers tomorrow to say thank you :) It's very basic, but this is what Ashton wanted it to look like!



Oh, and I guess I can share my news with you now too - I got my confirmation email this morning - I've decided to sign up with Stampin' Up! as an Independent Demonstrator. My friend Tanja has been a Demonstrator with them for almost a year now, and is just loving it, so I decided to give it a go too. I'm only planning on being a Hobby Demonstrator, but would like to get into running workshops etc., once I've found my feet a little bit. I'm very much looking forward to receiving my Starter Kit later this week (hopefully), and also to meeting the other people in my team. Wish me luck!

And now, it really is bed time I'm afraid ...

Talk to you soon,
Ness.

So much going on ...

Hello all ...

My life just seems to be in a bit of a blur at the moment! We had a lovely time for Ashton's bowling birthday party -all the kids seemed to really enjoy themselves, and so too did the parents that had a little game or two:D Nick excelled himself, getting the highest score I've ever seen him bowl - 155 - which was a bit weird, because I'd been telling everyone how bad he is at bowling LOL. The kids all loved the icecream cake, and then hit the amusement section, and before we knew it, it was time to head home, with two little exhausted kidlets. The whole day was really well run by the bowling centre, so I can highly recommend bowling birthday parties for kids.

I've been busy working on organising something for a couple of weeks now, so I hope to have some news for you about that soon ... it's nothing particularly earth-shattering, but it's still exciting! Anyway, I'm not going to say what it is until I have official confirmation, which should hopefully be in the next few days.

All this organising has meant that I have been in close contact with my friend Tanja, which has been great! I went down and caught up with her in Mornington on the weekend, and we just HAD to coincide our catch-up with a visit to Paper2. It would have been rude not to, really! I only bought a few little things ... I need to save my pennies to spend on other things in the near future :D

And, we have both decided to attend the Very Special Getaway again this year - a retreat organised by Remember When Paper Company, with all monies going to Very Special Kids. This is where Tanja and I physically met each other last year (having been chatting online for a bit) and we had a great time, so we're going in for another round :D It's held on the Melbourne Cup Weekend, so it's not long to go now!

Well, just a quick one from me today - I've got to get the kids ready to head to swimming lessons and then the playcentre, so I'll catch everyone later.

Hopefully I'll be able to tell you my news soon .... :)

Cheers!
Ness.

Happy birthday to Ashton!

Hello all ... well, today is my biggest little man's 5th birthday - Happy Birthday Ashton!! - and I've been feeling slightly melancholy today - where have the last 5 years gone? It's been awesome watching him grow into the very special little man that he is, but time has just gone by way too fast.

We had a lovely day today - the usualy swimming lessons then the playcentre, and we had both sets of grandparents over for his birthday dinner tonight. And, because it was his birthday, Ashton was of course allowed to choose what he had for dinner - and he chose ROAST. Yummo!!

He got some great presents, including the school bag for when he starts primary school next year, the logo on which he recognised instantly (I have NO idea how!), an art set, Mr Men books, a telescope ... you get the idea. And, we're having his first official birthday party for him on Saturday (where children OTHER than just Emily and Thomas have been invited LOL), and we're going bowling -he's very much looking forward to it, as are all of the parents I think! Lucky I've hired the lane next to us as well, so the parents can have a game too :)

I managed to complete my LO for the first week of the Project Scrapaway challenge at Scrapchat too (see first pic) - and I'm happy with the result! Week 2's challenge sounds fantastic too, but time might just get away from me this week I think ... I'll do my best to get a LO done though!


I've recently become a bit addicted to Stampin' Up products - I bought a couple more stamp sets a couple of weeks back, and I think I really need to buy even more still! I have made a couple of cards in the last day or so (the last one being a pretty close copy to one of the samples in the current Ideas Book), and I do just love the Stampin' Up products.

Here's the card I made for Ashton's 5th birthday ...


And here's an 'elegant' card I did for a challenge on my friend Tan's website Compulsive Scrapbooker ...

And here is my very close interpretation (read: almost exact replica!) of a card from the current Stampin' Up Idea book and catalogue.


And finally, here is the LO that I created as one of the Guest DT's for September for Scrap 'n' Craft with 'T'. I'm really happy with how this one turned out :)


Well, I hope everyone has had a lovely week so far! Thanks for looking, and I'll no doubt talk to you soon.

Cheers,
Ness.