It's February 29!!!

I'm a bit excited I know, but it's just weird because today is only the 6th time I have experienced February 29 and I think that's a bit weird! I still don't quite get the whole leap year thing!
Anyway, it was a sad day because it was Ashley's last day at work. She's heading off to Italy for a year, the lucky thing! We're definitely gonna miss her at work, she is so lovely, but she's going to have a great time, what an amazing experience it will be for her. But yes, we're all quite sad to see her go. Gonna miss you Ash

21 Years Of My Life

I'm working on an album at the moment about the first 21 years of my life. I am dedicating a page to each year. Here are the pages I have done for it so far:

Been Busy

I don't know what I've been busy doing, but I've just felt very busy this last week, which I guess is why I haven't been on here since last Sunday. So I hope you guys are all doing well!
Here are a few pics from yesterday. It was a good day. My mum's friend Andrea came over with her girls & her dogs. Ziggy had fun playing with little Remy. I love this photo where Ziggy & Remy are both rumbling with Bella.

We spent about 3 hours in the pool. Remy came in for a bit of a surf!
But he decided he wanted to go for a swim instead!

We decided to see if Ziggy wanted to go surfing, but he didn't enjoy it as much as Remy did.
Royce had fun rumbling with the girls. Here he is tossing Bella into the pool.
Last night was my friend Melinda's 21st birthday party. This is Melinda & my other really good friend Amy. Amy & I didn't really know anyone else, but we had fun hanging out together. Cathy & Simone, if you heard loud talking & music last night, it would have been us, we were just around the corner! So, sorry if we kept you up!
This is Melinda's daughter Kaitlyn with a faceful of cake!
Remy & I exhausted after our swim!

Childhood Album

I've just finished an 8x8 album of photos of my early childhood. It was a lot of fun putting together & reliving all these treasured memories.

You Know You're An Obsessed Scrapbooker...

...when you see your cat sitting on a chair he is not allowed to be on and your immediate reaction is to grab your camera so that you can take a photo and create a scrapbook page about your disobedient cat and only after you have the perfect photo do you shoo the cat off the chair and scold him for being somewhere he knows he's not meant to be!!!

Scrap Therapy

Is laughter the best medicine? Or is it love? Or what about chocolate?
Well, I have to say that SCRAPBOOKING is the best medicine for me. Take today for example. I had the worst morning, where everything kept going wrong. There were disasters all over the place and we were under staffed, so I was majorly stressed. I finally made it to lunch & flew out the door, but halfway to the shops I discovered I didn't have my wallet. So I went back to work & my lovely friend Sarah loned me some money, but I was still worried about what had happened to my wallet (turned out it was at home in a different handbag). Anyway, I made it through the day, but was quite miserable. I got home & got straight into scrapping. Though even then things were still going wrong. I put tape on the back of the chipboard swirl I had painted white, but when I turned it around there was some pink spodges on it. Then my pen went crocked as I was trying to draw a black line. But instead of stressing out over these two disasters, I embraced them & made them work with the page. But then I had no idea what to do as a heading & journalling. So I just looked at the page for a while, & realised it made me think about summer, it felt really summery, so I made it all about Summer. I was really happy with how this page turned out, and had totally forgotten about my bad day at work.

We don't like having our photo taken do we?!

Saturday was a horrible rainy day, so Davina invited us around for a games day. That was a lot of fun. I took my camera along with me, and as everyone knows, I love taken unexpected photos. But Mark ruins that. Somehow he senses that I'm about to take a photo, and he turns around and poses. So I have all these random photos of everyone else, and all these ones with Mark posing! This is one of my favourite ones, Dominic and Mark both posed for this one, and it is so cute!
This one of Jhorjie is gorgeous too. She was telling me a story, and in the middle of the story I pulled my cmaera out, and captured this gorgeous smile!

One Album Finished, On To The Next

I always get such a feeling of relief when I finish a scrapbooking album. I don't know how you work, but I work through one album at a time. Each album has a theme, and before I start I plan what pages I'm going to do, and what photos I'm going to use. The albums don't always turn out exactly as I imagine, as I always find photos and create spontaneous pages, which means other pages get left out.
This album I've just finished is a random album. I'd previously completed an album of my 21st Birthday party, a Christmas album and a December album, so I felt like doing a random, less structured album, where I just use all different photos from different times.
This photo is of me as a child with one of my dolls, and I talk about how I've always been very passionate about my dream to be married with lots of kids.

This is Nanny when she was in hospital, when she met Cooper for the first time.
I have had these photos sitting around for ages, but just haven't been able to scrap them. Iv'e found it too hard, as they are very sensitive photos, but I've realised that it was a significant time for all of us, and is just as important to scrap as everything else.

These are also photos that I'd planned onscrapping for ages but hadn't got around to it, so I finally dragged them out today & came up with this page.
The following two are the same story, photos I've planned on using for a while, I guess that's my theme for this album, photos that I've been putting off scrapping!

I threw this page together while watching Survivor, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.
I saw a page in a magazine that had this heading, and I thought it was really cool, so I tried it out for myself.

Three Years Ago

Sorry to sound so cliche, but time really does fly! I can't believe that it was three years ago that I had just finished year 12 and was moving to Sydney to study Music Business at Tafe. It was such a big time in my life, because it was moving on from childhood into adulthood. Getting ready to tackle the big wide world. The thing that was so huge for me was moving away from my parents and living by myself. That was really scary, and honestly I didn't like it, so I moved back home after 6 months. I finished my course, but didn't do the courses that follow. The intent is to complete Certificate 3, Certificate 4 and Diploma, but I just didn't handle being on my own.
But it wasn't all bad living in Sydney. Most of the time I actually enjoyed being by myself and having the house to myself, the main thing was just being so far away from my family and friends. I was quite lonely, which led to me getting my beautiful kitten Feeny. I felt a bit better having another being in the house with me, and he is just so cute. So definitely the best thing about living in Sydney was getting Feeny.
Another highlight was seeing Jimmy Barnes live at Rooty Hill RSL with Natalie. The picture above is us at the concert. It was outside, which I reckon is so much better than being inside, it was more relaxed, and it was just so much fun.
So I don't regret living in Sydney one bit. It was a learning experience, and though I didn't last there long, it has still made a big impact on my life.
Here are a couple of cute pics of Feeny to leave you with:

I can't believe he was so little! How cute! I wish he was still this little and cute, but people and animals grow up, what can I do about it?
Mum says he wasn't cute he was scrawny, and I agree he was scrawny but he was definitely a gorgeous little thing!

Bible Verse Of The Week

"Yes indeed- God is my salvation. I trust, I won't be afraid. God- yes God- is my strength and song." ~ Isaiah 12:2

I love this verse. It is quite simple, yet an important one for me to keep in mind and reflect on. I am finding this verse to be of great comfort at the moment. It reminds me that God is always there for me, so I should never be afraid.
Another verse along the same lines that I also really love at the moment is:

"Trust in Him, O people; pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge." ~ Psalm 62:8

Such simple, yet such powerful words. I love Psalms. It is such a great book, full of wonderful praises and prayers to our Lord.

10 minutes ago I was listening to "I Knew You Were Waiting" by Aretha Franklin and George Michael, and even though it is not a Christian song, I found myself really reflecting on the lyrics, and finding them to support these verses on trust that I have been focusing on at the moment. The following lines from the song really spoke to me today:

"When the river was deep I didn't falter
The Monutain was high, I still believed
The valley was low, it didn't stop me
I knew you were waiting
I knew you were waiting for me."

These lines just made me reflect on how I will never falter or stop believing, because I know that God is always there waiting for me. And that is such a great comfort.

Scrapping With Soul

I had a great time at the scrapping with soul day yesterday. It's always great scrapping with Mum & Cathy, and it was lovely to catch up with Lou & Cass, and of course meeting Cass' very gorgeous baby girl Annabelle. She's just too beautiful.
I got a lot of work done. I completed 12 pages which I think is a record for me. Usually at these days I complete 6 or 7 layouts, so I was quite pleased with my effort. Here are some of my layouts from the day.