I don't do mornings.....normally

I am not a morning person, ask anyone. I absolutely hate seeing light when I open my eyes, I don't see why the day time couldn't around alittle later and allow me to sleep alittle longer. Sometimes my reluctance to get out of bed is due to a rather late night the night before, but not the majority of time. I just don't do mornings. I wonder around in a daze, after taking ages to get out of bed in the first place, and I am really not totally switched on till around noon.

Tomorrow I am getting up at some silly time of the morning to travel down to the city to pick up my WH's (wonderful husband) new work ute. Current we have a ute that is about 7 years old, only has two seats and tries its hardest to shake your kidneys out of you when you are driving around even on the newest roads. Don't get me wrong I am extremely grateful that we have had the ute for the last year or so. Especially with us only having one income at the moment, the amount of money we have been able to save on petrol for our car is huge. And the stuff we have been able to carry from point A to point B has been a blessing as well.

I am really not looking forward to getting up tomorrow, really not. But I am looking forward to spending time with my WH. Who usually gets Monday's off but he has two of his employees away so he has had to switch his day off till Thursday until his employees are back, kind of annoying but it happens. My WH is going to drop me off at a shopping centre close to his head office (where he is picking the ute up from) so I can enjoy one of my favourite things to do. Drink hot chocolate (yummy!), usually I would also eat a piece of cake or a muffin at the sometime, but trying to be frugal I am going to be taking some apple cake and a banana muffin that I have already made in a container down with me (cheap? probably. But it saves money, every little bit counts).

Also taking some mags that I already own, but might find a discount store a buy a small sketch book for myself so I can sketch layouts and other ideas that I come across in the mags. I have been meaning to do this for a while, I have been making & selling notebook/journal covers for a little while and I don't have one for myself. So I am going to get a little sketch book, make a cover for it and when people ask what I sell I can show them. Also good advertising when I just get the sketch book out of my bag and use it (always thinking me). Check out my ETSY store (click on the side bar at the top of my blog) I will be adding some more journal/notebook covers in the next two weeks.

My Blog Travels

I have mentioned in a previous blog post that I love reading other peoples blogs, recently I have been having a look at the blogs that my favourite blog writers love. Thought I would share a few of the cute blogs that I have found.

I started at one of my absolute favourite blogs A Beautiful Mess by Elise Flannigan

Then I found myself at Freckled Nest by Leigh-Ann Keffer

Started in 2003 I loved the blue woodgrain background to her blog (made me want to change my background, again!).

Check out the series called Tiny Drawer Series, simple and gorgeous!

Next was Create loves by Holly Neufeld

Started in 2008

Check out Holly's Art Journals (loved the autumn journal! Thinking that I might start on of my own)

Finally I found Skunk boy creatures by Katie

Start in 2008 OMG! Her creations are so cute! Sooooooooo want one, I have added this blog in my favourites list and will be going back again and again just to see her newest little creatures. So talented.

On a roll

I love scrapbooking, but I have been in a creative slump. I have made cards and other things for friends & family. But no scrapbooking pages. That was until a month or so ago when I participated in a free hybrid scrapbooking class through Jessica Sprauge, and I created this page.

Once I finished that layout I had the urge to create another, then another, then another and now I have an actual pile of finished layouts waiting for me to put them in an album. Here are some of my recently created layouts.

I am unfortunately running out of photos, I am going to have to print some more photos. Time to get editing!

Oh cute!

I was checking out one of my fav blogs, A Beautiful Mess by Elise Flannigan, she does this great regular blog feature called '10 things I love'. She listed a oh so cute free printable calendar from another blog called Free People.

I have become rather addicted to blogs, not just writing one but reading them. I love sitting down and reading about peoples lives in different countries. I think its because me and my WH (wonderful husband) are yet to travel overseas, hopefully going to change all that next year with our planned trip to New Zealand. Which since we live in Australia isn't all that 'overseas', is practically a domestic flight. But you still need a passport so it is overseas.

Thought I would share some of my most visited blogs;

Jessica Sprauge's SpraugeLab

The Graphics Fairy

Talia Carbis's Life's Visual Journal

Elisabeth Katcher's Dear Lizzy

Becky Higgins

Elise Flannigan's A Beautiful Mess

Ali Edward's The Year of Story

My new toy

I L-O-V-E photo editing, and creating digital scrapbooking supplies in photoshop. About 3 - 4 years ago my WH (wonderful husband) bought me and graphics tablet for Christmas. For those of you who don't know what a graphics tablet is it is a device that plugs into the USB drive on your computer and allows you to use a pen instead of a mouse. Using a pen with a computer does take alittle getting use to but soon enough (especially with photo editing and drawing) you find it easy and very flexible. My favourite thing was doing finner editing, using a pen gave me load more control.

Last week my graphic tablet died :-( and I needed it to finish some invitations that I was making for my nephews 2nd birthday (which is in a couple of weeks). I have been having trouble with the tablet for a while, it didn't like to two changes in operating systems I have had in the last few years and really didn't seem to compatible with Windows 7, which we upgraded to at the beginning of the year.

So I started to have a look at what was out there to replace my graphics tablet, and I set my heart on the Wacom Bamboo Fun tablet. Wacom was the brand of my old tablet and I was very happy with it. Yesterday we went to a few shops to see who had the best price and my WH bought it for me! HeHeHeHe!

This tablet has both pen & touch capabilities. Meaning that it can work just like a really big version of the touch pad you have on laptops. Except that with a certain number of fingers and motions you can scroll, rotate and zoom (still getting the hang of that).

So far I have found it great for browsing my library of photos and it makes internet surfing interesting. Can't wait to really get into the photo editing with the pen, which is much easier to use than my old tablet, you can even write with it and the writing actually looks like your own hand writing (again something I struggled with with my last tablet).

I am so in love with this tablet! I think I'll go and continue playing.

Dipping into my stash

I have a sister-in-law who likes to travel, she has gone to Italy twice, traveled through the rest of Europe, England and late last year went to America, Argentina & Brazil. And she usually brings back something chocolate for me, I have chocolate pasta and quite a few packets of hot chocolate mix.

For ages I have just stored all these hot chocolates in our pantry. But not this year. I have been trying the international hot chocolates (someone has to do it).

Hot Chocolate with candy cane mixed in. To be honest sounded better than it tasted. Loved the smell, brings about memories of Christmas. After a read of the ingredients I found the reason why I didn't like the taste, milk powder. According to the packet instructions you just have to add hot water, I don't like to add just hot water. Personally think that hot chocolate made from just water tastes watery and not too nice, also don't like the taste of milk powder so I thought that I would mask the taste of the milk powder with real milk. Nope....didn't work.

Overall not a great success (loved the packet graphic!), oh well.

I had a couple of packets of this hot chocolate, my WH (wonderful husband) made one a couple of winters ago but didn't read the instructions, which I will point of now are in Italian. So though it tasted great it wasn't any different from the hot chocolate mixture I buy at the store. This time I decided to try to figure of the instructions (how hard could it be?). Pretty hard. I could only figure out one instruction and that was the amount of milk that was needed 125 and I guessed it was ml.

So I poured the milk into the pan and when it was starting to warm up added the contents of the packets and gave it a good whisk. I left the pan for a few seconds to get something for my WH and when I returned, oh yum! The mixture had become all thick and smelled wonderful. I poured it into a soup cup and this is what I needed up with.

Thick, rich and oh so yummy. Had to be eaten with a spoon and I was so said when I had eaten it all. Yummy, yummy, yummy.

Can't wait to see if my sister-in-law goes overseas again and brings me back some more hot chocolate.

Newest creation

A good friend of ours had her birthday recently and I made her this card

I love the result

The image I found on Martha Stewart's website, it was meant for a Mother's Day card, which I had every intention of making. But when I sat down to do it the image just didn't seem right for either of our Mother's (mine or my WH's (Wonderful Husband)). But then our friend T had her birthday, T is vintagey hippy type of girl. She lives in a small converted dairy on her parents property, and it is filled with furniture and decor that she has found on the road side or at Op Shops. So the image would suit her perfectly.

On Martha Stewart's website the image was designed to have the buttons sew on, I glued them on (laziness, mostly), and that was it. Which looked great but to me wasn't finished. So I cut a couple of slits into the card and threaded a piece of ribbon, alittle folding and tada! A scarf! The image to me had a windswept feel and the scarf ribbon gives that feel perfectly.

I am considering adding similar cards to my Etsy shop SuJoh, using vintage photo's and postcards. But I am still playing with the idea.