LOVE is all that matters

Good day to you!

So, it's time for an update again...!!! Nothing much happenin' around here, but after the past few hectic years I am fine with that. I would never sing a song about my life being boring, because thrill and excitement never happens the way you want it to anyway, so...

I did become the owner of a "new" car in the mean time, and I am very happy about that. Coincidentally I read an article about scrapping the relationship with your car in Creating Keepsakes, from some very cute, refreshing and unexpected angles, so I am waiting fot the pics of my cars to be delivered to scrap away!!!

I already thought up the story about my old car, I really had a hard time letting it go. That little car has always been good to me. I think it just broke down once, in 5 years! But it was getting too rusty, and hubby had already patched it up several times. He believed it was going to be hard to get it approved again next time. So, I decided to try and sell it while I still could get some money for it instead of it just costing me money...So far, no good. It has been on this sale-site for almost one week now, but to this day we still have had no calls. =( For now it means I own 2 cars, which is nothing compared to hubby, since he owns 3 cars. Of which he is not intending to sell any...Ah well, they hardly cost anything, so let him play and have his way, I say. ;)

I finished 3 LO's from the Scrap-a-Ganza, the first one was from Teresa Collins' class. I wanted to state something with the text which was: Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself. The pics had to black and white so I didn't have that much choice. But I decided to go with a (beautiful!!!) pic of my mom when she was younger, like 15 or 18 (dunno exactly, but I can't ask her anymore...) (she was stunning though...) and pics of her family. Meaning, the life she created for herself, and the person she wanted to be. A wife, a mom of 2 kids, a dog-owner even. Love is all that matters in the end, I guess. The picture all the way up, above my text, is ofcourse the one of my mom, so intens, looking so mature and wise beyond her years. Here are the pics of the LO, starting with the left side of the page, followed by the right side of the page, and a little close-up:

Further more I finished another S-a-G LO, I added some adorable pics of my brother playing with my dad's doggies on that one. (And sometimes I am really proud of my photography skills!!! ) On the pic at the bottom of the page he has a chippie in his mouth, and that particular dog is crazy about food so she etas from his mouth, eventhough she's scared of my brother! I made the title into something funny, Alex is doing it doggie style. Here it is:

Last but not least I finished the LO from Vicky Boutin's S-a-G class. I loved the foiling technique she taught us very much. Did some doodling on it but I hated the result, so instead I foiled all the edges of the papers. (I hate it when you do something and wreck your page!!! Thank God scrapping is about embellishments, there's always something lying around to cover up your screw-ups, teehee...) I went overboard with the foiling and did some doodle-foiling which was hideous as well. So, underneath the 4-layer-flower, there's a mess... ;) (I can't say it enough: Thank God for embellishments!!!)

Since the LO was fun, fresh, sparkly, and love-themed, I added pics of my father-in-law frolicing around with his grandkids. The grandkids he didn't even know until recently, of the daughter he didn't even get to see again until recently. After more than 20 years!!! Seeing him so happy and carefree, thoroughly enjoying the role of being a granddad, makes my heart smile. Especially knowing the story behind all of this...Here it is:

Well, for now, that's all folks!!! I am going to go and enjoy my day-off some more. ;) I am still in my PJ's, I may continue on my scrap-project today. Working on acrylic plates for the first time, that's fun for a change! Hoping I will get rid of my cold soon, as I have a busy weekend ahead. With 2 birthdays and a family-day from hubby's side of the family. Already bought pressies for the birthdays, we have a new store in town where you just buy anything and everything and it all costs nothing! They even have some cute scrapping-supplies!

Hope you have a nice, creative, loving and sunny weekend!!! Till next time!!!

Scrap-a-Ganza

Hey there all you blog-readers, here's another post from me!

Yesterday my friend Monique and I went to the (Dutch) Scrap-a-Ganza, in Noordwijkerhout. We had planned to go by train and bus, since we had these really cheap traintickets and neither of us is fond of driving long distances in unknown territory. :P However, since a few months the bus chauffeurs are on strike, demanding a better salary or who knows what. I get that they have to protest, but it affects US (we're innocent!) instead of the ones who are paying their salary...

So, after careful consideration, I decided to drive to Noordwijkerhout myself. Hubby arranged a GPS for me from his sista, that was one less thing to worry about. (Because I was dreading the drive overthere, I swear...!) One more benefit of this was the lenght of the travel, this saved us one and a half hour!!! Which meant we could stay in bed a little longer, otherwise we would have had to have taken the 6.30 train...Damn...

So, at 8 o' clock yesterdaymorning, my friend arrived. We had a little last-minute-stress because she had printed her invoice and I hadn't. I hadn't read anywhere that you needed to do that, but I thought the whole thing was vague anyway. So I tried to write down some things, but, ofcourse, couldn't remember my password. I gave up and just assumed all would go well once I was there.

Our journey went well thanx to TomTom (The GPS), except for a little bit at the end. TomTom was kinda slow and said I should go into some road a few more km ahead. Turned out I should have taken the road I passed at that point. Fortunately we could turn around after a few kilometres again, and all went well. My friend talked to me lots, I listened most of the time, hehehe, and the trip went by quickly that way.

We arrived at the hotel at about 10.30, so we had some time left before our first workshop which started at 11.30. They should have put up more signs in my opinion, where to get your coupons, lunch, where to do your make and takes, etc. They weren't all that well organised I think. We collected an envelope with our coupons and received the cutest goodie bag. The bag was from Fancy Pants and was the perfect size for scrap-papers. It had sweet colors and was just lovable. The contents varied per bag, but mostly it was old crap... There were dated papers in there and I didn't have any embellishments where as my friend did. But hey, any free gift is welcome! Here's a pic featuring the bag:We shopped a little (or a lot, in my case...) and I bought some things I had wanted and hoped to find there. The shops were in a big round room and eventhough there were just about 11 booths, you could spend your cash very well in there!!! I bought Grungeboard by Tim Holtz (Alpha's and Elements) Thickers, velvety flowers, lace ribbons, stamps, buttons, noteworthy journaling books, etc. Here's a pic of my shopping result at the end of the day (and I haven't even added a paper-storage box, plastic plates and a cutting-tool to the pic!):So, at 11.30-ish we went to our first workshops, my friend and I had different ones. I went to a class by Vicky Boutin, Bling n Thingz. Vicky was a nice teacher and funny as well. She gave away some stuff by picking out the names of the class from a bag. I liked what we did there. We made a 2 page LO, stamped some swirls and stuff on it, and we played with chipboard shapes, tacky glue, foil and glitter. It was a fun technique, messy though. We had to dip our fingers inside the little glue bottle and smear the glue all over our chipboard. And with a special cap on the glue bottle we could highlight some areas of our stamped stuff. The key was to let the glue dry until it was tacky, not wet! Once it had done that we put the foil on top, and took it off again. It had very nice results!!! And the bits where the foil wouldn't stay, we glittered them.

The silly thing is, I have that foil at home, and it's ancient!!! My mom had already bought that years and years ago, including some glue pens to go with it, with a broad point so you could even calligraph with it! Guess what I will be doing from now on as well when I scrap...?! I posted 2 pics of the LO's I did there. Almost finished anyway...The hour went by quickly, most of us weren't even finished, but my friend came to tell me that if we wanted to have lunch we could only do that until 1 o' clock. So we went off to have lunch. My friend enjoyed her workshop very much, the colors, paper and style were perfect for her. We had lunch, which was simple, but okay. Sandwhiches with ham or cheese and some veggies on it, some sort of soup, and all sorts of hot and colds drinks. You could drink anything you liked all day long for free. Here we are in the lunch-room of the hotel:

After our lunch it was already time for our next class, which was at 1.30. This was a class by Teresa Collins, featuring her Bella Girl Paper. I think it was called A moment in time. Teresa was extremely nice and a perfectionist. She told us she had 9 kids!!! She gave birth to "only" 5 of them, but still...I loved the papers, I already had some of them at home. She had some mini-books with her which were great as well. It was a good class and Teresa did a great job.

After this class we had some more time, so we sat down, drank some, ate some, and shopped some more. Well, I did...The bags were getting heavier and heavier...Man...But I enjoyed myself very well. :)

After a while we decided to go to our next class, which was at 4.30. It was a class featuring the new Making Memories Noteworthy paper line, by a woman named Jeanny. The class was swamped!!! There were 9 rows of tables, each of them consisiting of 8 or 9 persons or so. I liked the papers and colors, my friend didn't. She had looked on the internet, but hadn't seen it was this sweet and pink. She's not a girly girl in that sense. I am. It was messy and Jeanny just let us do our thing, or so it seemed. This is one page I managed to put together, half-finished:

We had to make tags in the tagmaker and in the mean time Jeanny did a raffle. She just picked rownumbers, and then another number. And what do you know, she even picked my seat!!!!! I won a summer set of Making Memories, consisting of foam stamps, letter stickers, velvet words, chipboard accents and metal accents, all with a summer theme. Not totally my thing, but I loved being picked and I am sure I can do something with my thingies!!! This is what I won:

With almost every class there was a bonus included, something we didn't use in that class but the company just threw in for free. This is what we ended up with as bonusses:

So, after all these classes we still hadn't done any make and takes. To our discontent the make and takes weren't gonna start until 7 o'clock again. Honestly, I had kinda had it, I was pooped. With the driving, and the watching and learning, dragging our stuff. We sat down and drank some and decided to go anyway, I still had to drive for 2 hours, so.

At 6.30 we loaded up the trunk of my car, and headed home. On the way we stopped at the well-known "Golden Arches" to eat some french fries and chicken nuggets and we continued our way home.

At 9 o'clock we were home again, and my friend was being picked up by her hubby shortly afterwards. I showed my stuff to my hubby, sat on the couch for a while and went to bed veeeeery early, because I was really tired!!! I had a great day and maybe next year, or at the end of this year, we will do the S-a-G for a whole weekend, who knows. We liked it lots anyway, so we will go there again.

Have a nice weekend, see ya!!!