Caturday + some updates

 

She likes to help out between bathing and pats. This is from December when I was catching up on Project Life photos.

I’m working on my December Daily album. This is a new record for me! I only finished my 2010 in SEPTEMBER last year. When I start posting my new album, I’ll also do a round up of my 2010 album. I spent most of yesterday working away on my 2011 book and have finished nine pages so far. Hoping to have this finished around Tuesday and start work on some things to add to my etsy shop. I’ve also been working on my new website and trying to learn Dreamweaver at the same time! My brain hurt after that, trust me!

After posting on Wednesday about my job hunt, I had two phone calls from different places for possible positions! Complete turnaround from the day before where I was a bit despondent over the whole thing. I was hoping for a phone call about one of them yesterday, but it was the day after a public holiday so wasn’t unexpected that I didn’t hear anything. Maybe Monday? It’s a step in the right direction though – I need to support my scrapbooking habit!

Today is pig out food wise day and we’ve already had hot cross buns AND pancakes AND M&Ms AND ice cream this morning. Lunch will involve hot chips, burgers and soft drinks and dinner, by special request (from me) will be Thai from our favourite place near the train station. We also have a lovely bottle of Moscato chilling in the fridge to go down nicely with chicken and cashew nut, satay chicken and a penang curry. We’re heading over to the shopping centre soon to have foot spas (reward for surviving another week and not succumbing to the need for cake) and then to see ‘Tinker Tailor Solider Spy’ (with popcorn, more M&Ms (have you tried the coconut ones? yum!) and frozen coke for Si). Really looking forward to this movie.

The weather has been awful the last few days but it has stopped raining this morning. It’s overcast and the humidity is still high, which makes an air conditioned shopping centre very appealing right now!

Around here

It’s a rather wet and soggy morning in Brisbane today. The radar image is from late yesterday, I’m sure today’s is probably as bad. Missy is enjoying her printer ‘bed’ in front of the window still. It really is the perfect size for her! I’m onto my second coffee this morning – it’s just that kind of day. Don’t you love my new contact lens case? They are little elephants! Love.

We went over to Scarborough on Sunday for some kite flying. I gave Si a small kite for Christmas and it was it’s inaugural outing. The photo of Simon is from Sunday, as is the photo of the kite – I had a lot of fun playing with the big Nikon camera. The photo of me was to capture Missy on top of the cupboard. You can just see her in the top left of the photo. This is our bed at the moment. I am in love with our quilt! It is not very large so it is over a white bedspread. The pillow cases are from an old IKEA set and I think they fit nicely with the colours and motif on the quilt. The yellow pillow has a pattern on it so I just turned it over to go with this new colour scheme. The quilt has cat approval, which is always important in our house!

Apart from all of that, I’m looking for work. Anyone need an admin person/designer/ marketing person/craft teacher? I had an interview yesterday for a perfect job but it is on the other side of the city and financially it’s not viable for us. I withdrew my application this morning, which was very disappointing for me but I thought it was the fairest thing to do. I’ve applied to a couple of universities to get into their ‘talent pool’ and sent my resume to a few of the suppliers I know in the food industry (not ideal but I know I can do it and it might be a start until something in a creative area comes up). I’ve been out of paid employment for a little while now and it’s time to get myself back out there. Fingers crossed something comes up soon!

Bits & Pieces

As promised, here is how I’ve been putting all those bits and pieces of life that are collected into my Project Life albums. I am a collector of little pieces that have meaning but just can’t throw out: ticket stubs, tags, post cards, shopping lists; but my previous weekly layouts left no room for me to add them in.

My solution was to utilise the We R Memory Keepers 9×9 baseball card page protectors. I first used these in Lauren’s 21st album for small photos, and again in Jane & Marc’s 25th wedding anniversary album. Here is a look at those (sorry for the bad photo on the left! It was taken on the kitchen table at Mum’s and the flash flared):

I have quite a stash of these page protectors and knew they’d be perfect for those bits and pieces I gather in my wallet and on my desk! Here is what I did last year:

I started this in about May last year. I created my own cards for each month with a little ‘bits & pieces’ logo in InDesign and have one for each month from May to December. As you can see, a mix of things we were doing, our interests, even the coffee I drink! This worked really well for me, to cull what was important and not feel guilty when I threw things out! It was great to be able to see a snapshot of the month as well – July was our trip to New Zealand and the December page is more Christmas related.

I wanted to keep things going for 2012, even though I am adding more things into my weekly layouts. I collect A LOT of stuff, as Simon will attest to! I wanted more colour in my month cards, which I did by adding in some backgrounds from the Clementine and Cobalt digital packs in InDesign. Here’s a look at how I set the file up:

I printed these on my inkjet printer at home (I use a very old but incredibly reliable Canon i865) on gloss photo paper. They really pop in the page protectors. Here’s a look at the start of my January page:

Because I am adding things into my weekly layouts, this time around I have more space so I’m adding in quotes and Instagram photos that don’t appear anywhere else. This is working really well for me and I like the look of this already.

I’ll post these at the end of each month when they are complete. I think I can switch things up a bit more with this one if there are things I want to add in and if I do, I’ll repost it at the end of January, which is next week!!!

If you are interested in my monthly template, leave a comment and if there is enough interest I might post the file as a PDF to print.

Project Life Week 3

I am loving completing each spread at the end of the week! I’m loving even more being flexible with the photos and the days of the week to capture more of what is happening. This is a whole new approach for me and right now, it is working really well for me! Let’s take a look at each side.

This week’s colour theme is a blue/green. I also printed a couple of larger photos without a white border this week (ooooo! breaking my own rules already!). One of my other blog crushes is Elise Blaha and I love how she has been adding in opaque boxes onto her photos, so I thought I’d give it a try and the photo on the top right is what I came up with. Simple journalling that didn’t require much effort! I use Photoshop to do my photo editing, although my skills are rather limited! I’m looking to invest in some filters and actions that you just open and presto! I love the filter effects of Instagram so might be worth a try to buy a few actions and have a play around. Across the middle is a temperature screenshot from my phone, a print out of last week’s ‘today’ from the left hand side of my blog, a poster for this week’s favourite tv show and an instagram photo of the girls. The photo on the bottom right is an instagram photo that I resized to be 3″x3″. I stuck it onto a piece of blue paper from my stash, added a mailing tag and a rub on. The thing I am finding the most fun at the moment is going through things in my rather large stash and actually using things that have been lurking there for years! Simon is happy, let me tell you!

Here’s where the green of this week’s colour theme comes in because of the Moonlight Cinema postcard! The top left is a mix of my instagram photos from our night out at Moonlight cinema. I resized the images in Photoshop, added them into a new file as layers, played with the positioning, then printed and trimmed. Across the middle is another overlaid opaque box with text right onto the photo of the eggs. The next is a small picture of my lunch (resized to fit onto the small card), a week round up and two photos of us at the Moonlight Cinema. The bottom left photo is of Rascal hiding in her tunnel, with text added in Photoshop and a sticker added after it was printed. The final image is of my cookies with silver sticker lettering and a cut down shipping tag.

This week I have two inserts. This one is 8″x8″ and is a We R Memory Keepers page protector. I had a few extra photos I wanted to add in this week so I thought this was a good way to do that. The first photo is the cupcakes that Grace got from one of the suppliers at work for her birthday. Underneath that is a picture of the cookies we bought from Paleo Snacks. The back of the insert is some photos from our night out with our friends.

Insert 2 this week is my diet update blog post and my paleo cookie adventure! I used Ali Edwards’ 6×12″ layered templates, added in my text straight from my blog as well as the photos I wanted to use. To print, I turn off the text layers and print my photos onto photo paper. I then turn off the photo layers and turn back on the text layers. Into my printer I add the 6×12″ card stock I want to print on and print the text only. I then trim my photos and stick them to the card stock.

Here’s a look at Week 3 from 2010 and 2011.

 

Life is so, so different each year and I love that I’m able to capture that through these albums. It reminds me, also, how rich life is right now and not to overlook that.

Caturday

We cut up the box from our new portable air conditioner to hack together an outlet for the window. This has been sitting beside the front door to take down to the recycling but I don’t think we’ll be allowed to now!

Diet update + cookies!

We are still hanging in there! Changing your diet COMPLETELY is never easy, but with the two of us doing it and helping each other, it makes it a little more bearable!

I am being very, very spoiled with Simon making me breakfast every morning! He gets up earlier then me, so he makes up a batch of scrambled eggs with ham/bacon and veggies and wakes me up with this and some coffee (I know, I know! Can he get any better?). It is more work then toast or cereal but it starts the day right and I’m rarely hungry before 1pm. Lunch is now usually a protein and salad. We like to go to Oporto and get their Fresco salad, although the amount of protein is on the smallish side. Kebab plates are pretty good as they give you a HUGE amount of protein. Simon is also having a tuna and beans mix with his salad some days, but I’m not a fan of tuna so that’s out for me!

Dinner is pretty easy now, albeit rather boring. Protein and veg. That’s it! We mix up the proteins and the veggies to try and keep it interesting. I’m also experimenting with minced meat (chicken or beef) and making a modified bolognese, without the spaghetti obviously. You can mix in heaps of veggies chopped finely, diced tomatoes and herbs, and even beans. I made one the other night and it was delicious, plus I had enough left over to freeze some for ‘emergency meals’ (you know, those nights where you can not be bothered to cook and would rather just have takeaway?).

Our Saturday cheat days have been rather funny. We start out thinking “Oh wow! We can have anything we want!” but not long into the day we are finding we can’t finish things and we really don’t feel like over indulging! We do make a point of having hot chips, ice cream and pancakes, though not at the same time obviously! We also try to go to the movies on a Saturday so we can have popcorn and Simon can have frozen coke. Simple pleasures! We did find that Dominos are now doing a gluten free pizza base, which was great on our first Saturday splurge. We just don’t recommend you try to eat it once it’s gone cold – it was like eating soaked cardboard! It can get rather costly to eat out for every meal on a Saturday so this weekend we are going to make a few things at home that we now normally don’t have.

Did someone say cookies?
I tweated the other day in frustration that I wished paleo man had eaten cookies. A friend, who has a lot of food intolerances, sent me a link to Paleo Snacks. I’m eagerly awaiting my delivery of Caveman Cookies but as we are going out to the Moonlight Cinema with friends tonight, I decided to try and make some cookies of my own!

I found this recipe and decided to work with what I had. So here is my recipe:

400gm almond meal
150gm hazelnut meal
100gm chopped walnuts
2 cups of honey, warmed (I used 2 types of honey as that’s all I had!)
1 cup of chopped dates

I missed the part of the recipe that said ‘put in fridge for an hour to make the mix easier to work with’ and as I was running out of time and still had to roast some chicken wings to take as well, I rolled the cookies in all their sticky goodness! I put them in the oven at 180 for 15 minutes and then checked on them, but left them in for another 2 minutes. They came out still soft in the middle and once they’d cooled they were lovely and soft.

The verdict from our non-paleo friends was a resounding yum! Simon especially liked them, which was even more important! I got 14 largish cookies out of this mix and still had mixture left which I put in the fridge to bake on the weekend. It went a long way!