Monday, April 27, 2009

Choose - entry for final NZ Dare



Choose - entry for final NZ Dare
Originally uploaded by pdugmore2001.

NZ Dares is wrapping up and this is my entry for the final challenge - the topic "choices".

I used mostly stuff from the Scrapbook Outlet March SOS kit. BG Marrakech, Bazzill, Heidi Swapp butterflies, plus a few other things. The little book has the journaling about my career choice.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

A holiday in Thames

After spending Wednesday morning filling up our car with gear and kids we set off for Thames.

View Larger Map

DD? Check.









DS? Check.














Kitchen sink? Check.










There was a bit of traffic on the road. We are used to having holidays outside of the school holiday period so there was some muttering about traffic from the driver. ;-)

Still, we made good time and audio-books are an excellent invention for keeping kids (and drivers) amused.










The appearance of clouds as we turned off Highway 2 delighted the Mad Photographer but didn't exactly fill me with joy.















The new tent got set up without getting rained on though. The kids were very excited about it. DS got into his bed as soon as I made it up! We found a leak in our airbed (just what you need to discover) - I'd foolishly lent it to some folks and they'd tried to mend it but not very successfully. So we had to head back into Thames to try and find a replacement. Fortunately the friendly Hammer Hardware folks found me one and even checked to see it had a bung in it ... no. So they opened another one and purloined the bung out of that one.










After the bed acquisition we set off for the Kauaeranga Valley. The autumn colour was lovely in the afternoon light.














We did a couple of short walks around the visitor centre and up further into the valley.

This one included a model dam. The valley was extensively logged for kauri to fuel the booming Thames goldrush in the late 1800's.















We crossed a swing bridge over the Kauaeranga River. DS was very brave - he did stop halfway over and say he didn't want to go any further but after a bit of encouragement he did go on. I hate these bridges. If I hadn't been carrying DD I'd have gone over it with my eye's shut! On the way back we decided to boulder hop over the river instead ;-) Wet feet seemed preferable!














The Billy Goat Falls.
Not the greatest of photos - difficult with the light. The falls are at the top of the picture, in the distance.















When kauri loggers tried to transport kauri over these 180 metre high falls they shattered. Doh. Eventually they built a tramway to transport them.

Another walk we did was to the Wentworth Falls over near Whangamata. You would think with all the stuff we'd brought that I would have put in the back pack for DD, but guess what? I didn't!

So she started off with lots of energy....














but quickly degenerated into lots of "Mummy up" requests...









The falls were nice though.














While Daddy went down to the bottom of the falls to take photos, we stayed at the lookout and amused ourselves with the self-timer and video function on my camera.









We also visited the Broken Hills area which was a thriving goldfield from 1893. By this time DD was over walking.










So the holiday was nice in parts.

On the bad side:
  • DS managed to work himself up into puking after a coughing fit one night... all over the bedding.
  • DD is scared of moreporks and anything that makes a sound in the night. Everytime they called she said, "No like dat sound" and came running into our bed. Most inconvenient. Especially when Mummy and Daddy had ..uh.. other plans.
  • My ankles are a mass of sand fly bites.
On the plus side:
  • I got to see my friend S who has moved to Thames.
  • We did enjoy some family time and walks together.
  • I didn't think of work at all. (Not looking forward to going back tomorrow).
  • We had a swim at Miranda.
  • I had the best sleep back in my own bed when we came home. ;-) For months I've been waking at 3am-4am and staying awake for awhile so it was nice to have a full night's sleep.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Day 6 & Day 8

Well, the deadline for layouts to be submitted to SBO's Amazing Scrapping Race has passed. It's been fun. :) I didn't manage all of the challenges but that is okay.

Here are the final two I did.
Day 8 (Japan) - went for the cutsey anthropomorphism of the kiwi fruit with the google eyes.

























Day 6 (UK, use time or a clock):Trip to Australia

Don't like this one, but the photos were difficult to work with. I would have binned them were it not for the historical significance of a few of them. My parents emigrated to NZ a few months after they married so all our relatives are over in Australia. My paternal grandparents eventually came over here to live. This is one photo I have of their Australian house, my grandfather's gladioli's and their cat Millicent. My grandfather's beloved V8 car was actually shipped over here when they came. It was sold when he became too old to drive safely and I've seen it out here in our neighbourhood which amuses me greatly.























So totaling up my entries:

5 layouts = 5 tickets
plus one bonus ticket for doing more than 4 of the challenges = 1
bonus ticket for making comments in the gallery = 1
bonus ticket for answering Nic's question first = 1
blog entries = 3
Total raffle tickets: 11

It only takes 1.....

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Day 4 France

La belle France... how I long to go there.

Day 4 of the Amazing Scrapping Race at SBO, and here is my attempt at 4 layers. :) The challenge for France was to get layering! (Note I said layering and not laid. Although you could do that too if you want. Just don't blog about it ok? Ta).

This is a blast from the past as DH said when he saw it. While we were courting we went on some bush walks including one to Fairy Falls in the Waitakere Ranges. Nothing has changed since we got married. We still do walks in the bush only now we have 2 sprogs following us and we're not quite as slender as DH is in this photo. Hee hee!

Can you tell I've run out of photo paper to print on? I'm scratching the bottom of the barrel in terms of photos to scrap on 12x12 at present. (Apart from old school class photos which are so hard to scrap nicely). I'm digging out the real old ones.