A restrained LO

For me anyway.. no inking, no misting no twine and the photos line up!! It is harder than it looks.

All inspired by this weeks Sketchy Thursday sketch. I like the way the clean style highlights the photos, and with a view like that, I guess they should be the centre of attention.




We only live a couple of hours away from Sydney, an easy drive but we never seem to make it there. When Matt caught his plane from the airport, we decided to spent the weekend looking around. This is the photos we took on the ferry to get across to the zoo. the opera House never ceases to amaze, wonderful, bizarre but beautiful building that it is.

And thank you to the folks at Scrapping the Music for choosing this LO of Meaghan for this weeks winner. Always, always nice to see your work up. yay.

The kids are on holidays at the moment so we are off clothes shopping for Meaghan now. sigh.

And Matt is about to hit Vienna. So far his favourite place has been Krakow in Poland, he has just spent a week in Prague but has been a bit sick. His blog work has been less than exemplary, a source of frustration for us (seriously how hard can it be to write a few lines, esp for someone who wants to be a writer!!) but skype continues to be wonderful. It never ceases to amaze us that we get free wifi whenever we have travelled OS and Matt has the same in Europe, but if you want Internet access in your hotel room in Australia you have to pay through the nose. So annoying and embarrassing as well.

Ok off now, see you in a day or two for my very last Southern Girls DT LO. If you are quick you can still apply to be on the team. It is a wonderful team and I am desperatly sad to be moving on, but I needed a bit of a break (the last challenge had at last count over 370 entries..). Pop on over if you are interested and wish Lou luck as she is currently in hospital hopefully having her forth baby very soon. xx

Frustrations

We are back in the land of computers after a very nice visit down to Mum and Dad's. After a long 6 hour drive back, I logged on to catch up on all the news only to find that the Internet was slower than when we had dial up (ahh, the sound of the modem...). Turns out our lovely nearly 19yo had decided to upgrade all his Internet games while we were away and used up our months supply of internet thingy (ok technical term, can't remember right phrase, you know what I mean!). So we had been dialled back to the speed of somewhere near a trickle for the rest of the month - aarggghhhh. Thank you Matt!!

Uploading images for this post is taking approximately forever but I am persisting...

Firstly a Lo I did before we went away for Little Shop of Sketches - #88 a sketch by the very talented Anne Pennington. Anne is starting a new challenge blog, with the first challenge going up on the 30th of this month, go check it out here. looks like it will be fun.

This is the first time I had played with the little shop and had a bit of fun with some old photos of Henry reading while we at a nearby park - he is so like Matt. The latest sketch has just gone up, lots of little photos that I can't wait to try.


And today being a nice Canberran wintry overcast day, a perfect day to get stuck into my latest Cocoa Daisy kit which was waiting on my door when we arrived back - yay for yummyness and kit companies! I used the latest Sketchy Thursday sketch -



and a photo of my littlest niece. She was still a bit sleepy when we arrived and was quite happy to watch all the action from her swing. She is a bit of a cutie.


Ok, off to drop Meaghan at her friends house for another movie night and another sleepover - I'm sure she doesn't technically live here anymore...

and then Henry and I will spend the afternoon together, a bit of park time and maybe some geocaching. Will take camera this time.

Have a great day xx

Buddha Park

This place totally rocks in a bizarre, surreal sort of way. We had wanted to visit when we were in Vientiane but we had run out of time. Luckily we had one less day in Luang Prabang (bad hotel) than originally planned so an extra whole day in Vientiane was a bonus.

We caught a tuk tuk, as it is 25k's out of town. The ride was a blast, love riding on the back of these, it took an hour so plenty to see on the way (the only sight our driver thought to point out was the beer factory..).

This place, on the banks of the Mekong (never get tired of saying that, The Mekong has such an old worldly feel about it) and it was just a large park. But it was filled up with all these giant statues all made by one man in the 1950's. And oddly enough (I found it odd anyway) that it covered two religions - Buddhism and Hinduism. I guess it was the same in the ancient temples of Cambodia.

The reclining Buddha is over 40m long, and there is a little temple that you can climb into, far too steep for me. There is also this very bizarre stupa sort of, which you get into by climbing into a demons mouth (as you do) but that requires a whole new LO.

Another place in Laos I would completely recommend visiting.



I have used a rare double sketch from Sketchy Thursday for this Lo. I struggle with doubles but is easier with travel photos as we have soooo many of them.

Here's the sketch-


and my Lo completed.


The latest Cocoa Daisy kit has just lobbed on my doorstep so hopefully will have more to show this week. xx

February trifecta - a bit late...

I cannot believe how quickly February flew by. I had planned (in my head anyway) to enter a number of challenges all due by the 28th - well that flew by with the challenges remaining in my head!! I will do better this month...

First up the very important and quite tricky Dollies trifecta for the month. The colours are cream, green and purple, the sketch can be seen here and the element is love. As noted in an earlier post, I struggled with the purple element and the gorgeous Julie sent me some Nikki Sivils products from the 'sugar cookies line" How yummy is that???




And here is what I came up with. My curly haired son with his equally curly haired cousin. Very cute together. Go and check out what the other dollies have done and give it a whirl. Can't wait to see what you come up with!!



And I finally managed to get some extra scrapping done for the latest Sketchy Thursday challenge - here is the sketch
and here we are, back in Laos.


This place, Pha That Luang, is an astonishing sight . It took a little while on the back of a tuk tuk to get there from our hotel, we went down a sort of lane way, not paved, with chooks and dogs running all around, turned the corner and there it was. In the afternoon light it practically glowed. It is huge, we got there just before closing time (for visitors anyway) so we didn't get a great look around but so glad we got to see it. We are still unsure how they paint the upper sections...


Some more photos from the Stupa and surrounding areas. These were inside ...



I am glad they resisted the temptation to put plastic googly eyes on their dragons which we had seen in some other temples..

This is a wat just next to the larger stupa, much newer, very colourful and obviously in constant use by the locals.

And we think this is where the monks live. So over the top in decoration, just fabulous. You can just see some of the monks cleaning the outside.


I loved Laos...

Off to do the rounds of picking up kids, tennis etc. Geoff's birthday tomorrow, luckily he organised his main present himself (very power lights for his mountain bike) so I just have to put together a few little things and cook lasagna and cheese cake, his all time fav's.

Have a great day. xx

Finally some scrapping done

I loved this sketch from Sketchy Thursday this week and managed to get two versions done, a traditional and a digi Lo.

This one is about releasing some small birds from a Buddhist temple in Laos. We bought two of the little cages, one bird in each. This is supposed to give you good karma. Further reading upon getting home made me realise that the little birds don't get quite the same amount of karma as they are often caught in nets and not treated well while awaiting release. Hopefully these ones get a free life after we released them.



This one is simpler. Henry and Matt (and Meaghan as well) got along so well for the whole trip. Matt looked after Henry, often carrying him when he got tired - it was wonderful to see.

And while in the sketchy mood, I gave this weeks Pencil Lines sketch a whirl.


Again from Laos but less obviously so. We took some bubbles along for down times and Henry had a ball while we out at the bungalows, blowing and chasing bubbles. Amazing how kids quickly adapt to no computer and no tv..

So I am quite pleased with these ones, it is so long since I have felt like scrapping and my output has dropped to a trickle. Just needed to get back into a routine I think.

Big couple of days coming up. Henry's 8th(!!!) birthday tomorrow (must go blow up some balloons) and then the day after he and Meaghan are back to school. A couple of Henry's closest friends have moved schools over the hols and he will miss them. He has a male teacher this year so he should enjoy that.

Ok, have a great day xx

Elephant riding

On Christmas eve, we ventured out to a small village, very near Luang Prabang, Laos. They have an elephant rescue centre there, where we spent most of the day. They get elephants that have been rescued from logging camps (for various reasons, elephants are no longer really required for the awfully hard logging that they have done historically). Owners aren't able to release elephants back into the wild so they are either left to slowly starve or they are destroyed.

We settled down here to enjoy the views - a hard life sometimes..


This place along with one in Chang Mai in Thailand are using tourism to save these animals. They reassure us that carrying a couple of humans every day is child's play compared to hauling logs, and that the elephants enjoy the interaction, and the stroll through the river a couple of times a day. They are also released back into the nearby jungle every night.

We had three lovely ladies (they only use the calmer female elephants) to walk us around for an hour. The downhill bit were scarier than they looked, only an unsecured pole between you and the ground

The mahout that was guiding our lady hopped down when we reached this mid stream island (leaving Henry and I somewhat helpless) and took some photos. Geoff was getting ready to explain how to use the camera, when the man took off his conical hat, flipped around his cap that was hidden underneath, adjusted the setting himself and rearranged us as professionally as any model shoot - he obviously does this a couple of times a day, ok reassess our superior western attitudes - again..)


Matt and Meaghan's elephant handler offered them a go 'up front'. Matt. surprisingly for us, took up the offer. I think it was getting a bit painful after about 20minutes, and they swapped back. Meaghan wasn't quite as game (nor would I have been to be perfectly honest..)


Using the first sketchy Thursday sketch for the year. Using supplies from my lovely friends, that I have previously mentioned, thank you Julie and Irini.

It was a great way to spend Christmas eve (better than the normal shopping spree and mad rush).

Have a great day and don't forget to check out the new Dollies challenge (featuring our guest designer for January, Amy Beaver) and keep an eye out for Southern Girls challenge, a new one should be up in the next couple of days. xx