D4

Okay so the title is a little cryptic till you see the page following, my first as a Guest CT for Sharon Kenealy.

The D girl, my wee baby girl is 4 and heading at full speed towards 5! It really makes me wonder where all the time is going, before I know it she will be off to school.

Credits here

12 weeks give or take is all its going to be before that happens and it really kinda hit me the other day when I picked up some shirts for her school uniform. School uniforms are so horrendously expensive! And this is only primary school for goodness sakes! High School is apparently much much worse. So definitely a case of spreading the burden out rather than having it all land in your lap in one dose!

And the D girl is in kindy four mornings a week now, thanks to our governments support for early childhood education which gives all 3 and 4 years olds, 20 hours free education each week. Obviously at approved Early Childhood Education providers, but the big plus for us is that its not income tested! Which means all children no matter what their parents earn have a right to access this. Great to see that they are considering the childrens rights to a decent education first rather than worrying about how much their parents earn!

Well you could knock me down with a feather ...

I come back to the most awesome news yesterday... we had decided at the very last minute on Friday to escape for the night in Beddy.

We went out to Kaitorete Spit, at the northern end of Lake Ellesmere (we live at the southern end of the lake). Talk about stunningly beautiful! Lots of photos taken but I still have to edit them so you will have to be coming back to check them out!

Beautiful sandy beach perfect for photographers! I will be definitely using it as a location for couple/family shots!


But I dither... when I got home I found an email from Sharon Kenealy from ksharonk designs at www.pickleberrypop.com inviting me to join her Creative Team for a three month Guest spot.

Wooohoooo most certainly happy dance time. So thanks have to go to Sharon for asking me and to the other guest CT'ers who will be joining me congratulations too!
And if you are a digi scrapper and haven't checked out Sharons designs yet, what are you waiting for go click on the link!

A page for this weeks Hodge Podge Challenge

My first ever time doing this particular challenge and boy was it fun! So the challenge was to take a photo any old photo and make it better by cropping it!

When I first took this photo I loved the texture the gravel road made behind her legs and boots, now not so much! That and getting rid of some of the distracting colours. The idea was there, and it was a good one at the time, just not one that came off quite as I had hoped it would.

So this challenge was right on time. Below you will see the original image followed by the cropped image added to a page.

Pink Boots

This is for the Hodge Podge Challenge on interesting crops.

Lisa Whitney @ ScrapArtist
Embossed and Embedded holes – Chalked Full Of Fun, Flowers - Painted Doodle flowers, Stitches (recoloured) - Ultimate Stitches Vol 3 Circles

Weeds and Wildflowers @ ScrapArtist
Paper - Drinking Tea Paper Set

Two Sisters Design @ ScrapArtist
Beauty Mark - Beauty Marks Vol 2

Linda Gil Billdal @ ScrapArtist
Safety Pin - In Vogue collab kit

Katie Pertiet @ Designer Digitals
Frame - Vintage Stacked Frames

Lucie Goikoetxea aka Lemonaid Lucy
Swirls - Newspaper Swirls freebie

Sharon Kenealy @ KSKDesigns
Notepaper - Grunge City Freebie

Font – Susie’s Hand

The school holidays have come and gone...

and the little fact that they were the winter school holidays was not enough of a reason to stop us going away in Beddy!

Okay so it was a little chilly but its not like we didn't have blankets, lots of changes of clothes and a gas heater to keep us warm. So where did we go?

First stop was Lake Pearson to get some photos, the lake was relatively calm on one half of it and so reflected the surrounding mountains in it. So needless so say photos had to be taken, then the girlies decided that tossing a few rocks in to watch the splash was a really fun thing to do. Now no one can call me slow on the uptake, and being the sort of person that takes the weirdest of photos I decided that some splash shots would be in order.

Credits here

And as you can read on the journalling my darling Chris is the bestest assistant to a nutty photographer, okay so he looked at me a little strangely when I first asked him to throw a rock in but did it anyway, and after about half a dozen rocks we got this! See I couldn't live without my darling husband. Who else would just do half the nutty things I ask him to do?

I have to show you the following page too, the photo was taken by Anya with my SLR, okay I made sure the settings were going to work for her but she composed the shot and made it happen. Both the girls had got a giggle when they first spotted their dollies and Anya wanted to take a photo of it so who am I to stop her creativity?

Credits here

I actually learned a new trick to selective colour this one, and boy is it so much easier than the way I had been doing it!

Next stop was the Bealey Hotel, no not for a quick drink but to let the girlies see the Moa. Mind they were a little apprehensive to start, I mean it is HUGE! the fact that its made from concrete is a whole nother story! It did take a little bit of coaxing to get them to get close enough to touch it to see that it was actually only a concrete model. And it took quite some convincing that Moa's were in fact extinct and wouldn't be jumping out of the bushes at them anytime soon.

Next stop, Arthurs Pass were we managed to spot a Kea galavanting on the road like it owned the place! Off in hot pursuit went we with camera in hand, and the girls eager to get close enough to it to check it out properly. They did have to be reminded that the road it was wandering on was infact a busy State Highway and that they had to be careful even if the Kea wasn't!

I am just about to post this one in the gallery so come back and check out the credits later.

Getting to the end of the first days driving here, yeah I know quite a way but we are nearly where we decided to stay for the night which was at a Layby at Mitchells on the West Coast. Not until I had asked Chris to stop and back up Beddy so I could get some shot at Lake Brunner.

Credits here

Now you see why I needed him to stop suddenly don't you? How could you not stop and take a photo here?

Oh and we walked up the Carew Falls track, got photos there too but yet to resize or make a page of them. So they will be coming soon!