Engagement Party Awesomeness

Wow, thanks to all our Family and Friends for making our Engagement Party the most fun ever!! It went off like a firecracker and we had SO MUCH FUN!!! The fairy lights, Chinese lanterns, candles, red tea light holders, candelabras and Moroccan Lanterns made the backyard at Hotel d'Lam just so beautiful! It twinkled just how I wanted!! All the family pitched in to make delicious food (of which there was tonnes!! and tonnes left over for dinners for the next month!!) and it was great to catch up with family and our friends and celebrate! It feels quite real now :) not just a small engagement but a big event everyone knows about! Lol! Not that they didn't know before, but it seems more cemented now. Get what I mean? Prob not. {chuckles}. Thanks Yvette for making the journey up to Sydney too, it was so great to have all the Kingmans all together!

It was a bit weird for me to not have my camera, cos I'm so used to it being permanently attached to my hand, so I had to rely on other people's cameras for the pics! Luckily I have great photographers in the family and so they managed to capture these cool pics and more!! I would need a post about 1km long to include all the pics so I've collaged them for you... I hope you can still see them all and see what a fab night we had!!

:) C

A Letter

Dear Little Blog,

Hello! It has been such a long time, I realise I have been so neglectful. If you were my child DOCS would have already come and taken you off me. Thank goodness you're just my own little corner of cyberspace!

I am super excited to be picking Yvette up tonight, in readiness for Will and my Engagement party tomorrow! I have to leave in just over 1/2 hr so don't let me get too distracted. I am even more looking foward to it cos we are going to Pancakes on the Rocks for dinner/dessert after I pick her up! And tomorrow we are going for breakfast with our other peeps (sisters) and then gonna get some cupcakes from my fave Cupcakes on Pitt to bring home for morning tea. Do you think we can fit it all in? I can't eat too much cos of all the delicious food I want to eat at our Engagement party! Wills Dad is a Chef (or Chief as he calls it) and is making us lots of yummy Asian dishes plus we have Beef and Pork on a Spit, and Will's uncle who owns a BBQ shop is giving us a flat-out Crispy Skin Pig (for good luck) and 4 ducks (to symbolise children). Super!! Plus Dad is making Sausage scrolls, Mum is making Pavlovas and we're getting a delish Tiramisu cake from the awesome Macedonian Place at Chullora. Hurrah!!

I think I have Tennis Elbow. My Elbow feels like it needs a good grease and oil change. Does that sound like Tennis Elbow? How do you get rid of it? Maybe I should go on a long and relaxing holiday!! Sounds good to me. It's a little owie.

I'm still looking for a flatmate... {sigh}. I can't wait for 7 more months time when Will and I get married and I'll never have to search for a flatmate again. Wooppeeee!!!!

Oh, I'm getting a free Wolfmother concert at the Moment!! AWESOME!! They are actually playing at the Uni near my house in Brownville, and the wind is blowing in the right direction and the window is open so I can hear them! Oh, he is sooooo good that main guy (including his awesome 'fro!) his voice is so clear and high for a guy. They are playing White Unicorn which is one of my fave songs of theirs. How happy am I?!! "...... we could live together!!......." ah yes. Would you like to be my flatmate Wolfmother?

Life has been fully hectik this week, including a Fedex Drama, which I wont go into too much, but which still hasn't ended... At least my parcel finally got cleared into USA and is almost in the state it's supposed to be in. A note of warning: never try to send anything important via Fedex, it's likely to sit in Alaska for a precious 24hrs waiting to clear customs! My stuff could be off by now people!!!!!!

Well Bloggy, I'll come back again soon, I promise not to neglect you forever!!

:) C

3D sticker mayhem..

Last week I went totally nuts trying to use up some of my massive stash of 3D stickers. I grabbed all the boy papers out of my stash, grabbed the boy 3D stickers from my massive box and set to work (with Midsomer Murders on Tivo- love that show! Dt. Barnaby is so dry..) So these are the ones I came up with....

Yesterday I was shopping in the Reject Shop and they had heaps of 3D stickers, which normally I would have jumped at and grabbed til my arms were overflowing, but I am sooooo trying to get into using up my stash so I had to stop myself. Proud? I was :) I much prefer the fun of stamping and it'll be good to use up what I've got! I was totally in the groove this night and ended up making 6 cards! I love when I've got something good on the TV and the ideas are flowing and everything just comes together so easily. It happens now and then for me, and I just love being able to create a whole bunch of things at once! It was like I had created my own card kits cos I had gotten out paper, card, ribbon, rub ons and stickers that all co-ordinated together and it all just came together! I am proud to say that I used up 2 full sheets and now the lid actually clips down properly on the 3D sticker storage box!! Lol! These chipboard 3D stickers took up quite a bit of room! In fact now I'm blogging about them it has made me a bit inspired to go and do the same thing for girl cards! I think I might!! So what have I got on Tivo to watch now... Inspector Poirot? He's so up himself.... Hmm.... Law & Order UK? Yeah, I think the young policeman is hot too, you're quite right. NCIS? oh I have Ocean's 13, how can you pass up on Brad Pitt?!

:) C

AWOL?!

Hi, I really am still around! For some reason I have been super tired after work each night and so have just been vegging out on the lounge. I can't even be bothered to turn on the computer some nights! Whoa!! But rest assured, I'm here. And I"m still thinking about you, I just haven't gotten to post anything.

The bummer about slothing on the lounge is that I haven't really been creating anything this week! I'll have to dig out through my old pics and find a page I haven't posted yet... hmmm....

Oh this page is only from last week, so thats not too old at all! Probably one of my fave meals of the day to eat out is Breakfast!! (Followed by dinner, dessert and then lunch comes in last, unless it's one of those long, lazy lunches where they let you sit and chat and drink coffee and graze for 2 hours :)!) Well, American's know how to make a gooooooood breakfast and so when I spotted Denny's in Hawaii I dragged Will along! Will ate steak and eggs (trust him to find the steak on a menu- he always eats steak if he sees it!) and I ate the 3 meat breakfast with pancakes. Yep, everything in that right hand pic is my breakfast! Oh it was sooooo good! I had a ham steak, sausages, crispy bacon, hash brown, 2 poached eggs and 2 pancakes! At least we didn't have to worry about eating lunch that day! The OLD on this page is the BG paper (it's double sided and I had actually bought it for the other side which was a rough pink with yellow and white dots, but this side turned out to be the winner for me!), the lettering stickers (I was amazed I still had all the letters to write that title!) the "Happy" punch out, the DENNY'S lettering rub ons, the stitching and flourish rub ons and the lace cardstock. WOW!! I actually really like this page, I know that probably sounds weird, but it is only a page about breakfast, yet I really like it!

BTW, I am doing so well on my New Year's Resolution that i only have to use up 5 papers to have reached my goal!! SO PROUD!!

:) C

Some more Jap Scrap..

Happy Saturday!! Yeah, I made the most of it.. getting up early, 2 loads of washing then heading off to Golf Mart to get Dad a Father's Day pres. I walked into what, at first, seemed like a tiny shop but once inside I realised it stretched way out the back and there was a whole new world of man-ish toys I had never imagined! I must have had the same look on my face that Men always had when they walked into the Scrapbooking shop I worked at years ago, cos the worker came straight up to me, I had a quick description of what I wanted, he found it for me and I bought it, all in the matter of about 3 mins. Rather quick and painless!! Just how it should be :) It had taken me longer to drive along the previous block of Parramatta Road than it took me in Golf Mart!! I rewarded my good work with a Sticky Date Cupcake from Cupcakes on Pitt at Parra :) A new flavour for me, and I have to say it was delicious!

So I've done some more pages from Japan lately... the first is of the totally AMAZING shoes that were everywhere in Tokyo. We both got a new pair, Will out of necessity cos for some reason he had brought 2 pairs of uncomfy shoes with him, and me cos they were TOO COOL to pass up! YOu may have seen them in previous Japan LO's? Mine are awesome Pink and Yellow Nikes, my first ever pair of Nikes! Is it sad that I got to 27 before owning a pair? Uh... maybe!! But now I have them, I love them!! I had an aweful time trying to find a shoe big enough to fit my giant white-girl hoofer, at first I tried every Vans they had in the shop cos I love Vans, but none were big enough! Then when I spied the coolness that was the Nikes and they had them in my size I did a happy dance! The OLD on this page is the 3 BG papers (yonkers old!), the pink and green fozz felt flowers, the slide shape, date spot and the purple felt flowers. I love those 3 AC Thickers fonts together, they look so cool!!

Then on a totally different side of the (colour) coin I did this page about some cute food in Shibuya. Will and I had these weird Bean paste (or something like it) balls left over from one of our meals and Will drew a face on his, so I drew a face on mine, only it went a little wonky like a moustache. Then he put the Mushroom on the head and I found the Chilli and adorned his eye, then we put capsicum and some cabbage on the other one... and they turned into "The Lady and the Pirate". How cute are they?!!! Oh we were laughing and laughing so much {chuckling}. The OLD on this page is the Chatterbox daisy BG paper (forever old!), the tag, unique rub-on, stitching rub-on lace stickers, red swirl and letter rub ons. I love this page cos I laugh when I think about that pic!!

:) C

Bumpin' Along to the End of the Week!

Hooray that it's friday tomorrow... YYYYAAAYYYY!! But man, how the weeks are flying by these days. It is only 2 weeks til our engagement party, that time has so flown.. come back!! There are only 7 months left of me being a Kingman & I'm gonna miss my name :( But I'll become a Lam, so thats quite nice too (I'm happy it's not a scary unprenouncable Asian name like "Ng", I don't think I'd cope with that! Or something Indonesian like "Supaporn" and yes, I have seen that name come through work a few times and have imagined how much that poor person must get ridiculed at school!). I'm looking forward to the day we can have some Lil' Lams of our own too. LOL!!

Talking about Lil' Lams... I finally got to scrap some pics of Felicity's emerging bump {sweet!} She only just seemed to pop out, and with only 9wks to go she's looking so fab!! I have been saving this so sweet PP for ages and it went perfectly with Fliss's pretty top! I also used the last one of my blue MM half artisan shapes from the notebook which I had been "saving" for a special page. And I felt this was special enough to break it out! (I'm such a duschbag sometimes, hoarding all my stuff!) The cream paper under the pics is a Chatterbox one I got from Yvette, it's embossed in silver foil and is SOOOO pretty! Bummer it didn't come out in the pic. The OLD on this page is the pink fozz felt flowers, the heart felt cut out, the heart sticker, blue tab and the rub ons. Thanks Yvette for giving me the idea to punch out the AC owl paper, cos I had no idea how I was going to use those cute as owls on a LO cos the paper is SO busy with them!

I hope you've all had a super week so far, I'm so looking forward to the working week ending!!

:) C

Comp page

Hi y'all.

How is it already Monday? Oh man, I had to force myself out of bed this morning!!

Yesterday I decided it was time I did a competition page, I like the challenge of doing a page to someone else's design so I headed over to Anna's Craft Cupboard and checked out their monthly LO comp. Here's the page I came up with! I realised that I have hardly any LO's from Hawaii, even though I took hundreds of pics! It was such a wonderful trip, just Willy and I, and so I decided it needed to be scrapped more! I did stick to my old habit of using up OLD items as well as NEW ones. So on this page the OLD is both the white and pink lace cardstocks, the rub on under the journal block, the orange chipboard flower and the 2 pink wooden flowers. That gorgeous pink and black paper is by Heidi Swapp and I've been wanting to use it for ages! So glad I finally got to! I didn't embellish too much cos I already think the page is a bit overpowering! Kinda like a flamingo threw up over here.... LOL! But in the end I think it conveys the happy, tropical, fun time we were having in such a beautiful place! Wish me luck, first prize is a $35 voucher! I could do with some new stuff :)

:)C

Project 365 Collage #24

I'd better share another Project 365 collage before the month is out!

The car clock says 7:57 and I'm on may way to work?! What?!!! Lol, starting early; a training day at work; having breakfast with my peeps; bacon and maple muffins (thumbs down, I think they were too doughy and not tasty enough, probably would have been heaps better drowned in maple syrup, but not when you're diabetic!); Yum Cha at Rhodes with Alicia and Willy, delish!; Will displays his delicious dinner; birthday dinner for Alicia, hanging out and watching her Foxtel with Mum and Dad; "End of Swine Season" morning tea with my work friends (note the multi-culturalism!! From left: Indian, Chinese, Lebanese, Fijian-Indian; Aussie (OMG!!), Iraqi, Lebanese and Chinese-Singaporian... and then Me of course!!; and doing well with my New Year's Resolution, I've now only got to use 10 papers without buying any more and I"m done!!!!

Hope you're having a good Saturday!

Man I've had a busy day, I started at the local Coffee Shop for breakfast with some catalogues, then on to Birkenhead point (undergoing reno's at the moment, so don't head there if you can help it!) where I staked out in Spotty for a while checkin out their Martha Stewart stuff. Man it's expensive!! Probably the best value is the ribbons ($8/10m) and the glitter ($13/45g) but see those blue and brown ribbon boxes at the bottom- so nice... and $45!!! WHAT?! The rub ons and stickers were equally as expensive, about $8-$16 for 2 sheets. I reckon that's a rip off!! The sheet of jewels you can see bottom right were $13 for one sheet!! Do they not realise you can get a pack of Kaisercraft jewels for $2? Hmm... Also, the border punches were $35, although I saw them at the craft show for about the same. I think I'll stick to online shopping! OR at least saving my money for our honeymoon (hopefully to the USA!) where I'll drag poor Willy around to the craft shops. Love ya Willy!! So after that I headed to Lane Cove to a great Deli, but didn't end up buying anything, then to Dan Murphy's then to Eastwood looking for lunch, then to Grocery Shopping and finally home!! Whoa!!

:) C

Jap Scrap!

Hurrah, I'm getting on with my Japanese Scrapping!!

I'm loving using bright colours to match with the brightness of my Tokyo pics (Kyoto pics are

much more historic and subdued!) Something Japan is full of (and you probably already have

worked this out!) is vending machines! They are on EVERY street, including in residential zones! It's like you never have to go to the shop, just step out your door and vend yourself a coke and go back in to watch TV. Amazing! On Mt Kachi Kachi there was even a hot food vending machine (I was perplexed as to whether the food sits inside cooking forever- hello Clostridium!- or if it's snap cooked when you vend?! We never found out cos I wasn't brave enough to try it!) The machines were so handy cos we walked so much and were always parched! The toy vending machines were fun too, they dispensed toys in big capsule balls or they even dispensed character stationary! The OLD on this page is the number lace cardstock, the orange lettering stickers, PP and the arrow rub on :)

Then I cracked out another Japanese Scrap page, woo hoo! Man I am killing that AC arrow paper, I've used it on at least 3 Japanese LO's now! This is one of Will's impromptu pics of me on the street in Akihabara. Last time I was in the US I spent all the time behind the camera and hardly got in any pics at all, there is only 1 or 2 of me in NY and they're not that scrapworthy! That's why this pic means so much to me, cos here I am, in front of those cool Jap signs, the only non-asian on the street, with a big bag of shopping and my vended coke zero, in the middle of Tokyo. I am really there!! Now, if only I can teach Will how to not cut my feet off in the pic too :) How do you like the new Kaisercraft Loire Valley range (the bird die cut circle at bottom left)? I think it suits Japanese pages quite well! The OLD on this page is the black textured paper, the rub ons and all those Alphabet rub ons! Yay to be using them up again!

:) C

Project 365 Collage #23

Oh Wednesday.... after you, it's all downhill to the weekend! I am going out again for another friend's birthday Saturday night, but other than that I have no plans! Yay!
Oops, I haven't posted a Project 365 update in some time!! This one is pics from the end of July!! Hop to it then:

Saturday I spent at the park in the sun with a Coffee and Real Living Magazine watching the local boys play soccer, so relaxing esp cos I was sick!; Aroma Festival with Willy; hehehe, making food faces from dinner! It is Island Potato eyes, corn cob nose and cob loaf mouth!; some cool brooch finds on Etsy, I gave the 80s chick to Alicia for her birthday; ah, my Celebrity Crush- Jason Statham; Will bought me flowers for our 3 months engagement anniversary {sweet!} and cos I was sick :); I love this baby boy card, love using "other" colours rather than baby blue and white!; Burger Date at Nick's Diner; My new TIVO!! It's so awesome, I use it all the time! It makes night's without Willy so much more interesting!!

:) C

P.s. I'll probably post more of them soon cos I"m so far behind!!

Ebay and Some Scrappin..

Hello!

Are you a fan of my nestabilities dies? YOu know, the Scalloped rectangles I'm always using on cards? We'll I've got an extra set and I'm selling them now on ebay, so if you're interested head over and have a look! At the moment they are only 99c so you could bag a real bargain! The matching plain edge rectangle dies are in a separate auction, check them out too. They can be used with lots of die cut machines like the Cuttlebug (which I use) the Ellison Big Shot, Spellbinder's Wizard etc. I love them and I've had heaps of fun using my set. I want to buy all the different shapes now!!

I searched my blog the other day, looking for the post of this page: I couldn't find it, so I'm posting it again. Sorry if you've already seen it!! I'm kinda sure I did post it at some stage... oh well! Can you believe I'm 27? Nope, me neither! We went to a delicious cafe at Balmain called Bar Contessa for Sunday lunch and hung out chatting for a couple of hours! Check out all my awesome birthday presents! It's tradition for me to lay out all my presents on my bed and take a pic (I remember typing that before, so this page must be posted somewhere?!) It's a really good reminder of when I got what! I wanted to show you the bag that Mum made me, remember the other day at the show I said we ran into the lady who designed and printed the fabric?! Yeah, she was thrilled to see the bag!! I love my top too, shhhhh it's just from BigW, man they have some nice clothes these days! And it cost me only $10 so you can't complain about that!!

:) C

Twas a fun day had by all (two of us)..

Thanks for coming over Fliss!! I had so much fun :) All the crap is still set up on my table though... I think I should pack that up sometime!

Here are our creations for the day... I'll start with Fliss's cards cos she beat me. (Yes, it's an informal comp to see who makes the most whenever we get together! Thanks Dad for the competitive spirit!) I'll point out that I did make lunch at the end, so I may have been at a slight disadvantage time wise! Lol! She made these beautiful Boy cards with Stampin Up PPs and Pumpkin pie/Bashful Blue cardstock (not sure what that green one is.. what a bad SU demo!!)I love that she has adopted my "make one, make two" mantra, it's the best!!

And then she went on to make these 2 sweet-as Girl cards with the deer from SU Forest Friends on Pretty in Pink card, oh it is the most adorable deer!! The BG PP is one of her faves so she made the images small so you'd still be able to see the PP. They are beautiful cards Felicity! Great work!! I'm so glad you got 5 made, that will plump up your supplies a bit!

And then here are my 3 measly cards! I wanted to use up the Butterfly and Ladybug from my AC set- the only 2 left in the box- and I am so proud to say... the box is empty and in the bin! WOO HOO!! Also I used my new Basic Grey clear stamps from the show together with "be Cool" sentiment which I've had for a while now. I love that combo!! Lol. The BG stamps were $9 Yvette, it's a small set though, so prob not the same ones you saw! I hope not anyway, cos $27 is a total rip off!

Lunch was delish too! The pizza was so filling and yummy :) We ate it all! I am so stuffed now! Going out for tea with my work friends for "Two Birthdays and an Engagement" (think: 4 weddings and a funeral!) to Restaurant 3one7 at Parra. I'm going to roll home I think!!

Thanks for a great day of Relaxing tea, cardmaking and lunch Felicity, I had so much fun and it was great to entertain you at my place for once!!

:) C

Anyone else want to drop by?!

Hello!

I am super excited this morning (hence it's 8:35 and I've been up for over 40 mins!) cos my sis Felicity is coming over for stamping play! Would you like to come too? I set up the table last night, it is covered in stamps, ink, punches, brads, ribbons, cutters, stamp 'n write markers etc! I'll put on a movie and we're gonna have some fun fun fun!

I have also bought a pizza base for lunch and I'm about to go roast some sweet potato, eggplant and capsicum to go on it with the fetta, chicken, basil, semi dried tomatoes and mozzarella I already have. Sound ok? :)

Yvette, we're saving you a seat! You know if you leave now you can still make it for lunch!

:) C

P.s. Alicia is in the US right now for work and I have asked her to look for this Martha Stewart spider web punch... I hope she can find it for me! I think it is WAY cool! If she does I'll be making her (now annual) Halloween Party invites with it! We have already been discussing what to dress up as, I've got one piece of my outfit already (heheheh!) and a piece of jewellery to go with it too. I know it's not til Oct, but I'm excited already!