LOAD16: About an adventure...

Today scraplifted a Cathy Zielske layout to tell about something a bit scary that happened this Sunday:

I had been to the supermarket with my 6 yo son and when we left the store I realized I had lost an earring. So I said to my son that I would go back in to look for it. He was standing outside with his bike. When I got out he was nowhere to be seen....and it was dark! I was not immediately frightened but did think that losing and earring was one thing but loosing a child was a whole nother thing!

When he wasn't in the store or close by I phoned to our home where my husband was. Wondering if Thomas may have gone home. I couldn't imagine it as he has never done that alone and it was dark. But apparently he had because he was just coming in through the door (at which point my husband had to hang up because the little man broke down and cried of course). So my brave 6 year old had cycled himself home without getting hit by any other traffic, had then carried his own bike up 5 steps, rang the doorbell (twice because my husband hadn't immediately answered), then managed to get his bike inside through a very heave front door and another inside door and got in the elevator to the 2nd floor! I am amazed...and ever so slightly freaked out because he obviously thought that I had just left him at the grocery store which I never have and never would do.....

The journalling on here is done by my son, I thought it would be good to write this in his own words as it is going into his album...I might do another layout for myself to get to grips with this adventure...

Still Going Strong!

It's Day 13 and I am still going strong. I may not have posted here every day but I have been doing a layout a day. Sometimes a Pocket Page (or two), sometimes a 12 x 12 and sometimes a digital layout like this one for Day 10.

As I was cycling home with my son through pouring rain I realized that this cycling thing we do in Amsterdam might be a good topic to scrap this LOAD so I decided to kind of document the evolution of Thomas's modes of transporation from pram to riding his own bike:

Journalling reads: 
Raising a kid in Amsterdam means you need to be creative with the wheels. Cars are just not that practical to get aroun city in and parking is always a pain. So you try to work out the easiest way to get kiddo and everything that comes with them plus some groceries:-) from A to B. In the first few months you really need the pram so it was walking or tramming it. But then when muncher could sit we got a “bakfiets”,very popular in Amsterdam. Not so popular with my back so I was happy when we could put T on the front of my trusty Batavus and later on he went on the back. Nowadays ( he’s 6) he gets to cycle in front of me. We both love it except when it rains...but we suit up and just get going! Amsterdam February 2016

Digital template from Simple Scrapper.

And today I also did a paper layout about one of my favourite places (the topic was landmark): It HAD to be about one of my favourite places to visit: Glastonbury Tor: a manmade "hill" with a tower on top of it. Glastonbury is a special place for many different religions and it draws seekers from all over the globe to the Tor. We try to go to Glastonbury every time we visit my Mother in Law. It is a bit of a hike but always worth it: the views, the energy, all that space and the wind blowing all the cobwebs out of my head. Just love it!

This is one of the few times I actually cut in a photo, I cut all the sky out of the picture so you get to see the sprayed sunburst.

I had already documented another landmark last week. One much closer to home:

Do you notice a colour theme here? I can't help it but I really seem to gravitate towards the yellow-blue colour scheme in many of my layouts. Different shades of it but still.

Do you have a favourite/often used colour scheme? Or one you never use? I am not that big on the vintagy browns for my scrapbooks. Or black and white for that matter. Although I do love those for card making.

Day 3: Music at McDonald's

Day 3's prompt was music and I used it to do a page in my Winter Holiday album, my broader interpretation of a December Daily, about T's love of playing the recorder and how it took a huge flight when we got him a book of St. Nicolas and Christmas songs. He was playing it all the time. In this picture he is playing it in a Mc.Donald's restaurant where we had lunch for my niece's birthday. Thomas' playing drew in many children from all over the restaurant who would stand around and listen to lim play christmas carols. I was such a proud mom!

LOAD216-Day 2: The back-up project

Every LOAD I make sure I have one easy project I can work on when I am pinched for time. It is usually a project that is half done so doing the odd page here and there over the month means I may actually finish that big project and feeling twice as good about having done LOAD.

This year's back-up project is the album for our trip to the US in the autumn of 2013. It was a great 2 week trip I took with my then 4 year old son Thomas. We stayed with one of my best friends and had THE BEST TIME EVER. So we took a gazillion pictures and printed at least 100 that have to go in this album I got at HEMA back in 2013. I had decorated the front before we left:

I am about half way through the trip and tonight I did some fille pages of our weekend in a cabin in Shenandoah National Park. It is so beautiful there. I have blurred out my friends and family for privacy reasons but little MR. T is still in full focus.

I'm off to bed now!

LOAD216 Here we Go!

Woohoo! I am so excited to to another LOAD again. There is only one public LOAD a year now so I have had to wait for quite some time. But there is a runour going round that there might be another pubic LOAD in MAy....fingers crossed! But let's not get ahead of myself, it is only  day 1 on this one:-)

The overall theme this time is Travel:

They have asked scrappers from different countries to help out with sample layouts and there are different themes for each day of the week. Monday is for Color and the scrapper was Dutch so they went with the colors of the Dutch Flag: Red, White and Blue. Perfect to make a layout about my son's first ever race: The Vondelparkloop in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Love the pre-race determination on his face and how pleased he looked crossing the finish. There will be more races I am sure.

I now need to make two more of these as I use them to send off to my parents and my Mother-In-Law. They get a layout from me every month to put on an empty calendar I give them each Christmas.

I'm at it again. Load 215! Day 1 is in the pocket

It's finally here! I love doing these Layout a Day Challenges and the last one was in May of 2014. Too long ago! Not that I didn't have a million things to do already but still, this so so much fun to do and so satisfying. 

The general theme of this LOAD challenge is Books and Stories of your Chlidhood and today's prompt was 'Which character did you relate to or imagine you were?'  For me it turned out to be two red heads (I only just realized this:-):  Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery and Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

Today I am taking it relatively easy with a digital layout. I'm still feeling a bit under the weather from being ill and had a late night last night. But I am very happy with how this worked out.

My childhood heroins were Anne of Green Gables and Pippi Longstocking. Their goodness and sense of right and wrong was so inspiring to me. Despite being  deemed unruly and uncivilized by the 'proper' people they would still always do what is right and always climb back up after falling flat on their face time and time again. That still inspires me:-)

I used a Simple Scrapper Digital Template and most elements came from Melissa Bennett's Oh Boy Kit from Sweet Shoppe. 

Day 23: Happy Days!

Today's topic was 'Playground', I twisted it a little to talk about some of the happiest times in my life.

Growing up my parents spent most of their free time (except for winter) at a hippy-esk marina. It was an island in the middle of a small lake not far from Amsterdam. It was heaven for us kids. We would spend all day building huts, climbing trees, rowinig through little water ways or out on the water swimming and learning how to wind surf. It was really amazing growing up like that. For me, that lake and island are my playground.

I've used a whole bunch of different digi stuff here. If there's anything you want to know just ask.