one week

One week has gone by and I did get a lot from my list done, unfortunately not everything. I even added a thing, like switching to the new blogger, did you see ?

MLS news :

Have to start my Dutch Dare project for wednesday, I finally have an idea so I can get cracking tonight.

I have uploaded so many great products into the shop and have loads more to go. Next week I will continue as the boxes are not empty yet ;)

With all these new products I will have to add a lot more products to the sales section cause it just won't fit .... In the next few weeks I will also be going through my own supplies/tools and start clearing out and putting some things for sale and making some RAKS and so on, you wouldn't believe (well those that have been here do) what I've acummulated over the last few years.
1st thing for sale :
My cricut (I ordered the QK Silhouette to play with) and it's going cheap ladies ! I have only used one mat so not used so much yet (I will supply a new one), 2 cartridges (xmas and doodle alfa) and a toolkit to be purchased for wholesale incl. btw (items can each be sold seperately). So if you are interested email me !
I also still have a Sizzix machine from a cancelled order for only 70 euro's so if anyone is interested ?

What I can share, and oh and I'm delighted to say.... Jo-Anne will be joining the MLS team as of April 1st ! So be on the lookout for her on the MLS site and the dutch dares blog.


About me:

Running is going ok, I've been going about 2x a week, not too bad it's a good start !


Plan to get some spring feeling going this week, got all the felt decoration Xenos had to offer to I can really go all out ;)


Some other things happened last week (which I can't share yet) which made my life even more busier but is soooo funny, will share more next week about this.


I will leave you with this cute card Daphne sent me and yesterday she brought me a whole boxfull of this lovely tea (and let me tell you the teabags are so cute I hated opening it .....) from Mr. Jones. Thanks Daphne, you know what makes me happy ;)

Behind

on posting on my blog
on my tax admin
on putting all the cool things that have arrived in the shop (like huge supercool flowers, huge MDF letters, memo clipboards, superduper chipboard happy flowers, cool things from 7 gypsies and the list goes on).
on showing a cute card I received from Daphne
on reading everyone's blog
on sending off the Dutch Dare Rak to Marguerita (will do this tommorow)
on sending Anita some cool stuff
on cleaning up the living room (which is looking like a warehouse far too long)
on preparing my workshops and putting them online
on making the next Dutch Dare
on my Emily's deck of me challenge
on posting the cool new projects of the team for March
on so much more .....

I was behing on putting the cool mdf ornaments in the shop but I managed to take care of that this weekend.
I was behind on things I had to share with the MLS team.
I was behind on anouncing Corinne Delis's workhops but they are now listed on the MLS site, mailed & posted to all kinds of places.

Let's hope I catch up in the coming week .....

Dutch Dare's are up

And we've been very patriotic LOL. Go check them out, and play along !

BTW I've been trying to run again ... the weather and flu/colds etc. have been keeping me from going regularly but I'm hoping to get into the swing of things, now if only it was dry this afternoon I could go again !

Wacky Workshop Weekend

I had sooo much fun @ the Wacky Workshop Weekend hosted by de Creatie. I took almost all of Celine Navarro's workshops (and boy do I wish I had taken them all) she's very inspirational and creates with such ease ! I have a bunch more unfinished but cool projects, cropped with a wonderfull bunch of women (even got 3 of my DOM cards done, 2 lo's and my DD is almost done too .. wow), met people I only know the names of and not the faces or recognized the faces but not the names and met some cool new scrappers (Astrid you should really always wear your sunglasses LOL, Linda Loe & Patricia Hamelink maybe we should wear nametags ;) and Martijntje you really need to get a blog, it really is simple I promise (if I can do it anyone can !). Met up with Nicole, Daphne, Liek and Moniqe, Elwira, Bonnette, Flo, Birgit, Corinne (so great to have some time to chat & scrap together) and I missed the ones who couldn't make it (Anita, Rev, Jo see you soon I hope !). Oh and Mandy and I had a wonderfull adventure @ our Bed & Breakfast address. Let's just say the people were really nice, the place just looked & smelled funky, lot's of okld and dead things around the house, and the only thing good were the friendly owners, the price, the breakfast and the clean bedlinnen ......Mandy thanks for sharing this adventure with me, it was fun !

Happy Birthday to

my dear friend Wendy !!

Sweetie a birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun.
Enjoy the trip!









(sorry for the blurry pics, I shouldn't try to take them @ 0.00 ......)
Now I was totally confused as to when I should congratulate Wendy as she was born on February 29th .... damn those leapyears confusing me LOL. So I thought I'd do it on March 1st since febr 28 was too early but Wendy had a good theory, her b'day is always on the last day of februari, hmmm sounds good to me.

Sweetie when shall we eat some cake ? Then I can give you this card and all the scrapgoodies that have been waiting here to be used ;) and I want take your picture as I discovered I don't have any of you .... :(

THIS

This is what this holiday has been about up until now :




How is your week going ?

Art is Art

No matter how old you are and what you are making as long as you are creating it's art .....

A dreary day but we are having fun here, creating, playing with iron on beads (Which we have bunches of as I buy them wholesale ;) and we have plenty of inspiration booklets and figures). Michael has discovered the inspiration books and is totally into it again !

Colin is dabbling here and there mostly likes to just play with the beads rather than putting them on a figure ....

Oh and this is a sample of Michael's art from school :

Aren't I cute ....

Liek made a real cutie icon so I decided to make myself too ....

So whatcha think ? Make yourself into an icon too here.

Dutch Dares are posted

Like the sneak peak then you gotta check the rest out, they are sooooo different and so rockin' I am proud of us all !

I really love mine and can't wait till DH can drill a hole in the wall so we can hang it with the others.....

Project & sneak peak Dutch Dare

Forgot to share this cute card I made for Charlotte (I made her a little something that I showed before but it didn't make me smile, and this does ....) that should be in her hands pretty soon .....

And a little sneak peak for my Dutch Dare which you may not believe but is finished already (and it's only 16.30 ..... wow). You know where to go tommorow if you'd like to see more ....

BTW we are changing the stakes as we have noticed we are not giving away enough RAKS to the people playing along. We will be giving away raks with 15 participants and we are definately almost hitting the 15 this dare, so send them in to dutchdares@memorylanescrapbooking.net if you haven't done this yet !

Fun, fun, fun

wow what a weekend let me tell you !

I'm thinking what I can say that the alliance gals haven't said yet about our little surprise for anita but nope. It was fun to surprise a friend, it was great to chat, share and giggle together. I even finished some cj pages for the dt and finally got stuck into altering my bag ! It was special as it always is .....

The dt lunch on sunday was not all about scrapping this time, but a lot about getting kits & orders sorted out, getting ourselves organised, catching up, meeting Mirjam in person and just a teeny tiny bit of technique with ranger inks. I had fun girls, thanks mandy for letting us invade your house with my stuff and the team !

(i stole all the pics from other blogs as I didn't make any photo's, hope nobody minds ....)

Unfortunately due to dishonest builders (hey it's all about planning right, and the ones I know cannot plan to save their lives ......), Ed could not finish what he had in mind (my room ...) so he got stuck into the hallway and this is coming along nicely I must say. He is working so hard, I think I need to pamper him this week !

Michael's swimming career

Yep got his second ribbon yesterday, he was so happy. He started in March last year and is doing really well ! He says he wants to get all the swimming certificates there are, well honey lets concentrate on the first one this summer.....

Christina is so right

I could feel it from the start, Couldn't stand to be apart.
Something 'bout you caught my eye, Something moved me deep inside!
I don't know what you did boy but you had it
And i've been hooked ever since.
I told my mother, my brother, my sister and my friends I told the others, my lovers, both past and present tense.
That everytime I see you everything starts making sense.
Do your thang honey!
Ain't no other man, can stand up next to you
Ain't no other man on the planet does what you do (what you do). You're the kinda guy, a girl finds in a blue moon.
You got soul, you got class. You got style, you bad ass - oh yeah!
Ain't no other man its true - alright - Ain't no other man but you.
Never thought I'd be alright. No, no, no! Till you came and changed my life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! What was cloudy now is clear!
Yeah, yeah! You're the light that I needed.
You got what I want boy, and I want it! So keep on givin' it up!
Tell your mother, your brother, your sister, and your friends.
And the others, your lovers, better not be present tense.
Cause I want everyone to know that you are mine and no one else's!



happy valentines day baby !

Ed heeft me gered

translation = Ed saved me

After 3 days and numerous tricks tried in the book, he tried something out of the book and .... it worked. Hard disk worked long enough so he could copy my documents (with admin), my favorites and my mailing lists..... Yes he definately is da man !

Phew so happy and relaxed today !

If you have no idea what I'm talking about you can read post below it will explain everything.

crashed and burned

My hard disk in this case, so many a tear has been shed this weekend ....

I was due for a backup but just hadn't gotten around to it (and yes I should know better with all our it experience....), so my last back up has been a month or two ago. Not too bad I guess if you rationalize this but I'm not too good at that .... but the problem is I hadn't backed up my mailinglist for the newsletter of Memory Lane Scrapbooking. We do have some addresses from a mailing in September and some unfiltered lists on a usb stick but this will cost us a lot of time and lots of customers.

So if you want to help me out we would be very grateful, spread the word that people need to resend their email address to nieuwsbrief@memorylanescrapbooking.net
so we can start all over again .......

Perfect the way you create ?

Why are we so hard on ourselves when scrapbooking should be all about fun ? That's what I've been thinking about the last couple of days.

You see my belief is that everybody has their own scrapbooking style, there is no right or wrong it's all a matter of taste, style and experience. I have a friend who has this need to be the best and is upset because not everybody gets her style and I told her sweetie you are perfect just the way you create but it left me with an uneasy feeling.

So this got me thinking, especially since I tried a different thing with my lo and I was not happy at all with the way it turned out. But why wasn't I happy with it, because I hadn't created a masterpiece ? Because I wasn't praised for it ? Because I didn't even that much constructive critisism on it ? No it just wasn't giving me that smiling feeling the next day when I looked at it, and you see that's why I scrapbook.

I do not scrapbook to get published, I do not scrapbook because I want others to say I rock or am the best thing since choc chip cookies. I scrapbook because I think it's a great hobby, a way for me to relax, sometimes it's therapy, to have a creative outlet and document our photo's in a totally different way, not just by noting a date or a few words but by journaling or using that title with that certain photo that will say more than a thousand words.....and that's what makes me happy ! And that's what it should be about unless scrapbooking is your job in which case I still think it should be making you happy otherwise you have the wrong job LOL.

Please share with me what you think.... As I am curious if you are as hard on yourself when you create as my friend or are you totally not critical of your work ?

Remember it is a HOBBY, it should be FUN there are plenty of other things to worry about !

A sneeze lo

Someone close recently said she had the feeling she sneezed on a lo with some material ..... Obviously she wasn't happy with her endresult and although it wasn't her usual it was a nice lo. Well I know her feeling, my dutch dare is up and is feels like I sneezed (since I have a cold I could seriously pass it off like this .......) and I am not happy, maybe there's too much or maybe not enough of one thing but I'm just not happy. Maybe I'll change it a bit, maybe not, but I will be putting this in my whatwasIthinking album .......

BUT the other ladies have done FAB jobs with their Dutch Dares, go check them out and PLEASE SHOW us what you made as we have found out there are subgroups that are playing the Dutch dares and only showing each other. We as a group are a bit sad as I stumbeled across one of them and it looked so great ! And everyone loves winning a great RAK ?!

PROOF

need I say more ..... LOL !

Celeb

Some of you had noticed already but we have a bit of a celeb @ home (and I'm not talking about DH ;) LOL)

In this issue of a dutch scrapmag CmF, you might have spotted this LO of Colin. So strange to see his photo scrapped by someone else, but fun too as it's totally different from the lo that I once made (at the beginning of my scrapcareer ;) hihi) with the same photo.

Version Jolanda Schellekens :


My version (for which I still want to make a right page ...):


I will leave you with a funny moment yesterday in the car (background info; We had just fitted (one shoe) and bought a pair of nike's for colin) ; Colin : did we buy the shoe from the store ? Parents : yes dear ! Colin : did we bring the shoe from the store ? Parents : Yes dear. Colin : did we bring the other shoe too ? Parents : Yes dear we bought 2 shoes ! hihi

Birthday Recap

Last weekend was a busy one, but lot's of fun !

On saturday we had the kiddie party for Michael, totally in Indian & Cowboy style. We had a "campfire", a totem (with balloons with numbers for all the pressies for him to burst open), we made dreamcatchers, danced the hokey pokey, decorated cupcakes, had 2 foodeating contests and tosti's (grilled cheese/ham sandwiches) and hotdogs and ehm well that was it I think. Can you spot me dressed up as pocahontas ? unfortunatelly we forgot to take a picture of the whole outfit, but hey I might dress up again sometime ....



On Sunday we didn't have too much as the house was already prepped for a party so we made his treats for his classmates & teachers. We made "klaasbrokken" yeah you know the lovely chocolate caloriebombs from the master of sweet goodies Francine and cupcakes with a failproof recipe from the multitalented Anita (and they loved it all !) and waited for the guests to arrive. Michael is at that age where you have to remain calm & cool when receiving the best presents from your list, but I could tell from his face & reaction he was so happy with his cards & gifts. He went to bed a little later, got to watch something he usually can't because Colin is too small and was in heaven !



On monday, I had a very nervous little guy on my hands who did not want to go to school because of a tummy ache .....Eventually after some tears and a few hugs he was up for it ! We took a basket (and some tupperware) of goodies to school and then Michael asked if I could come back for the main event, now I didn't know we were allowed to do this but appearantly we are (wish I'd known that last year :( !) But I went back and took a few pic's, he was overjoyed and my heart was all warm and well you get the picture I think ...... After school we had some more guests that couldn't make it sunday, more pressies, his favo meal (french fries) and again to bed later than usual but again a satisfied & happy little boy.