Hayley Hutchinson's Blog

Do I get the prize for the world's words blogger?

2009-08-07T00:12:00.001-07:00

WOW! It really has been a while since I blogged. I think that I must be the world's worst blogger!!! Where to begin. We have been keeping ourselves quite busy with the removations of our homw over the past 9 months. We are almost complete and are looking forward to having a party to celebrate next weekend. I have not photographed the main parts yet, however I do have some photos of our bedroom makeover. I am really happy with the results.

So here are the walls all freshly painted the teal is the feature wall and all the other walls are black. I just love it! When I first suggested black walls Nathan was a little unsure so we painted our feature wall first. Once he saw the teal on the wall he was sold on the idea of black paint and so went back to the paint shop to get the required black paint. When he came home with a 12L tin of black paint I was slightly shocked. Believe me our bedroom is not that big and so neadless to say we now have quite a bit of black paint left over. Black paint anyone???

So here is my new bedwear. At first I had something quite different to this in mind, however Nathan was not at all kean. I am really glad now that he said no to the other one though cause I really do love the one we found that we were both happy with. So now I just need to get my hanyman and the hammer in the same room at the same time so I can get the walls decorated.

In scrapping news I have been pretty MOJO less lately. But last week the Embellished Idol 2009 competition started and so that has got me scrapping again. Week 1 - Ali gave us a picture to use as inspiration. So what started as a layout became a framed quote. I am really happy with the outcome. I had just that week finished hanging our new panel glides and the pelmets that Nathan and dad made and so I used off cuts of both of these products in my layout. This is one of the many black frames that is going to form one of my features of my, soon to be finished, lounge room.

I have completed my week 2 but will upload it later after it is photographed. I also get in and did some other layouts this week. I will have to share them next time. We are finishing off the painting over the weekend and so once that is done I will post photos of my new lounge, dining and kitchen!!

Hayley

Rambling thoughts!

2008-07-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

Holidays - where have they gone?
I am now almost halfway through my 2 week holidays. It feels like I spent soooo long counting down to them and they are almost over. I don't feel like I have achieved much so far apart from lots of sleeping and just hanging around. I had BIG plans of getting a 'spring' clean done, however that plan doesn't seem to be working. Oh well! I have decided that I am going to stop stressing about that and just enjoy my time off. I have to go in and work for a couple of days next week so today is being allocated as scrapping day. I have been scrapping recently but nothing to show at the moment.

Masters:
I have decided to enter the masters competition and so I have been working on that. I have really enjoyed the challenge of it and I have been really happy with the work I have produced. One more to go and I am finished.

Scrapbooking Teaching:
I also started teaching on Tuesday night! It was great fun and everyone came away with such different layouts which is always a great thing. We did a circle LO with lots of paper strips and edge distressing. My LO is still at the shop so I will have to get a photo to put up when I collect it today.

Embellished Idol:
Embellished Idol kicks off on Saturday night. It is great to see the range of people taking part this year. The competition really has a international feel with so many people from all around the world.

Agnes Waters / 1770:
On to other news. On Wednesday I went to Agnes Waters / 1770 with Nathan. Over the past year he has spent many, many nights in this beautiful spot for work and so when he found out he was going this week he organised to take me. I got to go with him while he worked and it was interesting to see what it is exactly he does. He has been in this job for 8 years and I have never really known what he does. So 1 1/2 weeks before he is due to start his new job I went and checked out what he does on all of these out of town trips. He had to climb one of the towers while we were at the site and took some awesome photos.

Uni??
Nathan has finally got his change of course sorted out and is able to return to his studies this semester. He seems to be looking forward to starting again and hopefully having an in town job will make it a bit easier to get he work done. He found it very difficult to juggle his study and being out of town all the time cause whenever he was at home he didn't want to be doing uni work.

Well that is about it for me. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

I have been busy scrapping.

2008-06-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

After our photo shoot with Ali the other weekend I have been motivated to get scrapping. It just happened that I was also getting the June Kit for Embellished featuring the beautiful Amy Butler papers. They are just so versitile and I have had so much fun playing with them. I have ended up doing a 8 1/2 x 11 album of all of the photo shoot photos and I am so pleased with how they have turned out. Here are SOME of the Layouts I have done with the kit.

This is my Dare sample for this month. The dare was NO paper / NO adhesive! I really enjoyed creating this and the challenge that it gave me to think outside the box.

This is the June sketch for Embellished. This was my first ever sketch that I had to create. I was really happy with how it turned out. To see some of the other DT members samples jump over to the embellished forum. http://www.embellished.com.au

Well that is all from me for now. Looking forward to a long weekend, however I am not looking forward to having to get report cards done!

Have a great LONG weekend everyone!

Hayley

Photo Shoot.

2008-05-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to have seen some of the photos already from our photo shoot with Ali over the weekend. We headed down to the river bank on Saturday afternoon and spent some time with Ali mucking around and Nathan & I really enjoyed ourselves. It was great to have out photo taken in such a relaxed fashion. Ali takes really awesome photos and you can check out her stuff at her website (http://www.alirussellphotography.com)

After out photo's we headed home to get stuff organised for dinner. We had 10 of us (adults) in total for a BBQ on Saturday night. Around the table were; Ali, Glen and Luke, Jo, David, Harry and Liam, Amanda and Mark, Ang and Noel and us. We had such a great night with some old friends and we were also able to spend some time getting to know each others husbands which was really great. I would post some photo's of us all, however I forgot to even get my camera out! What a terrible scrapper I am LOL!!! Oh well, hopefully we will get to do it again soon.

On to other exciting news...
Nathan has been offered a new position. He will be working for the same company - BUT - he won't have to travel anywhere near as much. After 8 years of constant travel we are really looking forward to this. He will be starting at the end of June. (Which just happens to be the start of my holidays but oh well) This just means that I will be free to do my own thing during the holidays.

Book club???
Today I got an e-mail from one of my friends (Amanda) about the thought of starting a book club! How cool!! I am so excited - we are getting together this weekend!! I think that this is such a great idea. We already have our own library system going where books are continually moving from person to person so I think that this will be so much fun. This sounds like the sort of homework I will really enjoy!

Fund raising:
On of the other designers at Embellished (my local store) Maz is planning to spend two weeks in November/December 2008 cycling around Vietnam and Cambodia in support of Oxfam. She needs to raise money so if you would like to find out more or support her please visit her blog .http://followtheyellowbrickroad-maz.blogspot.com/

Well that is all for now. I hope everyone is having a fantastic week. Leave me a comment if you drop by.

Hayley

A bit of a scrapping share.

2008-05-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

Well I can't believe that I have taken so long to post again. I thought that I was getting so good. Oh well! Last weekend we went out to the family farm so that Nathan could do some work on the boat and then of course he had to get it out on the water as soon as we got back to check out his work. Apparently it is AWESOME!!!

I have been laying low for the past week or so and have been getting heaps of scrapping done. A bit of it is stuff that I can't share for a while but here is some of the stuff that I can. The first is my second last In My Skin for the competition on Embellished and the others are just Lo for me.

What a weekend!!!!

2008-04-20T03:02:00.000-07:00

WOW!!!
What a fantastic weekend I have had.

Friday:
On Friday afternoon I headed down to the Embellished Retreat at Cool Waters. It was a fantastic weekend full of scrapping, socialising and jumping (the jumping pillow down there is just so much FUN!). It was great to meet so many of the girls that I know through the web site and to be able to finally make connections from names to faces IRL. On Friday night we had free scrapping time which was great as it gave us a chance to just chill and get to know everyone. I was able to complete a couple of LO and do a lot of chatting ( I know that those of you who know me would be very surprised to discover that I was chatting).

Saturday:
On Saturday morning we were up and jumping on the jumping pillow straight after breakfast. It was great fun but I think that the kids thought we were slightly crazy. Saturday morning we made a beautiful Felt, Flower shaped book designed by the fantastic Kristy. I had so much fun - there was heaps of stiching - and the album looks fantastic. Thanks Kristy! It was so fantastic to get to be taught by such a funky designer.

Before lunch Ali announced the new Design Team Members for Embellished and I am very HAPPY to be able to announce that I am one of the new designers. I am SO EXCITED!!!!!! It was fantastic to be able to meet all of the current design team members from around Australia and New Zealand. I am really looking forward to working with them. Kirsty has already given me a list of jobs which I am looking forward to tackling.

Saturday afternoon the wonderful Kelly Slattery from New Zealand taught us a LO which she challenged us to get completed in under an hour. In the afternoon we had free scrapping time and then it was time for me to get ready to party.

Saturday night I had an engagement party for my friends Jenny and Dean in Rocky. It was great fun and I got to catch up with people who I haven't seen for a while. Now we start the count down to the wedding in November. In other exciting news from the night I found out that 2 of our other friends got engaged on Saturday morning. Congratulations Pete and Christine!! After my action packed day it is no wonder that I slept soundly.

Sunday:
Sunday morning I was up early and ready to head back to Cool Waters for some more scrapping action. This morning Ali taught a beautiful mini album using acriclic. It was just beautiful. We worked on the background of it so tomorrow I will have to add my photos and journalling. I have no photos to upload of all of my work over the weekend yet as I decided to have a nap instead of finishing my projects and photographing them. I will upload them later this week. So now the countdown begins to next years retreat. I am looking forward to it already. After such a busy week I am glad that this week is only a 4 day week cause I think I need I few days off to recover.

3 More sleeps to GO!!!

2008-04-15T00:52:00.000-07:00

Well we are on the countdown to the Embellished Retreat for 2008. I am very excited as I have never been on a scrapping retreat before. I will be heading to the coast on Friday afternoon straight after work and I am really looking forward to meeting some of the people that I know through the on-line forum and getting to know some of the other local scrappers better. I will post photos of all the fun next week.

I haven't been feeling well for the past few days, however I started back at work on Monday after my one week holiday. It was a pupil free day and so I thought that I would be all right but I can home feeling really bad about 2:00 and slept through till 6pm. This morning I was determined to go to work, however as soon as I started to speak Nathan told me that there was no way I could make it through a day in the classroom today. So today I have stayed at home and rested, eaten ice-cream, drank lemonade and rested some more. I am definitely feeling better for it and I am hoping that tomorrow I can go back to work.

On with some of my scrapping stuff. Last week I put up a picture of the beautiful Sassafras Lass papers and promised some Layouts using these - so here are a few from last week.

I also went to Ali Russel's class at Embellished (LSS) on Thursday night and created this beautiful LO. I love the burst of orange.

And finally here are my last two creations for the In My skin challenge on the Embellished website. The first one is Breasts / chest and the second is the stomach.

WOW - I LOVE THESE PAPERS!!!

2008-04-09T00:55:00.001-07:00

I went into my LSS (Embellished) today to print some photos and also came out with quite a bit of the new Sassafras Lass papers. They are so cool, very bright and funky! I love the owls on them as well. I came home with some of the 'Serendipity' range and some of the 'Life is Beautiful' Range. I love the scolloped edges of the paper I can see them really comming in handy on the pages as well. What a great idea to get more out of your paper as this doubles as the barcode / ect section on the back. The pages are doubled sided, however I have only photographed one side. I am looking forward to playing with these over the next few days. Will post some pictures of the results when I get scrapping. This is the 'Serendipity' range.

Here is the 'Life is Beautiful' range.

That is all for now - Unitl next time.

Hayley

Catching up.

2008-04-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Yeah! I am on holidays!!! It is only for a week but that is better than nothing. My last week for the term was pretty busy getting everything finalised before the end of the term. On the Thursday of the last week we had drinks at my place for anyone on staff it was a fun afternoon - however it was hard to chill when we knew we had one more day left. Oh well! Over the weekend my dad and Nathan started to knock a hole into my beadroom for my NEW walk-in wardrobe. Dad came up again today (Monday) and he has gotten a fair bit done and he recons that by tomorrow he will have to old doorway covered and the new one finished. I am very excited. Also on Sunday Nathan and I were at the Red Hill Centre and we saw the sign to say that Howards Storage World is finally comming to town. We had been planning on driving to Mckay to go to the store there to get all of the internal stuff for our wardrobe, however now we have decided that we will wait untill we have the store here. It is planned to be opening on the 10th of May.

On exciting scrapping news my local scrap store (Embellished - http://www.embellished.com.au/) had a huge order of stock arrive on Friday which was just in time for my holidays. This has given me a bit more motivation. So at the store crop on Saturday night I was able to finish 6 lo. I had one that I just had to put the finishing touches onto as well. These are the LO from Saturday night.

The last one is a 6x6 for my new 6x6 album. (Very exciting - it is great to have another size to work in) This is my In your skin for this week - Hands. I found this quite difficult, however this weeks is going to be even more of a challenge (chest!!). I will have to think about that for a bit I think.

I havn't got to much else planned for my week off. Tomorrow (Tuesday) I am meeting my family for breakfast before going shopping with my sister, mum and grandmother to start looking for things for her baby. It is very exciting as I will be an Aunty again in September (my sisters baby) and October (my sister-in-law and brother-in-law2nd child)

This week my sister-in-law and her two beautiful daughters are staying with us, which is great as Nathan was due to be away this week. It great to have them staying while I am on holidays so I can spend so time with them. On Saturday we are having a birthday party for my neice in the morning before heading over to my sisters for a tupperware party.

Well that is all for now no exciting news - except that it is now only 10 days until the Embellished retreat.

2008-03-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

After a very busy long weekend I was glad that I only had to survive a 4 day week. With the end of term one and our week of holidays quickly approaching I have been keeping busy at work trying to get everything finished.

I have been a bit slack over the past few weeks but have been back to the guy this week and have realised how much I have actually missed it (does that make me sound CRAZY?) It was probably a good idea to get back into it after the Easter long weekend and the two or three!! chocolates I enjoyed. The easter bunny was very kind to me and seemed to know just what to buy me (I really do wonder how that happened - could it have something to do with the fact that I did the shopping on behalf of Nathan?) Tuesday was a bad day to decide to go and do my groceries as well because there were still so many eggs in the shopps and they were half price. I was very restrained though and didn't indulge to much.

A few weeks ago we went down to the beach one afternoon to meet up with Greg, Michelle, Nicola and Heidi. We had a great time at the beach with all of them and Michelle's mum Gloria. It was an absolutley beautiful day and Michelle was snapping away an alful lot. I am so pleased that she was as Nathan and I have some beautiful beach shots of us. I thought that I would put a few of these up for you to see. I am really, really happy with how they turned out and can't wait to scrap them. Keep your eyes out for them in some upcomming layouts.

Michelle takes beautiful photos - we were really happy with how they turned out.

At class on Thursday night with Ali we played with Shrinky dinks. It was heaps of fun and it was funny seeing the way everyone reacted as their creation curled up and then our amazement when they uncurled and flattened themselves out again. I really enjoyed it and cannot wait to get to play with them a bit more. I have a packet that I got a little while ago so perhapse I will get a chance to play with it over the weekend. Here is the LO from class. I was not 100% happy with it, however you can't love everything. I am going to try and get some scrapping done this weekend with the photo's Ali took for us when we went to the park on Good Friday. You will have to wait till they are scrapped to see them as I don't have copies I can put here. I also am still contplating my In my skin for this week. It is on arms and shoulders - not the easiest topic. I think that they might be going to get harder from here on in.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Hayley

Easter LONG Weekend!!

2008-03-24T00:33:00.000-07:00

What a busy 4 days we have had! I have had a fantastic easter and have been able to catch up with a fair few family and friends.

Friday:

Ater the Good Friday service we met up with some of my scrapping friends and their families. Ali, Glen and Luke, Jo, David, Harry and Liam, Ang and Noel, Helen, husband (sorry, I have totally recked my brain but I cannot remember - I have Greg stuck in my head but I am sure that is not right), Wade and Jennae and Gemma at the parklands down at the Fitzroy river. It was very relaxing watching the kids running around and playing on all of the very, very cool play equipment. Eventually curiosity got the better of me! No photo's to prove it - Jo does have the proof however. It was lots of fun. We had a fantastic BBQ lunch and then it was time for the girls to head back to the shop to get some scrapping done. We had a pretty productive night. Here are a couple of the pages I managed to complete.

Ali had taken some photo's of Nathan and I while we were handing out at the park and she scrapped these at the shop on Friday night. Here is the link to her layout. ttp://www.embellished.com.au/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=10697 It is very cool I have never been the subject of someone else's scrapping before!

Saturday:

After dropping my friend, Bek at the airport for her week in Brisbane Nathan and I headed out to get some job done around the place. Really exciting stuff like going to Bunnings and BCF I left up to Nathan and I headed to Shopping Fair to help choose a present for our friend Jessica's 21st party with my mum, gran and sister. We ended up getting some funky Kelly Lane stuff. In the afternoon the we managed to get the boat into the river for the first time since Australia Day as there has been so much rain etc that it hasn't happeded for a while. I have been lucky enough to get to listen to Nathan complaining about how stiff and sore he is ever since:) That night it was off to Jessica's party. I made her a card which I forgot to take photo's of so you will just have to believe me. The party was good fun! Jess has just got her first car and so I think it will be very well decked out from now on. I think judging from the amount of pink that she won't have to worry about her dad trying to drive it!

Sunday:

We headed out to the farm to catch up with Nathan's brothers and our sister-in-law and 2 nieces (Nicola and Heidi - my main scrapping material) We had a fun time playing with Nicola and it was great to see how much more Heidi is able to support herself and how much she is already moving. I have a feeling she will be ready to crawl very soon. As they have just started picking we also went out into the paddocks for a while and Nathan and I got into the module builder and mucked around. I have a few photo's of us.

Monday:

This morning after a bit more time on the farm we headed home for lunch with my family. It was great fun and was good to catch up with my extended family. That is all for now. I will leave you with my "In my skin" challenge layout for this week. It was on hair. Hope you had a great weekend drop me a line and let me know what you were up to.

2008-03-16T04:14:00.000-07:00

A bit of scrapping stuff.

I have been scrapping up a storm over the past week and have a few pages to share with you. I have also been busy on the home front and have been re-decorating some of my rooms - will upload pictures later as i need to wait for day time to take photos. Here are some of my layouts though.

The first one is for the 'In your skin' challenge that i am in run on the Embellished site www.embellished.com.au this is week 5 - nose.

This layout I completed this week on the night that I got three pages completed. This I did in the colours that my new beadspread is for my front bedroom so i think that this will have to go into their for a while.

This layout is from Ali's class on Thursday night at Embellished. I just love the owl she is so cute. ( I though mine had to be a girl owl don't you think?)

Well that is all for now I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I am looking forward to a 4 day week!!! Bye for now.

2008-03-11T05:33:00.001-07:00

I think I've found it!!!

WHAT??? I hear you ask. I think that I might have finally found my mojo!!!! Very exciting. I have been feeling rather uninspired lately but tonight I sat down and completed 3 layouts and had a fantastic time. I would share but they are for a special project so you will have to wait to see them. But I am very excited that I am feeling inspired once again. Well I had better go and get some rest - hopefully another scrapfilled night tomorrow night with Ali's class. By for now.

It's been a while!!!

2008-03-09T00:59:00.000-08:00

Well it has been a little while since my last post and there has been a fair bit going on here so a quick recap of some of the recent things that have been going on.

Work, Work, Work.

I have been back at work for 6 weeks now. I can't believe it! How the time has flown by. It feels like only yesterday that my days were my own and I could scrap to my hearts content all day long. Needless to say this has been keeping me very busy, however we are now on the count down to the Easter Holidays. This year the holiday falls earlier so we only get the four day long weekend and then 2 weeks later a week of school holidays. At the moment we don't have any plans. Lazy day at home reading and scrapping are sounding really good to me at the moment.

Floods:

With all the rain that has been happening in Central Queensland Rocky has had a couple of floods over the last month and a half as well as our fair share of rain. We have been lucky and apart from our shed / storage area roof leaking we have been very lucky. Other people have had significant damage and so for them the clean up continues.

Off to Newcastle:

Last weekend Nathan and I headed off to Newcastle to go to our friends Jonno and Renee's Wedding. It was a great but exhusting weekend. The wedding was beautiful, however Wyee was colder than we were prepared for. They had a day time wedding so that night we drove over the the coast and had dinner with some others from the wedding.

New Glasses:

I finally got my new glasses on Friday. It was very exciting as I have been needing new ones for quite a while as the coating on the others has been comming off. Also my eyes have changed quite a bit so it is good to see things clearly again. On Saturday I took a few photos of them. So here is one to give you the idea.

Scrapping:

I have been participating in the "In your skin" 12 week challenge through Embellished. I have been having a ball. So far we have done 4 weeks of challenges these being 1. Head, 2. Eyes, 3. Ears and 4. Mouth. Here are my attempts.

To see the fabulous work of the others you have to visit the site. http://www.embellished.com.au/

I have also been doing some scarpping of my own and so thought that I would share some of my favs with you.

Thanks for visiting and please leave me a post so I know you have been here.

New Year, Fresh Start.

2008-01-04T03:57:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

As I do most years I have made some New Year's Resolutions and one of them involves this BLOG. This year I am going to become better at posting on my blog. There it is written down so mow everyone can keep me accountable. A little while ago I purchased 52 Scrapbooking Challenges by Elsie Flannigan and have decided that over this year I want to do one of her challenges each week. These I am going to put onto my blog. Challenge # 1 is called work those words. Here is my LO.

My local Scrap store "Embellished" has just launched a new site and as part of it they have put up some competions. The first one is their January Sketch Challenge which is what I have also used as my Elsie Challenge #1. Their second comp is to do a LO to the title of New Beginnings. This is mine.

Over the last couple of weeks Nathan has been on holidays and we have been doing some rearranging (something I seem to do a bit of). As part of our rearranging we have moved our study / scrapping room into one of the spare bedrooms in our house which is much bigger than our official study. Here are a few photos to show you what it looks like now. I wish that I had taken some before photo's so that you can see just how crowded our old room was.

For Christmas Nathan gave me a beautiful wire maniquine. I was originally thinking that it would be to hang jewellery and other accessories on, however after looking at it in our house I decidecd that it would make a really cool place to store all of my scrapping ribbons. Here is a photo of the finished product - again I didn't take a before photo - I really have to learn to do this!

As I have been on holiday's I have also been doing quite a bit of scrapping and though that I would put some of my work up here.

This is my 2008 diary. I thought that the plain black looked a bit boring so I jazzed it up a bit.

2007-12-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

Holidays!!!

I am finally on holidays. I am very excited as I have been counting down for quite a while. We have been very busy with pre-christmas activities over the past month, however I have found time to fit in some scrapping. Here is some of the stuff I have been working on...

WOW!

2007-10-21T02:05:00.000-07:00

I was so impressed with myself. I decided this afternoon that I felt like scrapping. I sat down and scrapped two pages in only a short amount of time - not something I usually do! So I thought that I would post them to. Two posts in one day is a bit much! I don't think that this level of committment will continue.

Golf

2007-10-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

This morning we went to play golf with some of the guys from Nathan's work. We had to start at 7am which is a bit early for a Sunday. Oh Well, it was pretty fun anyway even if I didn't hit that many balls. I think I did more swings and misses than anything else. Here are some photos of us trying to play golf.

I think this was the best place to be! In the buggy with my feet up chatting.

How Exciting!!

2007-10-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Well I have finally got a blog. I am feeling a bit confused but am sure I will work it out as I go along. Though that for my first post I would put up some of the scrapbooking I have been working on. Here they are: