Journal

Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

We have my cousin’s daughter’s Christening coming up soon so I made this from the Silhouette Store. They have such lovely stuff there!

I also had fun chatting with Lauren today. She came and sat on Nan’s lap and I snapped this picture:

It was overcast today and I had my kit lens on my camera like a numpty. I really should check it before I leave the house. I was hoping to catch Erin today, but she didn’t go to nan’s today. Still, I get lots of photos very soon   And of course, the best Nephew in the world, Oliver! With cute haircut from mummy and daddy.

She’s so cute!

Ok that is super weird LOL!

We had a lovely day, some hiccups which was to be expected. We seriously couldn’t have picked a better day – the weather was the hottest day of the year, glorious sunshine all day   It was very hot though!

Yesterday was a nice surprise as we had a bit of snow and a couple of people were sent home. This morning the alarm went off and I headed straight for the curtain to see a heck of a lot of snow. My parents couldn’t get their car out and quite a few of my neighbours came out took one look at their car and headed back inside. One van tried to get in our cul-de-sac and it took a while! I phoned some colleagues and spoke to my boss and in the end decided on a snow day!

There’s just something about snow that makes everything look so pretty   I leave you with this image of my brother’s snow man in his garden:

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Xmas I’ve had such an amazing day, hanging with my family – this is the first time in around 10 years that we’ve spent it all together and had xmas dinner on xmas day and not New Years day lol!  The most amazing present has to be the Pogo! I will write about it very soon, as it’s just wonderful for journals

This is my current journal, and I will share with you some bits and bobs from it

It’s another Daler Rowney of course! I decorated the book with Making memories stuff. I am missing one of the flower gems off the front though, and I have a velour lilac ribbon as a bookmark that co-ordinates.

and here’s a sneek peek at some of my entries (more after cut as image heavy!)

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With my swap journal, I began to include a few more relevant bits in my journals, not just random stuff I picked up along the way (although, in one of my hard back books I have a return bus ticket from at least 10 years ago – and it’s interesting to see the price difference!)

Yes, when I get upset I generally head straight to the journal and whine about my life in it – it’s free therapy and it never judges me. I like that! But I also like to put the every day life in it too As I also carried it everywhere with me in my bag, I kept some of my favourite photos in the back (this from my swap journal)

Pictures of myself and Stewart growing up That always cheered me up!

I’m also not an artist by any means. I really suck at drawing, but my journal was my go to place just to release some creativity (One of my Daler-Rowney journals)

I like to include happy photos:

Portraits of myself, and talking about my hobby (in this case this was about photography – before I got my DSLR):

and simple reminders to myself:

Some of the other things I have found helpful in my journals are tabs. Loving the Tabs! I can quick reference back to things – you have no idea how many times I thought about something, and thought “that was back in August 2005″ or something, gone back to my journal for that time and sat flicking through the pages to get back to that date to see what it was I was looking for. These tabs are by Doodlebug, and was on their Summer cardstock stickers sheet. Doodlebug was my happy thing back then and my journal is even covered in doodlebug papers.

I also kept miniature envelopes in my journal for no other reason than to write cute notes to myself and stash them away in there to find again later, and any smaller bit of emphemera I had collected. Larger envelopes is definitely something I will do in my next journal, to keep all my bits and bobs in a nice and neat order.

Now, you may notice a very silly thing, and ask: “But Kirsty, you said you chose Daler Rowney books because they were acid free, protected your photos and I can see you even used scrapbook products in your books… so WHY can I see BIRO in your books!?” Ah yes. This is something I stupidly and completely over looked! I do in fact journal with acid free pens now. It was shocking to me, that although you can’t see it in photos, my very first journal is already yellowing. Seriously breaks my heart, and this is why I’m going all out acid free in my current journals.

Also my number 1 top tip: If you should take you journal around with you, put your address in the back of the book! Mine reads: “This journal has no monetary value but it means a lot to me, so if found please return to {address} I will gladly refund the postage.”

Tomorrow I will be sharing bits from my current journal and might have a little something for you

I thought I’d take the opportunity to take this week to talk about things and give things to all my blog readers (lol, all two of you Rachael and Katie ) Today will be part one of my ramblings on journals It’s what gave me the idea when I was doing my personal blog. I wanted to keep it separate from my photography hobby blog and giving that the subdomain “blog” I chose “journal” for my personal blog.

This is my very first journal, aged 11 years:

It did have a lock on it and you could at one time back when I was 11, close it up but over the years I used it I began putting things in it and it would no longer close properly.

I also had horrific 11 year old writing and mainly talked about teddy bears and what I called them lol.

and my random stickers – back when the original 90210 was on! I kid you not, I even have a sticker of MC Hammer in there – don’t ask me why!

Then came my awesome “fluffy” journal, which still locks and I still have the key hidden away in my secret hiding place even after all these years and moving.

Filled with Hanson goodness
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I’m on a roll with Oliver’s scrapbook. I need some help from Stewart though. He sent my mum some photos and she bluetoothed them to me, but in the meantime, I have started scrapbooking some photos I took on Saturday:

and here’s 2 photos from Saturday, minus a scrapbook page lol. It was just me, dad, Stewart, Claire and Oliver at nan’s house, so it was quite nice and relaxed with lots of Oliver time

Firstly to start off this post, here’s a shot of Oliver I got doing his cute pouty lip thing. It was taken in low light settings with my kit lens, so I’m glad how it turned out – I imagined it would have been much more blurry!

And Taz enjoying his mini break

And now for the main event: Sims 3.  Now since the patch has been released it’s been a  MUCH better gaming experience. For me, I play on my laptop as it’s just easier for me and it allows my beloved Fiance to play on World of Warcraft on the main computer, and my laptop failed on CPU speed to be able to play it but I can play it fine

I started with Jamie Hart as I did in Sims 2 and immediately married him off to the first local who he met called Blair

They had two kids Avery Grace and Dylan and once Avery Grace was a young adult I moved her out to test the Story Progression She had a boyfriend and two kids, although the father of the children is questionable LOL! It doesn’t show in the family tree mode.
I continued on with Dylan who met Bella (yes, THE Bella!) at the gym and he married her, only to find out that she already had a little boy called Cary. Bella and Dylan had Connor together and as Cary was already around they didn’t have anymore kids. As Connor grew older I had a very funny time trying to get him hooked up with someone! He started off with a girl called Rayne who completely blew off all of his advances, so he started dating a girl called Lacy… Only she never came to see him – and in fact everytime he rang her to come over she would tell him to call back in so many hours or try again the next day. Now, I got annoyed so the last time she blew him off and told him to call back the next day I made Connor go to her house where she was watching TV. He proposed to her and she refused… so he went to see Rayne where she absolutely adored him! (Go figure…) So it was back to Lacy’s house where he broke up with her and things got VERY ugly… Seriously she was yelling and screaming at him to get out so he obliged!

Now at Rayne’s house there were a bunch of guys there which I assumed were her brothers… and boy was I wrong! Once married, only then did I realise that those 3 men were in fact her sons amd she was just days away from becoming an elder. Oops. So it was a race to get my heir! Then Aurora was born She’s currently a teen and the only 2 people left in the household are Connor and Aurora as Dylan died and just 2 days later Rayne died. Dylan did really well though, he got his lifetime wish and lots of aspiration points, so on the Hart section of the graveyard, Dylan stands proud above everyone else.

I’m on Networked blogs on Facebook should anyone want to follow me   http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/kirstys_journal/  and my photography one is there too: http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/kirsty_base_photography/  and I need people to confirm that I’m the author so please do that too after my failed attempts to confirm it myself.

My book was seriously funny. And I thought things went terribly wrong on my camping holiday the other week, nothing campared to this, and Emma and her family are nothing but persistent! LOL, I loved this. And the ending seemed very fitting too

My “beach in a box” is seriously awesome. I had it on my desk at work and my boss destroyed my sandcastle – to be honest I think he just wanted to play with it and see what it was about, so squishing my sandcastle seemed the best way!

Our sea monkeys are doing ok. Easiest pets ever.

and isn’t Taz the cutest hoodie you’ve ever seen lol! My parents took him camping last weekend but it was a bit wet so they bought him a rain coat complete with hood.

I will have to find something to blog about that’s better than this.