OMG, where did time go????? It's already Tuesday July 10th. I can't believe this. I really need some time for myself. 10 days have gone and I didn't do any 'vacation stuff'.

Erics back is still very painful. I try to help him every day in his pub. On Sunday, we had a day off as someone else offered to open the pub. We went out with friends to have lunch together. It was fantastic to be with Eric without working in the pub.

On Monday we went to the ' Tour the France'. The cyclists had to ride through Belgium and they came to a city only 3 km from Ieper. We were invited to a VIP-lunch. We could see the cyclists and had food and drinks for free. It was lots of fun to be in the atmosphere of the Tour the France.
Later that day we went to the sauna and jacuzzi so that Eric could relax his back. We were very lucky as there was an offer. We could stay 3 hours and only pay for 2. Isn't that great??? When we came home we watched the DVD 'Blood Diamond'. did you see it already?? It's very touching. I cried at the end.

I'm feeling very sad the last days as my sweet kitty, Baileys hasn't come home for the past 6 days. I really hope she isn't hit by a car. I love her a lot and I couldn't stand the thought that she is dead. The longer it takes the more I realise that she must be dead. She's never away for such a long time.

Here I am again. Eric's back is still hurting a lot so, I'm helping him at the pub. It's so busy that I don't have time for anything else. I still have letters to write to my pals (sorry girls). My pics are waiting to be scrapped, I can't finish my book that I'm reading, the house really needs to be cleaned ....

Yesterday I went to The Netherlands with a friend. There are some big scrapbooking stores over there that we wanted to visit. We had a wonderful time and I bought tons of paper and alphabet stickers. I hope to find some time to scrap this week as all this fantastic paper is waiting for me.
For those who know some shops in The Netherlands: We visited 'De Creatie' in Veghel and 'De Scrapbookwinkel' in Heesh. Both shops are amazing. I've never seen soooooo many paper. It felt like heaven. Unfortunatly, my wallet wasn't in heaven, hahaha

Going mad in 'De scrapbookwinkel'
Yep, need to pay too

Enjoying some soup at 'De Creatie'

Our healty dinner at Mc Donalds, haha

About our vacation spot!!! It has been guessed already. Rianne, you are right, we are flying to Turkey in August.

Books and game

Hi everyone,
Today is my officially the first day of my 2 months summer holiday. Yippppeeeee!!!! I'm so happy to have more free time now.
Eric and I didn't plan going on vacation this year but we decided to go. We will leave on August 14th and stay there for a week. Now, I guess you are curious about the country we will visit?? Well, I'll play a game with you all. I'll give a clue every day and you have to guess where we are going. I'm curious how long it will take till someone knows the right destination. (Desi, Daphne and Kelly, you can't play as I already told you where we are going, haha)

clue 1: We need to take the plane and it's about a 3,5 hours flight. For those who don't know, I live in Belgium.

Something else now: Eric is having problems with his back. He had surgery about 4 years ago and now he's in major pain again. Poor guy. He's seeing a physical therapist and needs to go to the hospital on Friday for a scan. I hope he doesn't need a surgery again. I try to help him as much as possible so I spend a lot of time in his pub working there. That's why I'm not online a lot lately.

Oh yes, did some scrapping again too. It's a page about the library in my city. I'm addicted to book so you can imagine that I spend a lot of time there. It was my favourite place as a kid and I went there 2 times a week during holidays.

Start to run

Hi girls,
I guess you still remember that I did 'Start to run'. I'm still running about 2 or 3 times a week. It improved my health and I feel more energy now. I want to scrap some things about myself and this 'Start to run' thing had to be in it. I'm so proud that I can finally run longer than 3 minutes, haha.

This is the journaling:
In March 2007, I had a date with Evy Gruyaert (she's famous in Belgium). From then on, we had virtual meetings 3 times a week.
Kelly introduced me to 'Start to Run' on iPod. Together with Evy, I did the whole programm and now I can be very proud!! I can run 5 km without stopping.

Have a wonderful Wednesday.

Scraplift Challenge at 2peas

I joined a scraplift challenge at 2peas. When you post your message that you want to take part, you need to look at the gallery of the one who posted before you. Then you choose a LO and scraplift it.

I had to scraplift Lilith. It was so much fun to browse her gallery and choose a page.

Can't wait to participate again next week. Maybe I'll play again this week if there is still time left to scrap. If you are without inspiration or you would love to try something new, just go to 2peas and join the challenge.

This is the link to my page and Lilith's page.

http://twopeasinabucket.kaboose.com/pg.asp?gallery=1&cmd=display&layout_id=1177479

Only 1,5 week left and then I'll have summer holidays. No more teaching for 2 months. Can you believe that???

I'll have more free time so that means more time to read books, have fun with friends, spend time with my sweetheart and of course more scrap time!!!

I made another page last week. It's about a crop at Tiny's craft store. They organised an American crop with 3 American girls, cookies, peanuts and coke. I had a wonderful evening and enjoyed talking to the American girls.
My page is based on an Elsie Flannigan page.
Hope your weekend was/is great!!

Snif, snif

Snif, snif, snif,
I didn't make it to the 10th round at the Scrapbook Chalet Contest. I'm a bit sad as I had so much fun creating those pages. So I wanted another challenge and decided to give it a try to become a member of the Design Team of http://www.pencillines.com/. It's an amzing blog that works with sketches.
We need to work with this sketch and mail them 2 of our other pages. I'm still thinking about the pages I will use for this Design Team call. Wish me luck girls!


Yesterday, Eric and I were together for 3 years!! OMG, time flies!!! We couldn't celebrate it yesterday but we will today. We booked a body massage for both of us. I can't wait to feel totally relaxed.

Doodling

The next round at Scrapbook Chalet Contest. We had to use some doodling on our page and nothing else but patterned paper. This is the page I made. It's about my Sunday evening scrapping time. Most Sundays I go to Kelly's house to scrap together. We always have lots of fun. The journaling tells some more about our scrapbooking together.

- on Sunday evening

- from 5 pm till ....

- first we talk a lot and then we start scrapping

- we drink coke light or pepsi max

- we eat self made cookies or cake

- Youri watches tv downstairs (Kelly's boyfriend)

- it often rains when we scrap together

- we use Kelly's fantastic green scrapstudio

- we are addicted to alfabeths and 7Gypsies stamps.

Let me know what you think about this page. I hope I make it to the next round. We are with 6 now and it has to be 4 for the next round.

Updates

Hi girls,

I know I haven't updated since a few days but life is so busy now that Eric is in Egypt. I have been working in his pub for 4 days now and I feel so tired. I open the pub at 11 am till 2 pm and then from 4 pm till 2 am or even later. My feet hurt a lot because I'm not used to walk on it for such long hours. Today is my day off and I feel so good. I stayed in bed till 11 am. Then I went for a run and cleaned the windows. Now I'm checking my mails and blogs because I didn't have time before. This evening will be scrapbooking time. Didn't make a page since 6 days and I really miss it.

About the Scrapbook Chalet contest: I made it to the next round!!!! There are 6 players left now. This is getting so though. The next round sounds like lots of fun but I'm not used to that technique. This is the Round # 9:

Challenge Week # 8 ~ June 4th - June 10th
This weeks challenge will be a hard, but fun one ~ Since everyone loves Doodling so much, I want to see a layout made with 2 photos (no less, no more) and nothing but doodling as your embellishments.. However, you are allowed to use as much paper as you want too..How you do this is up to you, so have fun with it..You will have until Sunday night, June 10th 9:00 PM, EST to upload your challenge and the voting can start at 9:30 Pm, EST.. Good Luck!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Tuesday. I'm sure I will cause all I'll do is RELAX!!!!!

Contest round # 8

This is what we had to do this week:

Challenge Week # 8 ~ May 26th - June 2nd

Hi Ladies,This weeks challenge is going to be a fun and easy one.. We have a shorter week since today is a Holiday.Each player will be teamed with someone else from the game. You're to choose each others layout and/or altered item from our gallery and scraplift it. When you upload your entry, post a link here with the scraplift and your version of it!You're able to use any products and do anything you want to..You will have until Saturday June 2nd 9:00 PM EST to upload your entry and the voting amongst the players ONLY will start at 9:30 pm ESTTeam Players are:
Beckbeck13 vs Sollie79
Becky Thackston vs Dianne
Craftygirl vs Tropicalart77
ElisaK vs LAM

This is the layout of Beckbeck13 that I chose:

And this is what I made

What do you think? Will I make it to round 9??? My god, this is sooo exciting.

Hi girls,

Here I am again. Yeah, I know I have been a bad friend for a few days. I didn't post anything. Life has been busy for me. This night, Eric will leave on vacation with 2 friends. They are going to Egypt. All three of them are divers and they will stay on a boat for 1 week and dive 3 ot 4 times a day. I have to work at school so I can't go with them. I don't mind if he goes with friends as he deserves to have a break. He has been working soooo hard in his pub that he really needs some relaxation. I'll work in his pub when he is in Egypt on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Wednesday so I don't think that I'll be able to update a lot these days but I'll try.

I'm with the final 8 contestants at the Scrapbook Chalet Contest!! I'm so happy but it will be sooo hard from now on. For the next round, we are linked to another girl and we need to scraplift one of her pages. This will be hard but lots of fun I guess. I really need to find some pics now.

Oh yes, the page about Barcelona is the page I made for the last round


Have a wonderful Tuesday

New Baby

Hi everyone,
This will be a short entry but I wanted to let you know that my friend Veerle gave birth to a baby boy. She went into labour on Tuesday evening at 9 pm and the baby was born on Wednesday 4.15 pm. She was in labour for 19 hours!!!! My god, it must have been like hell for her. They gave him the name

MAXIM

Isn't that a beautiful name? I like it a lot. Actually that was the name that Eric and I would give to our son if we had a son of course. Well, guess we'll have to choose something else, haha. I'm not pregnant so we still have more than time.
I went to visit her yesterday. She's in the hospital till Monday. Here in Belgium, mum and baby stay in the hospital for 5 days. Maxim is such a cute, beautiful baby. Sleeping all the time. I could even hold him and he didn't wake up. Lucky for me or he would start screeming Veerle took a picture of me and Maxim but I guess she'll e-mail it to me when she's back home. From the moment I have the picture, I'll post it here.
I'm off to relax a bit in the sun as we have fantastic weather over here. Unfortunatly it will change again this evening and tomorrow it will rain.

For those who watch Grey's Anatomy. We had season 3 finale last night. What a bummer!!! Why didn't Christina and Burke get married and what the hell is that new girl doing there. She will flirt a lot with Mc Dreamy, I'm sure about that. And she has the same name as Meredith 'Grey'. I hate her already, haha.

Worried

Yesterday was an aweful day. When I wake up and go downstairs, my cat Baileys is waiting for me at the kitchen window. This morning: no Baileys!! I didn't panic as I thought she was still walking around somewhere. I went outside and shouted her name but she didn't turned up. Before I went to work in the afternoon, I had another look in the garden and in the house but still no Baileys. I started to worry as it's not normal for her to be away from the house for so long. Then I returned from work and asked Eric if he had seen her but he hadn't. The whole evening I was worrying about her. I even walked through the neigbourhood, shouting her name but I didn't find her. I looked in the streets if I didn't see a cat that was hit by a car but lucky, I didn't. I got a very painful head and went to bed at 9.30 pm. Then suddenly, at 1 am (when Eric came home from closing his pub); Eric shouted to me (I was sleeping) that Baileys was back. I was sooooo happy that I jumped out of my bed and ran downstairs to cuddle my sweet kitty. What a naughty cat she was to stay away the whole day and night. This morning, I was afraid to let her out of the house. I went for a run and before I started I did let her out. When I came home from running, she was waiting in the garden. I can't tell you how relieved I was to see that she didn't ran away again.


About the Scrapbook Chalet Contest!! Well, I made it to the next round again. This time we need to work with an ad. I'll show you next time.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Scrapbook Chalet Contest

We had to use this sketch to inspire us


I used most of the items of this sketch and created this

As you can see I used stitches on the border of each paper piece. I don't have a sewing machine so I did it all by hand. Can you imagine how long it took me to finish it???
Well, let me know what you think about it.

Have a wonderful Sunday

New Papers

Hi everyone,
Last weekend, I bought lots of new patterned paper at the scrapbook store. There were new papers from Scenic Route. As some of you know, I'm absolutely addicted to Scenic Route so I couldn't resist buying them. I also bought some chipboard shapes like hearts, arrows, stars, corners, ...

There were some people demonstrating in the shop too. One of them was Birgit Koopsen again. I looked through her albums and told myself that I still need to learn a lot. My god, her pages are awesome. My friend Kelly was there too and she had her albums with her. Amazing pages as always. Simple LO's with lots of journaling. It's like a real diary. I love it.

One of Kelly's pages. I hope you don't mind I used this page on my blog, Kelly!

This is the Scenic Route paper

Some of the other papers I bought

I entered a little contest on the blog of Theresa. She mailed out some paper and embellishments and we had to make a layout and a card with it. You can see my layout and card on top. I know I showed it already to you but now you can vote for me. The winner receives a scrabook album so I would love to win. Have a look at her blog where you can see all the participants and then e-mail her with your vote ( I hope you vote for me). My layout is # 7 and my card is # 5. You can e-mail her on ttyree@fidnet.com

This is her bloghttp://mymiraculouslife.blogspot.com/

Hope you like my creations!!

*Birgit Koopsen Workshop*

Hi girls,
Friday evening was fantastic. Birgit Koopsen came to shop where I buy my scrapping supplies. She gave a workshop about a mini-album and it was great. Finally I could meet Vanessa (Scrapness) too but we couldn't talk a lot because she was a bit late. Hope to see you again soon, Vanessa. Kelly (Talesfromthecrib) was there too so you can imagine we both had lots of fun.

Birgit is the nicest person ever and I absolutly love her pages. You rock, girl!! Can't wait to see more of your creations.

Me, Birgit and Kelly

Vanessa

Kelly and me

Birgit

Working hard on the album

Isn't it cute??

On Saturday I went to the store again but that's something for tomorrow on my blog.

Round # 5

Hi girls,
This is my entry for the 5th round at the Scrapbook Chalet. I really hope I can make it to round 6.




On Friday, I went to a workshop with Birgit Koopsen. I had a wonderful time with lots of fun. Took some great pics but don't have time to upload them now. I'll show them as soon as possible.

Fantastic news

Hi girls,
I have fantastic news. As you all may know, I work as a teacher in primary school. The past years, it has been so hard to find a job for the next school year. It starts in May when you have to mail out your letter to the schools. Oh god, I hate that.

We have a law here that says that when you work about 3 years in the same school or group of schools you have priority above those who aren't working there for 3 years. They count the days and it has to be 720 (or something like that) or higher. Well, this year I finally reached that amount so I'm priority. Yippee!!!!

And guess what's even better????? I love the school were I work now (I only have 3 hours per week) because I've been here for 3 years now. I know all the kids and their parents. It's a little school and I really like that. A collegue will retire at the end of the year. She works part-time so those hours will be free next school year. We had teachers meeting on Tuesday and the principal told me that because I have priority now, that I can stay at this school next year!!!! I'm such a happy girl now. I finally have found my own place at this school and I hope I can stay there forever. Because we have a little bit more kids than the year before, we get more teaching hours. That means that I have almost a full-time job next school year. Only 2 hours less than full-time. What do you think about that???? Isn't that great???? So, no more letter writting to principals for me. I'm so relieved.

Hope you have a wonderful, fantastic Thursday

Did I make it to round # 5???

Hi everyone,
How was your weekend? I hope you had a nice one. Mine was o.k. Nothing speicial. Well, I went out for lunch on Sunday as my mother invited me together with my sister, uncle and aunt to celebrate her birthday. It was on March 22nd but we didn't celebrate it with lunch then.
About the Scrapbook Chalet Contest ...........I MADE IT to the next round. I'm so happy. For all of you who voted for me: Thanks a lot. You rock!!

This is the instruction for the 5th round is this:

Challenge # 5 Week May 6th - May 12th
Hi Ladies..Job well done on the last round, you guys are awesome!Okay, this challenge is a little different, so here goes:I want you to go outside tomorrow and take 2 photos of something that inspires you.. It can be anything you want! It can be 2 photos of the same thing, or 2 photos of different things..When you create your layouts and/or altered item, make sure you have a jounaling area, somewhere on the project telling us why the image in the photo inspires you..Anything and everything else is up to you! Have Fun and Good Luck! I can't wait to see what you come up with..When you're finished, upload your challenge into the gallery by Saturday May 12th, 9:00 PM, EST.. Voting will then begin at 9:30 PM, EST..

Doesn't sound this difficult??? My god, I really have to think a lot about this one.

I take part in another contest on the blog of Theresa. She mailed me some paper and embellishments and I had to make a page and a card with it. This is what I made

A couple we know was in Erics pub about 2 weeks ago. They had their little girl Camille with them and I could hold her for a while. My dad wanted to hold her too. He would be a fantastic granddad.
I really hope I can win, what do you think??

Yikes, weather is aweful over here. It's raining every now and then and it's very windy. Unfortunatly its cold again and I need to use the heating inside the house. Perfect weather for reading books and scrapping!

My layout for round 4

It says: Sleeping Beauty. I'm the girl on the picture and I was almost 1 year old then. We were in holidays in France.

Hi everyone,

How are you over there? Yeah, I know, it's been a while since I updated but nothing special happened. The weather has changed and it's colder again. So I can put my skirts and tank tops away. Feeling very sad about that as I loooooove warm weather. On Thursday, it was still very sunny, I sat in the garden and got tanned. Wish I could sit there again. But now I should wear warm clothes. There is 1 positive thing about colder weather and that is that I spend more time scrapping, haha.

I finished my page for the 4th round at the scrapbook Chalet. You can see the ad on the last entry. Well, I tried to make a page like the one on the ad but with other colours. Don't forget to vote for me on Sunday at the Chalet!!! Don't vote earlier than Sunday or they will remove me from the list. Votes closes on Sunday evening so there is no point on voting on Monday, haha

I took some lovely pic from the roses in our garden. Enjoy watching them

Round # 4

I made it, I made it!!!!! Yippee!! I'm in the next round at the Scrapbook Chalet. I was so happy when I saw that my name was on the poll for round 4. I bet you're all curious about the next thing we have to do. So here it is ...

AD INSPIRATION:The ad inspiration I chose is simple but elegant! I love the colors and the style on this one!Remember, all you need to do is create a layout inspired by some aspect of the inspiration piece. It doesn't have to be a carbon coby of the ad, it could be based on the overall design, the theme of the ad, the color scheme or maybe the fonts or title used in the ad. Whatever gets those creative juices flowing, the possibilities really are endless with this challenge!

When you've finished your layout for the week, you can post it in our Designing Like a Star Gallery, then upload the link to this thread with your layout so we can see your take on the ad & also leave your layout some love!

Thanks for playing along girls!! Have a great week & Good Luck! You have until May 5th 9:00 PM, EST to upload.. The voting will then start at 9:30 PM, EST and end on Sunday May 6th, 9:00 PM, EST.

What do you think about it? It will be difficult but I like the challenge of this contest. I'm creating things that I've never done before.