Phew! The month is over....

Sigh of relief ...... the month is finally over.

In my last entry, I said that I have been busy with deadlines. Well, there was a competition in For Keeps Scrapbooking magazine, called Awards for Excellence. I would say it is a major competition because the prizes are fantastic. There were a few judging categories... Excellence in Design, Excellence in Photography, Excellence in Creativity and Excellence in Craftsmanship. On top of that, 4 entrants who displayed overall excellence will receive the ultimate accolade in joining the 2007 For Keeps Elite Team. The closing date was 22 September. I had decided not to attempt cos I think it's way out of my league. But less than 2 weeks before the closing date, Ruey told me that they were also looking for their Design Team from this competition! Apparently this was mentioned in the "Conditions of Entry" !! You can tell I'm a person who go into details. So there was a mad rush to do 5 UNSEEN layouts in 1.5 weeks! Nevertheless, I made it in time. Even if I didn't win or get anything from this comp, I learned 2 important lessons:
1. READ all terms and conditions of entry.
2. SAVE some of my layouts as secret weapons (and not show them off everytime I do one) for "rainy day" situations like this when they require NEVER BEFORE SEEN layouts!

In any case, I am very satisfied with my submissions and can only hope for the best. I will display them when the mag sends them back to us.

There was another comp that I entered earlier in August, organised by Scrapbook Creations. The grand prize was for a set of Scrap room furniture! We had to scrap about our current scrap room (or lack of it), and collect 3 tokens from the mag and incorporate them into our layout. It was really fun to do! This was what I came up with .....


I finally got the layout back about a week ago. And to my surprise, there was a letter that came back with it. The letter said that my layout made it to the Top 20 of the contest!!! Although I'm not sure what that means. I guess I'm not the winner cos I'm assuming that they would have contacted the winner by phone by now, and there was no phone call for me (just picturing Bridget Jones checking her message bank every day only to find that there are no messages). LOL... Anyway, I'm happy that I got that far.

OK, more layouts to show. These are my Everyday Moments album comp (ongoing till next year) for the month of September. The theme is Celebrations.

This is my nephew. He is so cute in this photo.


This is a photo taken when I did my Sydney Harbour Bridge climb in 1999 when I was there for a holiday. I'm 5th from the left, dwarfed by the giants.

This is my brother and sister-in-law, one of their wedding portfolio photos. They are the proud parents of the little baby featured in the above layout.


My U for Underwater for Ellen's ABC album.

My V for Vanity meter for Ellen's ABC album.


To end the month, we took a 1+ hour drive to Mornington Peninsula yesterday to meet the lovely Katie Toland, for a photography shoot. I have made this a yearly thing to have photographs of my family taken by a professional photographer. We couldn't have asked for better weather yesterday - 21 or 22 degrees celsius, sun is just warm, and a slight breeze at the beach! We all had a ball just splashing and kicking water, kids playing with sand, blowing bubbles (compliments of Katie), watering cans and buckets (all props of Katie's). Ellen got her pants and top all wet 10 minutes into the shoot and started stripping herself, totally lacking in virtue. All the "wardrobe co-ordinating" efforts went down the drain. I can't wait to see the proofs, Katie! :)

Last night, Ruey and Joseph came around for a poker game night. We had coffee and I made dessert for us before we started and played for a few hours. Had lots of fun. So into the Texas Hold'em game right now. Need to buy the poker chips!

These are it for now. Sorry for not keeping up with my blog ... again. I thank you for still coming back. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everyone!