Emma Morgan

Month of Challenges: Day One

This month I am giving the Lily Pad’s Month of Challenges a go. Here is day one.

All products are from Paislee Press; Gallery Album No 2, Huntington, You are my fave, From where I stand, From where I stand Journaling Cards, Serendipity.

Cape Byron

We visited the most eastern point of the Australian Mainland – Cape Byron last weekend.

April was another reasonably quiet month, still trying to find my energy while carrying my precious cargo. April held lots of weekend breakfasts in bed. Sarah came to visit and came with me to my 20 week scan while hubby was in East Timor. We drank the last of the limited eddition Nespresso pods that I have (they were delicious).

I flew to Sydney for the ANZAC weekend to visit family and friends and looking after my little fluffy cats while Mum and Dad were away. I have been enjoying the sunrises from my view in a high-rise apartment as the countdown to the big move is on. Just over three months to go and we will be packing up and lugging all our belongings 1000km to our new home.

Trawling Through The Archives

Found this picture this week while searching for some other photos. We were heading to East Timor from Darwin in a Metroliner. I wonder what she is thinking…

I love to Visit…

There is lots of blogs I Love to visit every week. Here are a few (well quite a few);

Burleigh Heads

The beach photos I took on the photo tour I was on this past weekend got a little more attention from me than the Hinterland shots. Its not love but its far better than endless photos of Waterfalls.

Discovery

This week has been a fantastic week which came to an end with a photo tour that started in the hinterlands near the Gold Coast and finished on the beach at Burleigh Heads (Thanks Rach for organising our tour!). I made a discovery or more to the point confirmed that I love being out in the bush and ejoying nature but really don’t love landscape photography. I have tried and tried but unless the photos form a part of a bigger story or have a significant point of interest looking pretty in the scene, its just not my thing. Other than the photo above, all of the photos from the hinterlands I can’t even bring myself to edit. The beach photos give me more hope…will put some up later on.

Vanilla Cupcakes

Yesterday while Russ was engrossed in the car racing, I baked gluten-free butter cupcakes. I haven’t baked anything gluten-free so far, so I wimped out and used a Basco mix. None the less it was very tasty. Next time it will have to be from scratch, maybe with blueberries or choc chips.

Project Life

I gave up traditional scrapbooking some years ago for many reasons and these days prefer digital scrapbooking. This year I have attempted to embark on the Project Life journey, inspired by Becky Higgins ( you can read all about Project Life on her site). I love the concept of capturing the details in every week of my life and not just capturing the big events. I have captured so many more moments that in past year that I would not have even thought to take a photo of or note down. I also love how simple the project life concept is. Its far less time consuming than traditional scrapbooking (which means I have no excuses for being so behind). I like that the templates are structured and ready to go and that I don’t have to do anything fancy to make me feel satisfied with the way the pages look.

I am now using templates that I purchased from Jessica Sprauge and will be printing my book with Blurb (I love Blurb). I had originally been using templates that I had set up myself in the Blurb software, but was missing the little shadows behind each photo , which can’t be added in Blurb. I have also made some small modifications to the templates which Blurb also can’t do.

I’m beyond excited to be able to print the years photos and see them all bound together in a book.

Below are a few links to inspirational project lifers; Ali Edwards, Becky Higgins, Cathy Zielske, Deb Duty, Design Editor, Elise Blaha, Jennifer Woodbury, Jessica Sprague (you can buy the digital Project Life templates in Jessica Sprague’s Shop), Kelly Purkey, Lindsay Teague Moreno, Paislee Press, Sheri Mae Designs and Without Filters.

Gluten Free Museli

Until this week I haven’t had much luck finding gluten-free cereal that was actually tasty and I’m not a big fan of any of the gluten-free bread available at my local store. In need for something quick and easy that I could grab for breakfast before I run out the door in the mornings or to munch on at my desk on days where I start early, I ventured out to the health shop to see what I could find. Much to my surprise I found two cereals that taste great! I need to remember to eat them as sparingly as possible due to the price (adding a tub of yoghurt makes it go a lot further) but I’m happy to spend the money to eat something that I actually like.

My number one cereal pick is the Brookfarm macadamia muesli with cranberry (they also do an apricot version, a bircher muesli and muesli bars (the muesli bars, I also discovered are available on the Virgin Australia inflight snack menu, they are really crunchy and delicious).