Getting inky once more

Wow!  I have not picked up an ink pad in well over 6 months, but then so much has happened in that time.  In January we moved home, fully renovating the new home, that took us a crazy 6 weeks, walls came down, bathroom, toilet and kitchen were gutted and re done, tiled floors and carpets pulled up and replaced with floorboards throughout and a fresh coat of paint after that. It was just plain crazy.

Prior to that move though I was struggling with lots of things.  I needed to make some serious life changes, One major change I really wanted to was to downsize our home,  I felt it far too big for 3 of us, it was making me mad to have to spend all our free time and money looking after it.  So here I am today in my smaller home and am quite content.  It is all easy maintenance and takes me next to no time to look after.

Amongst this I was deciding whether to stamp again or not, I really was too tired and too bored to care.  So last October, when we put the house on the market, I packed all my stuff up and left it there until this past Sunday.  What changed? This month we took a trip to the USA.  It was my first 4 week holiday ever, and it was magnificent, but mostly it was needed, for me as a person, for me as a mum, and for me as a wife, to reconnect with my family and try and find what I felt my life was missing. We saved and saved like crazy, the idea for this trip came about a long, long 4 years ago,  and this trip was definitely going to be paid for in cash lol, so thats what we did.  We cut everything back, didn't go out much if at all, and saved saved saved saved.  While I was away, for the first time I actually felt like getting a little creative, and by the time we got home I was itching to, so hubby set me up a small space in our garage to use for now and today I thought I would get a start on my project life album of our California trip.

So I am rusty, I mean really rusty but I gave it a whirl,  I used the design over at Just Add Ink this week, coz seriously after 6 months where the hell does one start?  I guess the majority of my next posts will be about our trip, scrapbook pages, project life pages or inserts that sort of thing, but I want to use up a heap of stuff I have here already. Heres the sketch.

Well enough talk ha ha, thanks for taking the time to have a look.

We arrived in LA on the 21st April, wow what a massive and I mean massive airport, and we had our first sighting of a star, waiting outside was Jessie J looking all sorts of normal lol, almost blended in with the rest but not quite lol.

Items Used:

Tim Holtz : stencil, story stamp, fired brick distress ink
Stampin' Up: Back to basics alphabet and a rotary stamp, 13/4 circle punch
Avery Elle: Count on it number dies
Divine twine,
MME: 6x6 paper pad - wood
stonehenge watercolour paper