Southward Bound...

Our journey continues on another 500 or so kilometres from Goodiwindi to Dubbo.  We arrived in Dubbo on Monday, Day 3 of our road trip to Melbourne, and were immediately taken with the place.  Fantastic caravan park and gorgeous weather, we set up camp and made plans for our trip to the Taronga Western Plains Zoo the following day.  I can thoroughly recommend it.  We had an awesome day and took our time meandering around the 6km track and enjoying all the animal enclosures.  The kids especially enjoyed the African animals and were keen to view all the feeding times and presentations by the keepers.  I thought I’d share just a few of my favourite shots…. I won’t bore you with the four thousand others!!

After two nights in Dubbo, we hit the road early again on Day 5 for the 550 odd kilometre drive to Tocumwal, just shy of the Victorian border.  With not much to see in the way of scenery…

I decided to spend much of my trip doing this…..

Hahaa…. Trust me, if I can scrap efficiently in such a confined space, anyone can!!  It certainly encourages you to think simple and not over-complicate things. :)   I’ll share my first few pages soon.  As our trip progresses, so too does the travel journal process.  The idea of scrapping something from every day has evolved into the decision to only record the things that I feel are relevant or something that I want to look back on.  We may do a few things in one day that I want to document and then nothing much on the next day.  I’m okay with skipping days, or not working on the journal when all we really want to do is relax.

After a rest day today, we are off to Melbourne tomorrow.  I anticipate needing to rest in readiness for the shopping I have planned!!  Hmmm… I may have neglected to inform Troy of that intention, although I’m sure the girls will happily keep me company.  :)

Thanks for tagging along.

Cheers for now,

Jules
x

Off We Go!!!

Finally Day One has arrived!

Packed to the rafters (do campers have rafters?) .... mum, dad, 4 kids, 1 camper, 1 tent, waaaay too many clothes to cater for the 4 seasons we will be experiencing, 1 very dejected puppy with big sad puppy dog eyes as we locked the gate on him.... and bucket loads of excitement!

Day One was uneventful but long, with plenty of this type of scenery...

It will be interesting to compare and contrast the Central Queensland landscape to the Tassy landscape shots in a couple of weeks time!  :)

Day Two we reached Goondiwindi and met up with my mum and dad for the continued trip to Melbourne through the centre of NSW and Victoria.

 

 

 

Dubbo today for a two night stay, including a visit to the Dubbo Zoo tomorrow.  Ridiculous as it sounds, my kids have never been to the zoo!!  They are pretty excited right now... :)  The mercury has finally started to drop today and I took this as a positive sign....

 



The cool air that vapourised the fuel up there is bound to settle down here tonight, right?  That's what I'm counting on anyway!!

Hopefully I'll get some travel journal done in the next few days and have something more to share soon.

Cheers for now!

Jules
x

Scrap The Girls!

The drought has broken.... well, my creative drought at least!  :)

Thanks to Mal and Scrap The Girls, I put this layout together as part of the December Birthday Celebrations.  Scrap The Girls is 4 years old this month!  Congrats Mal and all the girls on putting together and maintaining such a fantastic challenge site.  Head on over and check out the multiple challenges for this month.  All challenges are open until 31st January, 2013 and there is bound to be something to suit everyone.

The challenge this week is to scrap a girl based layout in teal, white and a neutral colour (I have used kraft) with the option of including a 'life lesson' message to your loved one.  At this particularly introspective, family oriented time of year, I thought it would be nice to scrap some words of wisdom and then maybe even gift your layout when you are done.

This layout is based on Maddi's recent achievement when awarded with School Captain for 2013.  Yep, proud mumma.... that's me!  :))

{wings}

Tonnes of gesso, glimmermist and stamping on this layout... nothing's changed there!  :)   The gorgeous Dusty Attic Decorative Scroll #1 (DA0213) takes centre stage and acts as a perfect photo frame too.

So, as I am currently weaving my way down the centre of Queensland, NSW and Victoria on my way to Melbourne, this is a scheduled post.  Promise to keep you updated during our travels with plenty of pics and travel journal updates  :)

Cheers,

Jules
x

Happy Tassy Travels...

Hello long lost friends!  I'm not even sure if anyone is listening anymore... and I totally understand if you've given up on me, considering my ridiculously long absence.  I'm not even sure where to start, except to say that I was completely swept up by family and life demands and was attempting to keep too many balls in the air at once.  Something had to give and unfortunately my 'me time' took one for the team.

Well, I've scrapped, and it felt good!!  ... but more on that later.  :)

The subject of today's post is our up-and-coming camping trip to Tasmania for Christmas!  Excited beyond measure, I've no doubt that a major contributing factor to the anticipation is a quick study of the maximum temperature comparisons between home and Tassy.  42 deg/C :  20 deg/C.  BRING IT ON!!  lol

Does anyone remember this:

... from Issue No.94 of Scrapbook Creations?

I put together this travel journal several months ago in readiness for our Christmas holidays this year.  Instead of a December Daily, I will be documenting our epic Christmas camping trip one day at a time from Dec 15th to Jan 27th.  A big undertaking I know, but I am totally ok with only using a 'one picture speaks a thousand words' approach for some days, if that is all I can manage.

I have my base pages and vellum for journalling all prepared for action and have even jotted down some initial thoughts before our trip even begins.  It is a very eclectic mix of papers, scraps, altered book pages and embellies and I would like to keep the content and style very informal and ad hoc.  I envisage a bursting-at-the-seems collection of bits and pieces of precious tokens, snapshots and memories from our trip, randomly stapled, with notations just jotted down on the run.  No measuring, no typing, no fussing and NO straight lines!!  :)

I am prepared with my travel scrap kit, portable printer and a 'Big 4' caravan park wifi subscription in advance, because I will of course need to blog as I go too!  There will be some rugged camping where wifi just won't be an option, but I will record and blog as much as I can, when I can.

Our trek begins with a 2,500km road trip to Melbourne, followed by 10 hour ferry ride with car and camper across the mountainous seas of the Bass Strait before we even get to Tassy!!  (Actually, the kids and I will fly from Melbourne to Hobart direct, because it was cheaper .... and less tumultuous for the digestive system, while Troy keeps the car, the camper and my mum and dad company on the ferry ride over).  Not only are mum and dad travelling and camping with us, but we are also visiting and holidaying with many more of my relatives in Tassy too... some, Troy and the kids have never even met.  I can't wait!!  I know they say it's all about the journey and not the destination..... but I'm completely amped for the journey, the destination AND the trip home!!!

With just one week of preparing and packing and Santa organising to go, I've plenty of 'to'do' lists that I should be consulting right now... so I'm outta here.

Oh, and I'll be back soon with my first scrapping attempt in ...... no!! .... has it really been 6 months??

If anyone is still listening... thanks.  I know now I will always still need to create something, no matter what else is going on in my crazy and demanding everyday, so stay tuned and I promise to continue sharing.

Cheers for now,

Jules
x