Cleaning and Painting and a WINNER!

My life is filled with cleaning and painting, and other random handyman jobs around the home, getting it ready to sell. Sometimes I feel like I’m being punished for choosing to sew and craft when I could have been cleaning the last year or so!

When I’m not cleaning and painting, I’m too exhausted to do much else, and a teething toddler isn’t helping. But I think we’re finally getting on top of all the odd jobs, and when my husband finishes up his current job, we’ll hopefully have a bit of family time before we move. I’m definitely looking forward to that!

I’m really missing my sewing machine. I’ve discovered that sewing is stress relief for me and I’m really itching to get back on the pedal. A few more jobs to do, then maybe I’ll sneak in some sewing time!

And lastly, we have a winner for the My Memories Suite giveaway:

Congratulations Farrah, who said: “My favorite is Teen Sceene & Summer Party! I also REALLY Like Oh Boy!”

For those of you who didn’t win, you can still pick up My Memories Suite for $10 off using the code STMMMS18635 and you also receive $10 store credit.

Design a Facebook Wall Image (Giveaway - CLOSED)

Giveaway closed. Click here to see the winner!

When I was asked to review the digital scrapbooking software My Memories Suite (with a giveaway – at the bottom), I had visions of myself whipping up album after album, organising the thousands of photos I’ve taken since my son was born. Well, as someone who’s never scrap-booked (digital or paper), I quickly got overwhelmed and perfection-induced craft paralysis set in.

So for my first project, I thought I’d try something a little simpler: a custom wall image for my Facebook page (hey, you do like my Facebook page, don’t you? ). Here’s a quick rundown of what I did.

After opening My Memories Suite, I selected “Design Your Own” from the new album options, and selected a custom size for the album shape. The maximum size for a Facebook wall image is 180x540 pixels, but the minimum width for My Memories is 200, so to save myself some maths, I just doubled it and used 360x1080 pixels. A larger size is also easier to play with!

Before I got started, I selected View, Canvas Zoom, Fit To Window so I could see my full picture (on my tiny EeePC screen!). Then the fun and games began!

First I added all the elements I wanted in my design:

• the clip art from my blog header as embellishments
• a photo of me (as a box so it’s easy for me to update the photo in the future)
• my blog title as text
• my blog tagline as text

I didn’t have a plan and just played around. I added a plain background, a mat on the photo, a rectangle with curved corners to put behind the tagline and some ric-rac. I played around with the colours to match my blog and moved things around until I liked the layout.

I then exported the page as a jpg, and uploaded it to Facebook.

My thoughts on the software:

• After watching this tutorial to understand what you can do with My Memories Suite, it was very intuitive. The keyboard shortcuts and functions were the same as I’ve used with other programs, and it was easy to use.
• You can add backgrounds and embellishments created elsewhere, but I couldn’t customise the existing ones. There are lots of kits available, but if you’re looking for custom colours in something other than a plain background, it seemed limited.
• I used my arrow keys to nudge objects around and it sometimes took a while for the screen to update, and I’d move things too far. This might have been because I’m using a netbook without much computer power.
• If an item extended beyond the area of the page, it was difficult to resize it or move it to fit back on the page. This was more of a problem because I was working with such a small page size (maybe I should have made it even bigger first).
• There are lots more functions that I didn’t really explore, but I’ve got lots of ideas for other uses of My Memories Suite (aside from maybe actually doing some scrap-booking). I will definitely be using it again!

If you’d like to win a copy of My Memories Suite, visit www.MyMemories.com, choose your favourite digital paper pack or layout, come back here and leave a comment with your choice. Please include your email address if it is not linked to your commenting account.

Entries close at 10am (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on 17th February, 2012, and is open internationally. Void where prohibited.

And if you don’t win, enter the code STMMMS18635 to get $10 off the price of My Memories Suite and also receive $10 store credit.

I was given a free copy of My Memories Suite for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

As good as a holiday?

There are big changes happening here. No, not with the blog (although I am always fidgeting with that!), but in our household.

My husband is changing jobs, and it’s time to move, all the way to the other side of Australia (3606km or 2241miles to Perth, to be exact!). We’ll be close to family (for the first time since I moved out of home!), although it’s my husband’s family. It will be great for our kids to spend time with Granny and Pops, and extended family. We also have lots of friends in Perth, so it’s a happy move for our family.

BUT…

All I can think of is the million and one things we have to do before and after we move: getting a house ready to sell, sorting through our worldly possessions, packing, moving into a rental, searching for a house to buy etc etc. We’ve done this before, but this time we’ll have two active,high-maintenance kids underfoot. Am I feeling stressed!

I also can’t help but feel sad, about the friends we’re leaving behind and that we are selling the home that we first brought our baby girl into. I know it’s easier to stay in touch these days, and we have our memories (and an enormous number of photos), but I still feel sad.

So crafting and blogging time is going to be at a bit random in the next 2 months or so. I’ve still got lots of projects to share, but finding the time (and energy) to blog is going to be a challenge.

Of course, once we’re settled I’ll have a whole new house to bring my personal touch to, and there’ll be lots more crafting! So please bear with me during this transition. I promise there will be lots more to come!

Oven-Baked Chicken Nuggets

When we go out to a restaurant (rarely), our 3 year old son grabs the menu, opens it to a random page and says (while running his finger under any old menu item) “I’ll have chicken muggets (yes, he calls them muggets), chips and sauce!”. Rather than having a public battle, we concede (if it’s on the menu!), with that nagging worry about what is he actually eating!

When the kids have nuggets at home, I want them to be a bit healthier (and actually know what goes into them). I made these oven-baked chicken nuggets for Little Man’s birthday. I minced up chicken breast in my food processor, but you could used (ground) chicken mince if you prefer.

This is my first recipe in my Countdown to Dinner format. Read here for more information. I’d love to know what you think of the format.

Countdown to dinner

I’m trialling a new layout for my recipes: Countdown to Dinner.

It annoys me when cookbook recipes give you a cooking time, but half the ingredients already need to be chopped or prepared in some other way. So when I try a new recipe, I note  takes and write out a schedule to get it on the table by 6pm (two kids under 3 need their dinner on time!). So in my dinner recipes, I’m going to include the time left until the meal is ready, with a space for you to write down the time you need to start each step.

My recipes include all preparation time from store-bought ingredients. The times are based on my own cooking. I’ve taught myself how to chop things quickly (but not TV-chef super-fast!), and I’ll share my techniques with you, but I’m just a home cook. I think the preparation times are realistic for the average home cook (once you know a few tricks). There may even be a little bit of extra time to allow for cuddling a whingey baby or sort out a fight between the kids!

Countdown to Dinner recipes also include a list of all the equipment you need at the start – no suddenly digging around for tools, or realising half way through that you can’t actually cook the meal because you don’t have a food processor.

I’m working on getting them in a printable format in the near future.

My first recipe in this format will be posted later today. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you like the format? Do you have any other suggestions? What annoys you about recipes?