Michelle
Finally went on a road trip! I've been dying to get out of town for a while now and last weekend I went up to Whakapapa with 9 other friends...I didn't ski or snowboard as I just wanted to take a break and leave Wellington for a change of scenery... it was a great trip.. a little tiring and frought with obstacles.. but we got there... the others got to ski and board... and I got to read and scrap! (Yes.. I brought a tiny bit of scrapping with me) and all was good.

I woke up late on the Saturday morning when we were supposed to leave. I only managed to wake up at 5.25am and we were supposed to meet up at the Indonesian Embassy at 5.30am! YIKES! Total panic there for a while.. but we got there eventually and started packing up the cars with our stuff and managed to leave Wellington around 6.30am.


We got to Whakapapa Village (at the bottom of the skifield) around 10.45am and there was a sign saying that the road up to the mountain is closed as there was no parking space left! Man, we were not happy! We had to queue for a good 45 minutes at least to get to the ticket booth to get tickets for the shuttle to take us up the mountain. Poor Jay and Fahmi had to carry their boards all the way from the car to the ticket booth... and after we got our tickets, there was about another hour's wait for shuttles. The line was crazy long! So we entertained ourselves taking photos and such.. but you can take only so many photos when you're tired of waiting and just want to get up the mountains.


We made it up to the ski field around 12.30pm...and we were starving by then! All of us pretty much made a beeline for the cafe and the queue in there was crazy! By the time it got to our turn to order, a lot of the food were out. Had a quick lunch and a few of the boys went off to snowboard. Us girls together with Zainul and Agus went and got the Sightseeing lift pass and we just took the chair lifts all the way up to the top. We did stop at the lower mountain to take a few photos and when we made it up to the upper mountain we were pretty frozen! There was another cafe up there and we took the chance to grab a cup of coffee for afternoon tea and pretty much to try and warm ourselves up a little before going back down.

Jay met up with just as we were going to catch the lifts to go back down.. he boarded right below us, got a few photos of him, but not very good ones. I was so cold that my hands were shaking so badly the photos were quite blurred. Plus it started raining and the wind was blowing the rain right in our faces! OMG that was the longest ride down ever! Especially since it was the last trip down and everyone was heading down.. it felt like eternity before we got to the bottom again. I went straight to the bathroom in the cafe to try and warm my hands with the hand dryer! My face was all pink and frozen!! I couldn't feel my toes and fingers much by that stage. I just don't know how people live in places where the temperatures dipped below 0 in winter! I loved the experience of it despite being frozen though. We then had to queue for the shuttle ride down again.. the wait was quite excruciating.

The backpackers that we stayed at was pretty good.. they were nice enough to turn the heaters on before we checked in, so our rooms were pretty toasty! That evening we just chilled. I roomed with Jay, Yessy, Harridz and Zainul. Took our turns in the hot shower and had dinner. We brought quite a bit of food with us.. so we had a feast while watching tv. By about 10pm all of us were wiped and called it a night.

The next morning, we headed out early... by 8.30am we were at the ski field. This time, we drove all the way up. Unfortunately the roads were really icy, so only 4WDs and cars with chains were allowed up. Harridz had to park at the lowest carpark and catch the shuttle up. Surprisingly even at 8.30am most of the carparks were starting to fill up and we only managed to get as far as carpark 5.. and pretty much hiked all the way up to the skifield. After everyone got their passes and headed off, I found a spot by the window in the cafe, got a mochacinno and sat down and started to scrap. Yup.. I brought my This Is Me journal to work on. I had prepped the pages a little and since it was a journaling challenge and involved no photos for me.. all I needed was pens! :D Turned out well.. I finished my 2 entries and got to read my book too. All in all a pretty relaxing and productive morning.

Everyone congregated again at about 12.30pm - took a few photos and made our way back to the cars. We only did a halfday because we rented one car and had to get it back to Wellington by 5.50pm. So off we went... A pretty uneventful drive back.. we did stop in the middle of nowhere to take a few photos and stretch our legs. I was kinda stressed and worried that we couldn't get the car back in time, but we did... just by the skin of our noses! Headed off to dinner and went home..and I was so tired I crashed by 10pm on Sunday night.

Photos from the trip:



Getting nearer to our destination


All decked out ready to go...


The only thing you can do to kill time waiting in line is take photos.




Doing the tourist thing.. photos with the snow






Leaving the Whakapapa ski field..













I was so cold I had to wear Jay's spare jacket.. I was drowning in it!




In the middle of no where really.. but there's a single lonesome tree on top of a hill, so we stopped for photos and stretch our legs.





This happens to be the only group photo of us from the whole weekend!




Now on to scrappy news...

Holly and Maureen recently started a blog (This Is Me) that challenges us to journal about ourself and topics are posted every Monday and Thursday.. I thought it's a really great idea and also made it a challenge to myself to try and do this without photos so I decided to jump in and take part in the challenge. Here's my journal - I really like how the cover turned out. I painted and stamp and inked it and added Basic Grey rubons and a little bit of Hambly and some American Crafts alpha stickers and voila! my cover is done!



The first topic for the This Is Me journal is IMHO (In My Humble Opinion). Painted and bubble wrap stamped and inked the page before I went up to the mountains in the weekend, oh and the stickers for the title too. I sat at a cafe and did the journaling for this.(click for larger picture)



The second topic is My Hobbies. I inked and stuck the Love Elsie pp to the page before I went up to the mountains in the weekend also. And just filled in the letter stickers when I got home. Did the journaling and title there.



This is the third journaling topic just posted today.. and I got this done today too! This is a first that I ever get anything done on the same day! LOL! The topic is Favorite Friend Of The Moment. Used all LOVE Elsie goodies from the OPAAT July Kit and 7Gypsies gaffer tape (not from the kit) and a little doodling for the border.



Did this a few weeks ago and I forgot to post it here... :) Just a simple one of my cute cousin Daniel.



Well.. that's a long post! Thanks for stopping by and thanks for reading to the end. Have a happy week! Mine's almost over... since I'm posting this on Wednesday despite starting the draft on Monday! :)
Michelle
I spent the weekend in solitude.. it was great! I pretty much needed it... to just chill, be by myself... and do whatever I wanted to. Almost reminded me of an episode in the Gilmore Girls where Rory chose to stay home to do laundry - not even a date with Dean! Of course Paris showed up unannounced.. and thankfully nothing like that happened to me. LOL! I did four loads of laundry yesterday - Insane!

Friday night Jay left to go up to Palmerston North to see his friend. They were going up to Whakapapa to snowboard on Saturday. And I went to the Indonesian embassy for the Independence Day celebration. It was fun to meet up with friends and eat great food (the sambal was sooooo spicy!) and then watch a few friends being called up to play a few silly games.. lots of laughs for sure.. and a few photos! (I need to get them off my friends!)
Somehow I can never scrap after being out at night... I just can't get in the mood and am so tired that mojo runs away.. so I watch Gilmore Girls for a bit and turned in for the night.

Saturday I stayed in all day.. just pushing paper around for a bit and then scrapped while watching Family Stone and Raise Your Voice.... :) And that's what I did all day and night!!! Watched S.W.A.T and Lethal Weapon on tv at night too... it was great... it was just me, the tv/dvd and my September kit from OPAAT! :)



Sunday was loads of trip to the laundry room and scrapping.. and here's what I did. :)









So... That's pretty much all i've been up to. Stay tuned for an update with all my daily cards... Still need to scan them all.. soon hopefully! :)

Have a great week ahead!
Michelle
Another week has gone and a new one has just started... Time is just flying by so quickly that it scares me sometimes.. Especially when I feel that nothing extraordinary has happened and I just feel that my life is so mundane sometimes. I just feel pathetic! LOL!

Well.. it's another quiet weekend for me... on Saturday I went to my friend Elvry's place to do a bit of scrapping.. not a lot got done since we've not seen each other in a while, so we spent more time catching up instead of scrapping, but I did get a little done. The weather was quite horrendous so I stayed in on Saturday night. The wind was so strong that it shook my building! I felt like there was a constant earthquake!

On Sunday Jay and I initially planned to go to the Wakefield market for lunch but we found out that there was a Malaysian Festival at the Town Hall. So checked that out instead and ended up getting food there. It was nice and a little nostalgic. I used to be part of the organizing team for events like these. It was nice to see a few familiar faces and the weather was fairly sunny.. so all in all a pretty good experience.

The 3rd Kiwi Jack Me Up is up. This is my take on the jack. :) Not sure if I'm going to leave it as it is or if I'll be adding a bit of journaling. At the moment I'm leaving it like this.



I planned a mini album about a month ago.. I wanted to do a mini album on 20-07-2007 (just thought it's a cool looking date).. just what I got up to on that day. So here it is! I used mainly American Crafts and 7Gypsies papers with a sprinkling of a few random ones from Autumn Leaves and Imagination Project. I kept it really simple, repeating the format on pretty much all the pages. Feel free to let me know what you think.






















Well... that's all for now.. not much else happening here since I'm pretty much in hibernating mode. :D I got tagged by Cheryl but I'll do that another day. Do drop me a comment if you drop by so I can visit you too! Have a great week ahead!
Michelle
I had a quiet scrappy weekend...Pretty much stayed home all weekend apart from going out for lunch with Jay. :)

I got my OPAAT DT assignments for August done.. and also 2 other layouts! Woohoo! I think that's the record for me in a whole weekend! (I'm a slow scrapper!) So... here they are:





OPAAT DT layouts using August Kit





This one is for the Kristina Contes Scrapjack... :)



So... a brand new week has started.. and my Monday is already almost over... Hope that this week is full of fun.. and that I'll get lots of scrapping done! :)

I need to get my layout for the next Kiwijack done... stay tuned... Have a great week!
Michelle
I know the date stamp said 1 August.. well I started a draft of this and didn't actually post till tonight, Friday night. Well, the week has just flown by and I guess what happened last weekend is so totally irrelevant now.. therefore I won't go into it! This week, I had a dance performance at the Indonesian embassy and that was pretty much the only non-routine thing in my week.

Took these photos last Saturday and scrapped it on Sunday! Woohoo! I felt so productive! Hee hee...




This photo was taken on 27 May.. and those were the exact feelings I had on that day... a wonderful wonderful day!



My second 6x12 layout..just an old photo but I really want to scrap this. Love the memories this photo brings.



I got my August OPAAT kit on Monday! YAY! Will have to scrap and post layouts in the weekend... so stay tuned! Look at how yummy the kit looks!?!



Oh.. and I got the Candytown Collection in the mail yesterday too! These papers are designed by Adrienne Looman! That girl just constantly inspires me! I want to scrap like her when I grow up! LOL! She's just totally amazing! Check out the collection at
SIStv



Well.. that's all for now... off to continue reading First Assistant and then go to bed..