The life of a Dutch Scrapper

Bye bye 2009!

A couple of hours from now 2009 is over. This year has flown by! So many things have happened, good and not good, but let's just focus on the good :)

Here are a few things that made me happy in 2009:
* Anthony doing better in school
* Jadenn doing good in school (these two things might not seem important for many but for me they are VERY important after all these horrible past experiences with schools)
* getting rid of emotional things through NEI therapy and by doing that finding an important part of myself again
* going to the USA and meeting my fellow fashionista's and found some lifelong friends
* organizing the Scrap-a-Licious weekend for the second time and making it a big success.
* going to Italy with my family on vacation and this time around I could finally enjoy it and be relaxed
* deciding to quit scrapbooking
* making my own photography website
* taking a big leap of faith by becoming a professional photographer and thankful that is is already a success
* renewing the relationship with my MIL again after not seeing each other for almost 10 years
* giving back at people who are less fortuned and being aware of that
* deciding that we are truly going to go through with renovating our house
* being together with DH for more than 12 years
* paying more attention to friendships
* going to the movies a lot more
* keeping lists and an agenda to help me stay more focused
* going to France and see Céline, Karine and Dina again made my whole year
* my friends, love you girls!!!
* watching online tv! Grey's, Gossip Girl, Style'd, SYTYCD,Army wives, private practice, teen mom and 90210(I know, I know)

I bet there are more things that made me happy but these came to mind first :)
Here are a few favorite photo's from last year:

Anthony with Storm

Anthony and Jadenn on the beach

Being in the USA making these photo's of the still pregnant Amber Ulmer

The face and start of a new direction in my life.
 
Céline and me in Montpelier

Together in Italy

Anthony 

Jadenn

My DH Raymond, who has been my backbone for so many years. Thank you sweetie for sticking it out with me, I know it hasn't always been easy for you. LOVE YOU!!!

A big thank you to all my blogreaders, I mean YOU! for all your comments and emails when life got in the way, for lifting my spirit and for believing in me. I wish everyone a wonderful 2010!!!

Corinnexxx

Changes

Lots of changes in my life going on. Letting go of one thing/person, embracing the next. difficult to do but necessary to move forward. DH is home for two weeks and so far he has painted the whole living room and kitchen white. Hang up my new big mirror in the hall and we plan to do a lot more in this last week. I even made all the computers wireless yesterday evening and felt so proud for stepping into the next century hahaha. Not having all the wires hanging around everywhere in the whole house is such a better sight for my eyes :). Made a first attempt to clean out my scraproom. I have decided to donate a lot of my supplies to a crisis shelter for kids in my neighborhood(kids that come from horrible backgrounds or are abused and some have to stay there for observation till they are diagnosed which can take months and their room is almost like a cell since the doors are locked most of the time. I gave away 4 boxes of good and new toys just before Christmas to this shelter and the kids there where so happy. They send me flowers to thank me, which was so sweet. More than one child from Anthony his school lives there, some have for years.

I have been incredible busy with all kind of photo shoots. My business has taken of by storm and I truly feel blessed. Here are some photo's of the shoots I did recently:






You can see lots more of these shoots HERE.
Still two shoots to do this week, one newborn and one tomorrow of my favorite Dutch Dancer from SYTYCD 2008, wanna guess who?

Off to go to ballorig(indoor playground) with the kids and two of their friends.

Corinnexxx
PS: I will be scrapbooking this week as well.....did I just say that :)?
   

A child has been born, porompompompom

Baby Jesus came to mind when I saw this photo I took just a few hours ago of 3 month old Mack.
 
Merry Christmas everyone!

Corinnexxx

Christmas at my house

First of all thank you all so much for your emails, hyves/facebook messages and comments here, they mean the world to me, thanks for supporting my deciscion.

Christmas. I love it. I love listening to the mostly Dutch Christmas songs and singing them out loud when I am alone in the house. Most of all i love to decorate the house and the Christmas tree. The last is the most fun but also the most exspensive as it seems. I like to change my ornaments every year, create a whole new look. The last look I have had a few years, added some new ornaments every year, until you could hardly see any tree at all, that stuffed it was, but I loved it. This year I was so inspired through some blogs that I follow that I wanted to go for the more original Christmas colors, red, white and green. So I thought well let's buy some red and white ornaments and mix it with the greens I already have. Hmmmmm Apparently I bought enough red and white to fill the whole tree with so skip the green ones I already had :). This is the result by day:

by night:
 
Close-ups:
   
 
 
 

and some other decorations around the house:





and the last one I really like a lot. I printed out some vintage Christmas images that I found on the internet on glossy paper and hang them in this:
 
I love that I can change this with the season and have photo's of us in it on regular days.

Well that is it for now, have to do a little photoshoot with my own kids now to surprise grandma with some new photo's of them for Christmas.

Corinnexxx 

I am leaving :(

I have felt this for more than a year now. I kept pushing this feeling back because I was afraid to listen to it. I made all kind of excuses for it and I kept going knowing deep within it didn't feel good. In Montpellier with Céline I made the descision for me to stop with scrapbooking. But just when I spoke it out loud to Dina, I got an email from Tim Holtz asking me to make projects for him for CHA and inviting me to come to Ranger U. I now see that this was a sign from God, saying "Corinne have you really learned to listen to your heart or are you still listening to your head?" Of course I choose my head, hello, I LOVE Tim and his products and Ranger U is something I wanted to do for so long so I told Tim yes I would do it. He send me stuff to play with and I opened the box and since than said to myself every week, I am now going to scrapbook.....and when the week was finished I haven't made one single thing. I woke up at 5 this morning and lay in bed thinking and realized it was not going to happen, it is over.

I decided to quit scrapbooking, no more workshops, no more Scrap-A-Licious weekends, no more magazines, no more Design Teams. This scares the shit out of me to take this step. Scrapbooking has been my life for more than 5 years, it brought me such awesome experience and joy and most of all very good friendships. I am afraid of loosing some of them when I am no more around in the scrapbooking scene.

I still will be creative, but mostly with my photography now. My business is blooming really fast and I am very thankful for that. I have some amazing opportunities coming up and I feel like this is just the beginning for me. I also will be posting here, still sharing my life and artwork(still plan to do at least something from now and than ;) and my photo's with you. Being creative is a part of me and something I love everyday.

Not only my heart isn't in it anymore, I also need to know my boundaries. My ADHD doesn't allow me to do all the things I want to do. I still need to learn how to divide the hours that are in one day. My focus needs to be more on my family, household as well in order to become completely happy.

Maybe in a year from now I think what was I thinking?!, but this now feels the right thing for me to do.

So this is a Goodbye but also a Hello.

Hope you still stick around.

Corinnexxx

shopping news!

Memory Lane Scrpbooking gaat Schoon Schip maken in 2010 dus starten we met de MEGA Eindejaarsopruiming tot 31 december 2009!

Op alle lint in ons assortiment krijg je 50% korting*

Op alle artikelen (muv cardstock en design papier) die nog niet zijn afgeprijsd geldt nu 40% korting* !

Voor ons Design Papier gelden de volgende bodemprijzen :

Dik enkelzijdig design papier 0,60

Dun enkelzijdig design papier 0,40

Dik dubbelzijdig papier 0,50

Dun dubbelzijdig papier 0,50

Alle merken Scallop/bijzonder design papier 1,00

De laatste Hambly overlays 2,10

De laatste Hambly design papier 1,00

We werken momenteel hard aan de shop om te zorgen dat we een actueel beeld van de voorraad online hebben maar houdt er rekening mee dat het kan gebeuren dat een bestelde artikel net voor je neus is weggekaapt … *Je korting wordt handmatig in je definitieve factuur berekend,dus niet in je voorlopige factuur.

Dus bestel snel of, ideaal in deze drukke maand, kom op afspraak naar onze shop aan huis in Hoofddorp. We hebben geen pin dus neem voldoende cash mee.

Finally it is looking like

Christmas in our house! Well not completely finished but I am working on it. Bought some cool new items yesterday to decorate the house with. Set the tree this morning, but still have to decorate it later today(photo's will follow soon). last week I decided to paint out hallway white and what a difference that makes! Bought some things to make it look better and have my eye on a new lamp. Next year we are building on an extra piece to our hallway and also two "dakkapellen"(no idea what the name for that is in english, but it is put on the roof and it ads more room and light on both sides)

My photography business is blooming and December and January are fully booked(might have room for a newborn or two ;). I had such a nice pregnancy shoot yesterday with Daan en Liane:

Check out more sneak peeks HERE.

Hope I can edit them more this evening since I have planns to scrapbook all week to make projects and lo's CHA :)(yes T. I haven't forgotten about you ;)

Corinnexxx

Wanna win a photoshoot?

Go over here!

My Christmas gift for one of my readers :)

Corinnexxx

A little something that will make you happy

and in awe and excited and emotional....well at least it did it for me :)

I am such a huge fan of SYTYCD(so you think you can dance). The Dutch version just ended and the nr one and 2 were my favorits so I was very happy.

I am watching online the American version and I have to say those dancers are out of this world.
There are so many good ones now left, but I have one favorite and that is Jacob Karr. For me he is the best dancer since the beginning and just so talented. See for yourself:

He did more dances but these were the once I could find. The dances from last night were so incredible beautiful.
And I love this dance between Mollee and Russel

If you love to watch every episode watch through www.sidereel.com there are lots of links there to watch from.

Corinnexxx

Has it been so long ago already?

I have been so busy lately! Painting our hallway, doing photoshoots, editing a lot of photo's, painting a canvas, trying to clean up a bit, Sinterklaas, making lists of the things I still need to do ASAP, etc, etc, etc! I guess it is called life right?!

Ok on with the update:

Painting/creating

Made another small canvas:
  
 
 

And here is something I made for Christmas a while ago at the KKD while being bored:


 
Sinterklaas!
Sinterklaas is a Dutch tradition and is kinda like Santa Claus.
Jadenn still believes in Sinterklaas and for the first time in his life he was really getting into it and so excited and all. So Sinterklaas came at school first. This was the look on Jadenn's face when the Holy man arrived:
 
I think he was also a bit afraid in the beginning.

OMG! he got to shake Sinterklaas his hand and get into a photo with Piet(One of Sinterklaas helpers), his day was perfect already!
At home on December 5th(Sinterklaas his birthday) we celebrated with presents as well. They sang out loud on the couch with my parents(gosh my livingroom does look very tiny in this photo)

Kids made wonderfull things at school and I decorated DH's dart board with it(does anyone else have a dartboard in their livingroom.....no? Can you than please tell my DH it doesn't belong there)
 
Kids got spoiled....rotten! This is how big the bag with presents was:
 
Photo's


More sneak peeks HERE

And last but not least this cutie pie:
 
turned one last week :)

Corinnexxx