Challenge #324 - week of 25th March 2019

Another Monday and another chance to start the week with a "clean" slate and by clean, I mean it literally! At the moment, I'm home on Mondays which gives me a chance to get on top of the housework after the chaos of the weekend (when I generally do nothing household-y) and leaves the rest of the week free to do what I like! I read somewhere that your average German housewife spends more than four hours a day on housework which sounds rather a lot to me but then again, I'm not average, not German and definitely not a housewife. Maybe if I ticked one or two of these boxes, I'd spend more time not less!

Anyway, my place is now clean and tidy - more or less - and will remain this way until the weekend, although I do do a little cleaning most evenings after work. But this week, I decided to get a whole bunch of washing done - three loads in so far, another three waiting to be done. With no dryer and almost everything we own needing ironing when it is dry, that's a whole lot of work in itself. One step at a time.

So this week, I'd like you to be inspired by the washing (or laundry for my US friends!)

I think there are different ways to take this prompt:

• the physical act of doing the washing/laundry as a stand alone topic - maybe you have a huge amount, hardly any or are you lucky enough to have someone to do it for you? Do you send stuff out to be done or have someone come in to do the ironing? Do you have a routine or a standard time to get it done and do you always follow a certain way of doing it? I think this might be quite a cultural topic as I've noticed big differences across countries with how this household task is undertaken. You might have had a life change that has affected this task - a new baby who seems to need five outfits a day or a retirement which means that you no longer have to iron business shirts or a new job which means a uniform, different types of clothes or stuff that's tricky to manage. You could also think about the washing as part of a daily/weekly/regular routine which you might be recording on your page. A Day in the Life or A Week in the Life or just your Project Life project might touch on housework tasks.
• a problem you encountered during the activity - have you ever left a red sock in the white wash and sent all your husband's shirts pink? Or perhaps put a rather expensive woollen, designer jumper on a hot wash only for it to come out the size of a Barbie doll with the texture of solid felt? (true story that happened to a friend of mine while we were au pairs!) Or perhaps the washing machine let you down and flooded the house or something got washed by mistake (a special toy perhaps) and it was never the same again. 
• you might want to record it as part of things you love to do or maybe, like me, you are not a fan! A "Things Right Now" type layout are always a fun snapshot in time.
• part of your character - as my layout above shows, I'm not a natural and this layout records that. However, maybe you're a laundry fiend and could even consider it a superpower - record that this week.
• products - the Simple Scrapper collection in the layout above featured lots of housework elements both in the papers and die cuts and I loved trying to find a way to use them. The little washing machine cluster featured here made me happy.
• design - try hanging elements across your page from a "washing line". This is a design feature I've used again and again over the years and even have one hanging on my wall in a frame that even uses mini clothes pins to hold the photos and embellishments on the line

I think that's quite a list of ways you could take this prompt and I hope you'll give this prompt a try. It would be great to see what you make.  You can connect with us in our Facebook group here. Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken.

Have a great day everyone!

Challenge #182 week of 31st August 2015

Where have I been? You might well ask and the truth is, right here at my computer. But busy working. The end is in sight but it got me thinking about our prompt in relation to the activity I was undertaking.

I've got some work translating from German to English. There's quite a lot of skill involved but also a lot of interpretation and creative thinking. So why not use this as a challenge for us? Not the German to English bit! Just the meaning of the word itself.

Be inspired by translate

translate

verb (transitiv or intransitive)

/trænsˈleɪt/  /trænz-/

to ​change words into a different ​language: 
We were ​asked to translate a ​list of ​sentences.She ​works for the UN, translating from ​English into ​French.

to ​change something into a new ​form, ​especially to ​turn a ​plan into something ​real: So how does this ​theory translate into ​practical ​policy?The ​ways of ​working that he had ​learned at ​college did not translate well (= were not ​suitable) to the ​world of ​business

to ​decide that words, ​behaviour, or ​actions ​mean a ​particular thing: 
He ​mumbled something which I translated as ​agreement.

I hope you agree with me that there are many, many ways to take this prompt and really run with it. I'm thinking literal translation, problems encountered in foreign countries, learning languages at school or foreign words you use in your own environment. Then there's more creative translation, the realisation of plans, how you understand something, how you relate to words, what you think when you travel and can't speak the language. So many directions. I can think of a list of a dozen pages at least - if only I could get around to scrapping more than a handful of pages per month :-(

As always, we love it when you share your creations over at our Whimsical Musings Flickr gallery and don't forget to tag it WM#182 so we can track you down!

Challenge #121 week of 3rd February 2013

Welcome back to a week of creating and inspiration.

Participating in LOAD, I'm feeling full of inspiration and want to scrap all day long. Yesterday I finished two layouts and made three more! Ok, so I was against the clock with a deadline, but they came so easily and now I have five new layouts I love.

You all know that I love to look at the calendar and see what is coming up or has just passed to help us with our weekly prompts and this week is no exception. R is away in right now for a demobilisation trip but he was lucky enough to have it coincide with this event...

These photos are totally hot off the press having been taken down in Marina Bay, Singapore on Friday (31st Jan) which just happened to be New Year's Day for the Chinese calendar! Credit to him for getting sorting them out for me in the middle of the night yesterday so that I could post them here for you this morning!

Yes, it's Chinese New Year! We are now in the Year of the Horse and I was delighted to see these incredible photos of the wonderful colours and decorations over there in Singapore - just a bit sad not to have been able to be there in person!

Be inspired by

• the event itself
• that breath-taking horse statue
• the amazingly bright colours of all the decorations
• the ceiling of lanterns
• the fireworks which heralded in 12 midnight (sorry, no photos of that but you can see what this bay looked like here)
• Chinese or Asian culture
• a trip to Asia you've taken or always wanted to take
• or maybe you've even attended Chinese New Year in a Chinatown near you

I have to admit to being thrilled beyond belief with these photos. He was under strict instructions to get some for me to see what it all looked like and the photo of the horse at the gates literally took my breath away. I will be using these photos for sure although with colours as vivid as these, what on earth will I use for supplies?

If you are inspired to create this week, we hope you'll share over in our Flickr gallery (here) with the prompt WM#121.