I can...

make my own patterned paper, embellishments, what ever really. I can change the colours of anything I like, Ive worked out the whole use of layers, and played around with lots of fancy stuff in photoshop.

Ive just completed my assignment for lesson 5 of the digi course, and I think Ive come quite a long way in this short space of time - not that you can really tell from my LO! but Im much more comfortable with PS now - its not all that scary - once you know how to use it! Definately cant see myself becoming a digi chick though - I spend enough time on this darn puter as it is!
Nighty night!

Visitors

Isaac and I had the loveliest visitors today - Kathie and Jamie came to play! We had a great chat and the boys had a great time playing, once Isaac got over wanting to grab Jamie and kiss him like he does his teddy bear!

Jamie is such a clever little thing at posting, and loved Isaacs rocket shape sorter - he was very good at it too. Its always so cute to see how alike they are in what they doing, and also see the differences as well. I kept telling Isaac to watch and learn. He is quite happy to push the shape in once you sit it there (because thats what his brothers do for him) but he hasnt yet seen the need to do it all himself!
They were so cute to watch. Always checking out what the other one had. Just like Isaac, Jamie didnt take long to find one of the 'big boy' toys. He was fascinated by spiderman. What is it with stuff like this? Isaac has baskets full of toys, but if they are around he will always pick up one of his brothers toys in preference to his own!

I got some yummy muffins from the bakery this morning, and got one each for the boys for after school. I decided to give one to Isaac as well - it was his first muffin and he loved it. He is developing a very sweet tooth for such a little boy! I couldnt believe how fast he gobbled it down!

another first

It was haircut day today, and although I absolutely adored those gorgeous whispy baby hair bits on Isaac, I decided that it was time for his first haircut. It was starting to annoy him and get in his eyes all the time..but it did look so cute, and I was scared of him loosing that baby look. I didnt want much off, and Im really happy with it, just a trim (with some of the precious blonde curls bagged up for me to keep) I dont think he looks too grown up - Ive still got my baby for a bit longer LOL

Fabric Paper

I created this LO almost entirely from fabric. Originally the photo corner was going to be for the Scrapboxx DT competetion - the brief was one product three ways - my product was going to be fabric. But for various reasons I made the descision to withdraw from the competition. I was having such fun playing with the fabric that I turned it into a LO, and wrote an article about the technique for Scrapbook Stations fancy schmancy new newsletter.
You can view the first edition here.



Congrats to the girls that made it through the next round of the SBX comp. I saw the entries this morning and they are all awesome. LOL Michelle, even though you didnt use your boys on your entry I picked yours out straight away - gorgeous. (As are the others whos entries I instantly recognised !) Good luck in the next round.

digi scrapping

Well I didnt get a chance to get any scrapping done! The boys decided to stay home and play cricket instead of fishing. I have however just completed the second lesson in a digi scrapping course being run online by Tracy Watson. As you know Ive been struggling a little (understatement!) with photoshop so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to learn the finer points. Dont think Ill become a convert (although you never know!) but it will be great for designing my christmas cards and invitations etc. This first LO was just a simple graphic one - learning a few bits about layers etc. I knew most of this, but it was good practice. Next lesson is designing our own PP - I cant wait!

Also thought Id share the invites Ive designed for Isaacs birthday party. They took me such a long time!!!!! So wish Id done this little bit of the course before I attempted them - oh well I got there in the end LOL. I uploaded them and ordered the prints tonight. Should arrive on my doorstep sometime this week.

Lastly I wanted to send the biggest thank you to my friend Kathie. Today I printed out my blog entries of the monthly letters that Ive written to Isaac. I started writing them after reading several of Kathies letters to Jamie on her LOs. With the exception of the first couple of months Ive actually written regularly. It was wonderful to sit down and read through the progress of my little man. The big milestones, and the little moments that may otherwise have been forgotten. So thanks for the inspiration gorgeous - I will be forever grateful! I even sat down and journalled the whole birth experience. I know I did it not long after the actual birth, but it got lost in cyberspace some where I think. I still had the times etc that things happened written down so it was suprisingly easy to fill in the rest. I didnt realise it was still so vividly etched in my mind after 11 months LOL.

Well 'thats all folks' I think two entries in one day is enough for anyone

great weekend

so far we have been having a lovely relaxing weekend. I went and spent soemtime with my little sister and her gorgeous girl georgia yesterday, then took the boys to see some model cars racing near her house. They loved them, but thought it was too loud to stay very long - Isaac was the only one not at all bothered by the noise. I didnt feel like cooking tea last night so we gave my mum & dad a ring and headed to the local pub for tea with them.

Today after dramas with the computer this morning (we thought the kids has managed to wreck the cordless mouse while they were playing games online - GRRR we were so cross with them. After a phone call or two to a computer friend ti turns out that the batteries were flat in the mouse - I didnt even know it had batteries!!!! Had to apologise to the kids and tell them it wasnt their fault lol) We went for a drive to whispering wall, and then to the big rocking horse. Had a lovely couple of family hours. I think Craig and the boys are heading off fishing ata local dam a bit later as well. I still havnt managed to get Isaac to sleep, so I might be sitting here while they go fishing and he sleeps - mmmm wonder what I could do to fill in some time ;)

I did this LO Friday. There was an online challenge (on Scrapboxx I think?) to scrap a LO with out a photo. It inspired me to do this. I found this quote a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Its framed (love having a cheap shop close by!) and sitting on my desk. Now all I have to do is tidy and redo the rest of the room. Maybe this will be the catylist for a whole room makeover! maybe not too!

Hope you are all haivng a lovely weekend too.

11 months

My poor little poppet....
You spend a great deal of this month absolutely miserable. You picked up a virus which really knocked you around. You had a temperature for a week, which was helped only a little by panadol drops. You hardly ate a thing, and I really had to work hard to even get enough fluids into you. All you wanted was to be cuddled. You cried every time you were put down, and I don’t think we saw your precious smile, or heard your sweet laughter for nearly a week. It has taken two and a half weeks for you to get back to your normal self. It was heartbreaking to see you so miserable and be able to do so little to comfort you. You would start crying and clamp your mouth shut as soon as you saw the panadol syringe – you were so sick of taking medicine.

Thankfully the last few days you have been back to your cheeky little self. Laughing at everything and nothing, playing peek-a-boo under the table, continuing your ongoing discovery expedition of each and every room of our home. Even though you have free run of the family area, your bedroom and the playroom, we have to remember to shut the doors to the toilets, bedrooms and office or you find your way in and the exploring begins! You have even worked out that sometimes the boys bedroom door doesn’t latch properly, so even when it looks closed you still crawl over and give it a push just to check. If it swings open you take that as an open invitation. Your brothers are pretty good at keeping little stuff off their floor, but you love to be right there with them as they play, which sometimes becomes quite frustrating for them. They pick you up and take you out to your toy corner, but you manage to find them again in no time at all. If the door is closed you sit there calling to them. During the past two weks of school holidays we have been putting the safety gate in the door of their room. At this stage that is keeping everyone happy. You can see them, they can see and talk to you, continue their play, and have their personal space respected as well.

Your understanding of the world around you is expanding beyond belief. I think I had forgotten what a steep learning curve little babies go through in their first couple of years.
You love to play a little game where I hold your hands and say up…down…up…down… when I say up you stand up tall, and when I say down you squat down. Its too cute.
You just melted my heart yesterday. I was laying on the lounge,watching you crawling around the room when our eyes met, you gave me the biggest smile. I said come and give mum mum a kiss, I didnt really expect any reaction from you, it was just part of the daily chatter that we share. Your eyes lit up, and you crawled straight over to me, pulled yourself to stand at the chair and landed the biggest sloppiest kisses right on my lips. I picked you up and hugged you so hard sweetie. I love you so much. I must, cause you dont care if your face is dirty or your nose is running, when you want a kiss there is no stopping you. Mouth wide open, dribble going everywhere. And you insist on planting it straight on my lips. Its probably a kiss only a mummy could appreciate! You even think that me wiping all the dribble off and saying eewwww is hilarious....so you give me another one.

We have started to hear dad dad dad occasionally too – much to Daddys delight. You are so excited when Daddy gets home from work nowadays. You are becoming a lot more social, and are getting to be quite a little daddys boy, when he is around. You love the silly songs he sings, and the funny noises he makes. You love sitting in his arms and getting to look at the tin animals way up high on top of the meatsafe. You love tickles and peek-a-boo, giddy up horsey and hanging upside down. You love just spending time hanging out with your daddy.

You have nearly mastered the art of waving goodbye, although this skill seems to come and go at your whim. We are also working on clapping hands. You have managed to do it a couple of times, but I suspect the meeting of your hands was more of a fluke than good planning! Surely after the amount of times we have sung ‘if your happy and you know it clap your hands’ to you, you will want to master this really soon just to stop all of us singing and clapping. You do love us to sing to you though. Your favourite songs are ‘twinkle little star’, if your happy and you know it shout horray’, ‘hey diddle diddle’ & ‘hush little baby’. I wouldnt be surprised though, if the first words you sing are “I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair” this song is so stuck in mummies head that I walk around singing it all day…even your brothers know the words and sing along with me now.

We have also moved on to the excitement of finger foods. Mummy is not good at the whole messy eating thing, but in an attempt to get you eating something (anything) during your recovery I tried lots of things. You took to finger foods like a duck to water. Ravioli, steamed vegetable fingers, wholemeal crumpets, bread, pears, bananas you devour it all. Today you even managed to eat dried apple rings – how you manage that with only eight front teeth I will never know. One thing you havn’t had much successs with is your sipper cup. Slowly you seem to be getting the idea but its taking a while for you to work out you have to tip it up to get anything out. Too many willing little helpers to do it for you I think!

You had your first real accident last week. You were having a wondeful time in the little clam shell pool under the pergola. I was sitting right next to you paddling my toes (also very funny apparently) when you decided to stand up and topple head first onto the pavers. You banged your head, and skun your nose and lip. With a runny nose its taken a while to heal as well. I think that the little pool might need to go on the grass from now on - although with water restrictions tightening we wont be filling it very often. { This past year has been one of the warmest and driest in a long long time. I sometimes worry what the world will be like as you grow up. I fear some of the things we take for granted today will become much harder to come by. We live in such a lucky country, but unless we learn to respect and conserve our natural resources it is going to be alot harsher and cruler than I have ever known}


AND… the last week and a half you have been sleeping through the night!!! Im not sure if it’s the after effects of the virus, but Im loving it, and I hope we have finally turned a corner in regards to your sleeping.

I cant wait, in four more weeks we will be celebrating your first birthday. There are invitations to make & presents to choose. It will be such fun to plan a special day just for you.

I Love you forever my sweet little angel.

Mummy xxx

Birthday Brunch & SAM retreat - one year on

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM! To celebrate we had a birthday brunch at our place. Its become a bit of a tradition over the past few years. It all began when we decided that brunch on Easter Sunday was a great excuse to all catch up as a family, and now it happens more and more. Its a pretty simple affair, everyone brings along something and we have a big cook up outside on the BBQ. Eggs, bacon, sausages, piles of fresh toast, juice & coffee. We usually eat at about 10.30am and then sit around catching up for hours after. Its 2.30pm and the last ones just left.

I actually remembered to grab everyone soon after they arrived for a group photo. Ive been meaning to get one for ages, but you know what its like (especially with lots of kids ) there is always someone asleep, or hungry, or someone has to leave early or had to work and couldnt make it. LOL
So this is my family...Mum & Dad: Jodi, her DH Col and their three kids Jessica,Lucas & Riley; my youngest sister Vicki her DH Mike & baby Georgia and the five of us. Some strange faces there, but its near on impossible to get everyone to look and smile at the same time!

Yesterday was one of those days I just felt all inspired to scrap. Craig was at golf, the boys were all content and amused so I did one LO in the morning (cant share yet) and last night I still felt that urge (haha no not THAT urge!) so I scrapped another whole LO. Ive been wanting to scrap this photo since the retreat last year, but Im still waiting to get it on disc (!!!! subtle I know) so I went blog surfing and snatched all thepics I needed from your blogs. This photo has been scrapped a million times, and I will probably use it again when I actually get around to scrapping a LO or two about all the fun we had at the retreat. This LO was actually inspired the gorgeous photos of these little bubs who were all in the making at the retreat (even if some of their Mummies didnt realise it yet!!!!) It was fun, and really good to scrap about a slightly different topic for a change.

















Its also hard to believe thats its been a year since Mel and I jetted off to the other side of the country to spend a weekend with the most gorgeous and fun group of girls you could hope to meet - who we had never even met before. Its awesome when people you have never met before offer to pick you up, have you stay at their house and drive you around for the weekend - and to top it all off they turn out to be one of the most genuine and gorgeous girls ever - thanks Rozzie! I think our family and friends thought we were a bit batty going all that way for a scrapping retreat. But it was SO worth it. My only regret is that I wasnt able to enjoy it to the full (read stay up all night drinking and scrapping) as I was 36 weeks pregnant at the time, and had to be a little gentle to my poor old body. I couldnt even manage the walk up & down heartbreak hill most of the time, just as well I was able to borrow a car from some lovely chicky!

Craig & Pete have gone off to the 4 wheel drive show this afternoon, and when they return Sabine and I are off to see the dixie chicks at the entertainment centre tonight, Should be a good show. Tommorrow is the last day of holidays for the boys, so we better get all organised for Tuesday - Im definately not looking forward to getting back into the school routine again! Ive been enjoying my sleep ins too much.

nearly better

after a long week of a miserable little bubba, I think he has finally turned the corner and is on the mend. Today was the first day since last Saturday that he actually ate a reasonable amount, so things are looking up. He was laughing and playing again today - he has just been whinging and clingy while he was unwell. He still has a yukky cough, but that seems to be improving as well. AND ....wait for it..... he slept all night last night!!!

Yesterday was Nathans birthday, so he had a party at home with 5 of his mates from school. It was a pretty hectic three hours, but they all had lots of fun. Nathan wanted a sports theme, so I made the cake into a football, and we had sporty type games. Handball competition, egg & spoon race using golf balls instead of eggs, throwing a tennisball into a basket, donuts on a string, musical statues, a pinata type thingo and Naths favourite pass the parcel. He got some really cool pressies. We gave him a crows gurnsey, money tin with lollies in it, guitar stand & a how to draw(allsorts of things) book. He also got a couple of games, a bike computer, vouchers from a bike shop to buy a new helmet, magnetic sticks and balls, captain underpants book, sketch pad and pencils, over the hedge DVD, Lego, and i think there were a couple of other bits and pieces that cant think of right now. Here are a couple of pics ..the cake...


















donut on a string eating competition....















and lastly the all important blowing out of the candles....























It was also fantastic to have Craig home for the day to help out as well. I think he has nearly as much fun as the boys organising some of the games!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATE!!!!!


On the scrapping front Ive completed another LO for my EDM album. So far so good. Ive done the 3 Family LOs, 3 (+) snapshots LOs, 0 (!) celebrations LOs (still thinking on this one), 1 Home LO. I picked up a few things online that I had been trying to get hold of (MMM fabric paper, CC Rubons, SEI iron alphas) but do you know how hard Im finding it to get hold of some Strano ribbon. Might have to sneak into anyones house that admits to having any and steal scraps out of your bins LOL.
[ Seriously though, if anyone has any un-needed off cuts (in boy colours) I would be happy to pay postage and send you something in return if you can spare any (yeh OK Im getting desperate but its the one sponsor that I have absolutely none of)]

half way

I cant believe that we are half way through the first week of the school holidays already.

We had a great weekend. went to Sabine & Petes for a bonfire Friday night, and ended up back there for a leg of lamb cooked in the camp oven in the coals again Saturday night - yummo as usual.
Isaac felt really hot when we were leaving at about 11am, he had seemed fine at 6.30pm when I put him down to bed. He ended up having a really restless night, and despite a couple of doses of panadol still had a high temp and was really lethargic Sunday, so off to the doctor we went. We are really lucky here, there is always a doctor on call in the local area - thankfully it was our own GP on Sunday. Its a non specific virus, but its really knocked him around.
We had Craigs family for lunch, so there was plenty of willing arms for my poor little bubba to lay in while he was awake. All he has wanted is to be held, he is so restless while he is sleeping even, and his little mouth clamps shut and he shakes his head as soon as he sees the panadol syringe!

He has been off his food since Saturday night, and Im really having to ensure he keeps up his fluids, as he isnt really all that interested. Needless to say its been a long few nights and days. He has of course lost weight cause he isnt eating - not that you can really tell LOL, but I noticed tonight when I put a pair of trackies on him they fitted well - I was ready to put them in the too small box last week as they were far too tight around his belly.

This morning Nath woke up feeling like crap so off to the doc with them both - same viral thing, although its not knocking him nearly as much!

Isaac seemed to be picking up on Monday, so as it was a long weekend we headed off to the wetlands for a couple of hours with Sabine & Pete, as they had promised to take the boys bike riding. Craig and I went walking with Isaac while they rode. It was such a beautiful day, and a great way to spend it.

I have a couple of LOs to share finally. They have been done for a few challenges/comps etc and a couple have been picked up by SM.

This first one is of my neice Georgia. She looks so serious in the photo! but I love it anyway. All the embellishing is done with those temporary kids tattoos. Im really not good with using circles on my LOs, but Im thrilled with the way this turned out.


















Next is a double of Isaac - youve already seen some of these photos on my blog before.















Isaac again, using some photos from his 10 month photo shoot I did last week (or was it the week before??) - and yes I managed to squeeze another (little) circle onto this one LOL


















And last but not least a LO from the latest Scrapbook Station DT brief - decorative edges. Isaacs baby book is going to be bulging at the seems LOL



















I do still scrap Caleb & Nath, Im nearly finished one of C on my desk now - its just so much more of a challenge lately, it takes a while to do something Im happy with. Im finding the little boy LOs so much easier!

As you can see Im lovin' the whole white background thing atm too! And being on the very limited budget that I am right now, Ive just been using the inserts from my page protectors! I can remember a year or so ago that thought would have horrified me, in fact using anything but bazzill would have horrified me. Thankfully Ive gotten over my cardstock snobbery and I figure it does the same job so why not!!! More to spend on other yummy stuff this way....speaking of which, I dont think I shared my yummy little stash from my birthday money shopping spree, so here 'tis...Lots for my EDM album, and a few other bits and pieces.