Friday, December 07, 2007

She's got the Bug!!!!

I just have to share. Micayla is standing here next to me making a mini book while I play on the forums. This is what she said:

"When I start Scrapbooking I just can't stop. I just want to keep going and going. I love my mini bike, it's fun, but I love scrapping more. When the flys bother me I go really really fast and they can't get me. But I just prefer to Scrap. I love it when it's a really yukky day cause I get to stay inside and just scrap scrap scrap."

She's just piped up and said, "and the best thing of all, I get my own scrap desk while Dad's away."

Yep.... She's addicted!!!!!

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Fairy Park - Anneke

On Sunday, 25th November we took the kids all the way over to Anneke to visit the Fairy Park. It was only 16 degrees when we arrived there at lunch time. Luckily we'd taken some warmer clothes for the kids to change in to. We packed a picnic lunch and ate that as soon as we got there.
After lunch the kids wanted to play on the medieval playground called "Camelot". The playground was great and we almost had as much fun in there as the kids. We then walked around the fairy park to check out all the fairytale stories before going back to the playground to play some more.

The photo doesn't really show it but this slide was really really long.


Do you remember these??? I remember spinning around in one of these as a kid until I made Rochelle (my sister) spew ROFL!!! We all played in this one. Adrian was spinning it so fast that Micayla and I were screaming as girls do. Pretty silly thing to do after we just had lunch. But given that, I didn't feel sick; not until we came back to it later and played again after we'd walked around the fairy park.
These are some photos I took as we walked around the park.
This is Hansel and Gretel.
This one is Rupunzel
This one took us to Cinderella and Puss in Boots and I think Aladdin.
It was a great fun day, but a very long way to go. It took about an hour and a half to 2 hours to get there.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Advent Calendar

Well it's that time of year again. Time to bring out all the Christmas decorations and flick that switch so the streets are filled with Christmas lights.

Our tree went up yesterday. The kids and Adrian helped but I'm ordering them what to do. I'm fussy with how my tree looks. They were all ready to dump stuff everywhere. But I have a system. Lights first, then tinsel, then the string of sliver balls and they have a special way I put them on the tree. Adrian was starting to get annoyed and was ready to throw in the towel, but then I said OK, my parts done, now go for it. The 3 of them started hanging the decs anywhere and everywhere. That's OK, I just changed a few around later when they bunched too many of the same thing on the one branch LOL



I especially love their hand made decorations they so proudly hang in a prominant position. I never touch those ones, they stay where they are.



I always spend 2-3 days afterwards altering where the lights sit and adjust any decorations. I particularly worry about fire so I make sure every light is not touching any tinsel or tree branch.



My advent calendar is up on the cabinet and it looks really good, it has 2 santa chocolates in each pocket and a tag that says "How Many Sleeps" that they move along to the next pocket each morning. I'm inspired to make more of my own decs to hang around. Got some more stuff from Artypants this morning. As if I needed anymore Xmas scrapping to do after the AED layouts.

This is the Advent Calendar I made using the Alison Ellis Christmas range. Thanks to Pippa from Scrapbooking4less for the instructions and templates so I could put this together.



I'm a bit ahead of myself. We took the kids to the fairy park in Anneke last weekend. I usually like to post in date order but oh well, I'll put that in another post later.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Sharelle and Brian's Wedding

Wow look at this..... I'm blogging again!!!

Sharelle and Brian were married on the 17th November. It was such a fun day. There were 28 kids in total all had their own table and get this.... they even had a jumping castle.
Only Sharelle would think of something like that. We were all given chocolate hearts in organza bags but the kids organza bags were filled with lollies.
The kids had so much fun. There were lots of squealinig going on with 28 kids litterally jumping around. Here is Micayla and Emma's son Hayden on the jumping castle together.
And Micayla coming down the slide of the castle.
It was a quaint ceremony followed by the reception at Beaconsfield Community Centre. Sharelle looked stunning in her strapless beaded gown and Paige, their daughter made a beautiful flower girl.
Micayla standing for a photo with her best friend Paige. Micayla is missing Paige and can't wait for her to come home.
In between the ceremony and the reception, Kath, John, Colleen and Emm and all the kids came back to our house for drinks and nibblies to fill in time.

Here are the four of us together. Left to right: Moi, Sharelle, Kath and Emm.

Bailey's favourite friend is Kath's son Blake. Bailey was telling everyone Blake was his big brother. While we were standing in the circle waiting for Sharelle and Brian to say their goodbyes, Bailey was running around the circle, stopping each time he got to Blake for a cuddle. The lady standing next to Blake asked him if he was his big brother LOL.
Here they are on the dance floor. Blake was spinning Bailey around in the air.
They are honeymooning in Las Vegas where they will be married again by Spok in a Las Vegas chapel. Can't wait to see the picks to that. Paige is also honeymooning with them. Looking forward to them returning and hearing all about their trip.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Catch Up Time

I know it's been ages since I've put much up on here. Life has been sooooo busy and now my computer has crashed. I am waiting for a new one so in the meantime, I'm on Adrian's laptop. I can only tell you what's been going on, I can't share any photos as they are on my pc and I'm waiting for a friend to get all my files off my hard drive.

OMG, I just looked at the calendar and realised that apart from the spider bite I haven't updated here since the end of September. I have so much to say, I'll try and be as brief as possible, but I suggest you grab a coffee or whatever before you sit down to the read.

I'll start with Grand Final Day. I took Adrian and Scott to a Grand Final Breakfast in Noble Park at 8am in the morning. I must've been feeling very generous 'or mighty sick' to be up that early to drive them. I then went on to Scott and Tania's house and waited for the call to pick them up again when they were finished. They were pretty drunk at this stage. We were spending the night at Scott and Tan's so once I got the boys home, I too got stuck into the alcohol. We didn't watch much of the 'boring' game, just party'd really. By the end of the night we had been texting Emma and she ended up being dropped off at Scott and Tan's to party with us. We were all very drunk by the end of the night. I think we got to bed around 2am. I woke with a terrible hangover but had an awesome night just the same. Sunday was a right off! No photos to share of this day even if I did have my pc. Didn't take the camera. I know; not very scrappy of me.

During the school holidays I had Simmi and her 2 kids come over for a scrap day. Not much scrapping got done at all though. We went shopping at Artypants and did lots and lots of talking. Simmi ended up staying for tea so we could try and get more scrapping done but it still didn't happen. It was great to catch up though. Alison was going to come to but couldn't make it in the end. Hopefully next time I'll get to see Alz. Laura also popped in to show off Luke to Simmi.

Saturday 6th October was Adrian's mother's birthday. We went over to her house for an early dinner and then we went off to Emma and Russell's for a spa party. The kids were in the spa first while we sat around the fire drinking. At around 10.30pm we kicked the kids out and hopped in ourselves. The kids were busy inside now with the Wii, Xbox, DVD's and whatever else they had there to amuse themselves. Emma and I got out of the spa around 2am to find that all the kids had put themselves to bed all except Micayla and Emma's daughter Chloe. So we sent them off to bed and got back in the spa. I think it was somewhere around 3am we finally staggered out of the spa well under the influence and went off to bed. John and Kath and Adrian and I all slept on the floor in their front lounge and none of us could get out of bed. I think it was somewhere around 1030-11am we finally rose to brunch of eggs, bacon and croissants. Another great night but another Sunday written off!!!!

The weekend of the 12th-14th October the boys went off on a bike ride to the high country. The kids had a sleepover at their Oma and Opa's just on the Friday night. It was also the weekend of Paperific. On the Friday I picked Bec up and we drove into Docklands together. We were talking our heads off (as we do) and missed the exit to Docklands. Had to turn around and couldn't find our way. Thanks to Bec's husband for giving us directions over the phone. Paperific was absolutely flat out. The first thing I did was visited Alison at Alison Ellis Designs to give her the 8 layouts I had put together for her using their new Christmas range. I'll share these layouts with you once I get the files off my hard drive, in the meantime you can go here to check out a couple of them (my layouts are the ones on the bottom ends). The 2 weeks prior to Paperific was absolutely flat out getting these layouts done. I said to my friends "before you call the police to file a missing persons report, just check under all the papers at my scrap desk, you'll find me there." I also gave her a couple others of my layouts I'd previously done using their Garden Party range. We then met up with Jodie and Judy from Artypants. Jodie had the kids with her including the pram and no one would let her through. The crowd was absolutely crazy. We would then take it in turns to sit with the pram and do some shopping. After we had a look around we went into the trade section and then I went and spent an hour on the Alison Ellis stand to help with the make and takes. It was very late in the day though by the time I got to help out there. After we left Paperific we went straight to Artypants for a crop night. I think I was all scrapped out though. I got one layout done for a Guest Design Team position for Scrappile. After that I was just chatting and playing around with some new goodies I'd picked up at Paperific. I haven't done any scrapping since. The rest of the weekend was bliss all by myself until I picked up the kids and then Adrian came home late Sunday night.

Then the spider bite happened but you all know about that. It healed very well and we assume it was just a garden spider. I'll share photos later too. There is one photo I took on my phone while she was on the hospital bed. I still have to get it off my phone.

The following Saturday night was the 20th October. It was Scott's birthday. We went to a Trivia night at Lynbrook Primary School (that's where Scott and Tan's kids go to school). It was MC'd by Tony Shaw. One of the first challenges was to dance to 'Shake a Tail Feather'. One guy and girl from each table had to get up and do it to win points for your table. Troy and I got up to do it and because of Troy's bad dancing we won the points. The worse thing was we had to do the dance again on our own to show everyone why we won. That was bad!!!! I was still sober. I won one of the raffle prizes but I was in the toilet so Tania went and collected it for me. She brought back this gastly blue vase, there was not much more to choose from. When we'd got home Troy pick Tania a yellow rose and she put it in the blue vase and it didn't look too bad. I let her keep the vase, it suited her decor way more than it would mine. Anyway, we won the overall Trivia night and each of us got to take home a bottle of red and a bottle of white each. All my white wine has been drunk but I still have red to go. I'm saving that to take to the river next time we go. We spent the night at Scott and Tania's and woke to another Sunday morning breakfast of pancakes, bacon and eggs. Another Sunday gone!!!!

Are you still with me???

The 25th October was a school sleepover for Micayla. She set up her bed next to her best friend, Paige. She also slept next to Emma and Teresa. I read her little sleepover diary when she got home and I had to laugh when I got to the part where she had to describe what she didn't like about the night and her answer was "her friends snoring." LOL so cute!!!

Saturday, 27th October was Micayla's 7th and Bailey's 4th Birthday party. Micayla's part was an under the sea disco party and Bailey's was a Lightening McQueen party. Overall there was 24 kids. OMG!!! Way too much to handle. Micayla had an icecream mermaid cake that I'd made myself and it was a disaster. It kept melting while I was trying to decorate it. Bailey's was a vanilla mud cake covered in vanilla frosting, sprinkles and a Lightening McQueen picture, I made this one too. Thanks to Laura and Mel for helping amuze the kids by painting their faces. I'd had enough by the time they started this. I said I wasn't going to drink any Vodka until the school kids had been picked up, which was at 4,30pm. But, OMG, I'd had enough. By 4pm Mel and Laura started painting faces and I'd decided one drink of vodka wouldn't hurt, so I poured myself a good stiff one, just a tad earlier than expected. The party went on with the adults till about 1-2am. Not sure exactly what time. The kids were still up watching DVD's. Scott, Tania, Marty, Julie and Kath and all their kids crashed the night. Woke up to another Sunday morning ritual breakfast of bacon, eggs, pancakes and croissants. Mum and Dad visited for lunch that day, but I was partially hung over and then I came down sick with a bad cold, my body was aching and I had a temperature. At first I thought it was allergies, because that Sunday was really bad for pollen and I know of people who don't usually suffer that much, suffered badly. Again I'll have to share photos of this day later.

The following weekend was cup weekend. I was still pretty sick and over the weekend I lost my voice. Ended up on antibiotics with a sinus and chest infection when I returned home. Anyway, Micayla's actual birthday was on the Friday, 2nd. She got a new bike, helmet and DVD and went off to school for half the day. We had a great time at the river even though it was quite cool and rained a lot. Sunday 4th was Bailey's birthday, he woke up in the caravan to his presents of a Crusty Demons scooter, a Thomas the Tank wooden train set, a cars leap pad book and a new helment. The nights were always the best, drinking by the camp fire under the tarp the boys had put up to protect us from the rain. Monday was the best day. It went from one extreme to the other, cold and rain the previous days to beautifully warm and sunny on the Monday. This was the only day we got the boat out. Jaeda go up on the kneeboard for the first time and even had a go at skiing. She was doing really well and got up for a short time but fell off. She tried a couple more times but had had enough so gave up. She did really well and it was great that she wanted to give it a go. I bet at Christmas time she'll get up. I didn't ski cause the water was too cold and I didn't think with my illness that it would be a good idea. Again photos will be shared later.

Nearly finished

Saturday 10th November was Steve and Mel's engagement party. The atmostphere was great. A lot of people filled the hall and everyone was having a great time. Lots and lots of drinking was being done as was the dancing. The kids came with us but went home with Adrian's parents to sleep at their house at around 11pm. We stayed on and got a maxi taxi home at about 2am. Marty and Julie and Scott stayed at our house. Scott was going to go home; Tania had stayed home, she was really really sick. but Scott decided to crash cause he was in no state to get himself the rest of the way home. The next morning Adrian cooked bacon and eggs for himself only because everyone else was too sick to stomach them. Adrian was the smart one and went on to water at about midnight. The rest of us should've but didn't. I spent the rest of the day Sunday on the couch while Adrian went and picked up the kids from his parents and took them to the beach.

I'm going to stop there. I have a wedding and Lukes Christening to share (or visit Laura's blog for the christening) but I'll do that later. It was only Saturday night and Sunday and I'll get the photos off the camera first. Looking forward to an alcohol free weekend this weekend. I need to detox my liver and finally have a Sunday that's not written off. But things are starting to settle down now so hope to be back to updating more regularly. Hope to also get back to scrapping and having some more layouts to share.

If you got this far, thanks for perservering. Hope your cup of coffee made it to the end with you.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Thanks Jodie for the tip

I was in at Artypants yesterday and Jodie told me she saw my "Rookie" layout on the multi photos blog. Check it out here, just scroll down a bit.

I know I haven't updated my blog for ages but I will soon. My computer has crashed so I can't access any of my photos atm. When it's all sorted I'll be back to update you all with lots of news and layouts. Life has got in the way, so I haven't been doing any scrapping for about a month but I have heaps of layouts I did for Alison Ellis for Paperific that I would still like to share.

BBS I hope.