ONLY 8 DAYS UNTIL WE GO ON HOLIDAYS - and counting.........................
We are really in need iof this holiday. There seems to have been an extraordinary amount of stress building from all corners at the moment. Oh well, it won't be long and we can get away from it all and relax.
I haven't done anything creative this week - not through not wanting to but simply being too tired to, but Tyler actually did a really nice LO this morning with my help - in between getting the housework done.
Today marks exactly 1 year since we visited Taronga Zoo in Sydney on our holidays last year, and purely by coincidence, she chose this photo to scrap.
She did a great job, I thought.

Not much else to add so I'l go now and try to catch up on everything I've missed out on over the past couple of days.
See you all next week.

Here it is Sunday again and time to update my blog. I've decided to try to make Sunday morning my update time each week. That way I won't fall behind like I did last year.
This week has been a really busy week for all of us and we are counting down the days until our holidays. Rick has been on nights again this week, so that in itself makes it a hard week for everybody, and I've had a few changes to my regular roster so it has been busy for me too.
On Friday, Bryce told us that he has been chosen for the final tryouts for the school indoor cricket team. We are so proud of him because he's never done anything quite like that before, and it'll be the first time representing the school if he is chosen this week. We all have our fingers crossed for him.
I haven't really done much creatively this week. Only completed last weeks card challenge which came from a sketch.

I used papers left over from Tyler's mini album to make this with some little pearls added to finish it off.
Yesterday afternoon, we decided to go for a drive to get out of the house. We went down to Coolangatta to find out where the long term parking facility is where we'll be leaving the car on Easter Sunday morning when we fly to Melbourne. From there, we drove back north along the Gold Coast Highway just taking in the sights and reminiscing from our teenage years when we were both at boarding school on the GC. There are so many 'attractions' that just don't exist anymore. One place I have never been to, but driven over a lot, was Tullebudgera Creek, so we stopped there to get out and stretch our legs. The beach there and the water was just magical - still, clean water with the surf about 1km downstream. I went down to put my feet in the water, and, of course, the kids had to do the same. Needless to say, Bryce went in up to his knees, and Tyler just ACCIDENTALLY happened to get wet right up to the hip line. "It was an accident Mummy, I didn't realize I was that far in". No swimmers, no towel and no dry clothes. When we left there to drive up to Southport, we got her to take her long pants off so that we could wring them out by hand and then secure them in the window to dry while we were driving.

Then we drove all the up to the top end of the "Glitter Strip" where we called into a small Fisherman's Co-Op and bought some fish and chips for an early dinner. We took them down to the Southport Seaway and spread the picnic rug on the ground to have our dinner while watching the boats coming along the waterway.
After dinner we went for a walk along the Southport Sand Pumping Jetty. It is a huge jetty and it was extremely windy and very cool out there. The surf was raging under us and the fishermen were in abundance on the jetty trying to catch that elusive large fish. We didn't see any while we were out there. It was a nice way to walk off dinner before coming back home.
What a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

Here's a Great Give-Away

I've only just recently discovered this Blog. I read it every day because Bev is so inspirational. She is a genius when it comes to card making. She is currently giving away 2 awesome new stamps along with numerous other yummy items. Have a look here:
http://bevscrafts.blogspot.com/2009/03/its-candy-time-for-whiff-of-joy.html
Go on....... have a look, you will be very impressed.

Tyler's Creation

Tyler has been creating too. She loves to want to get in and do her own layouts whenever I sit down to do any scrapping.
This is a layout she did using a few different techniques that she's seen me using. She's even inked right around the edges of the page.

Finally,One For Me

Late last year I discovered the most beautiful, feminine patterned papers so I bought a few sheets in the complete range, along with some of the matching accessories in the range as well. Because it was all about fairies and princesses, I decided to make a mini album specifically for Tyler. Everyone I know kept telling me how easy and how much fun it was to make a mini album, so I decided that is what I was going to do. Well, because it was my first one, it was a big challenge, but it was an on-going project. I finally finished it last week - and here it is. What do you think?


This is on the back of the Princess Tag.

Off The Page

I don't do many OTP's, but this is one I did for another forum, online:

It is a wooden Recipe Box.

Scrapping

As I mentioned last night, I have joined a wonderful new Scrapbooking Forum online with a wonderful group of ladies to talk to and inspire me. They have some great challenges to do each week which I've tried to keep up with. I've even won 2 of them - to my surprise.
Here are the layouts that I have created for each of the challenges that I've tackled so far this year.




and her is a card challenge that I tackled. She doesn't know it yet, but this will be Tyler's birthday card this year.

Crafty Business

And just for my own enjoyment, I have been trying to do a lot of crafting during "my" time.
I have started going back to quilting again once a fortnight and actually starting creating things again. It took a few visits just to get my mojo back, but I actually finished 2 UFO'S last week.
The first is a sewing machine cover, that I've been wanting to make for a couple of years now, but could never find a pattern that I liked that much.









The second thing is a little bag that hangs on the edge of the sewing table, armchair, desk etc and is somewhere to drop all my scraps of material, paper, threads etc. The top bit actually is filled with sand/shellgrit (or rice in my case) and is a pin cushion. The other girls that used shellgrit or sand have found that the tips of their pins are beginning to rust, so I decided to try rice instead.
I'm actually not that happy with this one, so I will be giving it to Tyler to put all her hair elastics and clips in, and I will make another one to match the sewing machine cover.

A land of Contrasts

Haven't we had a contrast of weather conditions this year so far?
Rain, rain and more rain up north and to the north west, with not 1 but 2 floods in Ingham in the space of a few weeks, and then the horrific bushfires that savaged country Victoria. My heart goes out to all the victims of these natural disasters at both ends of this wonderful country. Not to mention the latest natural disaster, Cyclone Hamish that menaced almost the complete coastline of Queensland only last week, resultin the the terrible oil spill from a cargo ship that was caught in the storm. I haven't personally seen them, but most of our beautiful pristine surf beaches just to the north of Brisbane are now covered in the most disgusting black, toxic sludge.
What can you say:
Mother Nature can show her really ugly face when she's at work, but in the long run, it really is for the good. The sand on all the beaches will eventually replace itself with lovely new pristine white sand. The bushland will renew itself, and the image of brand new green growth emerging out of the blackness is a sight to behold. The same goes for the flood ravaged areas. The fresh new green growth will emerge soon too, if it hasn't already begun.
It's amazing, that in times like these that we've experienced, I still am amazed at the amount of compassion that the Australian people show and can come together to help out those less fortunate than ourselves. It brings a tear to my eye everytime I think of this.

WE REALLY DO LIVE IN THE BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD, DON'T WE?

We can't really complain here in Brisbane, because we've missed out on all of these disasters - touch wood. We only had the hot humid weather to complain about.

Summer Time, Summer Time......

As we all know, summer has been a scorcher for all of us. I particularly felt the heat and humidity this year, especially when I was at work.
On the weekends, over a couple of different weeks, I made the most of the hot weather and took the kids down to the Gold Coast for a swim in the surf. This was usually on days when Rick was on night shift and needed to sleep - so I got the kids out of the house. We would leave home really early, like about 7.30am and we'd be on the beach by 8.30 before it got too hot and not too many people on the beach. I could usually find a parking spot close to a patrolled beach that early too. After a couple of hours swimming and surfing, I get them out, we'd rinse off under the shower and have an early picnic lunch before heading home for the afternoon. The best way to spend a Sunday enjoying the great outdoors.
The kids' confidence in the surf is developing really well, although I still don't let them go too far out and I NEVER take my eye off them for a second.


























On other occasions we just went down to the local beach just a block from home, like Australia Day when we launched another christmas present:

Or even to a near-by suburb on the bayside to try out the Council owned Rock Pool:

As Promised................

last night, I am back to update on what we've been up to since I last put anything in here.
Christmas was the first big event and we spent it here at home. Neither of us took any holidays over the Christmas break, so Rick worked right through (12 hr shifts for 10 days) and I had just the Public Holidays off. David, now 22, was down from Julia Creek and spent about 2 weeks with us which was GREAT. He really hasn't been back since moving out west, so we all really enjoyed his company - especially the kids. They loved getting to know their big brother again and he loved spending time with them as well. He offered to stay at home and mind them every day so that I could go to work and not worry about them. From their point of view, there was certainly lots of BIG advantages in having a brother in his 20's come to stay - like having Pizza delivered for lunch on the first day. (We never have Home Delivery Pizza).














Here they are trying on David's Fireman's helmet.




About a week before christmas our neighbors got together with us and we organised a street christmas party on our shared front lawn. We delivered invitations/flyers to all the houses in the street and 11/14 of those houses came. Everybody brought a plate of savouries and something to BBQ. As the day got later and the sun diseappeared we slowly spread out onto the road in the cul-de-sac. It was a great atmosphere and nice to finally meet everyone in the street.

Santa even made a surprise visit and gave lollies out to all the kids.

Christmas Dinner was a small family affair. Because of work committments we decided to have it here at home the weekend before Christmas. Apart from ourselves we had Dad & Shirley, Aat, David, Kirsty & Cheryl and Cheryl's mum for dinner. We ate outside on the back patio and Rick cooked the Roast Pork in the new BBQ that I bought him for christmas. It was a really nice night.It really felt like all of the Christmas pressure had been lifted by the time that christmas eve arrived.The kids had a great christmas and Santa even brought a Wii for them which is a lot of fun for all of us.

On Tuesday 27th January, our baby girly finally started Grade 1. She had an absolute ball last year in Prep, but day 1 of Grade 1 just couldn't come around quickly enough.
Here are Bryce & Tyler together at the front door on on our way to school. It has been a great school holiday, but today finally arrived. I compare this photo to the same one last year and I can really see the changes in them both in the past year.



That's it for now - more tomorrow.

OMG!!!!

Look how long it has been since I posted anything here! I am so ashamed! So much has happened in our lives since my last post.
I have changed Scrapbooking Forums and Tyler has started "Big School" - just to name 2. It is quite late now, so tomorrow I will endeavour to bring you up to date with what's happening with us and I may even upload a few of my recent layouts that I'm quite proud of.