01.31.08
First time
Gosh this week before the school year starts back has been lovely and quiet for me. I feel like I am on a much needed break!
Mr 6 is in Christchurch, staying with various members of my family. Time to reconnect with the cousins, the aunt and uncle, Pop and Nana. He flew down on his own on Tuesday morning. He had been a little bit nervous in the days leading up to the flight: asking why I couldn’t go with him on the plane. But Hubby and I kept reassuring him that he would be taken care of and to think of all the cussie fun to be had at teh other end. Pretty sure that finalised the deal in his mind! 
In the end, Pacific Blue staff were lovely. Very reassuring at check-in and after getting through security, they swiftly checked the boarding details and whisked him away. I had to call out “Bye…!” to him before he disappeared through the gate door. He turned and gave the biggest grin, a quick wave – and a distracted “Bye Mum” in return. he was ready. (Where was my camera??!!!!)
Then my little sis at the other end kindly took some pics for me at the other end:
Quite the seasoned traveller you would think!
And so we are a family of 3 this week and Mr 3 gets to enjoy the attention that an only child might be used to receiving. He’s been so good. Misses Big Brother like mad. But he started morning kindy on Monday. He’s been trying to get that straight in his head. He knows that when you turn 4, you go to morning kindy. But he’s not 4 till March so, what?! The early start into the session is thanks to what is currently happening to the rolls.
But after the first week, he has settled in really well. Missing his buddies that are still behind in afternoon kindy, but hopefully they will be there in good time and new friends are to be made. I’m not quite so sure that I’m used to the difference yet. Afternoon kindy only has 20 on the roll and morning has 40. The noise generated by the families at pick-up time is massive. The teachers have already circulated a notice requesting some lessening of the chat volume. I for one am hoping the message sinks in!
In the meantime, I’m trying to adapt to having so much apparent time on my hands. I have a feeling it means I will actually need to do some housework. Hmmmmm!
01.24.08
Circle Journal # 3: The SBO One
I’m about to embark on my 3rd Circle Journal. Yes, I’m now involved in two concurrently! This one is for Scrapbook Outlet – another forum that I frequent.
This is my own page for my journal. I decided on the theme of “Happiness”. Who doesn’t need more of that? I have to admit to having real trouble pinning down what I wanted people to contribute to. And once having made my mind up, finding the album. I normally pick up a cheap one from the red shed because it is a good size for postage and allows enough room for everyone to get creative. There were none to be found this particular time.
Uh-oh. Thankfully one of the LSSs (ok, that looks weird… but I’m leaving it like that) has decided to have a sale. I got this neat little tool kit that lets me punch my way through chipboard…. so I made my own album this time. And at $20 (that’s with the 50% off) was WAY cheaper than the “Bind-it-all” I have been coveting. Ok, so I make a little lot of noise. Sure works out some aggression though! LOL.
Having sorted out the album, I now needed to actually create the look and feel. Not to mention my own page. So it is with a huge sigh of relief that I noticed Trina has been putting up some really cool sketches lately. So I used this one. Thanks heaps Trina!
So, having had since the beginning of November I think to get this organised, I am pleased to say it will be leaving on the deadline date. Thank goodness. Look out for it some time next week Beverley!
Right…. on to the boys dinner. I knew there was something else I should be doing this very second!
01.22.08
Quilt
Yep – this is the finished product. I’m thrilled with how it turned out. Both in terms of speed… it literally was just one week from the first snip to the last stich on the binding, and in how nice it looks.
Sorry the photo is not quite what I hoped… it’s so bright here I put it in the shade and probably should have used a filler flash or something. I’m telling you… girl in need of photography lessons here!!
Ok, back the quilt. I took a year long course through 2006 and have completed the Queen Sized quilt top I undertook for it. I was mad: everyone else was working on much smaller projects. So it’s taking me a while to do the back for that. Plus I seem to use the time I could be sewing on some other minor (Haha!) obsession of mine. What that all equates to is, this little baby is my first ever finished project! Woohoo! Now, for all you experienced quilters out there, you’ll spot the mistakes a mile off! Maybe you could give me some tips on getting the hand quilting nice and even. I limited the hand quilting to the around the tree and the interior shapes. I’m still quite pleased with the end result. OK – I’m sure I’ve said that enough in this post! Ha!!
Anyway, I had so much fun doing this, I thought I might go a bit American on us all. I reckon I might be able to do something for Easter, Winter, Summer, Spring, Autumn, halloween…. yep… a wall hanging for all seasons! What do you think??!
01.20.08
Happy As
I love how this turned out – used the sketch challenge issued by Megan at Scrapbook Essentials. I pared it down a little and took just the elements I wanted. Note I changed the circles for stars.
Partly because I realised that paper was what I wanted to use – and partly because Mr 3 really was a wee star at starting his kindy grade, “Clam”, lessons without mum in the pool with him. It was great to have the sketch kick start me into getting this page done.
I also really liked how I’ve used a bunch of different patterned papers across manufacturers. Love being able to choose and mix up the looks. It doesn’t always work the way I envision it, but hey, it’s me.
I ‘m finding scrapping a bit of hard work right now. Not because I don’t want to do it but because of some background stuff that means I’m struggling with a few things going on. Scrapping is something that has alway brought me a lot of joy and despite finding it hard to get settled and into it, I’m being encouraged to continue to try. I certainly still get some joy from the finished product so it’s worth the effort of setting up and having to clean up afterwards. Between that and some very good friends, I can count some blessings.
01.15.08
Sally’s in town
We only found out that Sally Carrera – yes, of “Cars” fame – was in town. A quick 2 day stopover in her tour around the country. We had until 4 pm today to pop in and say hi.
Sally happens to be Mr 3’s favourite character from the movie, while Mr 6 prefers Lightning McQueen himself. Trying to explain that it would only be Sally there because she is a Porsche – and McQueen is… well… red – was interesting. Thankfully, by the time we pulled up outside the Porsche dealership, Mr 6 was suitably interested. That might be due to the fact we’d picked up the C-man on the way into the city and HE was definitely keen. Phew!
We owe a thanks to our friend Brian who happened to mention it to us this morning – and meant we could do something this afternoon. While the rest of the country is basking in glorious sunshine, we’ve got the joys of warm, muggy, cloudy, and drizzly days. Not overly inspired to do a run to the park and play in those conditions. I know: I’m a hopeless case!
Can you see that Little Bear got in on the action as well? He liked the place so much, he almost ended up as an employee there. Luckily, we realised that he had remained behind and were able to persuade him to return home with us and thereby ensuring no labour laws were broken. Phew! Definitely a close call!
I did have a wee chuckle with a friend who also happened to show up while we were there… I bet it’s the first time that the dealership has had that many children and mothers set foot inside since it was built! Not too many salesmen lurking either…. I wonder why?!
01.11.08
Re-Discovering Fiskars
I often take a look at Fiskars blog after getting prompted by Trina. But today I finally added it to my blogroll. They’ve got some seriously yummy sketches that take my fancy – and as for the papers they are releasing under the Cloud 9 name…. wow! I think I saw the date of 21 Jan that they will be launched in Warehouse Stationery. Cool!
And on scrolling down a bit, I noticed one of Trina’s posts with this very intriguing looking tool. Turns out to be a craft knife! And for those that love to cut out – this might be what you need for that extra bit of control!
Death at a Funeral
I had no plans to see Death at a Funeral – it just didn’t strike me as my kind of movie. Despite having Matthew Macfadyen in it. However, a girlfriend decided it was the movie we should see last night.
Having left the hubbies with the children, we took off to get a chocolate fix before the movie. It might have been the result of that chocolate fix, but I don’t think I have laughed so much or so loudly in a movie theatre for a very long time! Definitely a lot of that low-key, farcical brit humour. There was one scene in particular which I could almost “smell” the goings on…. if you see the movie you will know what I’m on about…… if you don’t well, let’s just say I have no intention of making you spit your coffee all over your keyboard!
I don’t think I liked Matthew in the straight laced, uptight role…. maybe he was a bit wooden? And despite the hoots of laughter going through the entire audience, I’m still not sure it was my kind of movie. It was, however, a much needed piece of light relief – and did definitely have some seriously hilarious moments. Gotta enjoy something that almost splits your sides, right?
A three-and-a-half-star-from-me-job.
01.10.08
Di’s Sketch #2 Jan 08
This is the first card I’ve made for Di’s sketch team this year. It’s good to get back into the swing of things.
I quite liked using this week’s sketch – nice and simple but enough room to jazz it up a bit. I double stamped the swirl to give it a bit more fullness – and I reckon the resulting slightly messy look of the stamp contrasts nicely with the more structured lines of the paper. What I also liked about the end result is that I have no idea who will end up with it so the fact the colour scheme is neither too masculine or femine is good.
I have a tin that I have been meaning to decorate for a while. Hopefully by the end of the month it will be done. Inside the tin I will have monthly dividers. These dividers will list all the birthdays coming for the month. And the plan is to have birthday cards being made ahead of time so I can pull them out of the tin as needed. I know 
That almost sounds organised doesn’t it?!
On the quilt front, I have finished all the hand applique of the christmas tree design. I need to work out how to apply some ribbon to some presents and machine stitch the border on. I have no plans to hand sew the border onto the background…. I think nice, straight lines look much nicer when talking about borders. And my hand stitching wouldn’t have a clue what that means. I might however give the actual quilting a go by hand. We’ll see. I bought a thimble for my finger…. the poor tip of the middle finger is now bruised and sore thanks to the hand stitching completed so far. Who knew that I could hand stitch to the point of pain?!
Something I learned too while gathering the embellishment items for this quilting project. Spotlight is such a pain. Yep: that’s my lesson. Have you ever gone into that store thinking that because it sells pretty much everything that you can think of craft-wise, you’ll be sure to find what you need? I don’t know HOW many times I have fallen under the spell of the Spotlight promise. This time it was the buttons that drove me bonkers. I knew they had buttons, and from memory they’d had a reasonable enough selection. So off me and the Mr’s went in the rain and headed down the motorway to the store nearest us. The aisles as always looked like any one of my rooms at home (ie: a tip!) and finally I found where they kept the buttons. Only to find a much smaller and nothing like the promise of selection. I do not understand why I am so surprised at this result each and every time I visit. I do know the time between visits is getting longer and longer. 
So anyway, if you check out this week’s sketch and use it to make a card, be sure to come back and let me know so I can take a look. 
01.09.08
Trust these faces?
Of course you would! But then you haven’t heard the scrapping that’s been going on lately. And I don’t mean my kind of scrapping: that involving scissors and glue and paper and photos and nice sentiments and……
No. I mean the variety that has one or other of these sweet little faces yelling and screaming and kicking and crying and running to mama and and and … you get the picture!
I have just been looking through the photos that I took over the holiday period. Do you know, I’m not sure I was there! I mean, there is not ONE single photo of me! Not by design either: I’ve become resigned to the fact that I need to be in photos. So it came as a shock to me to discover in amongst all that christmas joy, I’m not there. Seems I was the only one that picked up the camera on holiday.
Oh: and “Happy Birthday!” to a certain Miss M that turned 5 today…. my “angels” will be around soon to deliver something to you. I promise your mum it won’t be their “lovely” selves!
01.07.08
Welcome Cooldown
It’s raining here today. And I can’t believe I’m actually even thinking it – but I am! I’m actually glad for it today! It’s been so hot of late…. while we were away in the Coromandel we got fantastic hot, sunny weather all week and missed the previous stormy weather event down this way. So for us, the sun and the heat was starting to get a bit on the relentless side.
Hubby has also gone back to work today, so me and the Mr’s are definitely in take-it-easy mode. I’ve got plans to get to Spotlight at some point…. I’ve started on a small quilting project and I need some buttons and bits to finish it.
I started the project as I couldn’t stand the fact that I just wasn’t creating anything at the moment. I am wanting to get into some scrapping projects but whether it’s a block or just lack of ….something!… I don’t know. So I thought I would turn my attention to something else crafty in the hopes of kick starting the mojo. It’s come together so very quickly I am thrilled with it. It was a kit I picked up from a quilting shop in Toowoomba when I was there last year. It’s a christmas wall-hanging – I probably thought at the time I would do it in time before 07’s Christmas – and then promptly forgot about it when I got it unpacked and put away after the trip. I was so pleased to discover it again on Friday night – along with some of the fat quarters I bought at the same time because they were cute. Turns out they are perfect for the kit itself! I’m now two thirds of the way finished the quilt top – and it’s all been hand stitched so far! I know!!!! I never would have thought I would have gotten the bug for hand applique so much. It’s been perfect for doing something while watching summertime TV in the evenings. I have discovered though that I will need to pick up a thimble: I have one quite sore finger tip now from pushing the needle!
The project has been so quick and much easier than I was anticipating that I had the thought it might a good gift for the right couple of people. So who knows, I might be doing a few more of these over the next few weeks!
