08.31.08
Who’s the boss??
I am!
Tonight over at Scrapbook by Design, I volunteered to be this week’s Boss. I’m quite looking forward to it as I have a layout which I think will be fun – and is definitely a little bit out of my comfort zone in terms of distressing and other stuff. But when I looked at it, I realised it wasn’t that hard and so the idea for this week was born.
If you want to join in the fun and mayhem, come and join the rest of us tonight in the chat room at 8pm.
See you there – bring the chocolate supplies!
08.29.08
Spotlight, oh how I love thee
Ok, so Beverley has had me in cupcake envy since she introduced her cupcake stand of the century. I’ve been coveting it from afar for quite some time.
Then last week, my girlfriend Donna had several of us around for a Stampin Up evening. All fun and good, except, what did I spy?? Nothing as grand as Beverley’s one, but gorgeous and cute all the same. No picture folks, but you will have to trust me on the fact I was in a near faint when I spied it on her supper table. 3 tiers, same white wire look, but lower and a little more low-key. Perfect, really, for me.
“Where did you get that?” was the question I just had to ask. “Oh, that? In Spotlight. I got it a few months back.”
And she never told me????? Some friend! Actually, she probably was being a good friend because she probably knew I’d spent the spare grocery money on scrapbooking goods that week.
Today, I was going to pop into Spotlight in Kaiwhara. I was there to pick up a thermos that was on special that looked perfect for Mr 7 to take his much loved noodles to school and actually still have them warm to eat at lunchtime. Possibly even to take a warm soup to school. When I can trust him with such treats – trust him not to spill the contents through his bag.
I was at the checkout, Mr 4 having dropped the thermos several times. It’s great that they are made out of plastic these days and not glass, eh? Then a thought whizzed through my brain.
I’m in Spotlight. Right near the kitchen section. Where those cupcake stands were found a few months back. OMGosh!! A quick text assured me I was in the right area but looking was not finding them. So I asked a staff member. Who had to ask at least two other members of staff. Because no-one had any idea.
Suddenly, a box must have moved among the glasses. It caught my eye. I needed to take a closer look. Indeed, it said cupcake on the side. Cupcake stand even. But it was ugly – nasty silver and all that. I was just about to give up, then two shelves over and down a bit was a rather plain box. With a picture that look vaguely familiar. OMGoodness!!!
It came home with me.
Happy? Very!
And I see it only has 3 tiers to fill. Awesome. So, ladies…… I need your favourite cupcake and / or icing (frosting) recipes. Feel free to leave me these in teh comments…. the family will be taste testing 
ETA: there’s a reason the I’ve blurred the photo… 
08.27.08
It’s Wednesday again
And that usually means time for a few woohooots in Janine style.
Mr 4 is back to kindy today – quite ready for it. Both of us.
I kept him at home yesterday as well, more as a chance to rest than because he was still ill. He was quite happily occupying himself with his craft goodies. He’s so into making cards right now. We get all sorts of meticulous creations. He loves to cut things into really, really tiny and virtually perfect shapes. I think he’s a linear boy: loves things in symmetry and in order. He had particular fun yesterday with a glitter technique. He would run a line of double sided tape (in a particularly straight line I might add!) then tip the glitter all over it. We then tap off the excess on to a scrap piece of paper (just like mum does) and get mum to help tip that lot into the jar again. Stickers and shapes were then added – just so, and in perfect symmetry and his name was written a few times in the right spaces. The end result was given to Dad to take to work this morning.
Shift forward about 15 or so hours to this morning.
Mr 4 would like to do another card. Not before kindy he is told – but this is ignored and card making begins while I am in the shower. Mr 4 wants to show Mr 7 his great new technique.
Mr 7 is more………….. “free-style” with his crafting. Fast. Quick. Cut it there, slap it down kinda crafting.
My shower is interrupted. There is glitter ALL over the lounge floor. “I’m sorry I got the crafting box out Mum” I get from a remorseful Mr 4. I’ve just finished vacuuming a 3rd time. There is STILL some glitter in the carpet.
The woohooo in all this??
I love the fact the Mr’s love to craft as much as I do.
08.25.08
On a quiet Monday morning
I’m at home this morning and about to crack open those pesky text books and notes. But before I do {…I swear, I STILL hold the title of Procrastination Queen!!} I’m savouring a cup of Earl Grey, and taking time to snuggle a certain Mr 4. He’s home with me today instead of being at kindy because he has got a Bug of some kind. Not sure what it is… It started out looking like a cold last week, and over the weekend it decided to trouble us with spikey temperatures. I was hoping this morning that all would be well, but he was up a couple of times all hot and flushed again. Plus his eyes are streaming with that stinging look that makes your own eyes water. Hmmmm. Best to keep the bugs to ourselves I think.
And it means I get to muck around that bit longer. Shhhhhh!!
Ok, so, weekend round-up, because it was a busy one.
- Mr7 played a real game of rugby at long last. Me and my gumboots missed it because there was an activity clash. Next week is the last week of the season.
Last week, forms were circulated for Best Player and Most Improved Player. We weren’t allowed to vote for our own kids – which does make a lot of sense – but I wanted to! I think Mr7 has made great improvement – here’s hoping the other mums and dads thinks so too. 
- Two parties for Mr4 and I to attend. The first was meant to be a family affair but due to the rugby, it was a half and half split of representation. The second one was in the afternoon and was a Miss4 from preschool. Her dad is the best party-gamer! He had them all doing mini-olympics: complete with lanes marked on the grass. Very cool. Luckily the bug/cold thing wasn’t so big a deal that day so we got to partake.
- While Mr4 and I were at the second party, Hubby and Mr7 went Kayaking. A first fairly big trip for Mr7 – from Days Bay to Eastbourne and back. Not bad for a kid that loved the idea but was too nervous to actually do it this time last year.
- I ignored the increasing level of housework chaos – and will be paying for that today…..
- Keryn had her 1st Anniversary of demonstrating for SU and celebrated by having a special demo. All good fun. Especially loved the afternoon tea that was carefully constructed to match the featured stamp set for the demo – “Tart and Tangy”. We had orange slices, cherries and strawberries. And those strawberries were delicious!! Great to see Keryn thriving in her role
- I remembered the Scrapbook by Design Scrappy Boss in time to join in. Liz (aka ScrapDizzy) was the Boss this week and at first I struggled to get started. Mainly because I was mucking around with the colours to begin with. And when I got into it, I wasn’t sure I was going to like the result – because I had a weird sort of colour scheme going on! I mean; red, yellow, orange, brown and green?? But this morning I saw it, and decided it worked and really just needed the title to be added. Et voila:
08.20.08
Woooohooooot
Oh man! I have such a big thing to yell “wooohoooo” about today!
Checking bloglines, checked out Trina’s post today, reading about her chickens laying eggs and her kids very cute stuff, reading the winner of her Stamping Up random draw….. was ME!!!
I was totally thrilled. Because I have been wanting that set of stamps but wasn’t sure if I was going to make the budget stretch in time before the end date of the promotion. Seriously thrilled…. Thank you, thank you, thank you Trina!!
Ummm….. anyone tell I’m a tad excited about this piece of luck??
Woohoo-ing too because today is really lovely. The sun is out and it feels like a spring day. Please don’t let the nasty grey cloud over that way move!
Wooohoo-ing again because you’ve all been so kind about the last couple of layouts. I wish I had time to thank you all personally but I’m limiting the old PC time to very small amounts. So thank you to all of you for leaving your comments. I really do appreciate them.
08.19.08
Olympic Warm-up
Haha! Did I have you fooled even just a bit with that title? It’s not about physical sport at all – although, perhaps I should really go for a walk today.
SketchBook is getting in the groove of all things Olympian and having a bit of a scrapping contest. All participants had to choose a country to represent and sign-up by today. Now, normally I don’t enter these things because A) there are waaaaay too many talented ladies out there for me to even “compete” and B) the whole time commitment thing – I usually can’t be sure I can meet the deadlines because ….yes, that’s right: “study first”. I so cannot wait til 22 October!
However, this contest is one where we are being encouraged to take part in as and when we can. Not too sure therefore if I can take part in every challenge, but, well, maybe some of them. So there was a warm up that needed to be in by midnight last night. I decided yesterday morning I might as well have a go and signed up as Luxembourg. Knowing the challenge was to do a layout in the colours of the chosen countries flag and only those colours, I wanted to be kind to myself and knew that I had plenty of red, white and blue to work with. At 7.30 I was hunting for a photo of myself to work with – yes, that was the other part of the challenge. There deliberately is not too many pics of me waiting to be used – but thanks to Kris who took some photos on teh fly while we were at scrapcamp a few months back, I found a couple.
So the flag I had to work with:
And no, I have not got this confused with Netherlands! Their flags are virtually identical, and while I lived over there, I always thought that the similarity was borne from the fact the Grand Duke was of the House of Orange – the same as the ruling house of Netherlands. Well, that turns out to be a coincidence. Interesting. The blue here is a different shade of blue to the Dutch flag and Luxembourg uses a ratio of 3:5 or 1:2, meaning their flag is longer than that of their Dutch cousins. The colours for the Luxembourg flag were derived from the country’s coat of arms, and the flag was first used during the Belgian revolt in 1830, although it was only in 1972 that they brought in legislation regulating their flag.
Anyway, that’s enough history for the moment. Here is the layout I did for the warm-up:
Actually, I’m glad to have done this challenge. As I said, it was at 7.30pm last night that I figured out what I was going to use and how. The layout was uploaded by about 10.30. All in all, a pretty quick layout! But the thing that pleases me most is how I managed to document the connection to my nana. I’ve enjoyed all sorts of crafts for a while now, and when I thought about it, it was my nana that introduced me to things like knitting and cross-stitch about 30 odd years ago. It was something I didn’t think of much back then, I got bored with it all and only restarted doing something crafty in late High School. Now, I can’t live with not doing something! And I’ve added a fair few other handcrafts into my repertoire! Who knew my nana was teaching me all those years ago something that would become so satisfying?
08.18.08
Watching the olympics should be an event in itself….
Had a busy weekend not doing very much. There’s a bit of overtiredness creeping in among us all and the weekend is definitely a good time to chill out and recharge. I have a funny feeling it has something to do with that major sporting thingy on at the moment!
Super Saturday lived up to its name don’t you think? At one point, while watching the rowing, it seemed like all I could do was help pull on those oars as well. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one pulling on the Evers-Swindell’s: 1/100th of a second??! Yep, they definitely had 4 million kiwis helping them out on that last stroke!
I heard this morning someone make a comment about if you cut Mahe Drysdale’s bronze medal open, you would find it was solid gold on the inside. I quite liked that thought – it definitely sums up the amount of effort he put into that race.
Anyway, I decided that on Sunday evening, rather than watching numbly the volleyball or some other sport that wasn’t actually that interesting to me, I would finally take part in “The Bossy Scrapper” over at Scrapbooks by Design. I always forget that it’s on Sunday night, and when I remember, it’s been too late. I have been printing off the instructions though, so I have a couple of pages to be done in my study-reward time
Last night Carol was the boss. She had lovely instructions to follow – although I went with two 6×4 photos rather than the recommended 7×8 pic. I’m glad because these photos were fun to use. The scan hasn’t come out so well (I see in the scan that somehow the spots of the paper behind the photos have come through the photos ), but well, life’s like that. Mr 7 loves it and it’ll be on display until the next finished one is ready to be popped up in its place.
It was a fun couple of hours and for the first time, I actually created while taking part in the fun chat! Those girls are definitely on the slightly crazy side of life!! I look forward to seeing the rest of the layouts being loaded. And I’ll be taking part again this weekend. If I’ve been good with the study that is
…..Speaking of which. Guess what I need to pop my head into now…. yes, some litigation paper reading. Righto….
08.13.08
Woohooot Wednesday
It’s that time of week already – again! – and I realised I got so sick of waiting for dial-up that I haven’t posted for the best part of that week. And what better way to get back into the swing of things (seeing as the new bill-month at Telecom FINALLY came around!) than to join in a quick Wooo Hooot round up of things. As always, thanks for Janine for kick-starting us with the positive stuff.
- I have broadband again… YAY!!! Hubby: you need to check with me before downloading bandwith hungry items…. OK?!!
- Getting the chance to go over to Janine’s and meet some crafty pals at her Stampin Up party. Getting to meet the lovely Sarah in person having admired the cards she makes for a wee while now. You can see the card we made as the make and take here. I loved learning the “thumping” technique and how to make a bow using scraps of ribbon…. so cool!
- Getting another assignement in to the Open Poly. And speaking to my tutor today. She was very lovely – calling me in response to a message I had sent her. She wanted to let me know that I was still on track to complete the course and that a couple of setbacks I’ve had would not stop me from completing. The total reassurance and support she has given me have put in an extra layer of confidence that I am going to get through the material in time. Wooohooo!
- Taking just a bit of time to put together a quick page for Mr 4’s kid’s album…. the one started way back in March a la Nic Howard.
- Having broadband back so that I can load a couple of extra layouts done a couple of weeks ago now at the crop organised by Joh.
This layout I’m using to cover my bases at the SketchBook NZ BOM prompts – one of them this month was to do a page regarding your favourite food. Well, this great place in Wellington (which is apparently just 8 weeks into its life) has got the best in the current cupcake trend. So, it’s my favourite treat place right now. Yum!!
And this layout was the one that I was meant to do for the Number 50 challenge at NZ Dares… but wasn’t able to do it in the time frame. Beverley kindly helped notch it up a level by giving me the fantastic background paper – thanks Beverley! And Janine let me play with her glimmermist which I used on my title… awesome stuff ( think I need some of my own….) There’s more journalling on that tag that you can pull out from the back.
- Sunday was truly gorgeous – it was sunny for a start. We took the Mr’s down to a local big park and discovered they have installed a bike park. It’s a road-marked “road way” complete with give ways, roundabouts, train crossing and speed bumps. I think every kid with wheels was down there enjoying it! The Mr’s certainly did – so I am pleased that we are finally getting a tow-bar put on the car next month and will be getting a bike rack. Yep, the bikes are now too big to all go in the back of the car.
- And finally, I got to have coffee this morning with a friend that I haven’t seen in a while. What could be better than spending time with a good friend?
08.06.08
A bit of fun
I’m still on dial-up…. I really am getting twitchy waiting for the new bill-month to get here.
Today was so sunny, I can barely concentrate on my work in front of me. I’m really not sure how much of it sank in, so I decided that I should just enjoy today by hanging out. Got some washing folded, poked around (albeit very, v.e.r.y. slowly) on a few new websites, got some washing hung out on the line, picked Mr 4 up from kindy. Saw the astonishingly large collection of pictures he and kindy-girlfriend spent the last two mornings producing for the teachers. Came home and mucked around some more. Hmmmmm, not so productive today. That’s ok…. it’s been so long since we’ve seen the sun, I think it made me loopy.
While mucking around, I came across this site. Remember the Photo a day for a month challenge I did back in February? Well, this blog is doing something similar. Except for 365 days. And with Lego. Cool!! Definitely head over there because the photos are just very, very neat!
I’m not showing it to Mr 7 and his friend, because I just know they will like it way too much.
And they have homework to do.
Like I don’t??!!!
Yesterday I discovered that I will never be able to take Mr 7 anywhere near a toyshop again. Not until Star Wars is well and truly consigned of the “that’s so last year” bin. Which I have a feeling is no time soon. How did I reach the realisation of never going toy shopping again?
When I saw several stores had this in stock:
Yes, indeed. I think I need one of these myself, if only to avoid listening to the inevitable tantrum that is going to come when one of these is spotted. At $60 a piece, it’s not coming home with us anytime soon.
08.04.08
Rain, rain, go away….
or at least go somewhere were you are needed!!
Squelch, squelch is the sound I seem to make anywhere I’m walking these days. And to be honest, it’s usually only from the parked car to the school or kindy and back. Yes indeed…. I am over the rain!! I am, however, thankful that the rain is ALL I am complaining about. All those people without power, homes slipping away from under them…. *shudder*
I thought I needed to actually do a post today. I wanted to show you the cards and layouts I was able to do over the weekend. Because I have been pretty good with the study timetable so I got to go out Friday night to Vicky’s and play with Keryn, Donna and Mandy too. Then on Saturday from after lunch til late, I went to the crop in Otari that Joh kindly organised. Fun!!
However, hubby downloaded some heavy stuff from the band comps earlier, and guess what? Yep, I’m sitting on dial-up. Sigh! It’s just taking way too long to upload the pretty pics.
In other news – that also comes picture-less 
– Mr 7 got “Player of the Day” on Saturday morning. Wooohoooo! The official game was rained off so the two under-7’s teams played each other in the “Sawpit”. Mr 7 got three tries. Awesome!!! When asked how he did them, it was a very cool and calm “oh, I just jinked, then jinked and jinked.” Cool! Mr Henry might have to come and take a look I feel.
And as a side-note about the game on Saturday…. phew! Only got to see the highlights, but was very pleased to see the score on tele-text when I got home. {not so thrilled that it seems I didn’t have the winning lotto ticket on Saturday night… with all those extra prizes, I should have gotten something n’est pas??!}
