8 days!

What have I done in 8 days? Cleaned the house, made homemade muesli bars, ate same muesli bars, finished a canvas, built a bed, doing some swaps, washing, played cards, scrapped, paddled, ACTSA, oh gosh and lots of other things in between!

With all three children at school this year, I have decided that I am going to bake. I enjoy baking, I hate cooking. I want to make things for their lunchboxes that aren't full of preservatives and colours. So last week we experimented with muesli bars and omgosh they were delicious! Mary didn't like the sultanas in them so I promised I'd make some with choc chips. Each time she would have a piece, she would take a little tupperware container and return it with the sucked sultanas, lol. She had muesli for breakfast this morning and picked all the sultanas out before we poured the milk in. I think I might have to make her some sans sultanas!

Billy turned 8 on the 16th January. I am the mother of an eight year old, how did that happen?! I can clearly remember the day I found out I was pregnant with him, I had suspected for a while as we were trying, lol. I had previously had a miscarriage at 13 weeks, so we were desperately trying! I finally did a home pregnancy test on Mother's Day 1998, it was strong and I took the day to be a good omen :) Anyway, his birthday brings me to the building of the bed, as we finally caved and bought him a bunkbed with a desk underneath. It's given him so much more room and I've been quite surprised that he is sleeping so well in it.

I'm in a Collections Tile swap that Tammy is hosting and I'm doing a couple of squares each night which has been very enjoyable.

I got a card accepted by Papercrafts for publishing in Aug/Sept.

I finished my canvas for Buzz & Bloom, you can see the full pics on the B&B Blog.

We celebrated Australia Day by going to the Cotter Dam, eating sausage sandwiches and rhubarb icecream. We then drove to a quieter spot to have a paddle in the river. I paddled, the kids swap, we skimmed rocks, I got some great photos, not yet developed yet, lol.

Then I went to ACTSA on Saturday which is always fun.
I have booked into Kiwiscraps in April! Gabbie is coming up with me, I can't wait. It will be a fun weekend, I am sure.
Today we picked up school uniforms ready for next week and my clothes line is now a sea of black and red. I'm also in the middle of completing the scrap pages for last year's school photos!
February kits will be onsite later this week.
Oh and the crowns/hats ATC swap is going well, they are arriving in trickles and looking AMAZING!

Where does our inspiration come from?

From the deep, dark recesses of our minds we can sometimes pull something from there that we didn't know existed in our memory.

I remember reading issue 33 of Scrapbook Creations many months ago and absolutely loving the Stitching Scraps article by Mel Nunn. Well that mag has sat on my shelf since the month it came out. I got an email from Mel on Friday saying she loved my layout (below) and had a giggle, well lo and behold, look what I pulled from the back of my mind! Here is Mel's layout that was in that article. Now I've seen hers, I wish I'd done mine on Kraft too!

Still struggling with the heat here, not much creating going on. I did start an art canvas for Buzz & Bloom last night which is way out of my comfort zone so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

I started reading Voyager by Diana Gabaldon too. I'm about halfway there. One good thing about her books is that they are so long that it takes me at least a few days to read them. I do hate reading a good book in 1-2 days, it feels over all too quickly. I get really obsessed with books that I read and I'm even thinking in Jamie's Scottish accent, lol, oh boy that is a sad confession!

Okay I'm off to add some flowers to the hills in my canvas....

I'm melting!

Our aircon decided to stop working when we got back from our holidays and when we were wearing jumpers on Christmas Day we are now sweltering in 40 degree Celsius (104F) heat! We have a solid brick wall facing west which gets the full heat of the afternoon sun. Whoever did the renovations here has a lot to answer for!

So the heat is stifling our school holidays a bit. We are too hot and cranky to do much inside and we can't go out everyday as it costs a small fortune!

Okay now I have that off my chest, lol.....

The ATC swap is going to be amazing! I have 14 signups so far, from here on my blog and from Time2Stamp. You can get my postal address from here if you need it.

Sign ups: 1. Me 2. Flea 3. Mojo 4. Lavandula 5. KristyC * 6. MargaretW* 7. Sephi - Received thank you 8. JoH* 9. Tania* 10. LindaB 11. Sarah* 12. Monique* 13. Kaeren 14. JoK*

If you want some stamps that may fit the theme, visit here, lol. We now have mounted and unmounteds, so make sure you click on both sections. I love these stamps!

I got my Buzz & Bloom DT package this week too, lots of fabulous chipboard and some great new alphabet stamps. Check out the new B&B blog, a couple of the girls have already uploaded artwork. I'm still in the thinking mode, but I did have a peaceful shower this morning where I came up with an idea, now I just have to put it into action!

I was also put to the challenge the other day on Scrapbooking Top 50 . I was challenged to create a layout using black handstitching, 3 brands of patterned paper and orange. This is what I came up with. I didn't have any black dmc thread so I machine stitched instead, but I did handsew the buttons on, lol. The pp is American Crafts, SEI and the notepad looking paper is actually Urban Rockstar from Urban Lily. This little man turned 8 years old on Tuesday. We made a lovely chocolate chunk mud cake which was delicious. He'll have a 'friends' party when he gets back to school, which is OMGosh in two weeks! It really does fly by....

Woohoo Fancy Pants!

I love Fancy Pants products, we've had a few Lime Tart kits with FP papers and products and I think they are gorgeous. But check this out, how cool is this?! Mel, our own Lime Tart, has received an honourable mention in the FP design team search. Congratulations to Shirley too, well done! Shirley also did a guest designer spot for Lime Tart back in July 2006.

Struggling with the heat here, we hit 38 degrees yesterday I think, and our aircon is on the blink. We went to the movies last night to escape from the heat and I was freezing! We went to see Flushed Away and it was quite funny. The kids loved it, so did the big male kid in our family ;)

Kiwiscraps have released their class schedule for their April Crafting Connection. I want to go, I think I'll go, will have to see....

Time for an ATC swap

Who would like to join me?

The theme this time around is crowns/hats/headwear, interpret how you like.

Due date is 23rd February in my letterbox.
Make 9 ATCs, get 9 back, including your own. This is the perfect amount to fit in an ATC sleeve.
The only rule on ATCs is they must be 2.5inches x 3.5 inches.

Who would like to join in?

I'm back!

We went away for a week after Christmas and it has taken me this long to catch up on everything, actually I still don't think that I am caught up on the washing, lol.


So first up as I go through my digital pics:

I got this idea from Jaki's blog. How cute are they? Little marshmallows topped with melted chocolate, jaffas and mint leaves. We made these the week before Christmas to take to a party.


This was the delicious entree that hubby made for Christmas day. Lobster tail in lime butter sauce with something else. Yum! I forgot to take photos of the rest of the meal, lol.

So Boxing Day we took off to Murramarang Resort where we had a beachfront unit. It was our tenth wedding anniversary so we lashed out, lol. The kids had a ball, we swam, built sandcastles, ate, swam, bushwalked, went shopping, ate, read books, played cardgames, I got sunburnt.

I got The Time Traveler's Wife as an early Christmas present and finished it before Christmas so had to go out and buy another book for the holiday. I got Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon and finished it very quickly so had to grab the second one while we were still there! It was by sheer coincidence that both The Time Traveler's Wife and Cross Stitch were both on time travel, love and girls called Clare/Claire.

Since we've been back it's been work, work, work, and coping with three children on holidays who just want to raid my craft cupboard!

The January kits are up and selling very quickly, not many of them left. We've also added some fantastic Catslife Press stamps. Plus today we've uploaded some little kits with some fabulous papers in them. I just had to have these papers and they are perfect for those will little boys, or big boys. There's also a girly kit too. Lots of fun! Buy them now, or order them and we can pop them in with your next subscription parcel. These kits are very limited!

Oh and Buzz & Bloom have announced their new design team for 2007. I am very excited to say that I was asked to stay on for 2007 and I'm looking forward to lots of new challenges :)

I'm sure I have forgotten something but plenty of time for catching up....