The pressure is on....

To update my blog that is! There is a little friendly encouragement happening with the girls at Scrapbook City to keep our blogs up-to-date! So here it is! An update!! Yay! Well, life is certainly getting busier as we approach the end of the year. Just last week we had Erin in at hospital for a steroid injection into her knee. Luckily she has responded really well. The swelling has gone down amazingly and her knee looks almost the same as the good one. But it is hard to send your little girl off into theatre. They were really good and allowed me in until she went to sleep. She amazed us all with how brave she was through the whole process. Hopefully this will keep the arthritis in check for a while now. Niamh is ready to grade to yellow belt with her Karate and you can't wipe the grin from her face! She is doing well and seems to be committed. She has even said she would like to have her black belt by 10 (she is eight and a half now!). She was absolutely horrified when I suggested it might be better if she was 12 or 13 before she got that far!!! Life has been busy with things for the shop too. Lots of Christmas preparations going on. Things to make, classes to prepare and all that! Good clean fun! Well, there seems to be a problem with uploading images at the moment so I will have to come back and finish that off later. Oh, one last piece of exciting news... My little Liam is toilet training! (OK not that exciting, but for those who know what changing nappies all the time is like, you will understand!!).

Layouts for Paper Crafts Festival

Well, I have finally photographed my layouts from the paper crafts festival! So here they are!




I am so glad we are nearing the end of the school holidays. I am ready for life to go back to routine and give me a few hours a day of quiet! But, I have to say they have flown by pretty quickly. I don't like our chances for slowing things down before Christmas!

Talking of Christmas, my side of the family have chosen not to spend money on gifts (except for the kids) and spend some time together instead and we are now booked in for a long weekend together at Bribie Island in December! I am looking forward to this! It is so nice to not have to think about gifts for more people.

Anyhoo, time to go now. I need my breakfast, how else will I survive my very loud children! Catch you soon.

Paper Crafts Festival

Well, worked yesterday at the paper crafts festival, came home pretty exhausted. It was busier than we were expecting which was good. The day just flew past. I power scrapped the night before with new paper lines to have examples, so this didn't help with the exhaustion! I didn't even have time to photograph them before I took them in, so you will have to wait to see them. At the moment I am busy with Christmas projects for the shop. That is certainly keeping me busy! But there are some gorgeous new Christmas lines out already! Anyway, I have a mini book to finish off for my niece who has just turned one, so that will keep me busy for today! Her party is tomorrow, so time is of the essence! Chow for now!

New Blog links

Hidiho, just dropping in to welcome my newest blog links! Over at Scrapbook City some of the girls decided we should get out and blog more and support each others blogs. I thought it a great idea so have joined in the fun. I now have links for Jen U, Terri, Tish, Wendy, Trudi (my adoptive daughter ;) ) and Tam. Make sure if you visit you go over and say Hi to them too!

Busy Week

Well, I am half way through a busy week. The best thing about this week is the release of issue 59 of FK. I have two layouts in there this month! Very exciting, these are the layouts:




Great news when I came home yesterday, FK has decided to pick up another layout of mine for their back to school gallery!

Well, as for other news, I will be working at the Paper Craft Festival on Friday. This should be a bit of fun, and a good way to get out of the house for a little break. I am lucky the in-laws are able to come and take care of the little ferrals while I am there!

As for today, the lovely Aunty Jenny is coming to take the girls out for the day, so I am going shopping with my good friend Deb. We are heading over to Photocontinental. I have promised not to spend too much on photographic equipment!! Although I am starting to price flashes and light meters and reflectors......OK I promise to behave!

Which reminds me, I need to load in some photos from the Fete Part II last Friday night. Great fun had by all. Catch you soon.

Latest Work

I thought I had better get some of my recent pages up, since I haven't put any up for ages....

This one was for Scrapbook City and uses some of the new Cosmo Cricket papers.

This used new Scenic Route papers and was also for the shop.

This was inspired by the latest Scrapbook Creations - Colour Challenge of magenta & mango.

For the shop, new Cloud 9 papers. I really love this one.

This was for a newsletter feature on using buttons creatively. Quite like how this one turned out.

What a few weeks....

Well, it has been a busy and stressful few weeks. August/September is traditionally busy for us with birthday's every which way you turn, and fathers day and the school fete. This year we had to add a sad moment with the death of my grandma. She was just 83 and so full of life that it took us all by surprise when she had a heart attack. My grandma collected giraffes and there were 15 giraffes in her collection, one went to each of her 15 grandchildren. I was lucky enough to take home a big concrete one, the one we gave her as a family for a birthday (or maybe mothers day), so there is extra sentiment in that. To show what an amazing woman she was, she had also organised the crotcheted face washers that she gives to each great-grandchild each Christmas already for this years Christmas bag.

My little boy, Liam is now a big three year old. Although he is heavily in denial, and often answers - "um maybe one" when asked how old he is! Very cute.

I managed to get my For Keeps awards for excellence entry off in time. Now, along with the Scrapbooking Memories competition I will be waiting for news on this one!

We have some busy times coming up at the shop too as we start thinking about Christmas classes and projects. I also started my series of Photo Know How classes. So far so good there.

Now, I need to include some pictures, especially for my sister in law Sue!

Here is the Story Bridge, complete with climbers taken from a CityCat during the June/July holidays.

Here is one of the images from the Lunar eclipse. Turned out alright, despite the light cloud that seemed to be around.

Here is the moon coming out from the eclipse.

And here we have the reluctant birthday boy! Look at that face!!