Snip, Snap, Crop

I know it is a few days early but just in case I don't get back before the big day then I'm saying Merry Christmas early. My online class with Penny went wonderfully well on Friday night but I can't share it with you all yet as the class will be repeated on the 10th of January. It was lots of cutting but well worth it for the results. I had to laugh because as I was gathering my things to prepare for the class Keelan was sitting with me and asking lots of questions and I was explaining how he could not disturb me later that night as I was doing a "class" via the computer. He asked what is was about so I explained that we had lots of flowers and stems to cut out so he thought he would like to try that even though I was not certain of all that was to be done. I found a paper for him that had some flowers and leaves to cut out and here is his interpretation of what he thought I was meaning. He even found some green and used my decorative scissors to cut the stems an

My boys are counting down the days until Christmas now and have already told each other what they bought for each other. I might as well have just taken them all out together to buy for each other, instead of making the special effort spending time with each of them at the shops. We haven't done a lot this week. I have done lots of sleeping in which has been nice and stayed up and watched Survivor final. I was a little disappointed that Parvati won, I was hoping that Amanda would. Monday I had someone out to test the pipes in our ensuite shower as the carpet is going mouldy in the room that backs onto the shower. Yes, there is certainly lots of moisture in the walls but it appears to be from the taps leaking back into the wall again and the fact that some of the tiles are cracked and grout missing and not sealed properly. This was all supposed to be fixed a few years ago when this happened so I'm not really impressed and our insurance is not likely to cover very much of the fix

If you are looking for my bi-monthly newsletter to catch up on the dates of when I am cropping over the school holidays, you can find it here: http://www.adrive.com/public/2104f8f6e7402e39fec28c4fca3a69cf23f9919a77124da9f6142a2dd92ddef0.html It is a PDF, so not fantastically clear with the images but you can read all the info.

Well thank you to the lovely Moira who has kindy given me the kreative blogger award. I can now proudly post this award on my blog, and hand it on to some other talented ladies. First is the amazing Leah Fung . Now, I loved watching this scrapbooker on the daily scrapbook lifestyle videos that used to be available to watch on podcasts from BHG. I used to miss my daily dose of these after they stopped them and googled Leah's name to keep up with her creative works. I love how she has kept videos going from her blog along with the talented Donna Salazar and Johanna Peterson. Second is Penny Hackney , who does some magnificent work with doodling and her own creative style. She also blogs over at Aussie Scrapbooking and runs some cool online classes. Third, is our S.A. Fiskars Ambassador, Michelle Wallace whom I love to see produce a variety of work particularly with the lovely Heidi Grace and Clound 9 products. I have great fun attending Fiskars crops here in Adelaide with her. F

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of hearing Keelan's and a Reception class sing Christmas carols at our local shopping centre. He really enjoyed it and was very excited about it all but I know that some of the students were worried sick about it. All those years of dance concerts have paid off for them. One of the songs they sang was the Aussie version of the twelve days of Christmas. How hilarious is that! It was the first time I had heard it and with the little ones singing it and their actions along with it, it had us in fits of laughter. On the twelfth day of Christmas, My true love sent to me: Twelve possums playing Eleven lizards leaping Ten wombats washing Nine crocs a-snoozing Eight dingos dancing Seven emus laying Six sharks a-surfing Five kangaroos Four lyrebirds Three wet galahs Two snakes on skis and A kookaburra in a gum tree Friday night the boys had a chance to visit with their big brother whilst Bruce and I went to his work cocktail party. It was at a hotel at Glene

Well this is the video that was created on Sunday afternoon. The boys think it is hilarious! Gotta love boys and their sense of humour. I have to admit that I was challenged by getting it to upload to youtube and attaching to here. It was not as easy as I thought. Anyway, it's done and they are happy for a couple of months now until they decide it's a good idea to do another. Personally, I've been getting my very short newsletter for December and January done. I've also completed one of my DT layouts for January - still 2 to go and I've been trying to plan Xmas gifts and lunch with my elder sons. Today my agenda is writing and posting Xmas cards and eating out - Mexican style tonight. Enjoy your day!

We have been at the JDRF Family Day today for a few hours and Mitchell and Ethan decided to have their faces painted. Keelan was rather a grump the whole time because we took him away from the computer for a few hours and so didn't want his face painted or didn't want to join in any of the sack, egg n spoon or three legged races. He spent a little time at the playground and then was bored until Santa came and then as soon as the gifts were given out everyone wanted to go home. Mitchell and Ethan had a great time and as you can see Mitchell changed into a crocodile and Ethan into Batman for a while. Last weekend whilst Dad was away I got them all started on making a bauble with sequins. Mitchell wanted to do it last holidays and I wasn't quite ready then so made sure I was now. I was so impressed with Mitchell and all the time he took to sit and do the pins and sequins. I think I only helped him with two rows because he was feeling left out that I was helping the others and

It's cyber crop weekend over at Heaven-Sent and I'm trying my darndest to get a few layouts completed. Come over and join us .... We have a sketch challenge, colour challenge, title challenge and a product use challenge all based around Summer in some way or another. You have until Monday midnight SA time to upload your entries to the gallery. See here for more details: http://heaven-sent.com.au/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=26&func=showcat&catid=57 Would love to see you there!

It's Friday again and here in South Australia the teachers were yet again going to strike. However when Bruce woke up to the 6.30am news the headlines were that teachers had been ordered back to work as a judge ordered it to be illegal for them to strike again. Henceforth we had some rather disgruntled children and an even more disgruntled Mother who was planning a sleep in this morning and was rudely awaken before 7am. Still, I have to admit I have managed to get a whole lot of things done today that I would not have gotten done if the kids were home. Including typing this entry out. Bruce is away for the weekend in Sydney so I will be playing single Mum for a few days. That generally means not much sleeping in on the weekend either. I might be a grumpy old soul by the end of it. I had a lovely Intimo lingerie presentation on Tuesday night and invested in some nice plain bras but certain to fit well as all Intimo does. I also ordered some roll top pants that fit like a glove and I

Have been a little slack on the blog update this week. Went to the Fiskars crop on Saturday and Michelle taught us some cute little last minute gift ideas. Most of them used the water colour pencil techniques which I love to use on stamped images anyway. I haven't taken any photos of them yet but I'm sure you can see some of the sneak peeks over at the Fiskars blog. My crop night on Saturday night was well attended and Sunday was a quiet day at home. The barbeque even saw the light of day too as the boys spent Saturday cleaning it after they got home from the Christmas Pageant. I must remember to post some of the photos of them at that but not tonight as I am too tired. Keelan has been home sick the last three days with a fever and upper respiratory virus. It seems to be clearing and he will be back at school tomorrow but he still has that cute girly squeal voice - poor little love! I haven't had too much of a chance to scrap. Can't believe that I forgot it was a Cy

Haven't had a lot of time for scrapbooking this week but have managed to get four more Octoberfest layouts done. Thank heavens I have a whole month to complete some of the other challenges around. THANK YOU to all the lovely people out there who voted for my layout at Puzzlesketches. It was amazing to be going equal first with someone that they had to go to a second vote, from the two layouts, to determine a winner. Lucky me! I came out on top and won a voucher to spend at Scraploot. Now comes the hard part of what to choose. I'm trying to get prepared early for my card class on the 15th. We are doing Black and white cards - four of them. Kits are ready to go. Tomorrow I have a day full of cardmaking and scrapbooking as I attend the Fiskars SA crop at Sheidow Park and then back home to my regular Saturday crop night. It shall be a long day but bound to be fun. The lovely Michelle always has something interesting for us to do at the Fiskars crop. Ooohhhh.... rain as I type - lov

Well Bruce went off to ACN training today and I spent the day home with the boys. I've had a cracker of a headache most of the day so haven't felt like doing much. We did however - the boys, Rufus the bear with diabetes and myself, head up to the playground for a while where Rufus delightedly posed for me whilst he played on the equipment. Will use those photos in a layout shortly. I took 105 photos overall - no, not all of those were Rufus ..... but there were a lot of nasty boy photos there too. Nasty, meaning heads cut off, blurry, closed eyes, screwed up faces etc..... you get the picture? Meanwhile I have a few layouts that I managed to do at the crop last night and finish off at home this arvo. Still more Octoberfest classes. You will notice that I have skipped fifteen and fourteen as I am still hunting some suitable photos to play with. Layout #17 - Surprise parcel Layout #16 - Simply Fabulous Layout #13 - Lego Games Layout #12 - Sonny glow Thank you to the wonderfu

It's voting time over at Puzzlesketches: http://www.puzzlesketches.blogspot.com/ If you liked my layout Friends - Playing games with my..... I'd love you to drop by at Puzzlesketches and vote for me in the next day. You can vote my selecting Melissa - FRIENDS from the voting panel on the right hand side of the screen and then the vote button. Thanks! Off to crop tonight after a quiet crop night at home last night where everyone had left by 10.30pm. I'm not used of that!

It's crop night tonight and the boys have their Halloween disco at school. It's a little rush to get organised after school but I'm sure we will get there. Note to self; - remember to take photos to use for Halloween page kit! I'm not really into the whole Halloween scenario for both religious reasons and personal choice but the kids really, really want to do it so I have succumbed only because the school are holding a disco with a Halloween theme. Only two of the boys will go to the disco and Keelan will help me set up for crop night at home. So, tonight I have about 4 people coming for a crop session and finally tomorrow night I will be going to Heaven-Sent monthly "Crop for a Cure" at Ingeborg's home. Always love doing that and hopefully will catch up some more on some of the Octoberfest layouts. I'm sharing a few more today: Layout 18 - School holiday fun Layout 19 - I wonder Layout 19a - Ethan, 1st camp Lastly my share for the week is my DT w

It's been a quieter couple of days after the busy weekend with the Stamping and Scrapbooking Fair and the Church stall. It was lovely to see some new faces at the Fair as well as some regulars. The cybercrop was good fun at Heaven-Sent too. I even managed to win the game of jumbled flowers on Saturday night. That was amusing as I'm not a gardener at all. It's a good thing that Mum knew her flowers and passed at least a little on to me. Have been trying to get a start with the Octoberfest layouts and have managed to complete layouts 22, 21 and 20. I'm working backwards from where I joined in. I've already shown you my first one so here are the other two: Finally today I even managed to finish my paper piecing layout for Ingeborg's challenge for the month. The trees and roo are courtesy of my Cricut and the birds are from the Scrapbooks etc. paper piecing patterns. These photos are from 2005 when Jackie, a Chinese teacher stayed with us for a number of weeks and w

Well I'm a little naughty because I forgot to mention earlier in the week that there is a Cybercrop happening at Heaven-Sent this weekend. The plan of attack for the Cyber crop has changed a little from the past so 'read on' to hear more: Our next Cyber Crop - Spring is in the air' is on during the last weekend of this month. There will be four challenges, which will be posted on our forum on Thursday October 23, 2008. All the layouts have to be uploaded in our Cyber Crop gallery by midnight on Monday October 27, 2008. On Saturday night we will do a game and chat on our forum too! Cyber Crops are a great way of getting some scrapping done, using products from your stash and to have fun with other members of our Heaven-Sent community. There are prizes to be won and the winners will randomly be drawn on Tuesday October 28, 2008. I have a busy weekend personally, so knew I had to get them done today and tonight so here are my examples: CCC#1 - Spring cleaning CCC #2 -

Well, I signed up for Octoberfest through Jen Hall's blog. It's an online class a day for the month of October but if you can't do them all then the classroom is open until January to do them in your own time. I spent all last night printing the instructions as I only got the access to the classroom yesterday, and today and tonight I have spent my time choosing and printing photos. It' s unlikely that I'll use any papers that Jen uses - apart from a couple of transparencies that I bought online today, but I will certainly get a chance to use up my stash and hopefully get some great looking layouts done along the way. There is a great variety - feminine, masculine, 8.5 x 11" and some different techniques that will be new for me. Just looking through the layouts and choosing photos has me excited. So much for my roll on the Christmas cards! On the home front, both Keelan and Ethan entered the International Schools competition in Computing and both received cred

Well I've put the scrapbooking on the back burner for the last week and focussed on starting my Christmas cards. I made about 30 over 3 days - 12 of which were the same for a swap at Scrapwitch. I've had a lot of fun with them so far and used up a lot of stickers I had lying around and some recycled cards which I always start with. I was having a lost mojo moment so decided that I would start them by directly cardlifting ideas from magazines however it didn't take long for me to realise that I am so not used to doing that and just gave in to my own ide as. Here are a few of my favourites: Had my regular crop night last night and it was an early finish as everyone was tired. Still didn't mean I got to bed early though cos as usual I sat down to do things after everyone left. Today has been shopping for Bakugan battle brawlers for those who know what they are..... I had to google them! After that I was building a Lego police station and police cars. I did about 4 loads o