SM

The newest SM is out and one of my all time favorite layouts is in it. Even though it was done a while ago I still love this layout, still look at it often. Here it is......

Kim and Marie both told me to look here at what Julie had to say. What a really nice surprise to find her comment on this layout and even better to say it was her favorite in the whole mag. WooHoo what a compliment. I don't often see comments about my work anywhere so this was very nice thanks Julie.

I also had a little clipboard/frame from the 7gypsies range in this months SM. It was a challenge sent to me by SM and I loved this little thing. It's a little clipboard that has a stand up attached to the back as a normal frame does. I would love to get some more of them to do, they are different and interesting and so much fun to do. They really do look good too.

Till next time...

Short trip

I have been a very bad blogger, I have had my nose stuck in a couple more books. This time Kathy Reichs is the flavour. Have had a little nudge though so I thought i might do a little (big)update.

We decidied to go away for a couple days last week as Craige has had a bit of time off work and the kids are on holidays. We headded to Ballarat on Wednesday morning, we went down through Melbourne cause it's the quickest way. We arrived about 4pm and headed out for a walk around the town. We had a good look around till about 6.30 then had some dinner and walked back to our hotel room. It was very nice after being in the car so long. The next day we spent many hours at Soverign Hill. It was a great place, very interesting and something we had been planning on doing for so many years.

Here's a couple of pics of the kids panning for gold. It was fun but they didn't have any luck much to Tahlia's disapointment. She so wanted to find some gold.



After we left Soverign Hill we drove to Bendigo to stay the night and do some sight seeing things the next day. We went in the mines, now I hate this sort of thing but it's funny what you can make yourself do for the kids. As the girls were both a little afraid I had to make it appear that all was well and there was nothing to be afraid of, even though I was scared myself. It was very interesting though I learnt many things about the gold mines I didn't know. Here's the miners now.........

Don't they look stunning in there little hats...... lol.


We then had a run on the talking trams, these beautiful old trams take you around bendigo giving you an auditory run down of the old buldings and other intersting things about the town. We got off in the centere of Bendigo to go to the mall and have lunch, lovely mall could have done some serious retail therapy there, had I had more time. After we finished our tram tour we headded up to the Science fair for the afternoon. Many great things here to enjoy and learn from the kids had a ball.

We drove up to Echuca after that for another overnight stay. What a weekend to find ourselves in Echuca, there was a hot rod rally on. There were so many fantasticly done up cars too see. Ethan kept saying 'awesone' this seems to be his word of the month lol. The next morning we went down to the port and had a run on a really big paddle wheeler. It was run by a wood fired steam engine. How fantastic it was, we sat on the deck on bales of wool just like they wuld have hundreds of years ogo when the port was the biggest inland in Australia.

We had a real aussie herritage holiday. Such a difference to the usuall theme park/beach holidays we have. It was a nice change.

Thanks to everyone who sent there best wishes and thoughts on Ethan's recent dentist trip. He is totally better. Now even the wound has healed and it is so reasuring knowing he won't have another tooth ache from that tooth, and it's not so long untill the second teeth start comming through anyway.

It was a really long post and blogger has been playing up on me, so till next time stay well.

My Poor Baby.........

Had to have a tooth pulled out today. He cried so much as you can imagine but was really good, he didn't squirm around and make it more difficult he just sat there in the chair very still but crying. The dentist and assistant kept commenting on how good he was and told him so, many times, thank goodness. The dentist was very surprised he has had trouble with this tooth as it was broken off a couple of years ago. He said usually they go brown but don't give you any trouble. Well poor Ethan had trouble.

A few nights ago it started, he would wake up every few minutes and whimper and grind his teeth, as he didn't have a temperature I thought it might just be a bad dream. I decided to wake him up and ask if he had a headache or something. He said nothing was sore and just wanted to go back to bed. Then last night he came into me in my bed and said he had a sore tooth, he was again grinding his teeth, so I guessed this must have been what was wrong with him the other night too. Any way last night he was really crying out in pain even after lots of panadol. This morning first thing I rang the dentist for an emergency appointment. Thankfully they fitted us in straight after lunch although the receptionist did worn us that he might need sedation as young kids are very hard to treat, which would mean they couldn't do anything for him until we could get into hospital, which meant putting up with the pain until then. I was so worried about this as I just wanted something done to take away his pain. He had a really bad morning with he pain and was getting quite distressed about it.

I gave Ethan more panadol about 1 hr before the appointment to help some more. He was very happy to sit by himself in the chair and show them his teeth, he was so good. The dentist said we can try to fix it with a root canal and other things which would take a many visits and the pain would still be there and it might fall out in 6 months after all that any way, as this often happens. Or he could pull it out right now, which would hurt for a few more hours but then it would be fixed for good. So we pulled it out.

He had a sleep on the short trip home but woke up when we carried him inside. He was as bright as a button!!!!! Showed the other kids the tooth, which they had given him in a little chest thing, and had a little talk about it to them all. I gave him some Nurofen just to be on the safe side. From about 4 pm onwards all he wanted to do was eat, he ate so much, we seemed to always be getting something for him. As Craige said he must have been putting off eating as well because of the pain. Tonight he has gone off to sleep without any pain medication and hasn't stirred once. I too am looking forward to a good night sleep after such a bad couple of nights.

At the time it was very upsetting having to put him through it, but boy am I thankful for the dentist's honesty and straight talking and not just wanting us to pay huge amounts of money to try to fix the tooth. A lot of pain for a small amount of time was much better for Ethan, than putting him through many more weeks of pain and suffering.

He is still sleeping soundly so am off To do the same..........

Inspiration Scrapbook Convention

Well we finally have some details about the Gold Coast ISC, I so love to attend ISC's I have met some wonderful friends at these that I love too catch up with. I have already booked and paid for my flights to go up in May so I will be going, but there has been quite a price rise to go to ISC. Of course the price of events has to go up to cover costs over the years but this years price rise has been quite significant. It is an extra cost of $70 to go to the Gala Dinner on the Saturday night. Now I'm not a real social butterfly but did enjoy these dinners and they do allow the chance to socialize with friends, as the rest of the weekend is so busy with classes etc, but I don't feel I can afford to pay $70 to attend one. The price of the weekend has gone up by $50 and now doesn't include the Sat dinner. I have been quite sad about this all week as I can see me not being able to go to ISC in the future and this is a huge disappointment.

Then yesterday I received and e-mail from Kim and Ray two lovely ladies that I have grown to know at ISC's and Kim then also rang me last night to chat. They too will not be attending the dinner so we will be having dinner together anyway. Boy this news has made me excited to attend ISC again!!!!!! Now I can't wait!!!!.

Kim and Ray have a Scrapbooking store in Mackay QLD called Scrap Happy, they have been building it up for the past 8 months, they recently had a retreat where the ever talented Michelle and Kerrin were there to teach some classes, how awesome would that have been?!?!?! Now they are launching their store on-line very soon and have asked me to be part of their Design Team. My God could this day get any better. Well yes.........

I also received a parcel from SM with a new challenge in it from We Are Memory Keepers I just love there stuff!!!! I got the Garden Path Range with the Patterned Papers, Alphabets and Tags, how awesome I love it. I still had another double layout to finish off for SM before I could get started. I have taken my time with it cause I had quite a while to get it done but now I have another one to do I was more motivated. I finished it this morning and I'm happy with it, I do enjoy being creative, Sorry can't share yet. I have come to the conclusion I do work better under more pressing conditions. When I know I have a certain amount of layouts to get done, I get energized and inspired to do them but without the pressure I find myself slacking off and reading a book or two instead. lol. I love reading I have just read 2 more John Grisham books that I had put aside due to scrapping. They were a little dusty mind you, lol, but I did enjoy them.

Now I'm itchy to scrap again and excited to go to ISC, Yay I'm happy

The most lovely way to spend the day

Having Marie and Kim around today was the best. I absolutely loved having them over it has been way too long since I had a good chat with friends. I really miss our little scraping nights we used too have. I never got much scrapping done but boy I enjoyed the time out from the family and just being able to chat and enjoy the company of friends. Being a SHAM I often find I don't get much contact with others outside the family, as much as I love my family, I just wish I had more contact with others sometimes. When there were regular dates set for scrapping I at least I knew I had this contact every fortnightly to look forward too. I miss it. I am a home body at heart but I still need the enjoyment that friends bring.

Nothing else happening, but tomorrow I do think I should get too the SM challenge I have waiting to be done. Craige is thinking of going camping on the weekend so might do some more over the weekend as well.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Must be some kind of record

That layout I did of Tenika on Sunday, as seen in my previous post, I submitted to For Keeps via e-mail on Monday for a call that was ending in April, well Julia e-mailed me on Tuesday and has asked for it ASAP. I can't believe it, how quick was that!!!!!!!! Now sorry if you missed seeing it because I thought I should remove it for a little while. I got another publication acceptance from FK this week as well. I don't generally have much luck with FK so 2 in the one week is a nice surprise.Marie also got 2 acceptances this week, well done girl you deserve it.

Tomorrow Marie and Kim are coming around for lunch, I have a nice menu planned Smoked Salmon on Sweet Potato Rosties with Mixed Salad Leaves and Dill Mayonnaise and some nice fruit punch and of course a lovely bottle of white wine. Then we will have cheese and crackers with lovely caramel lattes to finish off. mmm I can't wait. Tonight I have to go to the kinder PAC meeting but it's at the local Tavern so a couple of drinks and a nice snack and it should be quite enjoyable. Lots of drinking and eating going on so looks like an extra trip to the gym for me.lol.

Taking Ethan too Kinder is getting worse, this morning his first words were ' don't take me to kinder mum' and he was so unhappy when we got ready and went. Then cried again when I left him there. Next week is the last week and I'm on Milk and fruit duty so it wont be so bad but boy I hope next term is better.

better get on with something else now, catch ya later.