My Little Man started school this week.  Wow!

He is so very ready, and had no anxiety about going.  He actually asked every other day throughout January, when the 'end of January' was.  He looks very cute in his uniform, and has taken it all in his stride.  He is even very happy to sit down and do his homework.  Which I might add...I totally enjoy.  This is what I know how to do!  It is so exciting watching your child be so eager to learn how to read.  It is all he wants to get from school ATM.

Just before School started My DH took a few days off work ( just after he returned from holidays ( lucky me) and stayed with the kids for 3 days while I went to my sisters and had some time to scrap, and be without children for a few days ( well, my children, she has two of her own!)  It was lovely....

I have just bought a binding machine, the cute little scrapbooking pink one!  I have a big one, but this one has more flexibility on where you punch the holes.  I love it, and have made several albums already ( all given away so far....) But I have gotten through quite a few pages of mine, titled "The Daily Grind"  Have a look.....                                            

Thats it so far.  It was fun!  Ran out of photos!!  Need to take more of daily stuff that has to be done around here.  On a slightly different note...Finally my DH has taken an interest in cameras.  I bought mine quite a while ago now, and love it,  But the megapixels leave a bit to be desired compared to cameras these days, and is only a 4.  I must say though, it has been a fabulous camera ( Panasonic FZ10 as close to an SLR as can be without being one) I have been really happy with the quality.  In saying all that though, DH actually has a very good understanding of photography and had a film SLR back in the day, but took no interest in taking photos when I got into scrapping.  Very annoying.  Now he is all interested in the new Canon that has just been released in the US.  While yes, it does mean I will have no idea how to take a general photo, after being the sole photographer in our family...it does however, mean he may take an interest in what I do, and give me material to work on! (I may even be in it for a change!)  He goes for another work trip to the US in April, so maybe around then, we will have a few more megapixels up our sleeves!

Well..I have been on an organising, sorting and decluttering mission throughout January, and man am I on fire.  I threw out everything I don't need or use, especially in the kitchen, linen closet, main WIR and kids wardrobes.  I just have the downstairs room to do.....and she's a doozie!  Not at all looking forward to that one.  It is a guest room/storage/ & remainder of when it was my scrapping room, room.....whoo hoo!  It will take some time, and make a huge mess in the process.  It will be nice when it is done though.  Then I just need to sell some baby stuff and a sofa bed futon lounge and all the stuff we don't need will be gone!!!  Looking forward to that!

Must go....TFL

Lydell x

Tell me it's over!

That pretty much says it all I believe.  Sounds a little anti Christmas I guess....We have just finished off Christmas in our emalgamated family.  Honestly...I have had a migraine since Christmas Eve.  It's January 2nd, and now we can get back to 'normal life'  I even took down the tree and got the christmas out of the house yesterday....moving on!  We had 3 BIG family Christmas get togethers.  Which was nice in theory, but each of these required food, christmas presents for at least 15 + people ( each party) and in one, motel stay.  There are several things I could have done to alleviate stress, but chose not to......

1.  'Purchase' presents for adults instead of dreaming up interesting things to hand create...May have needed to remorgage the house, but I wouldn't have had to sit for hours upon hours creating the night before EACH party.  This would have required more shopping though, and with 1 attempt to go shopping with two young children, under my belt, (vowing NEVER to undertake that particular endeavour again in my lifetime) I had already organised John to take a day off while I went shopping for the bulk of just 1 of these parties,  any more and he would have had to take holidays.  I came home slightly frazzled!  Not nice.

2.  NOT try to make special little nicities for the dinner table, to make Christmas a bit more special.  I made a Christmas tree cake, (which was cute, but needed to be done Christmas morning, which made us late, and added more stress to an already rushed morning) and cute little decorated star biscuits with each persons name piped on, which doubled as place seating thingies.  Very cute, but again just something else to get done!

3. NOT agree to a time Christmas morning which does not allow for a casual relaxed Christmas breakfast with my own immediate family.  This is one I regret most.  I want to start our own family traditions, not just race off here and there and not get our own time to celebrate Christmas.  11.30am at a destination more than an hour away ( as it turned out -1hr 20mins with 19 traffic lights.....trying to balance a melting towering Christmas tree cake piled high and held together with only wooden skewers on my lap....mmmm!)

4.  Suggest that all these family get togethers start a fortnight before Christmas, and finish a fortnight after christmas.  Create space between parties!!!

5.  Try to minimise travelling.  We spent 10 hours travelling in the car over less than a week.  For us...that is excessive! (especially being in a confined space with two kids that don't like travelling!)

6.  Start now for next Christmas!

In saying all that...It was lovely catching up with people we hadn't seen for a long time, even though at the final party we were on a farm which recorded the temperature out in direct sun at 50 degrees I believe.  EWWW.  It was extremely hot, but.... we got a motel in Loxton and it had VERY good air conditioning, so when we could retreat to our room for the night each day over the weekend, we were cold, instead of sweltering!

Here are some pics.....

An advent Calendar I made for the kids for the month of December.  It was a hit.  I got the idea from a family craft website and a link to an ETSY shop.  someone had made a calendar from toilet rolls.  Very cute!

Our Christmas cards for people who live away from us.  It included a letter about our year 2007.  I have tried to do this for years now, and never actually got to it.  They were sent AFTER christmas, as a holiday card, but they were sent!!!!

I made a coupon booklet for some couples (with kids mostly) for the couples to use to give each other 'space' or 'mental health time'!!! (well that is what we call it in my home!!)  I dreamt up all the things I like to occur in my house for me to get relief here and there.  'A coffee out with a friend', or 'a meal You did not cook', or ' put your feet up with coffee and a biscuit for half an hour -child free'  'Pizza and a movie tonight - when kids are in bed!"  There were 30 coupons in each booklet, and I got to use my perforating tool for the first time ever.  I like it a lot!!!  Made them look very professional!

                                                               That cake!           

And our family Christmas photo. One of the better ones!  Man, that was a mission!       

Well That's it.  Now I just want to do some creating!  Lots of new stuff to use,  Lots of fun ahead,  as long as the kids will allow it!!!

Till next time....

Lydell x

This month.....

Back again for what has seemingly become a monthly event!!!  Not a great deal has happened from memory.  I did turn 35!  John finally finished the stairs out the back to get up into the back yard, with out mountain climbing.  The thing I am most excited about though, is not so much soaking in nappy-san trying to remove the dirt stains from the butts of my kids clothes.  (They would slide down the incline!!!!) 

Denver has his assessment day at school, it was nice to be back.  Shane ( Principal) took great pride showing me all the things that have changed over the last 5 years.  I let my registration lapse, and when I got home I looked in to what I needed to do to re-activate it, and It is harder than I thought.  Looks like more study will be involved, which seems rediculous when I taught for so long,  If I had done more relief teaching while I was pregnant (ie- 200 days)  I could have gone in front of a board and plead my case ( not sure I want it that badly!!!) So I am a bit annoyed about that, but I am pretty happy teaching classes and doing the occaisional shop hours for Janine and Karen. (Scrapbook Station) Anyway Denvers orientation day is on Wednesday.  Can't believe he will be off to school next year, and in my old classroom I taught receptions in!  I think it will hit when I purchase all the school uniforms. They look so cute in their brand new crisp grey, white and blue!

Not nearly enough scrapping going on here either!  I have done some things, although not layouts.  Lots of Christmas stuff, for an event at church that was not overly successful I hear, and I think I will be getting a lot of it returned.  I have started an album for a friend who recently got married, I enjoy book making, so it is from scratch, and while it looks lovely, there were quite a few hours spent on it, without much to show in the way of actual pages.  I am getting there!  I did make some cards for a card class,  Shaker cards, which ran Tuesday night. 

Janine and Steph came to visit last week, and between us we had 8 children in the house.  ( two were imobile!)  My sister and her 2 were here as well.  I had not seen Steph since Madison was born.  So we had two dear little girls laying on the floor goo-ing and gaa-ing, one little man crawling AND 5 bigger kids running around!  It was lovely, and all the kids did very well.  Mykenzie and Emma hunted for bugs, and gathered containers full.  Mmmm nice!

I still have the christmas shopping to attend to, which I am putting off....But if I don't get onto it, It will be a much harder task than it should be!  Blah!  I did promise the kids we will put the tree up this weekend, that should shake me out of my denial, that I do actually need to go shopping!

Well....

I think that is pretty much our month!

Hope you are all well. xx 

Three!!!

I can't believe my Baby Girl is three!  It has gone so fast.  We celebrated her birthday on Saturday with family.  It was nice.  Lots of work, but it was nice.  I have a couple of photos to share, for the benefit of other family who could not be there, and some work I have done recently.  So here are some pics.

She enjoyed herself anyway!

As for Layouts....I have done a few. 

This was my first attempt of using paper napkins/surviettes (?) to create paper, using liquitex medium to adhere the tissue to the cardstock.  It certainly is fun, and I will do it more!

This one is a very simple one for the beginners class at Scrapbook Station.  We will do the LO first, and then try several techniques on smaller projects. 

The Contacts one is a little flip album which sits on your bench for Phone numbers and addresses.  It is also a class.                     

The blue one is another class using one of my favourite boy quotes! Certainly suits my boy anyway!!!

Well that's it for now,  I can tell you though, that when your scrap space is shared with your living space and you host an event of some kind, and are expecting people, you tidy up any residual mess left by previous scrapping projects....So I now have this perfectly tidy scrapping table!  Just lovely to get onto another project!

See you again soon x

I Know...I know!!!!

I have been told enough lately how slack I am....And I know it!  I have not been sitting about twiddling my thumbs, but it seems if I don't make distinct efforts to keep track of this blog, It can go by the wayside.  I have not even visited anyone elses blogs either.  I really have not even scrapped since my last entry!  I did do the project for the Whalers retreat, which I taught on Sunday just gone, and that was fun!  I have another class on the weekend to finish off, and I have all the classes for the next schedule to do yet, and they are meant to be well and truely on the way by now, probably even up on the wall already.  Yes I am juggling!  I really should not even be blogging now!  I have done the Kindy drop and pick up thing and both kids are in my care again, so maybe I can get some stuff done.  I do have the washing to do, I have cleaned the house, but not my scrapping area. (which really needs to be clean before I can start!)  It is always something.  I have a list as long as my arm of things that I should be doing, but I could have that every day.  hmmm!

One thing I do need to do is take a photo of my completed bathrooms,  That many people have said they would like to see it completed, without the water damage and mold everywhere!  I will do that now.....

Denvers room all patched up.....They had to cut out the bottom part of his wall and replace it.

So there you go!  Completed and looking much better!  The different tiles are not too obvious....Much better for little wet slippery feet straight out of the bath, ( they are not glossy!)  And most of all it is oh-so-nice to have my house back.  I got quite tired of sharing it with work men all day every day.

Anyway  that's that!  We put in another claim for the wodden floor boards out side the bathroom, and got a settlement for them, finding matching floorboards was going to be a nightmare when we didn't evenknow the manufacturer.  On with life now!

well should get back to it....'life' that is.....or maybe the scrapping element of my life!  He he he! 

Chaos..but Bliss!

Well since that last post, we had about a week of sanity with two working bathrooms, with the ensuite complete and now even bigger mess....They have begun the main bathroom.  SOOOO much dust it is incredible.  The floor boards are covered in a film of fine white dust, even after being swept.  Not to mention all the furniture throughout the entire house....Even though the bathroom door has been shut the entire time!  It's a pain having workmen in your home all day every day too!  You can't do anything you want to do cause they are walking in and out all day!  And the noise....Jack hammering and drills Blah!

What I have been able to do , and about all I can do is scrap!  (Whoo-hoo)  BUT.....I am very conscious of them thinking it's all I do, with Mykenzie sitting in front of the TV!!! ( Her bedroom is off the hallway past the bathroom, and I don't really want her getting in the way)  Every time they go past I am sitting at my table creating away!  ( Good for me, not having had the time lately to get anything done at all....) I have done about 4 double LO in the last two days, since these guys have been working in my house.  It is actually work, as the LO's need to be done to show at the Birthday at the Scrapbook Station on sunday.  It's promoting a Class on at the moment, 'The Vintage Series', which as the name suggests is Heritage.  It is also available in Kit form, so all this has to be done....I am not just scrapping all day for pleasure!!!!  (Although it is pretty liberating after not doing it for a while.)

Anyway....Should make the most of this time while it is available to me.....  Scrap time!!!

Another month gone by

I can't believe a month has passed again.  I can't believe the lack of time I have to scrap either!  I have done so little lately it is depressing!  I have well passed due deadlines.  I am working on them.......Not like me at all!  We have been sick for what seems like a very long time.  About 12-13 weeks.  John is just getting over his version of the flu.  Hopefully that is the end of it.  That is far too long.  I even went and bought us some multivitamins.  It is just silly.  Denver just kept bringing germ after germ home from Kindy.  He is there 4 days a week now, instead of the two he did last time.  Lots more exposure I guess!

Well my bathroom is looking better than it has looked over the last two weeks 

So that is starting to look like a bathroom again.  The Guy is in laying the tiles as we speak.....Yay.  That is actually a saga in itself.  Our tiles had been discontinued and I had to select a different tile for the floor.  Hope I chose right, I didn't want a plain colour tile ( The floor and walls were matching)  The house is only 4 years old, so I was not sick of my choices yet. But they are nearly done with the ensuite now, and the main bathroom is next.  ( Yes I know the plumber/tiler who did the job only 4 years ago should not be helping to build houses.  They have had to rip out the floor for all the water damage.)

Anyway....Apart from Illnesses, that is about the size of things in our life ATM!!!  Now I am off to scrap!!!!  Whoo-hoo..Now just hope the kids will let me!