It's school holidays here...third day in and it has rained or been too wet and cold for the kids to go outdoors at all so far.  Blah!  They have been pretty good, but, the weather forecast tonight said to expect a whole week of the same.....It may wear thin by then!

I have not been shopping for a little while, and look at my recent purchases....all at once too...mmm (sigh) bliss!

I got several mini albums (should stop buying these....I will never finish all the ones I have in my cupboard!- I just like 'em so much) stickers, lots of alphas, as these are a consumable that always need replacing.  As if I did not have enough product in the cupboards already....I STILL NEED MORE....Oh but it's nice!

I do actually use some of the things I compulsively purchase......(come to think of it...not too much on this particular LO....he he he)

This is a photo from a couple of years ago, just when the little miss was beginning her 'strive for independance' stage.  We heard these words VERY often, complete with indignant attitude.

I figured I should use at least one piece of the hundreds in my stash I no longer 'love'  so I painted over it, edged it with decorative scissors, and inked it.  I then drew vines and flowers to resemble rubons and painted them with watercolour paint (making sure to use a permanent felt tip pen so it didn't run when watercoloured) I added a couple of felt hearts just hand cut and stitched together, and mounted a few stickers and added them to the hearts with a button.  I did a little more drawing with the swirly bits off to the side, added a rubon journal element underneath and stitched a border around the edge.  I cut some triangles from CS stamped them with my text stamp, trimmed with decorative scissors, and topped with dimensional fluid....Voila a LO in a few hours!

Yesterday the kids and I made 'The balls'.....they enjoyed it anyway,  and they are not too hideous. (The balls not the kids!!!)                      

 

We added dates to them to make them a bit more exotic than having sultanas...( not my favourite ingredient!)  They are very proud of their creation....Maybe I should get them making vegetable balls that, like 'The balls', they want to consume at every opportunity.  Might work!

That's all for today I think....Might go watch Regenesis with DH.... Bye                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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

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