Summer rain

Right at the moment in Kalgoorlie, it is raining iceblocks (as Caitlin would say). The weather has me completely baffled! The picture above is of the wet grey sky, and below is a little video of the hail hitting the ground. The hail stones are between the size of a 5c piece and a flat stone of about 50c size!

Pool Time

Summer has really hit here! We have had a run for the past week of super humid weather and hot to go with it. I am so ready for some "normal" weather!

We have had the paddle pool out for the kids and they had so much fun in it. I have taken a video of them, but after two attempts to upload it, it just isn't happening. I will post some photos instead.







I was at Cindy's on the weekend and she had some water pumper things that I might get for the kids to use in the paddle pool. Caitlin had heaps of fun sucking up water from their pool and squirting it out.

Our fridge has broken down and has been out of action for a week now. It started with it making a terrible loud noise, but deteriorated into it keeping a temperature of between 16 and 21 degrees! We have moved everything into the bar fridge and has been very interresting to say the least! Samsung and also Harvey Norman have not been as helpful as they could have been. There seems to be no service person in town, so that has made it extremely difficult. The last lady I spoke to on Friday told me that she would have it sorted first thing on Monday morning. Needless to say, we haven't heard a thing from them yet!

It has been reconfirmed over the weekend that there are some people in this world that are not as nice as they could be. It always disappoints me when people are mis-informed and will not listen to another point of view. Those who think they are "right" seen always to be "righteous" (unfortunately there is a really good reason for this gem of wisdom!).

I just did a dash to the clothes line because there is a thunder storm brewing. While I was out there Caitlin was jumping on the trampoline with her umbrella so she didn't get wet! She is such a funny little bunny!

I have been having some fun with my scrapping recently. I have been making some Christmas decorations out of paper and also some altered glass ones. I am so happy with how they have come up. I will post a photo when I have some.

I have found some cool web sites recently.

Wednesday's Wishes is a new online shop by Maxine Hazebroek and Audrey Underwood. They make the most divine off the page items and sell kits for them on their site. I love drooling over their great works of art!

Tammy's Recipes is a cooking site that I came across when following some links from someone else's blog. I love the look of her apple brownies.

Empire Beads is a bead shop (obviously!) and it has great beads for craft work. I love their huge range of pearls. You can get a bag of about 20 8mm pearls for 88c. Wow, that is great value!

Caitlin is itching for me to play and paint and draw (she just won naughts and crosses), so I had better get moving!

Time Off!

Finally I am back blogging after a long break! I think I needed some time to get back on track with life and also winter always makes me lazy.

So much has happened in the interim, but here are a couple of pictures as a quick update.

Callum turned two at the end of September and we had a cellebration at playgroup and also a party on the day of his birthday, when we were in Perth, with BOTH sets of grandparents and Aunty Pam and the kids. The pic below is from playgroup.

We had a trip to Perth which was intended as a little holiday, but turned into Callum having his tonsills out and adenoids reduced in size, so it has been a slightly stressful time here. Poor boy had his op 2 days before his second birthday, so he was feeling slightly under the weather for his special day! All better now though.



Miss Caitlin is growing up so fast. School has changed her, for the better mostly I think.



This is a pic of Cal and Daddy. The kids had been playing in a big cardboard box and having heaps of fun.


Callum has moved into a "big boy" bed. Caitlin was just as excited as Cal was. This picture was taken on the new bed, after the kids had been jumping and playing and messing up all of the new bedding!


I will aim to update regularly again and I would love to put up much more of my craft things too.

First frost

Lastnight got down to a chilly 3.5 degrees here and we had our first light frost of the season. It muse have been pretty light because the spuds and lettuces are OK!

Photoshop Tips

From Designer Digitals

Adobe Photoshop or Elements Tip of the Week:

Marqeeing Time

The Marquee tools in Photoshop and PSE allow you to create rectangular, square, circular and elliptical selections. Find the Marquee Tools by pressing the letter M on your keyboard or locating the Marquee tool icon near the top of the Toolbar.

When you are using the Rectangular Marquee tool, holding the Shift key gives you a perfectly square selection. Holding the Alt key (Mac: Opt key) forces the Marquee tool to draw from the center outward.

So holding the Shift + Alt keys (Mac: Shift + Opt keys) draws a perfect square from the center outward. Be sure to hold the shift key before pressing the Alt (Opt) key.

In Photoshop, holding the Shift key with the Elliptical Marquee tool gives you a perfect circle selection. Holding the Alt key (Mac: Opt key) forces the Marquee tool to draw from the center outward.

So Holding the Shift + Alt keys (Mac: Shift + Opt keys) draws a perfect circle from the center outward.

Random

Callum doesn't like Craig's stubble, so he protests when he is given kisses by Daddy when he hasn't shaved! Hence the look on his face in this photo!


Just a few random catch-ups:

• Caitlin is ABSOLUTELY loving school
• Callum has a new tooth - his first 2 year old molar - it came through on Saturday night (hence the really sleepless nights with him)
• we all had hair cuts today
• I am getting my card swap cards done!!
• Craig is away for the night
• I am loving scrapping at the moment but just can't find the time
• caught up with a friend today and felt really good about it! (thanks D for forgiving me!)
• loathing cooking at the moment, even though our order of yummy organic lamb arrived last night

Bye for now!

Caitlinisms

I thought I would have a catch up of photos of Caitlin. She is changing at the moment. She is losing all that baby look and becoming so much more like a little girl. She is getting pretty cheeky too, so school is having an impact already!



This picture is from easter morning. We had an easter egg hunt and Caitlin, as usual, didn't stop talking! I love capturing photos of her in action!



Caitlin was posing for this shot, and she thought she looked just so gorgeous, like a model, so she asked me to take a photo! Love it!

My gorgeous girl has been so funny lately. She just loves singing and she is great at making up her own songs. Today she was singing a song about me to the tune of Bob the Builder! It went something like this:

I love my mummy
She's so much fun
We scrapbook together
And get our jobs done!

It just cracked me up! When I made comment to her, she had the biggest grin on her face - she was pretty proud of what she had made up!

Today Caitlin and I planted out some of the vegie patch. We bought some seeds and also a few punnets of seedlings yesterday, so today we had to do some digging. We planted Dutch carrot seeds, pea seeds, mixed lettuce seedlings, a couple of perennial silverbeet seeds, some onion seedlings and some snow pea seedlings. Now I have to get a punnet of red cabbage seedlings in and I will have finished that lot.

I want to plant red beet, broad beens and spinach next. Craig and I noticed that some potatoes from last year have self seeded, so I am going to leave it at that soon as I am not eating them at the moment. Then I will have to get some herbs in. My rocket and corriander were great last year, so I am hoping to have a great crop again. Yummy!

Callum's finger is looking much better. Alot of the swelling has gone and the grazes are healing. The nail and the end of his finger is really bruised, so I am waiting to see if he loses his nail. His pain is much better too, so he is healing really fast. I was going to get a photo of his little hand, but it looks no different through the camera lens, so it would be pointless.