Countdown and One Word

This is what I am cooking for tea tonight. It is called Chinese Sticky Rice and the recipe can be found here. One time we were in Perth we went out for yum cha. Caitlin was great and tried a heap of new foods. The one thing that she absolutely loved and still talks about is sticky rice. One day she even cried because we couldn't find any sticky rice for her to eat!

I am on a countdown now until I have my tonsils out. It is only 6 days now (I have them out monday the 11th) and I am slightly nervous, but can rationalise that it is going to be heaps better with the big suckers out!

I am taking Ali Edwards one word challenge this year. All the details can be found here. Ali chose the word "story" and I think this is a great word with so many openings. It isn't the word that chose me though.

My word is "nurture". I think this is the word with meaning for me for so many reasons on the simple, obvious level, about to go into surgery and also with a house full of sick kids! I also know it is the word I would like to focus on in a deeper, more profound or abstract level. I want to nurture positive friendships/relationships. I want to nurture my creativity, not just my paper crafting. I also want to nurture some new roles and new skills during the year.

I will attempt to post some of my progress on my "one word" journey on a monthly basis (see how we go!).

New Year Tutorial

I set a challenge ages ago on the kal-scraps blog for people to use ONLY scraps to make a layout. It isn't until the last week that I have gotten around to taking that challenge myself! Here is the layout that I made (it is sitting on my layout shelf with a heap of other layouts and projects behind it - it isn't actually a weird shape!).



I made some cool flower accents on my page that added interest but didn't overpower what I thought was becoming a busy layout already.


To make the flowers:
1. Choose some flowers out of your stash. It doesnt matter what colour they are or what they are made out of because you are going to use them as a mask. You could use any shapes you desired, it doesn't need to be a flower.

2. Position your flowers on your project.

3. Choose a spray - I used Glimmer Mist in Creme de Cocoa, which is a very subtle gold spray with almost no background colour. Colour wash, walnut ink or any other favourite spray would also be great.

4. Spray this over your layout. I kept it fairly confined to the area where I was putting my flower accent. Remember to cover your photo if it is already on your layout because you don't want any over-spray damading your photo.

5. Remove the flowers or shapes from your project and dry off your paper/card with a heat tool.

6. Once dry, outline your flowers with a white gel pen. My favourite white pen is the Uniball signo. I buy these from my favourite Stampin' Up demonstrator, Leonie.

Finished!

For the ink splotches on my layout, I sprayed 2 sprays of colour wash (my favourite, lettuce) into a medicine cup. I then dipped a dry paint brush into it and flicked this over my page, making a splatter pattern over the layout.

Happy Creating!

Fun with Christmas Goodies

I wanted to post some creative stuff for a change!

The canvas below is one that I made at the end of November when my friend Bec gave birth to her fourth baby girl! It is only 10cm square, so is very cute!

I love gel medium image transfers and have wanted to use the image of the fairy for ages, so I applied it using an image transfer onto this little canvas. There are heaps of layers of paper, paint, gel medium and spritz on the canvas and I have dyed some gauze and also some paper flowers to add to it. I used a good dose of glitz spritz over the whole thing for some great shimmer. I also used some of my favourite Collections chipboard for the butterfly hanger and the butterfly embellishment, sprayed with a huge dose of glitz spritz (did I say that I love that stuff?). It was heaps of fun and I hope that my friend liked it.

Now for a mini tutorial on faux wax seals. These little blobs are so much fun and very addictive.

1. Using your hot glue gun, squeeze out a blob of hot glue about the size of a 5-10 cent piece. Use a teflon craft sheet to work on, or if you don't have one, use a piece of baking paper. You don't have to work super fast because the glue stays pliable for quite a while.


2. Choose a stamp with some detail in it. I have used proper wax seals and an assortment of rubber stamps. Be cautious using acrylic stamps because they are not as resistant to heat (hot glue!) as rubber ones, so may melt.

3. Ink up your stamp with Versamark (my preference) or a coloured ink. I have used black Versafine and this worked well, but I think Stazon would work best if using coloured ink.

4. Push your stamp into the blob of hot glue and squash it down a bit. Don't use too much force or you will squash too much glue out from under the stamp, making it too thin and also a weird shape!

5. Give your seal 30 seconds to cool a bit and then peel it from your craft sheet. Your glue blob will be stuck to the stamp.

6. Ensure all glue is set and then peel the glue from your stamp. Don't leave the glue on your stamp for too long, perhaps not even until it is completely cold, as it will stick to any areas of your stamp that don't have Versamark on it (ie, the most indented areas) and will increase its grip on your stamp as it cools!

Here are some finished examples. Clockwise from the top are: 1. hummingbird wax seal, 2, 3, 4, 5. Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge unmounted stamp set (mesh, crackle, dates, bubble wrap) and 6. Stampington & Co Temptress stamp (clocks on her head only). If you are in Kalgoorlie, all the supplies I have used are from Keepsake Krafts except from the glue which is from Chez's Crafty Affair.


I love how the impressions are shiny where the stamp presses into the glue and mat where the glue pushes up into the indented areas of the stamp.They look great with some coloured paper behind them and I also think they would look good with some Stazon rubbed over the high spots to give it a bit of definition. I think you can also get coloured glue cartridges, so seals made from melted coloured glue would be very cool.

The glue is really flexible when dried, so it attaches to your layout or art really easily with glue or staples, brads etc.

Hope you have fun creating faux wax seals!

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!

Ready to Walk

A quick update on my boy - he took 18 steps by himself on Monday the 6th and now he is choosing to walk more and more often. Yesterday he figured out how to stand up from the floor, so he thinks he is pretty clever now, being able to stand up and then take off and walk a little way! How cool is that? Not many days now and he will be walking all the time - he gets closer by the hour!

Cal had his 18 month check at the child health clinic on Tuesday and is doing fine. The CHN wasn't concerned at all about him only just starting to walk. He is within nornal limits and she could see that he is trying really hard to be up and about, so she had no problem with that.

I have been really busy trying to get a heap of scraping done ready for next term. We have school holidays here for the next 2 weeks, so hopefully I can get a heap done over that time. I am doing another 3 hours of power class this term, so that is a lot of preparation for me. Also we are starting up a make and take at the crop nights which will increase my work load, but that is OK (self inflicted!).

Photo catch-up

I took Callum to be weighed today. He is 10.95kg and 83cm long. He is below average on the graph for weight but given they were made for American bottle fed babies, I am certainly not worried about that!

Cal is so active at the moment. He can spontaneously walk half a dozen steps now, so I think in a few weeks he will be off on his own! He also prefers to walk just holding one hand and doesn't look for support from walls etc now - he actually guides me so that he keeps away from the walls. My camera is on the blink, so if I can get a decent movie of Callum having a toddle, I will post it on the blog.

Caitlin has decided that she loves to get her face painted, so on market day we went to see Candy the Clown. I keps prompting Caitlin about what she might like tohave her face painted as - Princess, fairy, butterfly, flower - NO! she wanted to be a clown just like Candy! I have scrapped this photo with a new technique that I am working on that I cal distress and roll.


We had a lovely family of doves in a nest by the front door. Only 2 days after this photo they had flown the nest.


Mum and I have a new cook book called "Grub" by Jane Lawson. It is all about those old favourites that we used to love and make heaps - french onion dip, corn relish, apricot chicken and home made crumpets! Caitlin and I had a go at the crumpets and I must say that they were super easy. I was really impressed at how they turned out - heaps and heaps better than the bought ones. We will be making them again soon I think.


Last market day Caitlin came along to help with the market stall, which I absolutely love her doing - she is actually a great help. She drew on a heap of our paper bags to decorate them so that people who bought a balm on that day got an original piece of Caitlin's art! Just look at how grown up she looks here manning the stall.


Here is a pic of our little man who can be found anywhere within the perimeter of our fence at the moment. I am sure he would go even further if he could figure out how to get the gates open! He is certainly not afraid to explore! I found him down near the stable only a few days ago! He loves it in the laundry too and I have to check the washing machine before I put anything in there now - today there was a jewellery box in there! I also found him with one of the laundry buckets on his head - testing it out for size. He thought it was a great game.


Caitlin has speach therapy again this afternoon. She is going so well. Craig and I are so very proud of the progress she is making. We have been working on words that start with G and other words that end in S. We have noticed a huge improvement in those words, but also in many other words that she had been having problems with. I am trying to get her to say "the" in the right spot now too, because she has previously replaced it with "a" so breaking that pattern may be a trial.

It is card swap time again (I have only just finished mine - I am so slow with them at the moment). Margie has set the challenge as a baby card. I think it is a great one because we haven't done anything along those lines yet. Good thinking Marg. I may post some cards in a later post.

Flutter by butterfly!

I have been super inspired by this great blog by "lolly chops". She is doing some fantastic craft. The butterfly pic above is a project she did as a take on the Ali Edwards butterfly frame, and anyone who has been to my house lately knows that I have been working on a few of these. Finding this puts a whole new spin on the butterfly project!

The Rest of My Week

Well, I seem to have posted in bits and pieces today! What else have I been doing this week? I will go through methodically to get it all down!

Tuesday:
I got my article and layout/card finalised for Scrapbooking Memories and posted them off. It was a real relief because in the end, I had lost the 800 word article that I had written for them 3 times! While in the post office I saw my cousin Hilda and had a little catch-up with her.

Wednesday:
Callum and I headed off to Smithton in the morning because I had two scrapbooking classes scheduled there in the afternoon. We got 10 people to participate and it was heaps of fun. I always love teaching a page and then seeing the end results, which are always so different to my own example. We stayed in Smithton with my sister Janice for the night and had a great time.

Caitlin had a mini-holiday with Nan and Pop while Cal and I went away. She had a special day at Wing's Farm Park in Guns Plains with Nan, Lynette and her grandson Kalan. Caitlin didn't really talk that much about her day out, but I gather from Mum that she had a good time!

Thursday:
Had a relaxing morning at Janice's house. We went to Montague to pick blueberries (Janice, Justice, Lauren and I) which was such a lovely thing to do. The owners are an older eccentric Canadian couple, but they grow the yummiest organic blueberries I have tasted. And they were so cheap at $7 per kilo!

We went scrapbook shopping, clothes looking and then out for lunch after our blueberry picking trip. I spent some time at Janice's packing up, helping Justice with some cards for the "animals" challenge for the card swap, and then headed back up the coast.

When Callum and I got back, I realised that he had cut two teeth over night (his bottom eye teeth R then L). No wonder he had been grumpy for a few weeks!

Friday:
We haded to Devonport to do some jobs - we called in to Pots and Pans and I saw a great stove top coffee pot that I think I will go back and get. It is an Avanti one and was $43 off. A friend at home makes this type of coffee and I just love it, so I would like to get rid of my coffee machine that I am not at all happy with and make it on the stove instead. We went to Mason and Mason for a yummy lunch and look around, then headed to Burnie to Jenerick and then Spotlight for decorator items for Mum and Dad's new home.

Saturday:
Went out for Chinese for tea - very interesting night - they had no high chair, so Cal had to be held, or watched like a hawk, Caitlin couldn't find much on the menu to eat (and they had no kids menu!), we asked for a bowl of ice cream for Caitlin and they came back to me to ask if I realised that a bowl of ice cream was $15!!!, so I politely said that we would give it a miss, then they came back and said they could do a kids serve for $5 and again I said no thanks ($5 for a kids ice cream???). They told us at the end that they were aiming to make it a high class establishment... don't rich people have kids? I wonder how long they will last...

Sunday:
Went up to the farm so the kids could have a ride on the motor bike. Then the kids and I went for a visit with Neil and Louise which was great. They are so relaxed and I enjoy their company. We are going there for tea on Tuesday night as a farewell.

Here are some pics of our blueberry picking expedition. It was such great therapy!

Janice and Justice:

Janice and I:

Lauren:

Look at the luscious little things! The plants were loaded.

Haylee and Justice move to Geelong this week - I think all of our family are really sad to see them move, but realise there are bigger things out there for those two! Justice has been accepted to a great all girls public school there and Haylee will have a new home and job in no time! Good luck. I now have a great reason to stop over in Melbourne for a holiday.

Great tutorial

I was blog hopping last night and found this great you tube video tutorial on making those great Prima lollipop flowers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqV6ebNzpe8&feature=related

I can't wait to have a go. I would love to start using my scraps of paper to make flowers and buttons, etc to sell on ebay or etsy to move the scraps on and stop them cluttering up my cupboards.

I am trying so hard to keep my new year's resolution to be more organised! I want to be more organised to get into bed at a reasonable hour, to get more scrapping done and submitted for publication, organised to do more fun things with the kids and to see more of my friends. So, in keeping, I am scrapping up a storm while I am in Tasmania on holidays! I like to have all of the term's scrap pages done and ready for the first class. I like to show students what they are "in for". This afternoon I have been working on the Christmas layout for our first class of term and was really inspired but I had forgotten that I had no photos and that Mum had no photo paper, so I have stalled! I will head to HN to get photo paper and will be scrapping up a storm again.

Every time I am home my sister, step-niece and myself try to get a photo of us together. We try to compose it the same every time we have one taken. On sunday we had Mum take one for us and we were all happy with the pic (me, Haylee, Janice).



When we were in Perth for Christmas we went on the train into the city to see Santa at Myer. We took our neice with us and I got this great shot of her on the train. I did a little photoshopping and I love the result. I can't wait to scrap this one. She is such a beautiful girl and fun and easy to be around.

I submitted a cute little apple shaped card to Creative Paper magazine and they want to publish it as a series, all using the transparent cut-out technique, so today we went to the scrap shop in Devonport - Bev's Cross Crafts - so that I could get a couple of bits and pieces to make the 2 extra cards and of course I came away with half the shop! I am sure all scrap shops are set upjust to catch me out! It is such a great shop though, if you are ever able to get there.

Then we made our way to Perfecta cherry farm and had lunch at their cafe called Windows. We had cherry pancakes and they were very yummy. I ate the remainder of Callum's cauliflower soup too and it was probably the nicest of its kind I have tried (and he thought it was pretty good too).

Callum is getting so strong. He wants to walk with me all the time, and it takes him less effort to get up onto his feet from sitting now too (with someone giving him a small amount of help). I really don't think it will be many weeks before he can pull himself up all on his own. He is loving getting into all of Nan and Pop's drawers now that he realises they come open and there is often something in them! Cal has also become an insatiable flirt - he has started playing up to the ladies big time! He does his funny face and waves and talks and bats his cute little eyelids - it is just hilarious to watch!

We have had a busy but lovely Christmas and New Year and now the kids and I are on holiday in Tassie.

We went to Perth for Christmas this year to spend time with Craig's family. We had a house full, but the kids all got on so well. I love that they are getting to know each other better, when we all live so far apart.

On the sunday after christmas we spent the day at the zoo with our kids, Steffan and their kids and Brian. Here are a couple of photos of us at the zoo. Callum was absolutely enthralled with the elephants. His little face showed complete shock when he saw one for the first time!

On the 29th of December the kids and I headed off on the plane to Tasmania. We are here for a whole month for a holiday with Mum and Dad. We are thoroughly enjoying it but I don't feel like I have really rested yet. Caitlin was so very sick only a couple of days after we got here. There has been a gastro type virus going around and of course we got it. Callum has managed to escape it, but Caitlin got it in full force. She vomited so hard that she had to lay down to do so. I was up in the middle of the night with a mild dose and had a day on the couch afterwards, but have generally been OK.

Cal is now very unsettled at night. I have no idea why - initially I thought it was teeth, but there have been none poke through, so I am at a loss. He has been up at least 3 times a night, so I am hoping that whatever it is resolves soon, because I am looking forward to a full night's sleep.

I got an email today from Scrapboxx saying that they have an opening once again for a design team member, so once again I am going to apply. They want 3 items of work and will make their decision from there. There are so many tallented scrappers out there that I am sure I will be one of many that apply.

My article that I had written for "For Keeps Creative Paper" magazine is out in the stores. The 2 page spread is on page 118. I had been so disheartened when I last had something published that I was reluctant to submit anything again. Well, this time my expectations have been blown away! The layout has been photographed brilliantly and apart from one typo in the text, it has come up better than I could have hoped! It encourages me t o get scrapping and sub some more!

Scrapping at the Shop

Wow, it has been such a busy few months at the local scrap shop (LSS) where I teach. I have had what feels like an absolute heap of classes, but now there is only one left and it is tomorrow. Even though I am tired and ready for a break, I am also really excited about the first term next year too. I have set the sylabus, I have done the sketches and now I am set to scrap my little heart out over the coming weeks. I will have to be really organised because I am going to be away in Perth and then in Tassie. That means having all the supplies I will need bagged up, essential tools packed and photos printred. It will be a challenge, which hopefully also means a burst of creativity!

I have an article that I have written being published next month in Creative Paper magazine. I got confused when they commissioned it and thought it was going to be in the November issus, but no... it is in the January issue! I can't wait for it to come out because I have only ever had a page published. I must be on a roll, because I have had a page chosen for the Love gallery of Scrapbooking Memories (I am assuming that is the February edition) and also another article for the May edition of Scrapbooking Memories. It is very exciting! I also have plenty more article and project ideas, but no where near enough time at the moment to submit them.

Our Funny Kids

I thought it was about time that I updated the photos of the kids!

Caitlin just loves to scrapbook with me. Here is a gorgeous creation of hers! She loves to send some of her layouts to the scrapbooking shop with mine and Renaye is good enough to put them up in the shop, which I think is a crack up and Caitlin thinks is great!



Dad is regularly inundated by kids - good thing he loves them to bits!



Callum has been taking an interest in some more challenging toys lately. Caitlin and I got out a heap of jigsaws recently and he loved the easy ones too.



Just checking to see if it is gold...



Last but not least, Caitlin is having a little break from jewelery at the moment, so when she does play with it, she piles it on to get a fix!

Chinese Whispers

A friend has asked me to be the first cab off the rank with a chinese whisper - you know, like the message that would start at one side of the room when you were a kid and you had to see how true to the origional it was at the end? Well, this is the same, scrapping style!


My chinese whisper:

there is a plain cardstock background

photo and embelishments are clustered in the bottom half of the page

it has one photo 4x3 (landscape) which is set to the right of centre

there is a medium - large embelishment on either edge of the page framing the photo and embelishment cluster

there is an embelishment laid vertically down the right hand end of the photo with another embelishment in the centre of the larger embelishment

there is a journaling block to the right of the photo

there is a small square of patterned transparency/patterned paper to the left of the photo.

there is an embelishment with a word for the title in it overlapping the top left corner and the bottom right corner of the photo

there is a hand drawn border around the outside edge of the page


I would love it if some lovely scrappers joined in. Once you have done your page, write a chinese whisper about your page and pass it on to another lucky scrapper.

When you have done your page, email me a pic so I can see what you have been up to!

Happy whispering!

Published!

I have a great secret, but you will have to get your hands on a copy of the next Creative Paper magazine for all the details...

The Scrap Room

Here is a picture of the room at the scrap shop (Keepsake Krafts) where I teach scrapping during the week.

Scrap Classes

I had my first class at the shop on Tuesday night! It was fantastic. I love the room and the dynamics were great. I have had lots of positive feedback too. I am teaching there again tonight, so hopefully it will be just as good. I have to get the hang of payments now. Thank goodness Renaye is there for the first few classes because I would have felt a little swamped otherwise!

I will post some pictures when I have some.

Long time no post!

Wow, I hadn't realised it had been so long since I had posted!

Most of my vegies are up! I was out in the garden yesterday and the spuds are just coming up, which is great, but means I need to be diligent in covering the vegies at night now because we have had heaps of really harsh frosts over the last couple of weeks. Mum and Andrew will be here at a great time because I will have spinach, carrots, zuchinis and probably redbeet ready in the garden at the time - yum!

We had a quick trip to Esperance last weekend - 3 nights. It wasn't as enjoyable as usual. It seemed like a mountain of packing to get 4 of us there and back, the weather was rainy and windy, and while we were there I had my wallet stolen from the toilets at the Boulevard, so it has discouraged us from going away again in a hurry.

I had my last scrapbooking class at home on thursday night which was sad but also exciting. I am moving classes to the scrap shop because it is hard on Craig and the kids having their home invaded 3 times a fortnight and I was also feeling the pressure of not being able to get into a mess or have an off day or two, like so sften happens when you have 2 kids. Classes start on the 22nd and I am really looking forward to it. Renaye from Keepsake Kraft has made a great scrap space that I am looking forward to teaching in.

All the cards for the June card swap are in and they are all so fantastic. I love getting them all and seeing just how differently we all interpret the challenge. This month was an embossing challenge and the August swap is a fold challenge, where we have to use a non-standard card fold. I would like to try a pop-up card fold, but I think I need to do some research on the net first.

We had a busy weekend again (what's new?). Craig has shifted a heap more lawn from the spots where we are going to have garden beds to the spot where the kids swing set is going to go. It is really hard work, but it will save us money in the end and will establish pretty fast once spring is here. I have set myself the task of completing one job a day over the school holidays to get the inside of the house sorted out. Boring I know! Saturday I cleaned out Caitlin's wardrobes. Sunday I sorted out the kids old clothes that I had boxed up. I set aside piles to go to Good Sammi's and piles that I am going to try and sell on eBay. Today I have started listing things on eBay, so I hope that they will sell. I still have quite a few items to go on, but I am going to work at it of an evening over the next couple of days and hopefully get rid of them. Tomorrow I am going to clear off Callum's bed and make it up, ready for Mum and Andrew's visit in August. Then if I finish that I will make a start on the toy jungle! I have warned Caitlin that we are going to have a big clean up of her toys. Also, Callum has grown out of many of the baby toys like rattles etc, so we can cull them now (maybe to sell on eBay too).

Callum has been really sick over the past week or a bit more. Yesterday evening his temp shot up to 39, so I was a bit suspicious. He has progressively been getting more and more miserable too, so we headed off to the doctor today. Didn't take long to discover that our poor little man has tonsilitis. I really hope he doesn't suffer with it like I did as a child. He has a course of antibiotics and hopefully that clears it up, but we have a repeat if he still isn't 100% by the end of the 5 day course.

I am off to watch the tennis - we taped it last night because it was still not on at 10pm, so we went to bed. We have heard the result (boo hoo) but want to watch it anyway. I will post photos in the next couple of days.

Busy!

Both Craig and I feel as though we have been unusually busy over the last couple of weeks. Craig was away with Mitchi and Big Yammi over the weekend, so he has worked the last 2 weeks without a break, which means I haven't had a break either. Today we took it easy and had some time with the kids and also pottering in the garden.



Planting two more rows of red beet hopefully to preserve or make chutney out of. My rows are pretty crooked! Wouldn't make a very good farmer!



In this photo, you can see the vegie patch starting to take shape. I have carrots, spinach, parsnips, red beet, broadbeans tomatoes and zucchinis already up and today I planted Bernie pumpkins, purple runner beans, spuds, corn, more red beet and spinach and red onions. Tomorrow I would like to get a half row of cos lettuce and rocket in, some shallots and capsicum (may be too cold yet) and some green and butter beans. I feel a real sense of satisfaction tonight that the vegie patch is coming together so well this year after it being a dismal failure last year!



I know this photo is blurry, but Caitlin looked like such a cool cat in my sun glasses. She was very impressed that I wanted to take a photo and posed like a model!



I tried Callum on some toast crusts on Thursday. I was really surprised that he loved them! He only gagged a couple of times and actually swallowed a heap - perhaps the toasted crust off half a small slice of bread. This is really funny, considering that he can't stand a single lump in his vegies and is super fussy about the texture, temperature, thickness and vegie combinations (he likes everything mixed with apple or pear!). Caitlin thought that it was great that he was eating her crusts that she leaves all the time!



Caitlin can be so laid back some times! Here she is having a pick-wick (picnic) on her special owl plate, feet up, resting in Dad's cane chair from when he was a little boy.



I caught a photo of Callum in action blowing a raspberry today. He loves doing this and uses it as emphasis all the time - cheeky little man! Luckily he hasn't started doing it when he eats... yet.

We have the first Winner of one of the RAK packs! She finished the layouts in a super quick time and says she was on a huge roll!

And, the winner is...

Dee Wells.

A little pack of goodness is coming your way!

There are 2 more up for grabs if anyone can complete the challenge by next weekend.

ED again!

We had an eventful day yesterday. Caitlin and I were getting lunch and she was jumping around everywhere like she always does and she tripped over and... crunch, her little chin hit the floor. It was such a small fall, that when I picked her up, screaming her head off, I was really shocked - she had blood actually dripping from her and I thought that she must have put her teeth through her tongue or lip which she has done before. Actually, she had, in that really small fall, managed to put a one inch gash in the crease under her chin (where the double chin starts) and about 1/2 a centimetre deep. Blood just poured from it! She was, naturally, absolutely distraught.

We took her down to the emergency department and saw a Doctor there (can't get in to the clinic here on short notice). They debated whether to put stitches in, but they were fairly confident that skin glue would do the trick. Caitlin was such a brave little girl. She didn't cry or even complain, even when the Doctor was squeezing her cut and making her put her head right back. The Nurse managed to steri-strip her chin twice (because she didn't get it right the first time) and still no objections from Caitlin. When the Nurse said "now this might sting a little bit" that was the end of Caitlin's good humour!

When we were still at home Caitlin had been asking "they won't hurt me will they Mum?" and I had tried to play it down by saying that I didn't know and that they would be as careful as possible, not knowing if she would need stitches and that they could hurt. Caitlin screamed and kicked and would not, for anyone, stay on the trolley. She was down and on her way out of there. In the end we had to wrap her in a sheet to restrain her and while I held her down and another nurse held her head still, her chin was glued and a piece of fixomul put over the wound.

Craig said later that he didn't envy me having to do that. When I was trying to reason with her to stay on the bed, I was so close to crying. It was a really hard thing to do! Of course not long after we had finished, she calmed down and was fine. The nurse mentioned an icypole as a special treat, so she perked up quickly! I think the episode will have damaged our chances of being able to treat her easily in that sort of setting again though.

She has to keep the fixomul on for five days and is not allowed to get it wet, so I think we will give swimming a miss on Monday, just to be on the safe side. I really hope it heals well because there was a patch that bled for quite a while and it looked as though the glue had not stuck in that one spot. We will see next week.

Callum, of course took it all in his stride. He is such a calm and placid boy.

I will post some photos at a later date because my camera memory card isn't being picked up by the computer. I think I need to shut down the computer and give it a rest!

I am just working on my second layout for my challenge. Actually, it is a frame that I have been making for at least 4 months, so I thought that qualified as old stash! It is coming up nicely and I can't wait to paint the scrap room now so that it looks nice on my wall (get rid of the hideous yellow)! A couple of friends are absolutely motoring with the challenge. D has done 7 layouts and L had done 3 last time I spoke to her and I am sure she will have done more by now!

Time for bed and to check my little ones are sleeping soundly!