Living my dream

Saturday Sketch Day....

Here's a quick sketch to keep you going over the weekend.....

Enjoy.

Happy Birthday Mum.

Very HAPPY birthday Mum. Hope your day is full of laughter and smiles, hugs and surprises.

T

So excited today...

to receive a parcel from the States. Inside it was a book titled 'Oh Baby!' by Memory Makers.

So, whats so exciting about this book? Weeeeeelllllll, its a scrapping one and I've got two (yes 2!!!!!) LO's in it. For me that is something very exciting.

Here are my LO's which are in the book.....

Quite different to each other huh?! LOL.

And just as cool, is that my fellow SBO DTer Vicky Gibson with a LO in there too.

Ok, chook news.....my silly billy chooks have started (after only 3 months) to work out what a nesting box is for. The other day I could only find one egg not thinking much about it, I got on with things, then the next day when there was only 1 again, I got thinking and for some reason decided to check the nesting box. You wouldn't believe my surprise when I saw an egg sitting there. Funny thing was, later that day there was another one. So I'm assuming that one was from the day before when we only got one egg. Since then we've been getting one egg in the nesting box and one behind the bushes. Its great. Its new. Its fun. My chooks are the coolest!

I also had a friend over today to get chook feeding lessons. You see we're off on holiday soon and we needed someone to stay here, look after Toast, the chooks, and of course the house. She went away absolutely buzzing with our how cute the chooks were.

Then this afternoon the kids and I took 1/2 doz eggs around to Andy's parents. I was popping in to see Andrea to drop off some CJ's (finally!) and thought it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of some of our eggs. Love being able to do this! So much fun.

And just wanted to say hi to everyone who pops by. I've got a pile of 'typepad' emails sitting in my inbox from all your wonderful comments. Thank you for stopping by and leaving these for me. I read each and every one and really appreciate them. Unfortunately, being sick and with a million and 1 things to do, I haven't quite got around to emailing back. I'm seriously thinking of deleting them all and starting again. Eeeeeek. In fact I haven't even had a chance to blog hop for hmmmm, maybe a week? 10 days? I'm looking forward to catching up with what everyone is doing real soon!

Alrighty, speaking of catching up, must go. Packing to be done!

BOM Tuesday

Thinking and planning holidays at the moment has led me to challenge you to do the same. For BOM Tuesday this week, I'd love for you to think about where in the world you've been (whether around your own country, or further afield) and write/create a LO about your favourite place/places. Where is your favourite city? Where is your favourite seaside? Where is your favourite building? Where is your favourite statue? Where is your favourite castle? Where is your favourite church? Where is your favourite fountain? Where do you like the public transport? Where do you like to sit and relax? Where do you like to walk?

When I did my 'big OE', as us Kiwis tend to do, I travelled around a few places. The main parts were all over Western Europe, Around the UK and then Eastern Africa on the way home. Until I saw Africa I had definite impressions of what my favourites were. Prague was my favourite city and Italy my favourite country. There were many other favourites in between.

Then Africa came and it totally changed everything (the above photo is from Lake Victoria). It is just so incomparable to other places that I couldn't really include it in the norms. Africa was by far my most favourite place to 'just travel' - experience it all. The people, their way of life, the animals, the beauty were like nothing I've ever experienced. Its one of the places I wish and hope Andy and I and the kids can travel to together. After all there is nothing like tramping up moutains for 3 hours to finally find your 'prey' (mountain gorillas of Uganda) and stand there watching them play with your shoelaces, to see the silverback and be told he is 26 years old. The same age as you. I'm still blown away by that. It was so special.

Or to lie in a tent at night listening to lions roaring around you.

Or to be sitting around the camp fire and suddenly see two lions appear out of the darkness and walk past your tent. With nothing but air between them and you.Its also part of why Andy and I want to take our children to places that are different. 'Exotic' even. So they get to experience these things first hand.

Boy, what a trip down memory lane!

Cor, dragging myself back to reality here...the cold, my cough. LOL! Speaking of which. Thanks to everyone who has passed on good wishes to me over the last week or so. I'm still not great, but getting better every day. Whew. I don't like being sick. I'm not good at it. LOL.

But on the good side of sickness, I've lost 2kgs! LOL. Talk about easy. I just didn't want to eat. But seriously, just before I got sick, I told myself that I needed to get healthy and to stop lying to myself about 'doing it tomorrow'. Because as we all know tomorrow never comes. Well it has now. I'm feeling really good about what we are eating (or in my case NOT eating! LOL) and I feel satisfied that its about being healthy. About trying to avoid the type 2 diabetes that has afflicted every single one of my maternal line. I don't want to go there. I know its early days, but my diet has been really full of good things this last week (when I've been eating) and more so, I've been feeling fuller. I think because I'm eating the 'right' foods (not processed sugary cr.p) my tummy stays fuller longer. You know the low GI thing. Its all true. Makes it alot easier to resist those sugary treats.

Anyway, because of this, I decided for dinner last night the kids needed to eat that bit healthier too. LOL. And I got out my new cookbook 'deceptively delicious' and made the kids 'rice balls' for dinner. The idea behind the book is to get good food into kids without them knowing it. And it worked a treat! I was able to tell the kids that the rice balls had rice, chicken, cheese, egg, lettuce in it (all stuff they like) and omited that it also had kumara which they don't like (and that the lettuce was really spinach!). It worked. Both boys LOVED them. Sarah didn't, but really gave it a good shot. I was really proud of her for making the effort to eat them. It also meant all the goodness was in one little package (without them knowing it) so when I gave them extra veges on the side, they just expected that as part of their meal and ate them up too.

It was a fun experiment for me and I'll be choosing something else from that book for our next meal.

Anyway, I should really get onto creating. I need to do a couple of things before Friday. So must be off to do them.

Have a great Tuesday!

Saturday Sketch Day

Hey there, here is this weeks sketch as created for Fiskars ANZ blog.

This is a mix of the two styles I seem to be using a lot of lately. Layers plus the grouping of embellishments. Have fun with it.

And adding in one I've just done for SBO.

This one has been done so there is deliberately a lot of ways you could use it. Either lots of little photos, some photos/some pp, photos/pp/journaling.

And what about that big white space? A super large photo? A heap of journaling to put with all those little photos?

Really the world is your oyster with this one. Let me know how you go.

Andrea at SBO sent me a wonderful box of goodies this month to use so I've actually tried to incorporate a few of them into this LO. I've used some of the May kit, some Pink Paislee papers and some from the Teresa Collins collection too.

 

Later.

Have you ever lost your voice?

Hmmmmm, well its only happened to me a handful of times, but unluckily two times since I've had kids. Do you know how hard it is to get them to do anything if you can't get their attention? LOL!!!! You can just see it huh? Me standing there waving my arms about trying to stop the crying so I can help them work out whats going on. Too funny.

Yep, I'm still sick. So much so that I've had to pull out of scrapcamp. When I finally saw the doctor this afternoon, I was told to go home, get into bed and stay there until I was better. Eeeeek, so I must get off this computer! Hehehe. But, thanks so much for all your good wishes! Its been really lovely! I'm actually trying to avoid the computer as much as I can cause it gives me incredible headaches (and I have to stay in bed, eeeek). But I got sent this photo by my gorgeous hubby today and just had to show...

It was taken by Andy when he took the kids to Kelly Tarltons one day. Taken on his phone so the quality is shocking. But, its such an incredible photo in that it shows Andy in our son, and what a way to see all the fish. Love catching a glimpse of the grown up Matt and Sarah even though they are still just littlies. Plus, I love how relaxed Matt is. How creative he is in thinking to do this. Go little man.

Alrighty, back to bed for me, and for those at scrapcamp. Have a FANTASTIC time. Can't wait to hear all the stories.

Feeling sorry for myself

I normally don't like to 'moan' on my blog. I like it to be a fun, positive place to hang out, but by golly, I'm sick again! LOL.... and I'm feeling very sorry for myself. Silly grin. You see I'm off to scrapcamp this weekend and its traditionally cold and wet and a bit yukky weather wise and I really want to be feeling better for it. Need to be feeling better. LOL. So moan over. But be aware I'm not up to scratch just right now.

Last night and today I spent printing off photos. Hmmmm, maybe thats why I have a headache? LOL! I haven't done this for AGES, and was getting very sick of the photos I do have here, so its great to have some new ones to play with. Can't wait to start scrapping them!

Alrighty, short and sweet. Just wanted to say g'day. Later.

BOM Tuesday

When Andy and I did a Toolbox parenting class one of the things they taught us about was how each of us works. Or as Andy would say 'what makes you get your jollies'. What he means is that we all have triggers which make us feel good. They called them the 5 languages of love and it explains a little about the way we tend to work. Some of us are a mixture of them. They are:

Words of encouragement

Gift Giving

Acts of service

Quality time and attention

Physical closeness and touch.

My main love language is giving. Whether its time, money, advice or whatever, I feel better for it. It truely is one of those things that makes me happy. Unfortunately with that comes the thing in that because I like to give I also like to receive things with thought put into them. To me it shows that someone cares about me. So poor ole Andy has a hard time when he's choosing presents. LOL.

But I'm getting off track.

With the economy slowly starting to go down the gurgler, petrol prices rising sky high and food prices too. With earthquakes, cyclones and Tsunami's devastating countries around the world, how do we help? Do we want to? Like to?

So my BOM prompt this week is a very personal one. And I imagine one one you might want to just create it and put it in your album? But it will be a very important part of who you are and fantastic to show your loved ones what makes you tick if you're not around.

Not all of us like to give, but if you do, it might help your friends or family understand you more if you're able to tell them why you give and what makes you give? In what format do you give? Money? Time? Experience? To what type of charities? To church? To friends/family? To strangers on the street?

Have a think about it. And if this is you, jot down a few thoughts and put it onto paper. Ensure that what makes you tick isn't lost. 

Quick Share

Cause I've been sick this weekend, I didn't get a chance to do my SBO DT work until this evening. And this is what I created:

3 canvas's. I used some gorgeous new Pink Paislee papers and shapes, some old Scenic Route rubons and a few beads scattered around.

The canvas's are only 10cm x 7cm so I'm hoping they will be perfect as indiscreet decoration for Andy's office wall.

He specifically asked for it not to be 'too scrapbooky' (is that a word? LOL) so they're pretty simple, but I think quite effective. The photo was taken by our wedding photographer on Daniels first birthday at the bottom of our section. Awesome.

This week I've been busy doing CJ's. You see I am doing them with a group of incredible ladies, but I'd got behind. By two months. I felt awful. I'd been making jokes about when I was late or not and after the second month came and went, I just had to do all the ones I had. So now I'm 2 months in ADVANCE! Love it.

I didn't know what papers to use so I decided to just go grab a pack I had from Tarisota to do Liannes double page. And I've gotta say I loved doing that. So easy to just go 'Tada' when you've got all the paper there in front of you and you just have to add embellishments. So if you're part of this group and don't want to see, don't look now.....

Alrighty, must go. Still not 100% so better hit the sack.

Sunday means pancakes

I think I've mentioned it once or twice (or 100 times, LOL), we have pancakes on Sunday mornings. The kids help Andy now and Matt particularly is good at breaking open the eggs. This morning he did it and there were 2 head eggs and one hair egg (2 round ones that look like a head, and 1 that had spread out, like the hair they draw). All the eggs together were in the shape of a smiley face. I just had to take a pic.....

When I woke up this morning I heard the kids playing in their room next to ours. They was lots of whoohooos and shouting. I couldn't make it out, but when Sarah moved on, I could clearly hear Matt being a commentator about a car race. England was racing the Silver Ferns (he's now carrying around a white car which was England - he even gets their colours right!). It was so accurate and he even had the Silver Ferns crash so England passed and won. It was amazing listening to him, I really wanted to get the video to record it, but was too late.

As for me and my cold I am feeling 'ok'. I spent practically the whole day yesterday in bed and most of it asleep. I needed that but poor Andy seems to be getting it now. I just hope the kids don't. Not nice.

Alrighty, off to bed again. Looks like its gonna be another nice one, so enjoy it out there!

Saturday Sketch Day

Well, I went to bed early last night with a massive cold that suddenly came on. Weird. But anyway, I managed to get this sketch done.....Lots of layering here. Enjoy.

And I have to put a plug in for my wonderful hubby who has this week completed his PADI dive course. Yeah!!!! Go Andy! We can now go diving together and with my sisters/brother in laws. He really enjoyed it and was really good at it too. And it felt nice to see him come home with a great big bag full of wet gear and see the smile on his face.

Scary part? He and his brother going to the Boat show to check out boats. Hmmmm. LOL. Watch this space.

Yesterday we took the day off from Connect Cafe to go to a morning tea for one of the teachers leaving the kids daycare. It was nice to be able to do this and the kids loved it. Of course we needed to take something to share and the kids were very excited about making something.

Hmmm, baking? I think they enjoy the water more. LOL.

But this is what we ended up with. Not bad huh? These are Matts ones. He put the sprinkles on top. Sarah had other sprinkles with dinosaurs, stars and red lines (like chocolate hail but red) but the photos weren't so good. Naughty Mummy. LOL.

They're now all at Matts rugby even without his rugby socks. I can't believe it. We found one, but the other one is missing. How on earth does that happen? Seriously?

Ok, back to bed for this sick Mum. Hope you guys enjoy that beautiful weather out there.

T

Meeting online friends

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Raewyn (whinney). She was flying into Akld on her way back home, so Dan and I raced out to the airport to say g'day. She is such a lovely person to talk to online, that it was too good an opportunity to miss and say hello for real. And I've got to admit, she's taller in real life than I thought! Beautiful girl! We had a lovely time chatting and catching up. Even though Dan was a bit of a sulker. Funny how they always put it on when you're doing things. Nevermind.

Cor blimey, not the best pic of me! I look like a startled rabbit. LOL! Nevermind.

Eating with the kids is becoming very interesting. They have really got their own opinions about things now and Sarah is much like me. Won't even try anything new. I remember this as a child. I just didn't want to. I refused to. I now realise how awful and frustrating it would have been for Mum. Well, its frustrating for me. However, we're not making a big deal of it. The kids get their dinner and if they don't eat it they go hungry. Its pretty simple. Sometimes it works. And Sarah will come back and try it again, but mostly not. My deal is that they need to try it. Even just one mouthful and then they can leave the table. We'll just have to see how it goes over the next few years.

Dan on the other hand is extremely good with food. And he's also very funny. He LOVES food. He will run to his chair and get himself in and even try and do the buckles up. Then when its coming he'll start laughing and shouting "Yay" or "mmmmMMMMMMmmmmm" or 'yumyumyum'. Its just the cutest thing and I really must try and get it on video. At least its easy for one of them.

Yesterday my Mum came over and dropped off a box full of slides. She has been sorting through them all and knew it was 'my thing' so gave them to me to look through and get copies of. I just about cried when she first showed me what she was doing and now they are here. Ready to go. Waiting for me to rediscover some photos. I had a quick look yesterday and was stoked to see some I 'knew' we had but couldn't find. I can really get stuck into my BOM now!

Speaking of which, Mum read my blog yesterday and sent me an email with all the things from the year I turned 10. It was fantastic. And once she told me the stuff, it all came flooding back. So I did remember alot of it, just not the time frame. Well worth thinking about and talking about!

Oh, and if you've been reading this you'll know how much I love my chickens now. Well we've been listening to radio lives podcasts (and radio if we remember) as they have a chicken show, with one of the presenters setting up his own chickens. Its been very useful to us and last week I sent in some pictures (which are now on their website) and some questions. So last night I actually got to talk to them and ask them a question about one of our chooks who isn't laying. They are planning on using it for their show along with other chicken enthusiasts. Oh dear. I totally stuffed it up. LOL! I forgot to even say hi! What a dufus. LOL! Nevermind. Will be interesting to see if they use it and if so what I really sound like. So if you wanna hear....listen to Simons show I think around 1.15pm on Sat on radio live which is 100.6 FM.

Alrighty, beautiful day out there. Must go and do something. Laters.

Guess what I nearly forgot?

BOM Tuesday. Yep. Tuesday already. I'm going to sound like a broken record, but SERIOUSLY, where do these weeks keep disappearing to? Is someone out there fastforwarding time?

So what are we going to think about? I'm thinking "Turning 10". Double digits. What did it mean? Do you remember it? What would you have liked to have known when you were that old? Did you have a special party to celebrate? Would you have liked to?

I remember when I was that young that 10 was the big birthday. 13 was good, but more the American birthday. But 10 was double digits and a pretty big thing. Funny thing is I have a terrible memory (really!) and I can't actually remember my birthday that year. Or anything about my thoughts or feelings. So part two of the question, is to talk to my Mum and see if she remembers anything? Maybe you can do that, if you're like me and get some memories down that way.

Today I got a txt from the kids daycare. It said that Matt had just read his Hairy McLeary book to the whole class during mat time. OMG, I was sooooo proud! Now admittedly, he can't actually read it, he just has it memorised down pat including when to turn the page and everything, but still he got up in front of his class and 'read' them his story. When he got home, we were told he did it twice. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Wow, my boys growing up. Sarah seemed to be very proud of him too. It was lovely.

Chooks, got 2 eggs again today. Yippee. This is now very regular. I'm stoked. I'm not sure who is laying. But its all good. We've doubled production since last week. LOL.

Would love to show you some pics, but don't have anything right now. Take care now! 

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Do you remember this from when you were a child? Mmmmmm, me too. For some reason I never won it. LOL! Our kids have started doing this to work out things. Who gets to sit by the window in the car, who gets to stay in the shower the longest, who gets to pick up the egg in the chicken run, who gets to choose todays tv etc etc etc. It mostly happens when Andy is around. Its his thing, but I'm finding it creeping into other areas and to be honest with you, it works! They seem to see a fairness to it which is great. Quite happy about that!

Today we had a wonderful day. Really Wonderful. I was lucky enough to have Lesley come and visit with her camera. She took lots of pictures of all the kids for an assignment shes doing. She sent some of them over to me and they are just great. I love them. But best part was that Jane and her kids were here too, so we got pics of them too.

Honestly its just soooooo great to have her here. The kids all get on so well. They hang out, play, squabble, make up and talk. They have fun. They show each other stuff, and Jane and I sit back and watch, chatting and being the friends we've always been but with our children surrounding us. We've often talked about this and how nice it would be to be able to do this. We've often said we wished we could, but I don't think either of us knew how nice it would be until she came over this time round. And now I've got to admit I'm a little scared. Scared of when she goes back home, when my buddy leaves and we can't just hang out anymore. Scared of missing her and what 'could' be. I think she feels the same way. Don't get me wrong, we've both got amazing friends that we hang out with and the kids have some wonderful friends too. But Jane and I go way back. You know, the type of friend that knows all your dark secrets and still luvs ya anyway. Its an easy friendship. One I treasure and even more so now. I hope when she goes home, she reads this and realises how special she is to me.

Anyway..... enough soppiness. LOL!

CHOOK NEWS: We had another two eggs today. Yeah! But this time round, I 'think' one of them was from Chickenee. Yep. Really. It was a little egg and we'd already seen Bob lay her egg (and picked it up still warm! Wow!), and Doras eggs are so much bigger. Also this egg when I cracked it open (or should I say when Dan tripped over and smashed it, LOL) was like Bobs first egg. Just a little bit 'unusual'. It also had little white spots on the outside of it, which was similar to Bob's when she first started to lay.

If I'm right then within the next week, we'll be getting 3 eggs a day! OH WOW!!!! I so can't wait for that to happen. And when it does, anyone who lives close, you're more than welcome to some of them! We'll never keep up!

Alrighty, I really must get going. CJ's to create, dinner to cook, kids to kiss goodnight.

Have a good one.

T

PS: Forgot to say, thanks so much for all your comments about blog reading. I was really interested in all your comments. Thanks so much for taking the time to write them down.

Changes

When I first started scrapping I was really into forums. That's where I'd get all my information from, inspiration from, chat to friends, make friends, be a community. Then as my scrapping grew and blogs became more popular, I hung out a lot more at the blogs of people who inspired me or who were my friends.

Just talking with a few people we realised that we often don't get the time, or have the motivation to do this so much anymore. Even with bloglines, we don't visit our 'favs' nearly as much as we used to, sometimes not at all.

So I'm curious. Is this something that's happening to you? Or, do you still enjoy catching up on your favourite blogs? And what draws you to a blog? Why do you continually go back? What makes you leave a comment? Bit of an independent, impromptu survey happening here. LOL. But its got me thinking about my bloglines list and who I visit and why and now I'm curious to see what you say.

Reasons for me? Its pretty simple:

a) My friends

b) Inspiring people/ideas

c) Someone that makes me think/laugh/ponder/be happy etc

d) Certain mft blogs to see whats new, etc

(and gotta be honest here)

e) People that visit me - I like to visit them right back!

f) Blogs which have prizes - so shallow!

I leave comments cause I know I like to have them (see shallow again! LOL) and if I can think of something to say, well hey, I'm not known for being the shy timid one. LOL!

Soooooo, let me know what you think. Would love to hear.