My baby girl is a ballerina!!!!!

Well my worst fears turned out to be completely unfounded and I'm sure you're sitting there saying "well see we knew it would be okay!". Caeligh and Lily looked like little princesses in their matching leotards, skirts, ballet flats and headbands, with their hair pulled back in ballerina buns. I stayed in the studio for the first ten minutes but every time Caeligh felt unsure of what to do she would run back to me and want to sit on my lap so I bit the bullet and went outside where she couldn't see me. After that she was perfectly fine!!!! She pranced, jumped, leaped, skipped about with a chiffon scarf, learned how to stand at the bar and point her toes. She only climbed up the wall using the bar a few times!!! She had a huge grin on her face most of the time and really enjoyed it! I won't say she's been struck by the love of the dance but I'll say for sure she had a fun time and is happy to go back next week which is all I cared about. Yes must have photo share!

Lachlann had his "end of first week" music recital and was stoked with his rendition of Hot Cross Buns with his three notes. He just beamed the whole time and it's fab to see him enjoy something so much. He really is a music and dance kind of kid so I'm glad he's finding his niche.

We've got cricket for Blayd tomorrow and a trip to the hairdresser for the older two plus I have some extra work that a doctor has given us to catch up on for him so while the money's good, the chunk of time it will take is not. Doug is planning to go to the Motor Show sometime on the weekend (thanks Cass and I'm sorry you won't have time to use them) but without the two little ones as I'm sure they don't offer personal liability insurance for clumsy or destructive children as you walk through the doors!!! I think Doug wants to LAN tomorrow night which means that he will take the two older boys away to a mate's place for most of the night and the two little ones will probably have a sleep over at their Gran's place meaning I should have a whole house and night to myself to either scrap or work. Gee tough decision......NOT!!!!! I had a great idea for a layout last night after watching a preview for The Devil Wears Prada. I have a picture of Caeligh with her best evil smile in her kindy clothes so it's going to be The Devil Wears Target. Wish I'd thought of it a few weeks ago for the Aussie Dares Inspired By Film dare!!!

Must go now because apparently children need to eat. Can you believe that???? I wanted to sit and scrap. Well those kids are just inconvenient arent' they? lol Have a blast of a weekend whatever you get up to!

ttyl Lu

Allelujah!!!! Allelujah!!!! Alle-lu-jah!!!!! You know how it goes!!!

Finally my SM arrived in the post today and yes, I still found my layout first even though I've already seen it, and then I found Cass's and then I went and read Lusi's Real People, Real Stories segment!

Now I've got a minute to have a good look. I like the cover - the Basic Grey Lily Kate was harder for me to do anything with that I first thought. I loved loved loved it when I saw it and even when it was put into my hands. Cath gave us the entire range each as well as the Romani to do DT layouts with but to this date I've only ever done one with the Lily Kate. I just looked at it and nothing came!!!! I have promised myself to revisit it over the weekend though because I have some awesome new chipboard and alphas (if you like cheap and fabbo chipboard you should have a look at www.cyberscraps.com.au - over the weekend we're putting up on the website a range of great chipboard alphas and embellishments at very affordable prices, we're talking cheap enough you can buy all of them type cheap!!!) and I may as well use up some of the stash of pp.

In the Scrapshop I love the K&Co Frippery bracelet. I was given one as a DT project and still haven't done it. I don't have an excuse now my printer is working so I will have to shoot off some pics small enough to put into the little photo holder charms. It's one of those things that I really want to do but have trouble finding the time for. I don't love OTP so maybe that's why but I know I'll wear it all the time once it's done. Can anyone spell procrastination????

Love Gallery - really love Chrissy Berry's Love Is.... layout, it's the photo that makes it such a knockout and I also love Leone's I Will Always Love You. Yay for Leone!!!

Master The Art - Sandra you always wow me with your work!!! So love Tilly's layout and the dimension and depth is just fantastic.

Cactus Pink chipboard - mmmmmmmmmm chipboard........drooooooooool!

Okay not even going to comment on poppets because it's just one of those crazes that never appealed in the slightest - I have never even attempted which is a bit sad for me that I'm not even willing to try the style. Pass me a big glass of red and we'll see ...then another........then another.....poppets what are they? Oh I couldn't possibly have a go now I'm too tipsy!!!!

The top 10 trends were interesting with some old faves like simplicity (which I'm not very good at) but I'm going to say I think I fall into the freestyle category. I've never followed a sketch in my life and I'm not very good with rules. You know me - I do what the paper tells me to!!! Did shape and dimension ever go out??? What?? You never told me that!!!!! Love the Asian and Middle Eastern influences as long as it's not too kitschy (sp? Drs don't say that word much!). Not huge on kits but again I've never had one handed to me and been told to work with it. Beads are great but I haven't gone there enough - if you want beads go see Cass she is bead crazy!!! Better still she makes it work every time. Bohemian is very cool and I like that trend. Stitching is awesome but I have to confess that essentially I'm lazy and if I can get the same result with a souffle pen then bugger a needle and thread!!! I have been fake stitching for ages now and really like the effect without the effort. Now for my last rant - since when did rub-ons lessen in popularity so that now they can become a trend again???? I adore rub-ons and totally love rub-on alphas. I've even given up alpha stamps in favour of rub-ons because I'm too impatient even to wait for paint to dry!!! lol Don't understand that one myself......

Expressions Gallery - well what can I say but there's my cranky girl!!! Also love Jodie Davidson's How Dare You Tell Me No and Louise Spiden's Photo Out-Takes. I have so many out take photos it's not funny - exactly where I got my Are You Cranky picture from - I was trying to have a nice calm photo shoot when her royal highness got sick of it!!!

Grandparents - love Jennifer Hall's Cherished Always. There's something about those papers that calls me every time I walk in the LSS!!! Also liked Gabriella Campbell's Treasured Memory, again great photo that tells the story.

Cute As A Button - Sandra you have done it again with a knockout layout - I love the contrast of colour and B&W and if I remember I've seen Jeni O'Connor do a similar layout with her twins. It still sticks in my memory because it was so gorgeous and distinctive.

Real People, Real Stories - Lusi you are the bomb girl!!!! So loved reading your story and you know this is only the start for you!!!

Subs - Oh thank goodness there are more than two!!! Although I'm moving away from scrapping just for the purpose of submitting, it's still nice to have a good number to choose from because if you can put a page call spin on a layout you were going to do anywell well all the better then!!!

Final Encore - oh well I'm biased here! Yay for Cass and her fab Beautiful Girl which she has waited ages for!!! What a cutie that Miss Lil is!!! Also liked Janelle Wind's Brown Bear and Penny Hackney's Growing Up

Really REALLY REALLY love the Autumn Leaves unmounted stamps on the back cover!!! One set is not enough!!!

So there's the wrap up from my desk and didn't I have to wait for it!!! I'm sure I'll jump onto the couch later tonight and have a really good look through once the small creatures are in bed.

I'm going to go finish some work, have some hawaiin pizza on cheese burst base (cos ya know my behind is just NOT BIG ENOUGH!!!) and wait for Dougie to come home. HRH will be home from Gran's any minute for a bath and to get ready to go to Lachie's monumental three note bass guitar performance at school and then it's off to ballet for the world's most unlikely ballerina! Yes the camera is fully charged and yes the SD card is empty!!!! And of course I'll share later - how much later depends on whether she lasts the whole class or not!!! lol

Sandra thanks for the offer btw - I may actually have to take you up on it as Dougie's come down with my dreaded lurgy and he sounds like death warmed up on the phone so I may be flying solo this weekend as far as my computer goes!!!! Thanks so much for being so generous with your time and talent!!!

ttyl (talk to you later), Lu

Check out the serenity!

Well it's painfully early here, about 4.30am and I've gotten up to start work. Sometimes it's just easier to get up this early and get a couple of solid hours in because if I try to type after the kids have gone to bed and it's been a long day I'm tired already and my eyes start to feel like they are skipping around like my fingers on the keyboard and thus I don't actually get much quality work done! At least at this hour it's v.quiet, there are no distractions of any kind and the only noise is geckoes and the flap of a flying fox going past outside occasionally. Oh ahem and then there are noises from the sleeping man behind me but I can pretent I don't hear those, especially if I turn the volume up on my headphones!

STILL no SM!!!!! Look it's so bad I'm going to ring the delivery centre in the morning to see if they can find the postie who, according to the nice lady I spoke to at Australia Post yesterday, apparently should know if he has received the Express Publications magazines yet or not and should remember if he has delivered them yet. And then she said that if he thinks he's already delivered it and I haven't got it then it's a matter for the police as someone has most likely stolen it out of the postbox. Now I'm sorry but I've been hiding behind the front door listening for the sound of his bike each day and then pouncing on the mailbox like a woman possessed so I have no idea exactly when anybody would have time to steal anything!!!! Maybe it's just late -I did speak to Cath who doesn't have hers either yet and she only lives as far from Cass as me so it gives me vague hope! I really want to have a read through and have a decent look at the layouts. Flicking doesn't stick in my brain so I forget most of what I've seen by the time my copy arrives, even if Cass has let me look at hers first!

Busy kiddy day today, well busy for us anyhoo. Lachlann has been learning bass guitar this week as he's now only old enough this year to begin a school instrument program. He has learned three notes this week in preparation for a short recital this afternoon at school along with all the other poor terrified kids who've never picked up an instrument in their lives and suddenly their told they get one week of tuition and then they have a performance on the Friday afternoon. Poor little man was bricking it yesterday so I told him to teach me the three notes to see if that would give him a bit of confidence in his own ability. How embarrassing, he's 9 and he's got the hang of it better than me though I did persevere!!!!! By the time I'd spent an hour wasting his practice time I'd picked out the opening riffs of Smoke On The Water for him and he could play it back but it's not actually helpful to him as I can't read music and only know how to play stuff by ear!!!! That's so not helpful Mummy!!!!

Caeligh has ballet this afternoon too and I'm becoming more confident that she may be okay, just because I sewed new elastics into her ballet flats yesterday and then she threw a hissy when I wanted to take them off her again. She also got quite possessive about the leotard and skirt, and in a turn of events that can only be described as monumental she actually let me do her hair up in a ballerina bun. I'm very grateful at this point that I've let her hair grow long! So much easier but she will still need the big wide pink headband as she has a crazy desire to take to her hair with scissors if she can get them so she has a few "slightly choppy" bits that won't stay back. That's why I can never find a pair of scissors - I had to hide them all to protect her gorgeous hair!!!! So she seems excited and Daddy is even coming home early to come to the music recital and then take his princess to ballet for the first time. What a man!!!

I will be sure to let you know if it all goes pear shaped though. I don't know how only three notes on the bass guitar can go wrong myself but I can see very clearly how the ballet might. We'll see how the day pans out and in the meantime I might even get some work done!

Quick shout out to the totally lovely Lusi on your great news from yesterday!!!! I won't share for you cos I don't want to spoil the surprise for others but I'll give you a ring early next week!

Thanks so much to everyone who has been visiting lately. It's so cool to have you drop by!!! If you've got a blog be sure to let me know so I can cruise in on my rounds through the blogsphere!

Banner envy

I've been doing lots of blog cruising in the past couple of days (see door hanger below which just had to happen!) and I'm developing a real case of banner envy!!! I see so many amazing scrappers with fab banners - Ngai, Rett, Chilli, Karen and Sandra to name just a few and I WANT ONE!!!!!! (throws herself screaming and crying to the floor in a major hissy fit of epic proportions which spills her Cooke Zero and frightens the cat).

I've gotten as far as making a really REALLY basic jpeg banner in photoshop with a cool pic I found on a free photostock site and used my favourite font - f@#%*d olympia - for the wording, and I even got as far as posting it at the bottom of my blog as a page element but we've ground to a bit of a screaming halt right about now.

I did ask Dougie the techno-geek to help but he was trying to do necessary things like get ready for work and help kids get ready while I tried fervently to figure out why oh why Blogger couldn't just let you insert your header like any other page element, but nooooooooooooo you've got to understand HTML code to do any of it! The last time I screwed with my Blogger template some of you will have been there to see the ugly (and very pink) fallout so understandably I'm reluctant as my blog and I have come to a very happy place in our relationship where the only thing I really need is a rockin' banner and maybe a few more fun bits and pieces like more widgets, and widets are easy and good and I get those. He did casually throw on the bed a couple of books that actually looked like footstools for elephants they were so frickin big and said chirpily "you'll have to learn how HTML works!" and off he went. Because for sure you know I could learn to fly the space shuttle too like that pepper spray-I'm wearing a wig-I'm takin' a hostage NASA lady (boy there's someone who may have slipped through the psychological testing!) in about the same time as it would take me to learn that stuff.

So I've thrown a suitably loud, inconvenient and desperate wobbly to which Dougie has responded and he assures me he will help me get my banner up where it should be hopefully tonight.

The beast is appeased for now.........hang on......where's that postie?

Is Blog. Is Good.

While waiting for my postie (who did eventually turn up and who did not have my SM in his possession) I had a play with a door hanger. I've never done one before because I think I have trouble with the idea of working on a smaller surface than 12 x 12.



Now if you are like me, sometimes other occupants of the house (right Dougie?) have trouble understanding that blogging is an essential part of the day - stress relief, therapy, fun and social networking all rolled into one. I often am sprung blogging instead of typing my work and while nothing is ever said out loud, I can still hear the voice saying "that's not working, that's mucking around".



So this is for you Dougie - please read it and learn......it says "I am blogging not bludging and yes, there is a difference!


Yes indeedy there is a difference!!! Although when I showed it to Dougie he did have to ask if there was! What a cheek!!!

Hmmmmmmmmm

Okay, quite sure now that obviously my postie is dead........no SM yet!!!!!! I can't live like this much longer!!! At the rate we're going people on the other side of the world will get their copy before I get mine - it's Brisbane for goodness sake, an obscure Chinese village! Can you tell I'm just a wee bit impatient? I've even seen the mag already but I wanted to show Dougie and the kids. This month my layout "Are You Cranky?" finally got published and if you have the mag already then take a good look - I think it's in the Expressions Gallery - that cranky face is what we see most of the time!!!

Big shout out to Cass who also has her layout Beautiful Girl in the same issue. Woohoo for you babe!!!

If I wasn't working I'd go and camp out on the footpath to wait.......

It worked!!!

The remedy the Careflight man told me about is actually called Senega and Ammonia Mixture (Without Chloroform). I had a good cackle about the lack of chloroform which to me sounds like the best part of the mixture if you feel like crap. It would be nice to just drift off into unconsciousness for a few days until your body got over the flu and you could wake up feeling ever so much better!! To be honest it tastes like poison and smells as bad but I had some last night and fell into bed at about 6.30pm (thank you so much to a very brave and valiant Dougie who did the whole evening routine with 4 kids by himself after he put me to bed).

I've woken up this morning still with a blocked nose and congested chest but feeling human again. Yesterday I felt like death warmed up and had a lot of trouble just being awake and today at least I feel okay apart from those two remaining symptoms which I can live with, as long as I don't feel like I want to curl up in a ball and die as well, which I don't! So thanks be to Him for putting that nice Careflight man in touch with me right when I needed it and for guiding me to something that really helped. Weird how things work out!!

I do feel for Doug though, last night was one of those really busy nights - Blayd had karate, Lachlann had brought home his bass guitar and amp from school to practice, James was cranky because he's coming down with the same bug I've got and Caeligh was whingy because she's gettng over the same but I've got. He had to supervise guitar practice, make dinner, put little people in baths, help Blayd with maths homework, wash school uniforms, dress small people, check the boys' school diaries, fill in kindy forms, clean up the loungeroom, pack the dishwasher and get the boys to tidy up their room. The man is just a wonder and I don't know how he does it all. I even struggle some days trying to get done all the stuff that has to get done and he can keep it all in the air alone! He's a keeper that boy.........

Nothing much on the menu today except for catching up on work I couldn't do for the past couple of days cos I've been sick, maybe throw a couple of loads of washing on, catch up with the Cyberscraps forum and Cass is coming over this morning for coffee and to show me the new Scrapbooking Memories that she got before I did!!! Damn my slacker postie!!! It's funny though, sometimes I'll get it first and sometimes she will. We live less than 10km apart but I guess it just depends how and when the mags arrive at the delivery centres and if they make that day's round or not.

Anyway I'm off to start work. Hope you have a great day and beware of the dreaded lurgy!!!!