Saturday already and some BIG news!!!

Here's what I got up to at the shop on Wednesday. I had a terrible tragedy of running out of photo paper so the only stuff left was canvas paper which is why the pics look a bit weird! lol I'm having a serious invasion of the style snatchers moment and these layouts are a bit different for me but I'm still happy with them. The top one I really love just because of the colours. Don't you love the pic of my darling dd with the dirty face!!! lol That's a permanent thing for her, always grubby! The second one is a pic I took of James last weekend at Lusi's picnic. I'm eternally grateful that at least one kid will always pose on command for me - or at least look up when I tell him to and realise I'm trying to take a picture so not make a funny face at me constantly.......!

Yesterday I got my All About Eve layout done but it's not scanned yet so that will come later today probably. Very happy with it. This fortnight's challenge is music and whatever music means to you.

OLW this fortnight is GONE and while the first instinct is to mourn something that is gone, I purposely won't do that and I'll try to focus on something positive if I can cos that's just what I prefer to do. So I'll give that some thought today but I don't think I'll get any scrapping done.

I have to work this morning until lunchtime and then I think we have some shopping to do today as school goes back on Monday and I'm pretty sure there's no lunchbox supplies in the house!!! Tomorrow Doug will be gone all day tomorrow at High Octane for a day of sim racing and entertainment and watching Bathurst on the big screen with his mates from 8.30am until about 5.30pm so I'm doing the racing widow thing all day. The little ones are going to Gran's for a sleepover tonight and spending the day with her tomorrow so that's two less to find ways to entertain for 9 hours. Blayd will be at his State Titles for karate all day with his teacher so it will just be Lachie and me for the whole day. I've got a few housekeeping type shopping things to do but anyone with more than one kid will tell you (and definitely anyone with four of 'em!!!) it's always a special occasion if you get to spend a whole day with only one of your children without having to take everyone along. The plan for me is to get the shopping stuff over with early and then maybe we'll go see a movie and have lunch or something. I feel like I rarely spend one on one time with my kids, especially the two older boys. I try to get out one night a month and have coffee alone with Blayd or Lachie (we call it "Date Night") but then sometimes if we have lots of things going on that doesn't always happen either. Lachie doesn't know about tomorrow yet and I'm going to surprise him when he and Blayd come home this morning.

Okay in BIG news stories (and no way am I pregnant again!!!!!) - Doug and I have decided to FINALLY get married! We've been together for almost ten years, engaged for about nine of those and we have two children together. We had gotten to within a month of getting married when James was only a newborn as Doug's dad was very sick with terminal cancer and we wanted to tie the knot before he passed away but we couldn't make the plans fast enough and he deteriorated very quickly and passed away before we could organise everything. After that happened we kind of let it all go and didn't think much about it again. After all, we've been very happy for a long time and as both of us has been unhappily married before we weren't sure we wanted to "jinx" what we had by getting married. I know that's totally irrational but there's always that little fear in the back of my mind because you do hear of people who are perfectly happy as live ins or as an engaged couple for a long time and then they decide to get married and for some unknown reason it all goes to pot from there. I have no idea how that happens but I don't want that to happen to us. It is pretty much just a formality but we were watching TV the other night and a show was on about how a couple who had been together for a long time couldn't make important medical decisions for each other as they weren't married but their parents could make decisions even though they weren't close to them or hadn't seen them in a long time. Awful as it sounds, I'm not close to my Dad and if something happened to me I wouldn't want him to be the one to make the decisions as he doesn't know what I would want. Doug is the person who knows me inside and out and he's the only person I want to be making any decisions on my behalf and so we figured that something like that, that could impact our family and our whole lives together, we really should fix it so something like that can't happen. So we just looked at each other and said "How about it?" and we both agreed that we may as well just get it over with!!! lol Yep real romantics we are!!!! So we've set a date of 24th November (only 7 weeks away!!!! AARRRGGH!!!!) and we've started all the paperwork and planning. We've gone and bought our wedding rings a couple of days ago and everyone I've told has been very supportive and excited for us which is nice. I think others are more excited than we are! lol When I told James the only thing he wanted to know was who would be the ring bearer!!! I didn't even know he knew that job existed but he told me that his favourite cartoon character Ben 10 got to be a ring bearer so that's how he knows and he's decided that that's the job for him in the ceremony (which I guess it would have been anyway!). He's already decided for us that Caeligh and Lily will be flower girls and I've already asked Cass to be my matron of honour although there's nothing matronly about my Cass. It will be de ja vu for her though as she was in my bridal party the first time round!! lol But we're both a lot older and a lot wiser and I'm glad that this time I will be getting married for the right reasons and to the right person!

As for stuff like the reception, what on earth I'm going to wear, all those things??? No freaking idea at all!!!!! lol I guess I've got a few weeks to try to sort that out and we don't want to spend much money if we can help it so we'll do what we can with what we can afford. The ceremony itself is going to be Registry Office all the way (I have no idea if a Registry Office wedding has the stigma that it used to but to be totally honest I don't give a damn actually!) so that part is taken care of and all I need to do is find our birth certificates and Decree Nisi from our divorces and go book it a minimum of one month and one day beforehand so I have to remember to do that in the next couple of weeks at the most. They also have really nice photography gardens and the registry is in the old government printery which is a beautiful heritage listed building in the city so good photo opportunities there!!! With so many scrapping friends I can only imagine I'm not going to need to hire a professional photographer!!! lol I do plan on taking my own camera though!!!! Scrapper to the core I am!!

Oh if anyone has any really good tips for a budget wedding in Brisbane or any great tips on how to use my scrapping skills to help with costs then please feel free to comment. I've got every intention of doing the invitations, cake, favours, etc, etc myself but I don't even think I can remember all the details of stuff so if you can think of things then I'd love to hear some ideas!

So there you have it, my big news which isn't really that big but in a way it will be nice to finally make that commitment to each other and it will mean a lot to our kids as well.

I'm off to get some work done now but I'll post up my AAE layout later on. Have a lovely weekend whatever you're up to and I'll chat again soon! Love, Lu