Freebie !! Freebie !! Freebie !!

Come out, come out, wherever you are!!

Well according to my counter I get about 20 visits a day to my blog and I'm lucky to get 1 or 2 comments lately (thank you Sarah, my best commenter) so to bring you all out of the woodwork I made a tiger!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrr...

Well, it's sort of a tiger. It's black cordurouy with tiger stripe fabric details. It's very cute. It was my experiment to see how I'd go enlarging the pattern slightly so I wouldn't bust the seams like last time and it worked. My hand stitching's a little dodgy but it's pretty good overall if I do say so myself.

So to be in the running to win just leave a comment by Sunday night and I'll draw a winner on Monday.

Cheers.

Those cats again...

Today Jack did this with the little pussy cats...

He put them to bed under the mail. Awwwwwwwwww, how cute it that??? And then he was shhhhhhing at them too. It was ADORABLE.

We went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum tonight. It was really good but the cinematography was wierd. They did all shaky hand held camera stuff through all the action scenes. I found it a tad annoying but overall good action movie. There was a preview for the next Resident Evil movie. It looks rockin' hot!!! I'm a bit scared about seeing it, they scare the shit out of me and although I used to love horror movies I turned into a bit of a horror woosy for some reason, but still I might have to brave it. And I tell ya, that Milla Jocovich is one hot looking chick. One of the girls I work with looked after Jack tonight because Mum couldn't. It was the first time he's been looked after by anyone other than Owen, Mum and I. He was fantastic apparently. Played with some blocks for awhile and then Camille asked him if he wanted to go to bed so off he trots to lay down in our room and watch Dora and was asleep straight away. Incredible.

Not much else to tell I'm afraid. I do have a LO to show. It was for EB's Friday challenge where you had to do a LO about spring using yellow and white and just a title, no journalling and no flowers. I normally don't like yellow at all but I'm really happy with how the LO turned out.

Righteo, I'm off to scrap.

Ciao.

Love the things kids do...

Jack tonight got these little cats off the entry table, put them down on the floor and then gave them some nutri grain. Isn't that so cute.

Markets and more...

Here's a quick run down of my weekend. We picked Jack up from daycare on Friday afternoon and he was upset when we got there and quite pale and the girls said he'd had an emotional day. They had phoned me at work to ask if they could give him panadol because he was saying his teeth hurt but obviously he was coming down with the flue. Friday nights our nephew Jadon comes over for dinner but then Jack had fallen asleep in the car so we came home first and put him to bed, I packed up all my scrap stuff to go to a crop then I went out to get burgers for dinner. When I got home Jack had woken up and was quite upset and had a temperature of 39 and a bit and was just not himself so we decided to take him up to the hospital. So I took all my scrap stuff out of the car, gathered our stuff together and off we head to the hospital but of course Jack fell asleep on the way there and we decided to head back home and see how he went. We don't normally rush off to the hospital but one of the daycare women had made a comment and then with all the awful stories about the flue this season we thought it might be best. Anyway, he'd settled down fine in bed so off I went to the crop (only 4 blocks away from home) but I didn't get much accomplished. I started one layout and finished off another (but I don't have a photo of it as our camera card is stuffed, and Erica, it's for the DT and it's of Lauren so if your heading by Scrappy Days you might want to drop in).

Saturday after a late start Jack and I headed out shopping and although I was only going to go to get a couple of things we ended up there all day. I bought a new small bag for when I go out without nappies, lol, and a few things from Lincraft. I've got plans for a few more pointy kitties when I get around to it and a pattern for a monkey that I can't wait to try out. I even got new needles for my sewing machine so these one's should be a bit quicker.

That night our friends Ben & Magda came over for dinner which was lovely. We havn't seen them in ages so it was great to catch up. You should see how much pavlova Owen ate. I can't believe he didn't get sick from it. It was a nice pavlova though, just a Woolworths brand one.

On Sunday Jack & I went to the Calliope markets with Mum and Aunt Jenny. Calliope is an hour and a bit away and they have markets there once a month. Mum's on a 7 day rotating roster so she's not very often off work when they're on. It was a nice day but there wasn't as much there as I had hoped. Mum bought me this gorgeous beaded gekho...
Isn't it cute. They had some cool things.

Anyway, not much else exciting to talk about. Jack and I didn't go to Mum's and Bub's group today because he's got a bit of a cough and I had a sore throat, I'd hate to get the other kids sick especially when they've all had the flue and are all just getting better.

I did a digi LO tonight just because I told Michelle I had a LO to post and then the camera card had stuffed up so I didn't actually have a photo of it so I thought I may as well do a digi. It's been awhile since I've done one. Retrodiva's Tag Sale freebie kit, chippies by I Made This Today, frames by Designs on the edge, scrabble letters by Lauren Bavin, flower by Saab, ribbon by Tabby Lewis, cardboard by DebF, tag by Linda G, notepaper by Anita Designs. Whew, I should just stick with one kit at a time really shouldn't I.

I also did up a new blog header for Sarah and a header for my forum as well as a link button. I actually did some html today, well sort of, and my gosh that stuff is confusing but anyway if anyone would like to put the link button on their blog just let me know and I'll give you the code.

I'm in the process of loading up my Master rejected entries if anyone wants a squizz they're here. If by chance Khrys Yealland drops by my blog, sees them and decides to make me a Master after all I will of course quickly remove them but I'm pretty damm sure I've been rejected so I thought I may as well show them off.

The vet rang today to confirm Ophelia's results and it's definately FIP. She seems comfortable at the moment so we'll just take it a day at a time.

That's it from me I think...don't forget any scrappers wanting to take part in the challenge in my last post you have until Friday. I havn't started on mine yet but I'll get there.

OK, nighty night.

Any scrappers out there want to win a prize??

As most of you are aware I started up a scrap chat forum, What's new scrap chicks?, and I thought I'd start up a weekly challenge.

This week's challenge is to create a LO using something to do with postage. This could be stamps, an old envelope, packing materials like bubblewrap, whatever you like really.

And here's what you're playing for... New members welcome!! :)
Edited to say that you have until Friday as well.

A day out with Daddy!!

Owen is on RDO's today and tomorrow so today we went to the Botanical Gardens for a play on the swings and a look at all the animals. It's really beautiful up there at the moment. I think they must have a variety of work for the dole schemes going on there and there's a lot of work being done with some new enclosures and things plus everything is flowering and it just looks neat and clean and well maintained.
We had a bit of a play on all the equipment first up of course. Jack is so co-ordinated now and is getting quite adventurous so he just loves things like that and I think Daddy does to. Dad had to have a turn on a few different things, just so Jack didn't miss out of course.
After a good play on the swings and things we headed over to the zoo to check out all the animals. We saw baboons, swans, emus, chimpanzees, koalas, dingos and kangaroos amongst other things. Then we headed down to the lagoon to feed the turtles. Unfortunately for the turtles there were too many ducks and geese around and the turtles sort of missed out. We were there breaking up the bread and I was busy watching Jack to make sure the geese didn't get him when something nipped me on the toe, I looked down and it was a big turtle. It didn't bite hard luckily but it scared me a bit. We were lucky enough to see a peacock displaying it's feathers, it's a shame the background didn't show it off very well though but it was beautiful none the less.

I took Poppy and Ophelia both to the vet's today. Ophelia just needed to have some blood taken for a test and Poppy had some skin cancers removed. Poppy looks pretty sore tonight. She had a large spot on the flap of skin where her rear leg joins her torso so it's in a spot that would get a fair bit of stretch, poor thing. Poppy is a huge dog, like big, big and while we were in the waiting room there was an elderly lady there with her dog, a little long haired foxy or something little like that. Anyway Poppy's there pulling on the lead, choking herself and coughing and going on like a big galoof and this little dog is just sitting calmly on it's owners lap looking adorable with a little pink bow above one of it's ears and a beautiful little light coat on, pink of course with pintucks and ribbons, bows and embroideries all over it. Poppy could have swallowed that little doggie whole, pmsl.

Also, can anyone recommend some good dvds, either new release or older and nothing scary. I just can't find any good movies lately. Ta!!

Sad news day...

Our poor cat, Miss Ophelia has feline infectious peritonitis and the prognosis is not good at all.

Introducing Captain Meow

I thought since a few of the girls had been making soft toys that I may as well have a go as well. Now I used to sew but that was 15 years ago, I have a machine that was Owen's Grandmothers but I need a new needle so Captain Meow was made using my $16 little portable piece of junk. Apart from a few busted seams during stuffing I don't think I did too bad. Jack was watching me making him and asking what it was and I told him it was a cat for him and what did he want to name it, he just kept meowing at me and the one suggestion he did come up with was Kitti which is the name of one of our cats so I decided that we'll call him Captain Meow. The pattern was a freebie from Wee Wonderfuls if anyones interested.

I had one of those days yesterday, you know when you feel kind of funked and couldn't be bothered doing anything around the house so I scrapped. I did my advent tree...finally and I have another still to do for my brother's family and one for my Mum. I actually dimensional magic'd it too, some of the flowers discoloured a bit but it looks fine and is all protected. Inside the number 1 is the Christmas stamp from Jack's first Christmas and if I can fin the spare one from his 2nd it will be going in box 2 and so on...

And a LO using on the gorgeous sheets of paper that Sarah very kindly sent me.

Righteo, I better go and finish getting ready for work, catch you on the flipside.

Dandelions & 12 hours of scrapping...

Okay, well I'm going to work backwards here. My Mum came over this afternoon for her regular Sunday afternoon visit and out big adventure walk. Today she bought Jack a cool helicopter that has this launch tool so we took it with us but Jack can't pull the cord fast enough to make it go. He had fun trying though.

Where we live there is a creek at the end of our street and on the other side of the creek is a huge council botanical garden. They maintain our side of the creek as well so there an area that is blocks and blocks long to walk along. We normally only go on Sunday's with Grandma and Jack's Grandma is a bit of a nature lover so we stop and look at all sorts of things, plants, lizards, flowers, crunch leaves that sort of thing. I saw a dandelion today and I thought it would be a great photo opportunity. He loved it, as you can see from the photos so then we searched high and low to find him more to blow. I tell you what, I wish I was a child again. It looks like a blast.
This morning we went to the Multi-cultural day at the Uni. It was nowhere near a big as last year but all was not lost...my favourite fudge lady was there. They have markets and activities and info about the uni and music and all different types of food. So for lunch today we had some noodles and some machupicchuan for lunch. The noodles were crap but the machupicchuan was quite nice and then we had churros (mexican doughnutish things). Jack and Owen went for a ride on a camel!! I'm so pissed that I didn't have my camera. I nearly took it and then I thought, no I won't need it, it's just like a market. Grrr. They had a stall where you could get your name written in chinese so we got Jack's done and Owen got a leather bracelet.
On Saturday I went to Scrappy Days for a 12 hour crop. TWELVE HOURS!!!! Well I only went for 11 because I was runing late but still, ELEVEN HOURS!! It was great. My butt was killing me at the end of the night but it was great. I did the majority of a Maya Road "Love" book. They are quite fiddly to do. I've still got a couple of pages to go and all the journalling as well. I also did a layout and started another one as well which I finished off this morning.

I even went out on Friday night too. It was our regular girl's night out for work but one of the girls I work with sells Emma Page jewellery and one of the other women from work had a party and then we went out to dinner after that. It was a nice night but I ate WAY too much. Story of my life.

And I just want to say that I was a bit dissapointed with the series final of Grey's Anatomy. It was okay but not as tear jerking as I would have liked. Oh well, let's see what next season brings.

Toilet training is nearly killing me...warning this post may be TMI for some people!!

Jack is full blown toilet training at the moment and I think I'm going to take up drinking or something to take the edge off. It's driving me balmy. I'm trying soooooooooo hard to be patient but I tells ya, my gosh. Some times he wants to wear a nappy and sometimes he want to wear jocks and you just can't talk him out of either. Then he keeps doing poo's (sorry if tmi) in his nappy and the second he does it he starts crying and then rushes to the toilet to whip off his nappy so you have to sprint to the toilet after him before the poo falls out and then you have to plop the poo in the loo, he flushes and waves and says, "Bye poo, see you soon" and then the real fun starts. He then want to sit on the loo, thankfully he can put his little seat up and climb up there himself because he's up and down up and down for about the next twenty minutes, seriously. I would think he'd get bored but no. So I have to stand there and talk to him for awhile, he tries to impress you by grunting and pretending to push out a poo (see I did warn you about the tmi), tells me the "poo comes out your bot-bomb" and "you have to push poo out your bum" then after awhile he closes the door on me and then the sneaky little bugger tries to pull all the toilet paper off the roll. So he's up and down and on and off and chatty and not and then finally he'll do a teeny tiny little wee. He's a bit tough on his bits too, I think he thinks it's a rubber band. So then we go to the bathroom to wash his hands and then he gets to hop up on the counter to put a star sticker on his chart which is a trial in itself and he also gets a star to wear. It's really cute too, he has a mole on the back of his hand which has been there since he was a little baby and that's exactly where he wants the star, right on the spot. I wouldn't be surprised if I end up with a UTI from the toilet training as well. I have to sneak to the toilet and try to quickly go before he gets there otherwise he's in there trying to pull me off the seat, "No Mummy, mine's toilet!!!" Hopefully at least it will be good for my pelvic floor. Hi David!!

Anyhoo, now to the fun bit of the day. I was scrapbooking today, woohoo, and Jack was there right beside me of course doing some drawing and then all of a sudden he said, "Look Mummy, there's a lion" with a little fearful tone in his voice. And he was standing up looking towards the bed and then he told me it was under the bed and then there was an elephant (which it sounds like he was saying rabbit), a giraffe and a tiger. Now I'm presuming that the fear I heard in his voice was a put on as of course there was no lion in the room. How bloody clever is that. I mean the kid only turned 2 in April. I can't believe that they can work out imaginary things this early. So since I was scrapbooking at the time I went and got some toilet rolls and made him a pair of binoculars to use on his little African safari. He knew straight away what they were for too and stood up on his chair and looked out the window and then told me there were monkey's in the monkey tree in our next door neighbours yard. It went on for ages too, him telling me all the different things the animals were doing such as lying under a bush and popping up and eating bananas. I was astonished.

And just to make you all jealous, I gave my poor old feet a paraffin wax bath last night. I have the most awful cracked heals and they've been really painful so I thought I'd better do something about it. On Monday night I had a nice long foot soak while watching ER, which I'm so excited that they've put it back on and the Abby's baby was okay, and then last night I lathered my feet in moisturiser and then dipped them in the paraffin wax and sat and watched House (addicted to medical dramas :P). If you've never had a paraffin wax treatment you really should. It's normally for your hands and it makes them feel absolutely devine. Owen bought me a wax spa years ago and although I hardly ever use it, I'm soooooo glad I have it.

Note. you do wait until the wax melts obviously but it made for a prettier picture unmelted like this.

Well, I really should be off making lunches for tomorrow so bye!!

We're WINNERS!!

We went it Coles yesterday to pick up a few groceries, we normally shop at Woolies but were on the hunt for chocolate specials, so anyway out they have one of those claw pick up games with stuffed toys as the prizes so I had a go and on my first try I got 2 toys at once. So I thought to myself, man, I'm pretty damm good at this game and so I had another go and then Owen had a couple of turns and then me again. They should put one of those Gambler's Anon stickers on there. Anyhoo $5 later and look what we scored...

And look at the fantastic RAK that Sarah sent to me. You are one hell of a generous chick Sarah. Thank you so much, mwuh.
And everyone don't forget to check out my new forum, What's new scrap chicks?

I made a forum

I made a forum so that my forum friends can post about the cool things they find that are against the rules to post about :P

Make sure you drop by...What's New Scrap Chic? and tell your friends.

I just hate to miss out on anything.

Prepare to be photo inundated!!

Well Jack and I had a pretty good day today. You know those days when you actually seem to get something done and you can look around the house and it actually looks pretty clean and tidy and you've done a couple of other things and it just seems like you've done something with your day.
After a nice leisurely breakfast and a bit of a web surf this morning I got into it and while Jack was watching the Wiggles I did the dusting, cleaned the kitchen, made the beds, vacummed the whole house, wiped down the cupboard fronts in the kitchen, put all the toys away and mopped all the floors. So our house once again looks liveable. Aaahhhhh, it's such a nice feeling, of course there are toys everywhere again now but at least you can walk through the lounge room without tripping over.
After that was all done Jack & I whipped up some cream and I chopped up some strawberries and we decorated a spone cake for afternoon tea with Grandma Joy. Jack loved the cream but of course hated the strawberries. He's not a very good fruit eater my Jack. He actually asked me for some fruit salad, yummy yummy today, of course while watching the Wiggles and so I chopped him up some banana, cherries, strawberries and grapes which he touched each to his lips and then pronounced all of it to be yuckky. Little turkey. I left it out for him for awhile because sometimes he comes back later and will eat something that he didn't eat earlier but I gave up and threw it out and then of course an hour later he came looking for his fruit salad again. Anyhoo, here's the cake and a little storyboard to go with it.
Just a cute photo...
Here he is concentrating very hard to make Grandma a pasta necklace. This was painfully frustrating to watch and I can't beleive he stuck with it for as long as he did. Note the little tongue pertruding. Cute.
So then this afternoon Grandma came over and after coffee and cake we headed down to the footie field to try and wear Grandma out. I think it probably worked. First we tried to fly the kite. Jack didn't quite get the gist of it though and instead of running away from the kite to get it in the air he kept running towards it and then getting tangled in the string, quite amusing to watch actually. At the end of the footie field there is a bit of an incline and so the next fitness test for Grandma was to run up to the top, count to 3 and then run back down again, repeat this about 20 times. Also note Grandma's style there with her gorgeous new necklace. Then it was up and around the block and over to check out the new shop down the road and then home again. Phwew!Then tonight our friends Michelle & Greg and their daughter Nicola come over for a little visit. Nice to sit around having a leisurely chat while the kids had a bit of a play and then dinner...
And look what we had tonight, Veal cutlets and grilled haloumi cheese and a little bit of salad. How crisp, fresh and inviting do those lettuce leafs look I ask you? You know why, cause I just picked them out of our potted garden this afternoon. Exciting hey. Actually they were quite nice as far a lettuce goes.On the dummy front, I have been extremely surprised. Jack hasn't asked for it once today. I can't believe how easy it's been. I was prepared for a HUGE battle and it's just been easy. Touch wood.
Righte0, I'm off to bed.
Bye.

Rocky Swap Bargains!!

Well the illustrious Rocky Swap Meet was on today and after hours and hours of browsing Jack & I returned home dusty, milk stained and sore footed (well me anyway) but with some bargains to show for our trouble.
Jack was sooking within 50 metres of the front gate about being in his pram so he sort of spent the day in and out of his pram, walking like a good boy, running away with Mummy chasing him like a bad boy and the rest of the time was spent up on my shoulders. I had a few older ladies tell me he looked like he'd had enough, hmmm.
Anyhoo, here's a couple of my bargains...the vinyl case is very cute, I'm planning on altering it but I'm not sure how I'll go with it being vinyl and all, it was $1; next we have an octagonal plastic biscuit container which of course I'm planning on altering also, it was 50c; the basket's a bit naff I know but it was only $1 and it's pretty big, about 35cm diameter so it'll be handy for throwing something in; the cake pan was only 50c, it's only a little one and I'll probably hardly ever use it but it was only 50c so I thought what the heck.

As I've stated before, I just LOVE Christmas. There was one stall that was selling a massive amount of Christmas lights and paraphaelia and when I saw these I just couldn't resist. I've always wanted Owen to make something for out the front like these so now he dosn't have to. I bought 2 boxes for $10 and was expecting to get 4 reindeer but one box only had 1 in it not that I'm particularly worried. As you can see by Jack the supermodel they are a decent size. They need to be cleaned up a bit and I've got this nice fine glitter spray varnish so I might give them a little bit of glitz as well.These were Jack's purchases for the day. The Elmo doll was only $2 and was bought early on in the day and did a great job of keeping him occupied for about and hour so I would count it as a great bargain and the Elmo t-shirt was $2 as well and is in fantastic condition. As you can probably guess Jack is loving Elmo at the moment. Okay, the fudge. Well it was just the normal price, 4 for $10 which I still think is cheap as. The woman that makes it is local and she and her teenage daughters man the stand. I always look for them when we go to any markets because her fudge is fantastic. Nice and creamy. I hate it when you buy fudge and it's all hard and chrystalised. Anyway my stack is, from the bottom, russian caramel, very vanilla, plain old chocolate and heavenly which is layered choc, caramel and white choc. As I said, GREAT fudge and the woman who makes it always wears linen and looks organised which makes me feel good about buying her fudge for some reason.And lastly these are a few things I picked up for my EB embellishment swap person, just a little sneak peak. I think they're some cool things so I really hope she likes what I've gotten her. Rach had posted about a cyber crop last night and I felt like scrapping so I decided to check out the challenges. I've still got one more to go as well. There were two sketch challenges and a colour challenge, the top LO is the colour challenge one using brown, blue & green.I buggered up the fold in the ribbon as you can see but other than that I'm prety happy with this LO. I love red and black pages, they're always very dramatic.We had a bit of an incident at our place this morning. Jack is doing really well with his toilet training although it took us ages to get out of the house this morning because he kept wanting to go to the toilet, so anyway, he's sitting up there and I'm sitting on the floor (this had been going on for a bit) and he's chatting away and all of a sudden his dummy fell out of his mouth and into the loo!! Now whilst I was typing this I thought to myself that it's probably not very hygenic to let him have a dummy in the loo anyway but anyway on with the story. Now Jack had been quite dummy addicted since the moment I first stuck one in his mouth and whilst Owen & I have discussed getting rid of it we really weren't in a hurry to push the issue. He's had no problems with speech and we decided that he'd grow out of it himself but for the last couple of weeks we've been telling him that when Santa comes at Christmas time that we would leave his noo-noo (dummy) out and Santa would take it with him and give it to a baby that needed one since he was a big boy and that Santa would give him extra presents. I had been having second thoughts about that plan because I didn't want Jack to not like Santa for taking his noo-noo away and so when it fell in the loo this morning I just told him that we had to throw it away because it had poo on it now and it might make him sick. We had a few tears but nothing too dramatic. I sent Owen and SMS warning him about it and throughout the day Jack has asked for it a couple of times but I just reminded him of what happened and...touch wood...he was okay. He had a little sook for a couple of minutes in the car but that's the worst we've had, even going to bed he was okay. So we'll see what tomorrow brings. Don't tell Jack but I have a couple of dummy's stashed on top of the fridge anyway.

And speaking of toilet training Jack informed me this afternoon that poo comes out of your bot-bomb. So there you go people, now you all know.

That's it, I might go and watch a movie, have a coffee and eat some yummy fudge.

Oh and btw, my first day with the new boss went okay, we'll just wait and see what the future brings.

Bye