australia Day 2007

WE celebrated Australia Day this year with a traditional aussie bbq!

Had a great day. We had Jane & Simon; Tracy & Jacob; Gail, John & Haylee; Simone, Greg, Jhorjie & Dominic; and us!

The wine flowed, the food was plentiful and there was laughs and chats. All in all a wonderful time.

It was great to catch up with Tracy and spend some time with Jane that didnt involve tears and sadness (we seem to be meeting at funerals lately!). Hope to do it more often

I dont believe it!

I spent last weekend participating in the scrapyourselfsilly cybercrop and had such a great time.

The girls there are so friendly and welcoming and helpful and I had lots of laughs and really enjoyed pushing myself with the challenges. I actually finished all 4 challenges for this cybercrop including a bleaching class taught by the lovely Crissy. I had so much fun experimenting with this technique and trying it out on just about every colour card I had in my scraps box so I had heaps of flowers which I used in my layout.

I found out this week that I won the bleaching challenge. How exciting. I have now entered two cybercrops in my life and have won a prize at both of them. Wow

I will try and upload my LO's here



Challenge 1 - paisley



Challenge 2 - find a LO you like in the gallery, get the owners permission and scraplift a LO using techniques from that page




challenge 3 - christmas, ribbon, flourishes/doodling



challenge 4 - Lo using bleaching (my winning LO)

A morning of memories

Had a great time on the weekend. I met up with a group of friends from school (yes that long ago!) that I hadn't seen in a couple of years.

We met at Tina's Place and there was Tina, Louise (who was my bridesmaid and I hadn't seen for 4 years after a falling out (long story)), Tracey Dean, Tracy Hawkes, Josephine Bugg and myself.

We had a great time catching up with each others news and learning about jobs and families and discussing old times at school. I had such a fun time and hopefully we will get together more frequently. They are just the nicest people and spending time with them reminded me of why we got on so well at school.

The downpoint of the day was that we were talking so much I forgot to take pics. What sort of scrapper am I!

Here he is!

Introducing Dominic Pignataro

Dominic Jaymz is here

Simone, Greg and Jhorjie's new family member arrived safely this morning after a caeserean delivery.

Mone rang me from recovery to say things were going well and to tell me that it was okay - Greg didn't faint!

Apparently Jhorjie is smitten with her baby brother which is great.

He is tiny (6lb 8oz)ad has gorgeous black hair. A real cutie.

Went up and saw them this afternoon and mum and bub are both doing well

Exhausted

Boy am I tired!

Had a mad day at work today - first consulting day after three weeks of holidays.

Headed off to work at quarter to 8 this morning and walked back in the door at quarter to 7 tonight and it was just go, go, go all day. Total mad house!

I am sooo thankful for my great husband who had the kids fed and bathed when I got home so I could just collapse in a heap and veg for 1/2 an hour or so.

Mone and Greg's baby will be here by the weekend so can't wait to meet him.

Will update more later - too tired now

my holidays are nearly over

WEll time flies doesn't it!

Less than a week before I go back to work. These hols have been good - haven't acheived as much as I wanted but hey had some fun! I have cleaned out the craft room, cleaned up Tasha's room (much to her disgust!), done the kitchen cupboards and tidied up the bookshelves in the study but HAVEN'T gotten around to the gardens or the changes I wanted to do in our bedroom yet. And as for catching with my reading or my movies I want to watch. No chance!!!!

Yesterday the kids, Tony and I went and played putt putt golf. Took us so long because we laughed nearly the whole way round but we had a great time. It was lovely to do something all together!

This morning I met up with Gail to see if we could work out a way to cover these new tins we got with four (yes four - are we mad!) windows in the lid. I love how mine turned out. Had to leave before Gail finished hers so not sure how hers went.

Had to leave to go TO THE DENTIST YYYUUUKKK. After having my wisdom teeth out and the nerve damage sustained then my gums and tongue are soo sensitive so I wasn't loooking forward to it and I came home with my very first filling. Not something I will go back for again if I can avoid it!

Got lots to look forward to over the next few weeks. Got my wonderful Jane coming over Friday for some craft and dinner, in a couple of weeks I am meeting up with friends from school, some I havent seen for three or four years, and having friends over for a bbq on Australia day so will be nice and busy. Add to that a cyber crop in there somewhere, going back to work and getting the kids ready for school. AARRGH

For some reason Blogger wont let me upload pics so will try again tomorrow

Suicide is not the answer

After attending the funeral of one of my friends husband about 6 weeks ago on Tuesday we were back at the same place to say goodbye to her son who would have turned 14 years old the day before he was buried.

He committed suicide on the 23rd of December in the backyard of the family home.

I know sometimes life gets hard and I know where these thoughts come from and I can relate to the not knowing what to do but it affects so many people around you.

The funeral was heartbreaking - one of his sisters spoke at the service and finished off with "and now the two special men in my life are gone". there were so many school kids there and hopefully the message that suicide isn't the answer got through to them.

My big beef was that there was all these 13 and 14 year old kids totally distraught and not a parent in sight. I know they are old enough but at times like this (it was probably the first funeral for a lot of them) some support would have been nice.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Well we made it home safely. We had a great christmas in Brisbane with Mark, Mel and Declan.

We flew up on the 23rd and Mark met us at the airport and then when we got to our apartment there were Mel and Declan waiting to see us! The place we stayed was lovely.

Chrsitasm Eve we stayed at Mark's so the kids could wake up together christmas monring and then we went to Mel's family for christmas lunch. One thing I learnt about Gatton - it is very hot!!!!




We did lots of fun stuff. Went to underwater world, did lots of shopping!!!!, went to southbank and did went up the river, and shopped some more! didn't get to dreamworld as it rained most of the time we were there but had some great times with Mark, Mel and Declan.

Mum and John joined us on the 28th for a family christmas celebration and then we flew home together new years eve.



All in all it was a great time