Saturday, May 31, 2008

Wild Weather

This weekend has turned out to be perfect for staying inside and doing as little as possible! Which is good as I pulled a muscle in my back the other day and have been a bit slow moving around. Great timing too - not only did I get Noel bugging me about doing my back exercises but my Mum as well! Damn pregnancy hormones... LOL. Here's a pic of my patio - the chair has blown over but there is no way I am going out there to fix it!


Luckily, these came yesterday so I am planning on spending the whole day having a bit of a play and hopefully I'll actually get a few things done!

I ordered them while I was down in Brissy so it was great to get them in the mailbox - we don't check it all that often as the only thing we usually get is bills which I don't really want anyway. Luckily I did though, they'd probably be a soggy mess by now otherwise! I've actually managed to do a couple of things over the last few days but the weather is WAY too bad to take a photo so it'll just have to wait until it's sunny again.

I had some great news this week! Scrapbook Creations has decided to publish some of my cards in an upcoming mag!! This is the first time any of my work has ever been published so it's kind of exciting and making me feel all motivated. A big thanks to Nic who dobbed me in and suggested they take a look at my work, it was so nice of you!
I'm thinking I might change the look of my blog as I'm getting a bit bored with it at the moment. I'm a bit worried though that if I do something I might end up losing it all! If anyone has some tips for me it would be greatly appreciated!

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Keepin Busy...

I think I must be trying to fit in as much social interaction as I possibly can before bubs arrives as this week has been pretty busy..... On the weekend I went to Bookfest, a big fundraiser for Lifeline where they sell a heap of second hand books and clothes etc. It's the first time I've been to the one here in Rocky as every other year I seemed to be working - was a bit disappointed about the size of it (just kept repeating to myself "I now live in Rockhampton, I now live in Rockhampton) as the ones I've been to previously in Toowoomba have been massive, however it was cheaper than I exected - I ended up getting a whole bag of books for just $20!!




I have never heard of half of them, but I don't really care - they look like they might be interesting and if not, I'll just give them back to Lifeline and they can sell them again next year! Speaking of books, Amanda had the great idea for a few of us to start our own book club... sounds great to me as I don't have to worry about whether my view on a book is "intellectual" enough or not. And we also get to pick the books so no boring ones! We are getting together this weekend to come up with a list of books so it will be interesting to see which ones make it on there. I would put a link in to Amanda but as of yet she doesn't have a blog... hint hint!!


Saturday night, a group of us went around to Hayley's place for dinner - she has the most amazing back deck - it is just huge! Then on Monday night, Amanda and her hubby Mark came around to our place for dinner, she even brought some Chocolate Bavarian which was yummy - I have had a hankering for some for the last couple of weeks now. On a (kind of) unrelated topic - is Chocolate Bavarian a cheescake or what - we decided that it was kind of like an ice cream cake but if you have a different view let me know!

Guess what I got in the mail yesterday!



Page by Page - a zine put together by the talented Samantha Kira! I've been waiting on it for a while so I was so glad when it arrived here safely - can never be too sure about Australia Post, although the only thing that I've had lost so far was something that was registered - go figure! I've been a frequent stalker of her blog and she even has an online workshop coming up which looks like it will be great fun... might have to sign up for it!

Well, must go as my Mum is here visiting me for the week (see what I mean about social interaction) and I've left her upstairs watching Huey's Cooking (fun).

Bye!

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Feeling Better Now....

Thank God I'm pretty much over the flu now.... still waking up in the mornings feeling ick, but it goes away after I've get up and have something to eat. The good news that I've been busy doing things around the place.... I've even done some baking! Now anyone that knows me knows that I generally don't cook - Noel usually cooks dinner so I'm just left with the cleaning up. But now that I'm not working, I've been doing the majority of the food prep around the house. In the last week I've even made some chocolate slice (an old fave) and some choc hazelnut biccies....

Unfortunately the recipe didn't make a lot, and I'm not sure if I can make any more for a while.... let's just say that over Christmas when I was using my food processor, it may or may not have been overheating and having a bit of smoke coming from it. Well, I thought it might get better after a bit of a rest..... when I was using it yesterday, it may or may not have had some smoke coming from it again. I think it's time for me to get a new one......

I also got around to cleaning up my scrap room while I was recovering - it was so messy, it completely tired me out and I had to have a nap afterwards...LOL. So I've been in there a bit in the last couple of days... haven't really accomplished all that much, but I have been working on some kids classes for Embellished and finishing off a layout that I started about 2 months ago.

On the first layout, I used dabbers to create the background - they work amazingly on stamps as they seem to have a bit of a thicker consistency than regular paint.


Oh, we also had a bit of a development on the baby front - for a few weeks now I've been feeling it moving around and kicking but it hasn't been strong enough for Noel to feel. The other night, bubs was particularly active so I kept grabbing Noel's hand and sticking it on my stomach to see if he could feel it, but no luck. So I told him to rest his head on my tummy to see if he could feel it that way - as soon as he did, he got kicked in the head! I think Noel got a bit of a surprise - it was so funny to see his face! Hopefully now Noel will be able to feel the kicking more... although maybe not with his head... LOL.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Sharing is not always caring.....

My darling husband has been home sick with the flu for the last couple of days and has kindly decided to share it with me (can you hear the sarcasm in my typing??). So I have just dragged myself out of bed to say......

A big Happy Birthday to Embellished!! The store in Rockhampton has now been open for a whole year and has continuously gone from strength to strength. YAY!!
Ok, I'm feeling a bit delirious now..... back to bed I go.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

How cool is this??

I had my 20 week ultrasound yesterday and just had to share a couple of pics of the baby. We didn't find out if it's a boy or a girl as we want it to be a surprise but we did get to see it move around a lot and yawn quite a few times! Even got to see it's eyes moving around!!

In the first piccy you can see it's profile shot, in the second it's more front on and you can see 2 legs and an arm up above it's head - very flexible!





Mothers Day was on Sunday so a big group of us went to Sizzler for breakfast... YUMMO!! Then Noel and I headed off to the Heritage markets and a few other places before heading home to watch a couple of movies. We hadn't checked the mail for a couple of days so it was great to find a package from my brother - good timing - nice Mother's Day present! He sent me a couple of souvenirs from his holiday in Japan... one of them was a Sarubobo doll which is only made in one town in Japan. They are usually made by Grandmothers for daughters and grandaughters and are usually associated with 3 wishes - protection from bad things, a happy home and an easy delivery on birth. (Thanks Wikipedia!!)


I'm thinking of hanging it up in the car as it has a little suction cap on it - it's quite cute, looks like a little faceless ninja!

Well, that's it for today... Bye!

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Such a great week!!

Well, the last week has absolutely flown by.... Ali and I had an awesome time in Brissy! We didn't take many photos though as we didn't want to have to lug our cameras around all day. Our bags came back a LOT heavier than when they went down, Mum and Dad even took some stuff back for us so we didn't have to fit it in our luggage! Here's a couple of photos that I did take....
The view from our hotel window, looking over towards Southbank...

You could also see the pancake place where we had breakfast... absolutely yummy and it is open 24hrs! It's in an old church which has been done up - I love it!!

You can see a few more photos over on Ali's blog.

Surprisingly, we didn't go to any Scrapping shops (we tried, but they were closed) but we did manage to go to a few art shops.... got heaps of cool supplies..... acrylic inks, irridescent medium, matisse paints just to mention a few. Now I've just got to have a play with them!

This week has been my first week off from Embellished and I've been loving it! Although I have been down to the shop at least 3 days this week.... I've had plenty of time to relax and do stuff around the house. My first project was to replace the curtains in our bedroom - they are SO old and block out hardly any light, not saying anything about the colour. I was lucky to pick some up at Spotlight in a decent colour for only $80!! The window is about 3 metres wide so I was expecting to have to pay a lot of money so I was pleasantly surprised!

You can see that it has made a vast improvement... probably should iron the new curtains to get rid of all the creases but I think that's a job for another day.... LOL.

And last, but not least here are the pages that I did at the retreat... for the first one I had a play around with oil pastels... not a colour I would normally use.

For the next one, I have had the page painted brown for months now and have finally finished it off, went over it a bit with a dabber (have I said how much I LOVE dabbers??) and some other bits.


Tonight I'm heading down to the shop to scrap with some fabulous girls, I want to have a play with some of my new supplies and see what I come up with!