Look what I got!!

They came yesterday and I'm pretty geeked about it. I signed up for the Big Wig Bash at Big Picture Scrapbooking a couple weekends ago and I won a set of Stacey Julian's books in a random draw. I was surprised that I'd actually won anything but these books are really nice. I've always liked her style, even though I can't scrap like her, she's too organised.

Just wanted to show off....er, share. That's right, share.

Goodies

I broke my scrap diet :-) and I did it with 2 eyes open and money in hand and not guilty about it. After hearing numerous rumours about an LSS, I decided that I needed to investigate and there were further rumours that the alleged LSS was next door to a YARN store - LYS. They were reputedly in a fairly familiar part of town so I made a special trip and YAY! Found them both first time, no turning around or passing by too fast.

Only problem is that "L" isn't that "L", they're in a mall that's a good half hour away if traffic's moving but both rumours have been confirmed and they do exist. I have actually NOT gone into LYS yet but it's in the plan. LSS isn't bad, there was quite a bit in it, some of which I would actually buy ;-) and they have a weekly Friday night crop. I'm particularly impressed with my new stamps, I'm christening those tonight.

I wish...

I wish I could say that I was productive today but I can't. Out of my 10 items on the mental "Things I really really really need to get done today", I've done one and a half. I wish I could say it was because the one task I did get done ate all my time but again, I can't. I wish I was motivated to do the rest, but alas again, I can't. Don't you love apathy? I completed the one task and gave up, figured that I'd done enough and...

I can't really remember how I filled the rest of my day. I think I ate and drew a mental blank for a couple hours and then realised I had to do the school pick up.

I then had to deal with 2 children that are experimenting in the fine art of negotiation. This usually involves with them asking for something, my saying "No" and them repeating the question with "I really really want to..."

I don't negotiate with terrorists.

Mmmmmm Look what I made

I actually was able to find the right coconut here! Not that sweetened clumpy nasty stuff in the grocery, I got proper dessicated, unsweetened coconut and the only thing to do with it is to make lamingtons. It's been a while since we've had them too and the kids were so geeked to see "Daddy Cakes".

Who's that?

Conversation with this afternoon with Greg

"Greg, who's this?"

"That's me!"

"Is it? You're sure?"

"YEAH! Oh wait. That's not me. I don't have pink underwear. It must be Maegan"

I laughed - wrong both times.

CC this weekend

It's Scrap4Life's August Cyber crop this weekend and I managed to get a couple of the challenges done. Thanks goodness there weren't many "back to school" type of challenges posted because I don't have a lot of those pictures.

So far, I've got these done






I'm finally getting the groove back. Slowly but it's dribbling in.

First day of school

Today was a GOOD day! Uninterrupted hours of thinking my own thoughts and doing my own thing, getting all my errands done in my own time. Such a good day and they were so happy to be going to school and not having to deal with the shouting lady that keeps telling them No! No! No!

Until they got home...something about Maegan had been bothering me for a while, couldn't quite put my finger on it until I was brushing her hair and...

"Why did you cut your hair?"

"Because you wouldn't let me"

"You didn't ask"

"I did when Dad and Greg went"

"But you didn't say anything, you just said you didn't want your hair like that"

She cut her fringe last night and the shortest pieces are dead centre of her face and they're, I swear, at scalp level. Maybe a whole cm long. I actually had my face in my hands for a minute, trying not to fall to pieces because if I don't laugh, I'll have to cry. You can actually see how short and crooked it is in the picture.



IT was so cute though, when I picked them up, Greg was wearing his "beautiful crown" .

"It's not a funny crown Mom, it's a beautiful crown"

Today's drama

I hate when they're bored!! Greg comes to me about 4:00 in tears, not whiny "Somebody's picking on me" tears, deep sobbing "Help me please please please" tears.

"Moooommm, I put beads up my nose! Waaahhhh"

"What? What do you mean you put beads up your nose? Come here let me see"

Yep - I look and see this blue piece of plastic wedged in there. Ok, deep breath, do I take him to emergency or do I try to get it out myself? I took another look and decided that I could probably get it out since I could see the hole. I find a hook, catch it and it's out. *HUGE SIGH*

"Mom, there's a yellow one in there too. I put two in"

Ah CRAP!! I look in there and sure enough, there's another one in the back, just at the back of the nostril but that one's sideways, no purchase. By this time, he's wailing that I'm squishing him and his hands are flailing and getting in the way and I keep telling him that he has to stop or it will really hurt or worse and I'm thinking "I better take him to emergency". After about 5 minutes of him flailing, he gets tired and I'm able to push the tip of the hook under the bead and it pops out. Just in time because he caught his second wind and he was winding up to start again.

I bet he won't do that again! That was, I swear, the most stressful 10 minutes that I've ever been through. I felt the grey hairs sprout.

Aaaaagghhh

Fay's killing me and she's not even a hurricane yet. First day of school has been delayed until possibly Wednesday depending on where and how she is. This is seriously cramping my style. I had all these lovely plans on how I was going to spend my alone time since DH is away too. Now I have to entertain 2 active, trapped children ALL DAY!! For 2 days!!

On the bright side, the weather's not actually that bad. So far, rain, quite a bit of rain, but that's about it. No wind, no floods that I've heard of yet so we're not doing that badly.

On another note, how cool am I that I figured out how to get 3 columns on my blog? I've been jonesing for that little feature and I had to dig into some script - can't call it code if it doesn't run through a compiler - but I think I got it down.

I'm wondering why

Butterflies are for girls and dragonflies are for boys? I mean, there are boy butterflies otherwise there wouldn't be caterpillars. Just like in "A Bug's Life", just because it's a ladybug, doesn't mean it's a lady. That thought crossed my mind when I was making this little creature and it occurred to me that I just assumed it was going on a girl layout.



I'm bent now on making a "boy" one. Btw, this isn't the idea that bloomed yesterday. I'm having a bit of an issue expressing exactly what I was thinking of both verbally and visually so I'm a little frustrated. I was hoping that doing something else would help but no luck so far.

This is cute...

I got this off of Kris' blog. Give this a try Swedish Furniture Name Generator

I am:



The 2 brain cells collided tonight and a light bulb went off that I'm going to have to exorcise tomorrow. I now have to hunt for that perfect picture so I'll probably be attached to the camera all day tomorrow or however long it takes to get it.

Stitching

I just love the look of stipple stitching on quilts. It just gives the finished product that much more dimension. So, I've been playing with trying to reproduce it on a scrapbook background and I've realised a couple things that should be glaringly obvious but I'm just a sucker for torturing myself instead of listening to common sense. I just need to see how something will work out.

Stipple stitching on quilts requires that the presser foot be raised while stitching so that the piece may be moved in any direction freely. When stitching on cardstock, if the presser foot is lifted, for some reason, the needle punches these GIANT holes in the paper and the result is not pretty. Not what I was looking for. I used an 80/11 needle, which was the smallest one I could find, I've ordered some smaller ones but I don't think it will make that much difference.

Polyester thread works better than cotton which works better than handquilting cotton. It could be my machine but I couldn't get handquilting thread to work, just couldn't get the tension right. The metallic threads work really nicely.

It's infinitely easier to work with a small piece of cardstock over the full 12 x 12 piece (DUH!) but I thought "Oh, it won't be that bad". Maybe it's my reliable 10 year old machine.

So I had to keep the presser foot down but because there's no nap to catch on the feeder dogs, the cardstock moved fairly easily but only in a forward direction so it can only be spiraled and the radius can be pretty small and the turns can be spiraled both left and right but for some reason, turning the cardstock counter-clockwise is more natural.

The top image is a finished one. I sprayed and stamped the background first and then ran it through the machine. I chose the yellow because I found I had this spool of metallic yellow thread from some distant project - not gold, metallic yellow.

This is the layout after I scrapped on it. Not bad, the stitching added a bit more dimension but I'm not done playing with the machine yet.

Waaahhh!!! I want to knit

But it's too hot here in South Florida. With the high humidity we've been having the last few weeks, my hands are always moist. I did a bad thing and went to the Knit Picks website and now my fingers are itching to feel all that lovely baby alpaca running over them.

That's the other thing about living down here. Even on the coldest days, it's too hot for a sweater. I might need one if I'm going out in the morning but by 10, I'm shucking out of it. I haven't yet been converted to cotton knitting either, it doesn't have the same feel to me and I'm yet to get used to the reduced elasticity in the yarn.

I've knitted and crocheted flowers a la Miss Nicki Epstein but it's not the same as completing a garment and to add insult to injury, my new Vogue Knitting and Knit Simple magazines have arrived. *SIGH*

I have no stash left either, I gave about 90% away when we moved from Sydney and I really want to order more but I don't have room with all the scrap stuff I have yet to go through. I really need to organize myself more...

This is a response to a product challenge from Scrap 4 Life where the challenge is to use non-scrap items. I used a paper towel, tinfoil and popsicle sticks. Actually, they're the sticks from the rubon pack so they're a little shorter than the popsicle sticks.

Not something I'd normally do but that's what a challenge is all about and I'm quite happy about it. I did figure out what wasn't sitting right with me about it and it took a while, it's the plain green cardstock that I backed it on. I think I would have been happier with a patterned but my thought at the time was that I didn't want to overwhelm the paper towel. Or maybe I should have used white or black instead of the green.

Colour Story Challenge CS7

This month's Colour Story Challenge is done :)

I love the fact that they pull inspiration from a variety of ads and pick both colour combinations and design elements from it. This month's was based on primary colours: yellow background with scattered red, teal and pink accents.

I kinda stepped out of the zone a little for this one as I have a really hard time with buttons and ribbon but I DID it!! I'm pretty happy with the results, the empty space at the bottom and left side could probably use a little something extra but I think I'm OK with how it is now. I might look at it again in a couple days to see if I feel the same way.

I must say, I'm really enjoying the Colour Story Challenge blog :-)

A breather :)

DH is home!! The kids are rapt that Dad's home again, the fun one's back. Hah! What they don't get is that for the next 2 weeks, Dad's going to be sleeping all day so he can watch the Olympics live all night so he WON'T be any fun during the day.

Won't matter much soon anyway, school starts in 7 days - that's 189 hours from now and I'm still scrambling on finding ways to make those hours fly past. I love the fact that they're always wanting their art box and we're working on cleaning up after they're done using the art box but that'll just need some more re-inforcing me thinks.

OOOh and Club Heidi's back and I am LOVING the new Heidi Swapp website! I'm not into the current kit, clocks don't really do it for me but I'm looking forward to see what else is coming down the track. Patiently waiting for the new Tim Holtz products and my new Gel-a-tins stamps. Wendy's so cool...

Tagged by Jude...

Ten Years Ago:

August 1998: Contracted to Chrysler for application development

5 Things on Today's To-do List:

1. Pick up photos
2. Mid week shopping
3. Tidy up rumpus room
4. Clean bathrooms
5. Organize dinner

Snacks I Enjoy:

Anything crunchy and can be dipped :) Chips, raw veg, pretzels....

Things I Would Do if I Was a Millionaire:

Ooooh...

The responsible thing would be to set aside enough for children so they could attend any uni of their choice and there probably wouldn't be much left after that. I also have a long list of causes that I'd help if I could, I'm very supportive of any cause that gets women and children off the streets and allows them to be self sufficient for example *unashamed plug* companies like Dhoo Dhaas in South Africa. I'd also like to buy some patience because lately I've been in short supply and I need to stock up.

The indulgent thing would be to have a house in Bali and go diving there when ever the urge hit. Second thing would be to set up a studio with just my stuff - no more taking the dregs of space left after everyone's dumped their crap all over the place. LOL - probably in the house at Bali.

Places (or areas) I have Lived:

Trinidad and Tobago, Toronto (Ontario, Canada), Dallas, Detroit, Boston, Weston, Philadelphia, Sydney(NSW Australia)

4 People I am Tagging:

I'm pathetic and don't have any friends that haven't been tagged yet. I'll have to come back to that...

Facelift

Trying to get my groove back and I decided to give the blog a facelift. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out but it was a pain getting that sidebar image just right so it would tile nicely. I love those coffee ring stains, a little slice of my life I guess. I see enough of them around me HA!

I'm fixing to rig up some ribbon and hooks in the kids' rooms so they can hang up their creations, just trying to decide where and how many and I need to track down clothes pegs. After being in Oz for so long, I'm surprised how scarce they are here - not that I hung out clothes down there either, but clothes lines are not the norm here. Even in Florida, just rains too much and the humidity's too high and it ALWAYS rains when no-one's around to bring the wash in so you have to do it again otherwise it starts to smell. Maybe out west in Arizona there's more of them.

Ikea's calling me, this could be interesting...

And it's only Monday

Well, day 1 of DH being away. I should be used to it by now, his usual MO is to be away for 2 weeks out of the month. I guess I got used to him being around since this is the first time he's traveled since the move and that was in March. No-one told me that 3 1/2 year old boys needed a full time keeper either. He's starting to feel his boots too and he thinks that they're too small for him. I'm mis-speaking though, it's because he's 3 and not a he. It seemed like I was yelling at DD all the time too when she was that age. He just needs to grow out of it and fast. Is it wrong that I'm counting the hours until school starts so someone else can deal with him for 6 of his waking hours?

6 more days to go until DH get back and currently 320 hours until school starts...

Tapped out

I've hit the proverbial wall. Out of the blue, I've gotten lethargic and just want to veg, I don't even want to read and that's never happened before. I'm in the process of making my to-do list for next week but since DH is away for the week and camp's done, I don't know how much I'll be able to complete. Maybe that's why I'm feeling tired. No mojo either.