To Infinity and Beyond!!

HAHAHA, we just came back from the 3D double feature of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. You have to love a company that can produce movies where kids will sit and watch, totally engrossed for 4 hours. They even added in extra scenes through the movies, I have to admit I enjoyed it. Only thing is that I'm not completely sold in this 3-D thing. I really don't think it's all that, I mean, to me, these 3D movies just look like high end HD/Blu-ray movies. I think I was spoiled by the 3D spiderman ride at Universal because that really made you feel like things were coming to get you. These "3D" movies just don't have the same feel.

I have to share these...

These photos are crazy mad. My friend in Sydney sent them to me this morning. They woke up to find Sydney completely enveloped in a dust cloud. The dust storm originated in the Northern Territory and blew south to Sydney. That's like a dust storm in the Dakotas blowing south to Miami.

Been trying new things...

Well, I was inspired by a really good friend of mine to play with a blank canvas book. Only problem was that I couldn't actually get my hands on one so I decided to make mine. With about $2. worth of artist's canvas, about $1.50 in tabletop vinyl and a couple packs of grommets and interfacing that I had lying around anyway, I stitched one together. A bit of gesso, paint and glimmer mist later, I'm pretty happy with the results. Most of the embellishments are buttons, I really like that silver 3/4 profile facial button.



The bling on the cover is another new toy I got. I forget who it's by but it looks like a soldering iron and it heat sets the stones onto the fabric. It's very cool but really requires a bit of patience. It took a little longer than I was expecting to get the cover done.

My last cool purchase is my felter! After countlessly stabbing my fingers by hand felting, I happened across a bargain I couldn't pass. I've been playing with it and came up with these beauties. Oh, and the ribbon on the book cover is felted on as well.





I've also got some new papers that I'm working with now. Will post when done...

AARRRRGGGGGHH!!

Why can't there be just 1 @#$%&* version of Windows that can work??? I've just about had it with Vista!! &%&*($^ explorer keeps freezing so I can't even see my hard drive and apparently, the "fix" in the service pack is hit or miss. I won't ever find out because I refuse to install the little virus that they want to push to make sure that I have a "good" copy of Vista installed.

I seriously need to install Linux...

Presents!!!

Well, it wasn't as bad as I was led to believe.

I got my 2nd fridge which I'm really chuffed over :) I've been wanting one for a while now and yes I know it's more a "family" present, I get veto power over everything that goes in it.

Meanwhile, DD picked out this...



Which is a lot better than I was imagining, apparently something with faux fur was a close 2nd because "this feels really nice Dad"

DS came up with...




He's been wanting me to get a "slider station" ever since they started peddling them on TV. For those unfamiliar with the concept, check it out here. Beware, you're going to be yelled at so turn your speaker volume down. Dad, being a good dad, used the burger thing to make dinner that night because I was sleeping off the effects of drinking a blenderful of something frosty and adult flavoured :)

It was a VERY good day.

Happy Mother's Day!!!

I'm being pro-active since I can barely keep up with everything else.

Happy Mother's day to everyone out there in a mom role. Moms are the coolest, most patient people on the face of the earth. If they weren't, humans would be extinct in a generation.

Can't wait to see all the stuff that Dh has apologized for in advance, apparently my kids think my style is having no style...

Happy dance

Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! School today, quiet house. Doing a bit of code, finishing off a hat for felting and hoping to paint a bit.

Happy days are here again...

Bleeaacchh!!

Spring break is almost over, 3 more sleeps and it's back to school. Yay! DS is definitely feeling his oats these days too, talk about defiant 4yrs olds! To top it off, you can really tell when he makes the effort to be good and when he's "in a mood", I guess there are some days when he figures it's no use so he may as well let it rip since he's getting into trouble anyway.

No scrapping for the past couple weeks either, I'm hoping to get some done today but it's too early to tell at this point. Hopefully, I can get some Easter pictures this weekend too.

Scrapping!!!

Scrap4Life had their cyber crop last weekend and I did manage to get a few of the challenges done. Where I have been slack is with my girls on the Australian Top 50 board. With the time difference and just day to day stuff, I haven't been by in quite a long time. ASBT50 had their CC last weekend too and I'll be good and drop by to check out the challenges.

Anyhoo, here's what I managed to do. I'm really pleased with them.







BTW, good luck to Jodie and Judy at S4L. Jodie's moving out to Hawaii to start a new adventure and Judy is going to take over the business. Can't wait to get my box of goodies from them.

We've got big things coming down the track too...

Project Appalachian

I get emails from my LYS and this week, they announced that they're collecting sweaters for Project Appalachian. I'd personally never heard of it but they were inspired by a story on the news over the weekend about poverty in the Appalachian mountains.

To be honest, I still don't know much about it or have bothered to research the article - my bad - but in this day and age, I truly believe that poverty, true poverty, not relative poverty in the USA should not exist. Anyway, their initiative is to collect sweaters for children and they are looking for any and all knitters and crocheters to get involved. I packed up the few that I could put my hands on and took them down and volunteered to make more as they were getting some yarn donated.

Having said that, I'm putting out a call to any that can help. My LYS is A Stitcher's Haven and unfortunately, they haven't updated the website with the details yet but their contact information is on the link.

The Cat in the Hat came Back

I had to share this...

In honour of Dr Seuss' birthday - at least I think it's the birthday, DS's class did this getup, which I had a helluva time trying to get him out of.


I couldn't imagine trying to control 21 of these things - it really was a day of herding cats.

3 more days til school

There's been no school this week for "Family and Friends Week" which means that I've had 2 feral children for the past 5 days. 3 more days to school and at this point, hours are worth counting.

It all started off with the Garlic Festival in Delray Beach on Valentine's day and yes there actually is a garlic festival, it's their 10th one and I was quite surprised how extensive it was. All the food of course was garlic themed - garlic pulled pork, garlic chicken skewers, garlic pizza, garlic sausages, london broil in garlic sauce...garlic ice cream which was surprisingly tasty. Kids had a blast, got their faces painted and got on the rides and a couple hours later, it was time to leave with much lighter pockets.

DS had a custom paint job, it was so worth the money. He wanted spidey and I asked for venom since it wasn't on the list. I think it got them a bunch more business as everyone that saw him wanted to know where to get it done and I believe they made the local evening news. I had to get them hats since they left the house without theirs and the sun was beating down pretty hard. Anyways, there was a local camera reporter at the tent where I got the hats and she thought they "were just too cute" and asked to interview them. The boy, just went to town with it. I don't know if it was aired or not, it's not local to us but it was funny watching them and all I could do was shake my head. Don't I have the most beautiful DD?



And look out, here comes Venom and his mild mannered alter ego; Stupendous Man

DD had her first spa experience too, one of her friends had a spa birthday party and I was really pleased that they had age appropriate activities. The girls got their hair done, a bit of glitter and eyeshadow and manicure and pedicures. It was very cute, loud but cute. We dropped her off and wandered around the mall while it was going on. They were running a little late when we got back and I went in to find about 15 giggling and talking 6 and 7 year olds parading around in their little spa robes and pedi-slippers. It really was trying to herd cats.

Oooooh!!! Tagged again :)

Hi!! Long time no see huh?

I got tagged by Vicky and since I'm soooo slack, I just found out.

*****Photo Memory Game****
Here are the RULES:
1.Go to where you store you pictures on your computer.
2.Go to the SIXTH folder and pick the SIXTH picture.
3.Post that picture on your blog along with a SHORT story about it.
4.You know the rest. Tag SIX people and leave a comment on their blog or email then letting them know you chose them.

Here's my picture:



This is actually from DS's camera. He got one of those kid-proof Diego cameras for Christmas and this is from his first play with it. We were outside playing with a bubble machine so his excitement was two-fold. The bubble machine was actually working - I had confiscated it the week before because they swirled the thing around and got the motor wet so I had to clean and dry it. Second, he has "my OWN camera". He's very button happy too, I had to dump the card a couple times that day. Too bad most of the pictures were of the floor or his fingers. I believe those are my feet in the shot.

My turn now...who to tag?

I tag

1. Kylie
2. Jude
3. Jen
4. Kayla - if you get the chance but I figure you're taking lots of pictures now anyway

Glad that's over

The germs have left the building!!!

I'm still not on full appetite but that pain's stopped and my body isn't protesting to everything that enters my stomach.

One of my favourite cyber crops is on tonight too. Scrap4Life's January CC has started for the weekend and the challenges are so nice and I'm going to take the challenges with me to my not-so-LSS's Friday night get together with the girls. I'm realy liking scrapping at the store since it helps me stick to the scrap diet. I only get what I need for the layout and I'm not picking up stuff for the sake of it. Mind you in a couple months when all the new stuff from CHA hits the shelves, that might change.

Having said that, my pal Vicky has awarded me with a blog award and I have yet to collect it. I will be doing that soon, I promise and I'll be paying it forward, I need to have more than 5 min blog time every 3 days or so.

Big things to come....

My kids love me

They were very insistent on sharing their germs with me. I'm not feeling good...

My kids are sick :(

Poor babies. DD started throwing up Friday night and it's progressing through her GI tract but it's still gross. She says that she's feeling better but I'm not seeing any improvement in her colour, she's still really pale and still has dark circles under her eyes. At least she's trying to drink, I just wish more would stay down. So far the only thing to stay down is rice and gatorade. Even tea and water is coming back up.

Then, 4 short hours ago, DS started to puke. Poor little guy is so freaked out by it. He never throws up so all the cramping and retching that goes along with it has him in tears and to add insult to injury, his birthday is tomorrow. I had cancelled everything anyway since his sister was ill but I was still planning on taking him out somewhere. Now, he can't even enjoy his own birthday.

I'm really hoping I don't get it. I've been walking everywhere with a spray bottle of bleach cleaner so keeping my fingers crossed.

Project 365 is a bust

How hard is it to take 1 stinking photo a day?? Let me tell you, it's not that it's hard to remember, it's just sooooo easy to forget. When all I can think about is "Why am I the only one in the house with the capacity to clean floors", taking a photo of it is the last thing on I remember.

If I took a photo of the floor around the dining table everyday, I'd probably disgust myself. Maybe a photo journal of the way they eat would shame them into cleaning it...in about 15 years.

And what's up with this? Bedtime is 8. Maybe later on a weekend...MAYBE...sometimes we'll cut them a little slack. Anyway, last night, I wasn't gone 15 minutes and he's already been yelled at by DH for locking his door and turning the lights on.

It's about 9 - 9:30. I've yelled "Go to sleep!" about every 20 minutes to the boy and you would not believe the responses I was getting - and roughly in this order:

"I'm in the toilet"
"I AM! I'm in bed!"
"I'm putting toys away!" - WTF?
"Ok Mom!"
"I'm NOT playing, I"m not, I'm not"

Finally, there's no response and I get up to check in case he's not actually in the bed and this is what greets me in the dark.

None of that was on the floor when I put him to bed. As a matter of fact, I distinctly remember putting those 2 light sabres away when I turned the lights out because he had hidden them under the comforter at the foot of the bed and the duvet was in the closet.

I remember telling him that he had to clean up the mess in his room and I was then informed that

"It's NOT a mess, Mom. it's beautiful!"

I'm going to have to start camping outside his door when the lights go off. I really hope that this is just a phase because it's not as if he's not tired when he's put to bed, the little *insert appropriate noun here* just won't stay still.

I scrapped!!!

For the first time in months, I finally got something done.






I went to my LSS and met up with the girls there and a good time was had by all. I'm quite happy with the result, there was the general consensus however, that the jump layout needs a bigwheel die cut sometwhere. (Un)Fortunately, I couldn't find one.

Let's hope this is the start of many more...

Project 365 so far

I really did want to make a go of this but it's not even a week into the year and I've already missed a day, well 2 days actually but I sort of fudged one of them. As part of it, I started to journal every night too and so far, I've been keeping up with that. Just a page or so with the day's happenings so I can say I did something.

I've been painting too, which is a nice change. Feels good to smear colour again and squish stuff together.









I was slightly affronted when DH looked at them and asked if they were the right way up.

Can you hear that?

SHHH!! Listen...all that quiet...no kids!! School's back in session. WOOHOO!!

Isn't that terrible? I love my kids but I was really looking forward to them going back to school.

I've had a chipboard album sitting on my workspace for , oh I don't know, months maybe? I finally decided to do something about it. I have no pictures to go into it yet but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.




I tried to use a bunch of stash items - beads, buttons, rubons but I didn't make much of a dent, *sigh* still a whole whack of it left. I even painted the backside of each sheet as well. I just need pictures to go in it now.

Happy New Year

Here's to resolutions and breaking them. I don't know which one will be more fun...