Just Me and Them

Oops!

Tonight I realized just how long it's been since I wrote an entry on my blog. I keep telling myself that I will do better at this and keep up writing here at least once a week but then time kind of slips away. This weekend we had Emma's 16th birthday party. It's all kind of hard to believe - Emma is 16 years old!!

Anyway, we threw her a huge party to celebrate. We had the family one during the day, partly for my mums sake because she's not well but also so the teens could have fun without a bunch of adults telling them to be quiet.

Em planned the whole thing as a Silver screen dress up party and we had special streamers hanging from the roof and different decorations that revolved around that theme. Em dressed herself up as a character from her favorite TV show the Misfits.

I took photos of the decorations and the girls took photos during the whole day and evening...

Here is Emma in her costume and Stacey in hers - the posers!!

and the birthday cake - we had two!!  Her Auntie Jenny made a brilliant one one for the family but my photos are pretty ikky so I thought I'd share the evening one..

Lastly, here is the table centrepiece I made especially for Emma ...

Sharon

Sharesies

Its been awhile.  Between school and certain head bump and just living - ive been too busy to get back here!!  However its finally the school holidays and I can breathe and do a few of those things that I love.  But let me first explain exactly what I've been up to ...

During the last week of school for the term I fell/tripped and hit my head on the concrete driveway out front of my own home.  At the time I was sure I didnt hit my head and apart from being a bit embarassed by it all, I decided I was ok to go to work.  Only problem was, my head wasnt as sure as I was and within an our I started to feel sick and headachy.  It just kept getting worse to the point that two hours later when one of the kids asked me to write a word for her, I realised I was only writing symbols despite the fact I thought I was really writing the word.  Thats kinda when I knew I had to see the doctors!  Foirtunately for me it was only a concussion and nothing worse.

Of course, Ive been running around like a headless chook all week because I've been re-doing my art room!!  Its actually turned out really nice to look at and smells so much better because once the room was empty, I cleaned everything!  I chucked out all the old curtains and got Mattt to install a much more modern system of roller blinds and lace curtains so that I can let in as much natural light in as possible!  I took some photos to share ...

This is from the doorway, looking in.

I now have all my major things stored in a long shelving system just behind my desk so that they are all together and in easy access to work with!

This is the view over my desk - Matt took me to this car tool shop awhile ago and while I grissled A LOT, I managed to find this two amazing tool boxes that I now use to store all my tools and mediums in.  The best part of them is that they are ..

RED

Strong and very sturdy

Lockable so Sarah can no longer raid my glitters and make a mess!

Finally, I had to share my new lace curtains.  I saw them hanging in my local drapery shop and absolutely fell in love with them!  Of course at the time I didnt realise quite how much work they would actually be in threading and tieing up all the ribbon - but I do so love the end result so I guess it was all worth it in the end!

I also wanted to share a card I made for last weekends Frantic Stamper Blog sketch.  I forgot completely to be organised in time for it but did end up getting a card done ...

Lastly, this morning we had our Easter Egg hunt.  sadly its now only Sarah who is interested - Emma came out to help hide the eggs but went very red faced and refused to play along with Sarah and the hunt.  I guess my kids are growing up!

The funniest moment was Sarah trying to find the last egg - she was so frustrated because she couldnt see it and I couldnt help but snap this photo of her standing right next to it without even realising it ...

Sharon

Happy New Year!

Well, I can officially say that this is my only blog entry for the year!!  But not my last!!  Our household really hasnt settled down since before Christmas, especially with getting organised for that big day then Sarahs birthday in between and New Year.

We ended up having a bit bigger New year than we had originally planned, but it was a great night!!  Here are some of the photos - 

Sarahs birthday was only two days before New Years eve and because she wanted a movie day on the 1st (today) we all decided to leave her cake till the New Years party so she could share it with family and friends.  She had an absolute ball!!

I think we all did, celebrating the New Year a bit earlier for the kids, popping poppers and making the sky shine with sparklers!!

This morning wasnt so shiny with the big clean up but Sarah stepped up big time and the only one who got up with me to clean up before her best friend came over.  Sarah and Natalie went out with Emma and Mason (Emma's boyfriend) supervising, to the cinema to watch the new Alvin and the Chipmonks movie!!

So thats about it for us, but I do have a quick share to make ... of a card I've been working on since Christmas Eve.  I finally finished it off on Friday night -

I recieved a Cricut Gypsy just before Christmas (Thank you Paula) and my very first design was this tear drop-ish card.  BUT to add a different feel to it, I also cut out a centre design to use as a mask and sprayed the card with a pink and blue Glimmer chalk.  I then sewed blue net over the top to soften the sprayed image and to add texture before finishing it off with diamontes at each stitch crosspoint.  The whole card seems fairly basic but it took me forever to finish!!  Oh and its an easel design with the rosette at the bottom stabilising it.  check out a side view to see what I mean -

I'd love to get back in and create up a storm but its so hot at the moment!!  Today was a whopping 41 degrees and I don't see it getting much better this week ... eek!!  I think I may end up moving my art room into the lounge where its much cooler.

Sharon

 

Dimitri is fine!

I havent had a chance to come back to say that my little kitty is fine!!  When we picked him up at the vet he was very groggy and cuddly.  He slept most of the first 24 hours but he's now back to his old self and nutty as ever!!

Sharon

Digi Share

I'm really not sure whats happened to the past week. Truly?!?  I think KI blinked and it just disappeared.  I wish I could say I've been really busy with a tonne of stuff for work or the like but in truth I have no excuse other than a certain Itunes game has taken a great deal of my life away!!  Its called Dragonvale and I have been so obsessed about creating the elusive rainbow dragon that frankly, nothing else has mattered.

Incredibly wasteful really, especially since I still dont have a rainbow dragon.  Anyone else out there play this game?  do you have any tips for how to get one?

So anyway,  I have a few things running through my mind to create but for now I wanted to just share one of the digi pages I created within the Jessica Sprague classes ...

I really love the classes jessica runs and over the Christmas holidays, hope to finish them all!!

Sharon

Birthday Card

It's my mum's birthday today - Happy birthday Mum!!  I spent a bit of time down at her house today, she's madly getting organised for her holiday and of course we had to drop Em off because she's going with Mum!! 

To celebrate her birthday, I reated this card for her ...

 

Mum is all this A.L.W. mad so this digi stamp from Sassy Designs seemed a perfect choice for her!!  The Phantom has been coloured using Copic markers and I have to say that I was thrilled by how well the folds turned out on his cape - I'm finally getting the hang of it all.

Sharon

An Evening with Anberlin

Last night was the most amazing concert!!  I have loved the group Anberlin for ever so long and to see them up close as they sang was just wonderful.

They sang sooo many of my favourite songs, opening with Dismantly Repair and closing the show with Fin.  Halfway through the show they did an acoustic session and I swear, it was absolutely dreamy sitting there listening to Stephen singing The Haunting!! 

Here are some of the photos I took during the evening -

 

 

BUT... my all-time favourite photo was this one -

 

we waited after the concert to meet them and I managed to get a photo with Stephen!!

Sharon

Finally ... a name!!

We finally named the kitten after a long process of discussing it.  I won!!  He is going to be called Dimitri after the Strigoi fighter from the Vampire Academy series.  If you saw how he was with our dogs you would very much get the name choice as the little devil already has them running scared.

So... as I promised, here are some photos of Dimitri -

 

Today I took him outside for a bit to try and get him to play with our other Russian Blue and I also took some more photos while I could -

Here is my other baby ... Misty. 

 

For now, he's not too keen about hving to share his life with a kitten BUT today they actually got face to face without hissing and spitting which was a huge progress.  I managed to even get a photo of it -

 
Misty looks so caring - he's not!!  At least he seems to finally be interested in the idea of another cat being there. 

Finally, I have a fun photo I took (and edited) of Sarah and Dimitri.  I've actually used a few different filters on the original image to get a very aged and worn looking feel to the photo.

 

So, thats it for me for now, I have some projects to mark and a card to make for the Wild Orchid challenge!!

:(

 

RIP sweet man, I hope that you finally have the peace you so richly deserved. 

Sharon

It's an obsession!!

My Ipad that is.  I love love it!!  Theres nothing better than moving freely around the house reading the paper or my emails.  Then theres the whole playing games thing and best of all is the Apple TV built in!  I love telly, love the fact that I can sit and either get absorbed in a good story or that it makes effective background noise.  With the Ipad, I have access to sooo many mpvie and video files through Itunes and I have been loving it.  Last weekend I downloaded the Brit Tv series 'Being Human' which I loved but never got to watch the other series of because rotten old Foxtel decided to get rid of it after the first season!!  I love it though and while I still havent seen season two yet, its there awaiting me!!

The other nifty part is that I can actually work on.  I've been drafting up documents for work with this wonderful App called simply 'pages' and it really does a great job for me.  If the whole Ipad thing had a decent Photoshop App then I would truly be in heaven and never touch a computer again - maybe not quite that far lol.

Anyway, I have no pages to share.  I've been busy with the wrap up of our first school term and parent interviews and. well, my Ipad!  I've been working on things but nothing I can share yet because they are either for Scrappit or for Frantic Stamper. BUT  I figured I better come visit before my blog gathers dust or - eek - spiderwebs!!