Having a fine time with mum

Although it hasn't stopped raining all weekend. Friday was an okay day but Saturday and Sunday it rained and hasn't stopped.

We did go shopping on Saturday, a bit of wet weather wasn't going to stop us. We ended up at Port Fairy and went in and out of every single boutique there, bliss! Mum snapped up some bargains, lovely Italian knitted jumpers at $49 each! Gorgeous. Score one for mum. We ended up having lunch at Time and Tide, delicious. We rounded it off by sharing the most magnificent chocolate brownie cake, covered with rich chocolate sauce, icecream, cream and strawberries. Too bad I left my camera in the boot of the car because it was truly sensational. And more than a little sinful.

I'm heading back with mum to take her home tomorrow. And of course more shopping!

Off to bed with me now but before I go here's another page to share of the family album. This is my very very favourite family photograph. We were out the back of grandma and grandpa's under his apple tree. I just love this picture, I have turned it into a vintage hue here, but have it framed as a black & white pic on our mantle piece.

Credits here.

Tail end of it

Thank goodness we're at the tail end of Mike being sick, although he's still using it as an excuse to get out of the dishes. Men are really really bad at being sick aren't they? I use a very general sweeping statement there I know. But women might be knocked to the rafters with being sick but they still keep on keeping on. Beds still need to be made, meals still need to be cooked, things still need to be tidied and put away and cleaned. Part of our multi-skilling perhaps? Who knows. Just that often if we don't do it, it doesn't get done.

Okay, rant over!

Mum is coming to stay today for a few days, I'm so looking forward to it. Again madly cleaning yesterday. te he. Everything is clean enough, but you know how it is, you want it to be perfect for your mum.

Onto scrapping. I was thinking the other day how funny this is. Although not scrapbooking per se (because I didn't even know what it was), I loved when I came home from travelling overseas, that I would put a photo album together. It had to be perfect. Perfect placement of pictures, stories typed up on coloured paper, memorabilia inserted such as tickets and the like. Everything pristine and a pleasure to view.

The great trend in scrapbooking I think at the moment and I've jumped on the band wagon with full force is to distress things. I love this look. This antiquated, crumpled, torn look. Obviously perfect for vintage pages, but why did I do it for the Molly page shown in my last post? Who knows. I just like the look.

Back to my photo albums of my trips. I would be horrified if I had torn a ticket when putting it in the album and any crease marks from folding memorabilia were straightened out as much as I could and if pictures weren't exactly perfect they didn't make the cut.

How funny that my way of thinking has gone 180 degrees.

Another page for the family book. There are not many baby/toddler pictures of Trevor, I'm having a hard time finding them but there was a reason. Mum and dad with a sick baby and a toddler (me) in tow, really didn't find time to take a lot of pictures of him. Thank heavens for the digital age today, nice and quick and instant.

Credits here.

Back to your previous scheduled viewing!

Surely I'm not the only one to say ... at last the Olympics are over? Tell me I'm not. Very un-Australian isn't it? We are the nation of sun, sea and sports. Don't even get me started on the female basketballers though. Silver not good enough? Hmmm? Their attitude really put a dampener I'm sure on the very excited and gracious other athletes that did win silver and thought the world of it.

Yes you can tell I'm not very sports-minded (apart from my beloved Cats in the Aussie Rules). I'm not against sport, not at all, I think the fresh air and exercise and team spirit and camaraderie are great and wonderful learning tools for children and adults alike. Sure I'll watch a good game of anything if I'm forced to, ha! But the money they put into sports, the payment for rights to televise, the huge amounts of dollars it takes to host an Olympics, the obscene amounts that sponsors pay, it's all very well and good, but let's face it, they're not curing cancer are they? And apologies to everyone who takes offence at my anti-mega-dollar-sports stance, but I'd rather channel the money into something that really matters.

Don't worry, I say the same amount the money that movie stars make for movies too.

Does it make me bitter and twisted? Perhaps. But strangely enough I think it makes me quite sane thinking this way.

Enough about that. Check out this forlorn looking face. It's the face I get when I drive away from the house whether it's to head away for the day to work, or for a quick 10 minutes down the street. Which makes me wonder if dogs have any concept that you are coming back? Does she always think I'm leaving forever and ever? I wonder what goes through their heads.

Credits here.


I do really love this rich gold colour and there are a lot of other beautiful rich colours in Sharon's new kit that I used. Click on the link to take you to twolittlepixels.

And now having brought down the very essence of our nation with this post, I best head off and make dinner.

Weekend at last!

This week has gone by very slowly, probably because I knew at the end of it holidays await. Not having to go to work. I get to sew, knit, scrap, cook, read, relax, visit with friends, have some "us" time with Mike, all those things that replenish the soul.

I'm also quite a list person, so I'm putting together a list of things I want to do. There's such satisfaction in crossing things off once done I think.

Now this past week has also seen me nursing quite a sick husband, he's been full up with the flu. Now I know a lot of people get the common cold and call it the flu, but I do believe this was the full blown, knock you down, hit you sideways flu. He's been very lethargic, no appetite, the couch has become his best friend, and he's slowly made his way through the week.

EXCEPT ...

Guess where he is right now? Camping! Yes you read right. Against my better judgement. I wanted him to stay home this weekend but it was a pre-arranged weekend with a group he's with and I know he dearly wanted to go. He's had what he likes to call "cabin fever" in that he wouldn't go camping while his mum was so sick this year, he didn't want to be too far away in case he needed to jump into a car and be by her side. So I do know that this weekend was going to mean a lot to him to get away, his way of replenishing his soul. He's up north and so no rain, but it's very cold he told me a short while ago on the phone. Any bets he may come home with pneumonia? Hmmm???

So as I go off to couch luge tonight and watch some more Olympics and do some knitting, I will show you a page I did for the family album. Where it all began with me and bands. My very first official "gig". I was about 12 years old here.

Credits here.

Oh and for those non-knitting people who read my last post, I didn't realize you wouldn't know what "frogging" meant. It meant "throwing your knitting down in disgust-ripping the needles out-and pulling the wool undoing it all in a temper tanty". There, I do believe that's the definition of frogging.

Just call me Kermit

Yes the knitters amongst us will understand what I mean by that. I have frogged majorly tonight. I was going gung ho on a lovely pair of socks. The pattern was only a 2 line pattern but it was effective and quite frankly all this passing the slip stitch over on each row was slowing me down so it was a fair slog to get to the heel. But this wasn't my normal heel, Bells you nearly got a phone call in panic this arvo!! ha This one had a wrap and turn thing going on. So straight onto the net, I thought I worked out how to do it, but there were gappy bits going on and I just knew I wasn't happy and before I knew it in a bit of a dummy spit the needles were out and I was frogging the lot. Mike looked at me in horror but knew better than to interject and just let me keep on frogging.

So now my smooshy brown yarn is taunting me again, I want to start but now to find another pattern I will be happy with. No more of this W & T stuff in the next pattern, I like my old every day heels I've been doing.

Oh and just for something completely different ... it's raining out there right now. Actually not just raining, but raining cats and dogs! LOL

I dug out a fun couple of pictures so thought that will be my next page for the family album. I'm seriously missing the 80's/90's so this fitted the bill. I looked back at myself in these pictures, oh to be 29 years old again! Not just 29 but a whole different dress size, hahaha. Check out my brother's earrings, he had about 7 in one ear and 3 in the other, and the length of that hair!

Credits here.


Actually the funny thing about this page is that I had totally frogged that too! I had been toiling over it, I liked the blue background but I had the frames all wrong (so Mike told me). I took that on board. I did not however take on board the fact he thought I should put a big yellow happy face on the page too! ha. So I started the page all over again, changed the frames and the position of them, moved my journalling to the bottom, a few stitching holes and hey presto, I liked the page. Ahhh now this my friends is the benefit of digi scrapping. No wastage!

Time for bed, one more week and then I'm on holidays from work. Yahoooooo!

Rainy Cold Wet Weather - what else is new?

I swear it has rained for 2 weeks solid, it really doesn't do much for the mood. I know we need the rain, yes yes yes, how many times do people say that, but THIS MUCH? I swear if we had a reservoir built in our town we could supply water enough for the whole state. I've only lived in this town a little over 4 years now, but even the locals are saying it's the coldest they've known it, so it's not just me being delicate you know.

Mike went down to check on his dad yesterday so I've been left to my own devices last night and today. We've decided it will be an easy dinner and we're going down to the local pub for a meal tonight. To be honest we hardly ever go down to the local because their meals went right off there for a while, we'd rather get in the car and travel 20 minutes to the next town. But we've heard there's a new cook so we're going to give them another go.

Mum rang earlier, Mike had called in to check on her too. It's nice to think your husband will just pop in on his mother-in-law like that, for a coffee and a quick fix of anything that needed fixing, so she had him reprogram the video player as she'd mucked it up. Yes, although she has a dvd player, she still players her old videos too!

So apart from looking at the ironing basket every time I walk past the laundry, I swear it's taunting me, I've just cruised today, a bit of housework, more washing (which means even more ironing, eeek) and a bit of knitting and scrapping. The fire is crackling away keeping the house warm. And I do think a hot chocolate is in the offering right now.

Before I go, thank you for not begrudging my little pity party I had in the last post, I do appreciate my dear friends for not thinking I'm the biggest sad sack ever. And with that, I'll show you yet another page from the old slides.

How lucky I am to get to play with the new kit "As I Am" by creashens. It is exquisite. Click on the link and go check it out at twolittlepixels. The colours blend so well to both vintage layouts as well as modern. Check out Shen's blog and grab yourself the freebie that goes with it.

Credits here.


Message for RH : Is there anything wrong with your email? My emails to you over the last 2 weeks have kept bouncing back to me, although I've gotten yours okay. It's infuriating.

Rain day mood

It has rained all day today, about 4am I heard it coming down in buckets and it's still going. Not that I'm complaining, I'm not, we need the rain. But this much of it? And our garden thermometer has kept glaring at me that it's not nudged any more than 0 degrees celsius all day. So definitely a day for indoors.

But with the cold and the wet and all the tension and stress of the past week, God! it's already been a week. How can time go so quickly and yet it was yesterday? So with all that my mood has been very sombre today.

So I decided to get out a very personal picture and scrap it. I've had quite an emotional time putting this page together. So simple it is really, but it's taken 8 months to really look at that picture again. I took it about a week before dad passed away. He was in hospital, mum and he were having a quiet moment, probably one of his last lucid moments he had where he could communicate with us. I snuck out my mobile phone and took a picture with the camera. Didn't aim in particular, the light was shining in from the window at probably the wrong angle, it's not overly clear, I just needed to preserve that precious moment.

After thinking long and hard about it, I decided this page should go in our family history book, I think it's a beautiful fitting farewell to dad. This is what mum used to say to dad every night when she'd put him to bed during his illness. So whilst I've shed many a tear this afternoon, probably over everything - dad, my mother-in-law, my grandma, I'm glad I put all that emotion into this page.

Credits here.

I have no words

After a beautiful day spent on Saturday with her and we left feeling so good about things, yes she was sick, yes she was frail, yes she was still not able to eat, but she was in good spirits and we hugged when we left. No special words, just "see you next time".

My beautiful mother-in-law, after a long battle with cancer, had a heart attack on Saturday night and passed away in hospital on Sunday morning.

God only takes the best doesn't he, and she will soon be organising Heaven I'm sure, making it work even better than it already does.

I do love my Friday nights

Friday night is sacred to me. I love to just unwind and do my own thing. And here I am, cup of coffee at the ready, some white chocolate being nibbled on (I looooooove white chocolate!), dog at my feet sucking up the heater, ha! Mike is in the loungeroom watching some boy flick. Perfection.
Oh and I started back in Personnel/HR today, and totally thrived. Big smiles all round today.

We are heading down to the family tomorrow it will be a huge day. Mike wants to catch up with a friend, I need to buy an "emergency" birthday present for my brother. I have put what I bought him away somewhere and I went to wrap it tonight and I can't find it anywhere!!! Then picking mum up and going down to Mike's parents for lunch, and then back to my brother's to meet Kim and the boys, and then take mum home and we said we'd shout pizza for dinner.

Goodness knows what time we'll get back here after a two hour drive back.

If you're a digiscrap person reading this you might want to visit pickleberrypop and pick up one of the "lolly bags". There might be some fun things included on this layout which just happens to be in a lolly bag by, oh I don't know, perhaps [ksharonkdesigns]. I'm not very good of this secret surprise stuff am I?

Here's a more up to date page for the family album, when Trevor turned 40 last year.

Credits here.


While I'm at it, I might just show the other lolly bag layout I did. There's no wonder her dad's hair is turning grey!

Credits here.