And here we are, another week over

I fear it's going to be like this all year, counting the year in weeks.  During the week everything is go go go and I only really get to take inventory on the weekends.   Mike has been up in Ballarat today at a Pipe Band event.  I opted to stay home because once again it's been incredibly hot, like it was yesterday.   I feared leaving the old girl out in the back yard all day, sure there's a huge tree for shade, but silly girl doesn't go under the tree to sit under the overhang of the branches.  So I stayed home and did some housework, then flaked it as I was exhausted!   What a wallflower I am.  Molly has been by my side nearly all afternoon.

Then this afternoon the rain came down.  I had just finished sending an email to a friend asking how they were faring higher up in the state, and then down it came, lasted all of five minutes and then stopped.   But as it was bucketing down, Molly decided to go outside and stand in the middle of the driveway and get drenched.  It was so funny, I think she thought ... at last I can get cool !  Until a clap of thunder had her rollicking inside.

Temperature has dropped now thankfully and Mike is now home having a cat nap on the couch, totally exhausted.

I worked really hard this past week...

Really I did.  TRULY.   I had to go to Melbourne on Tuesday, stay overnight for an all day course the next day and then home on the late train, stepping back in the door here at 10pm.   It was a real hardship (giggle), particularly when our two regular contract motels were booked out and they put us up at the Grand Mecure.   That is me and one of my work colleagues.  Not only that but when we arrived, they upgraded us.  TO A SUITE EACH !!!!!!!!!!!!!    I am not kidding you.  Five rooms of luxury.   95 square metres of luxury so the brochure said.   Kitchen/dining, a loungeroom twice the size of ours here at home, the biggest TV I've ever seen, an office/study area, a bedroom with the most comfortable king sized bed I've ever slept in and honestly if not for the course, I would have stayed in that bed until check out time!  And a bathtub that I spent an hour almost swimming in, it was huge, up to my shoulders, I had bubbles galore going.

Yep, life is tough.   There will be a scrapbook page coming  :-)

On the scrapping front...

One of the fun things about Designer Digitals are the challenges they put up, lots of different challenges to grab your interest.  I played along this week with the template challenge.  I love when you can start with a template and end up putting your own spin on it, and particularly that you can use it over and over and each page will come out differently.

So here's the template that was used:

And this was the finished product and how I used it.   I have a friend who sometimes visits this blog and has a look at what I've been up to, and I just know he is going to have a laugh at all this purple and somehow not be surprised at all about it.   Oh, and don't ask me what some of these flowers are, my style of gardening is popping them in, sprinkle a bit of "stuff" on them, water each day, cross fingers and hope for the best.   Most plants of which I have thrown the tags out, so no idea what they are.  I especially can't remember the top 2nd from left and the bottom left right corner.  Although that might be an Astra or Aster or Asta or something like that.

Credits Designer Digitals.

The journalling if you want to read is:  "I really didn’t realize just how much purple I had planted in the garden until I decided to take some photos. When I looked at the colours when the photos downloaded from the camera, it just made me happy."

I mentioned in the last post that I now had ACDSee and was happily tagging all my products.   I am a long LONG way from finishing tagging, but I did use some of the products on this page which I was able to find in an instant with ACDSee's search of  "purple".   That made me happy no end.  I'm having a mini love affair all over again with some of the products I have forgotten I have buried deep in my computer.

Movie Review...

I don't often go to the movies but here's a review for you.  A couple of girlfriends from town here got together and went out for dinner on Friday night and went to see "This means War".  LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH, not to mention the guys in it, particularly the one with the British accent, was a hottie.  There's a trailer linked up on their website, don't let the first minute fool you, I thought WHAT?!? when I watched the trailer, this is a shoot 'em up, knock 'em down boy movie.  Not so.

And with that, the temp has dropped a bit, I may just go and make a cup of tea and sit on the front porch and pick up some breeze with a bit of luck.

The week that was

After a huge week, here we are on Sunday night again and thinking towards yet another huge one coming up.

As for Valentine's Day, we ended up at one of our favourite pub restaurants in the next town for dinner.  Never one to disappoint, unfortunately this visit was fraught with such slow service.  The meal once we got it was absolutely over the top delicious, and I guess the fact we were using a gift voucher that someone had given us late last year was an added bonus.  But the kicker half way into the meal they put on some music throughout the restaurant.   I said to Mike that I swore I heard "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and a bit later he could hear "Joy to the World".  A bit later "Jingle Bell Rock" came on and everyone was just giggling.  A day of romance and we were listening to Christmas Carols ... in February!

So when we went up to settle the bill I asked what the deal was with the Christmas Carols.  She told us that the Manager turned the CD player on (which obviously had not been used since Christmas) and then left and no one there knew how to change the CD.   Errr .... perhaps turn the volume down or kick the plug out of the wall people.   Still, it did make us laugh.

Last night we unexpectedly got invited to our neighbour's BBQ for dinner which was a lovely treat.  They've only just arrived and now are leaving to move up north, so it was a kind of hello/goodbye meal.  A shame, as they are a lovely young couple.

Yesterday I bought ACDSee, an organizing program for my computer.  I have resisted for so long out of laziness.  I have heard people talking about it, and tagging their digi scrapping supplies and how easy it is to find things.  It just didn't compute in my head.  But then I realised yesterday it was half price so I bit the bullet and I have spent all my spare time this weekend tagging away.  So cool.   For the uninitiated I can just type in "pink paper" and all my pink papers come up, no matter where they are saved on my computer and I just select which one and wham, it opens up in photoshop.  Why oh why have I not taken the plunge before.  No more looking for ages trying to find exactly what I want to use.   It's going to take a while to tag everything, but once I'm there, there'll be no looking back.  Plus I'm discovering things I have purchased years ago and completely forgotten I had.

I finished a page up yesterday that I had started some time ago and never quite got the journalling how I wanted it, then I came back to it with a vengeance today.   A lot of people may say I'm obsessive about scrapbooking.  Perhaps I am.  I never paper scrapped, but just love this use of technology with digital scrapbooking.  I love to tell our stories.  I love to preserve these memories so I can look back at these times and remember.  I love to see how much we've grown as a married couple, as people.  And I wanted to put all these reasons and more down onto this page.  So this is how it turned out ...

Credits Designer Digitals.

As it happens I do know who this woman is, it's my grandma.   But just because I knew who it was, no one else picking up the random photo in the bottom of the shoebox would have known.

And in case you can't read the journalling there, this is how it goes:

I don’t want to end up in the bottom of a shoe box with a whole stack of other photos in 50 or 100 years time with Mike’s children, or their children, or even their children saying “hmmm is this great great grandma Carol, or is it the lady who lived next door to them?” Or perhaps when working out the time lines our descendants might ask “I wonder if this is great great grandpa Mick or could it be great grandpa Wes, they look so similar?”

I want the people who come after us to know us, know how we lived, know who we were, know what we loved, know what was important to us, know how we felt, know our world, know what made us tick. This is why I scrapbook.

I do it so they will know.

Righto, a little bit more tagging then off to bed I go.  Another hot one, so it's the fan for me tonight.

A good laugh after a hard day at work

Had a horrendous day at work, felt like I was putting out fires everywhere, figuritively speaking of course.  Everything, even the littlest thing became a disaster of epic proportions and I've come home so tired.  Just before I left work I got a text on my mobile from one of the girls here in town:

"Desperate in need of girls night out, how about 25th, movies and dinner?"

Couldn't think on the spur of the moment so I text her back that I would check the calendar when I got home.  Yes, even in this age of gadgets, my diary is the kitchen calendar, sad but true.   I look on the calendar and saw she may be double booked so write her back:

"Err, isn't that your husband's birthday?".

A short pause then I get the message back:   "%&#*(# you're a better wife to my husband than I am, how about the Friday night?"

Right, so between you, me and the gatepost and the whole www, let's just not let her husband know that his wife completely forgot his birthday.

Talking about forget ... Valentines Day tomorrow.   We usually go out for dinner which we will be doing as usual tomorrow night.   And yes, we get caught up with the schmaltz and give each other a card and gift.  But like last year have set a $10 limit.  Actually that ends up a lot harder, it's so much easier to be grand and majestic.  So being that usually I am up and ready and off to work while Mike is still in bed, and I mention to him that perhaps tomorrow we should exchange gifts and card in the morning before I go to work.  He looked aghast then tried very smoothly to say:

"Oh honey, why don't we wait until you get home from work, that way we can take our time and enjoy opening our gifts."

Translation:   I haven't bought it yet, haven't got a card, let alone thought of what to write on it, so I need tomorrow to do all that.

Yep Mr. G, I'm a wake up to you.   So for all the world to see, here's something from the heart I put together for him, ready for tomorrow.

Credits Designer Digitals

I like that photo of him, I took it at the Muster on Australia Day.  Yep, he looked the part surely with his Akubra.

I'm reality TV'ed out !

Woah, my eyes have turned square for sure.  I started off watching Biggest Loser, switched over to Excess Baggage and finished it with Find a Wife for My Boy (or whatever the heck it is called).  It was like I was in a trance, I couldn't leave the room! ha.  They really throw out out the fishing line with these shows and reel you in, don't they?

I'm a bit behind with finishing up Christmas pages, so here's how Christmas day went down with Mike's family.

Credits Designer Digitals.

Love this way of scrapping, nice, clean, neat, shows off the photographs nicely, and still leaves room for journalling and a little embellishment.   These were done using Lynn Grieveson's Centred Shots Template.   Click on the template set to go check them out.  I'm thinking these are way perfect for a travel album too.   

Nothing much happening this neck of the woods.  I hear that the Giants won the Super Bowl, I know someone who will be very happy!

Oh and Lucky has completely forgotten to limp at all today, so all good in that department too.

You've lost the plot !!!

Or at least I thought that's what Mike yelled out to me today, I could hear him from out in the back courtyard yelling "you've lost the plot".   WELL !  hmmmph, I strode right out there to wonder why he thought that.  Except it was "you've lost the POT".  A lovely creamy white porcelain pot that I still had not yet planted a plant in was smashed into pieces on the ground.  Waaaaah!  So I hadn't lost the plot afterall, haha.

It was so windy today, Melbourne really copped it I saw on the news, we just had wind and a bit of rain.  We lost a bit of the carport roof, part of a strip of that corrugated plastic sheeting, which had gone brittle from the elements over the years.  It had come off and blown right across the roof of the garage to the other side of the house.  And it was windy like that most of the day, thankfully that was our only damage.

Back to work tomorrow, a 4 day week for me, I have Friday off.  I like heading into the week knowing it's a short one.  It just makes me happy!

Well you knew I was just going to have to use some of the photos to scrap a page, didn't you?  He is back to his normal self today so whatever it was that was bothering him, is bothering him no more.  He's running, jumping, playing without a hint of a limp.  Although funnily enough when the lady from up the road was walking her beautiful Golden Retriever this afternoon and Lucky usually does backflips when he sees Bridie walking past ignoring him, the little minx started limping again running up and down the fence line with his paw in the air.  Hmmmm, can we say SYMPATHY !

Credits Designer Digitals.

Oh and for those who are barracking in the Super Bowl, I'll say ... 'GO GIANTS' !!!!!   (hope that brings a smile to a friend of mine who may be reading this).

Can we say pathetic !

I want to start off this blog post with a photograph, it will eat at your heartstrings, it will make you just want to pick him up and cuddle him, it will make you go awwwwww.   Do not be fooled !   It started off with a hurt paw, have no idea what he has done but it's not sore to touch, he lets me feel him all over, so there's no broken bones, sprains, etc.  There's no blood, cuts or the like.  He has been out of sorts, turned into a little loner there for a while, but now ... hmmmm ... now I think he's playing on it.  All the sympathy and love and hugs and kisses I have been showering on him and he likes it.  He knows with one little limp, one little lift of the paw and his soulful sad little look and I'll come running.

I'm a wake up to you now Lucky Boy !  Move over Red Dog, I think we have another acting dog in town!

Well this past week has flown by with a blur and here we are in February already, how on earth did that happen?  I got my hair cut and coloured today so feel quite on top of the world, and treated myself to lunch in my favourite cafe.  

I came home and decided it was too hot to do housework, but did run a broom over the floors, very quickly.  Mike is up bush chasing the gold so he will come home hot and bothered later on this evening too I bet.    Right now I should be working out something to cook for his nibs when he comes home, but sooo tired, might have a wee kip first.  I'm really not enjoying summer this year, as you can tell.

On the scrapping front...

In my rush bid to finish my Book of Wisdom, I haven't yet had a chance to scrap the photos of my fabulous weekend in Melbourne with my bestie which we had early December.    This will go down as one of my favourite ever pages I think.

Credits Designer Digitals.

Righto, cup of tea time I do believe.