March 2010

Righto, I need to hurry up and finish updating so I can get onto all the new, exciting things happening......
March...a huge month really.
I went to see AC/DC live in Perth!!!  Phil was still away so I drove to Bunbury for the night, left the boys with the Wards (well, all except Tyler...see next post!), and then went on the Perth to meet up with Dad, Steve and Renee and the rest of Esperance!

Not great photos, only took my phone camera!

Tyler didn't come because he wanted to stay and do the Fun Run at school. It's a 3.1km cross country the year 4's to 7's do before sports day. Last year (his first time doing it) Tyler came 8th overall. Pretty impressive but he was sure he could better that. I didn't want to miss it either, so I left work, packed the car and the other boys and popped back just in time to see him finish 3RD OVERALL (just over 200 kids in years 4-7)!! He was stoked, as were we all! He stayed to collect his medal, while we hit the road.

Computer keeps turning this photo sorry!
March was also Sports Carnival. The boys dyed their hair red which looked great but do you think I could find them?? Normally I can look across a crowded field and find them easily, particularly Tyler with his white blonde hair, but red...???? That was a bit harder.
They all had a great day. Tyler got knocked out by a boy from another team in one of the team games. Apparently he went the wrong way, and typical Tyler had his head down and didn't see him coming, so got knocked out cold. He sat  with an icepack for half an hour then got right back out there. Last year he got whacked in the face in the wheel relay and had to sit out of the carnival. Maybe next year I'll keep him home??

After that came Humphreys Dance visit to school. A week of learning to dance the classics but with fun up to date music. At the end of the week was a disco, where you had to show off your dancing skills. Everyone had partners. Some chose! Shay Gibson invited Tyler and Crystelle Parsons danced with Callum, though no one is saying who invited who!

There was obviously lots more day to day stuff in march. Tyler and Coby have been playing Street Fourz. It's 4 a side soccer, all to music. Lots of fun. It's inspired them to sign up for 7 a side soccer outdoor. (So AFL Saturdays, Soccer Sundays!)

There was a Family Fun Day. Water slides, face painting, lots of fun stuff.

And did I scrap?? Of course.

These were both for Cybercrop Challenges at Littlescrapbookshop. The top one is my favourite page, but I actually won a prize for the one about Tillysox!

Okay, that's about March. oops, almost forgot Shazza's b'day

And Phil's 2 days later. Brekky at Maccas which opened last week, then off to school for Interschool Carnival.

See you in "April!"

February Lo's

Here's a few of my faves from Feb - all for Kaisercraft Saturday Sketches. These were great for getting me motivated and of course with a deadline of 1 week.  I love having a deadline, otherwise there doesn't seem any point in doing things!

I didn't think I actually had alot of Kaisercraft Paper when I first discovered their site! But when I dug through I found I had A LOT! That's without the many kgs I bought home with me from The Scrapping Cruise in November. After that I joked that I was "sponsored by Kaisercraft"! Melissa Kennedy was not only amazing to learn from she (and Kaisercraft) were very generous and I had to mail home 23 kgs worth of scrapping supplies! Not complaining mind.......just trying to avoid the excess baggage which would have been very expensive!

The one on the bottom left (It's Mutual) is one of my very favourites photos ever. Caits and Riley have such a beautiful bond. It doesn't matter how they feel with the rest of the world, with each other there is always love and plenty of cuddles! So many times I turn around or come into the room and Riley is just sitting on Caits, or nestled up next to her. In the car, he has to sit next to her so he can cuddle up. If she gave the rest of the world as much love and joy as she gave him, the world would certainly be a much more pleasant place!

I've been using some old photos lately as I'm scared I will never get through them They are not nearly as much fun to work with as my latest ones since I've had my good camera, but they have to be done I guess.

I did these 2 layouts for a challenge at CPC. The challenge was to use the same photo in 2 completely different lo's. I chose the only 2 photos I had on my desk which were the same and this is what turned out..

Because the 1st was so busy I tried to make the other less busy but it didn't really work! lol!
This lo was for Scrapping Outback Challenge You Kit. A friend's children and my nephew.

One of the original designers from Country Papercraft, Deb finished up this month so I used up heaps of my BG stash as  a tribute since she is such a BG fan! There is one card too just to fill in the corner or the (cheats) collage I did!

Some very old pp's and some very old photos too! Not a huge BG fan so don't know quite how I ended up with so many pp's but I've used most of them up now.

Then CPC set a challenge to do a sport lo as that also is Deb's area of expertise. I used a Kaiser sketch and pp's for mine.

February 2010

Spent the first few weeks of February in bed or laying around watching TV, which I'm not very good at at the best of times so was well and truly bored. Ended up going back to work even though I was still quite wobbly, just so I didn't have to watch anymore TV. Would have been different if I could scrap but I really couldn't manage even that. Think that was the inidcator for Phil how sick I really was! If I miss squash or don't scrap...then I am really sick!
The best thing to come of it all though is that Phil had to do everything around the house (well, everything that mum didn't do!). He cooked, cleaned (a bit!), did washing, shopping, delivered and picked up kids and even took care of the banking. And even better than that....He is still helping around the house, even though I'm mostly better! He has never really done any of those things on a regular basis and never without being asked, so there's a little silver lining there!! Let's hope he doesn't go back to his old ways. Maybe he did get a little taste of everything that we wives/mums do in a day.
So back to February... firstly Tyler's birthday. I wasn't up to making a cake so Aunty Renee kindly volunteered. She made him a cake in the shape of a pizza with a shake on the side....very creative!

And because we were in Perth for Callum's birthday, she made some cupcakes for him, decorated with his name. Very nice of her.

We had Tyler's party at Mini Golf and then headed over to the skate park for a play (2 of his favourite things to do)

The next weekend we headed off to Kalgoorlie to see the Monster trucks. Phil was supposed to be doing a week's work in Kal and they extended it to two, so he got us tickets to see the Monster Trucks. We stayed at a caravan park with a pool and in an a-frame with beds way up high that the boys loved! (It was only 1 night so not much time to stress too much about it!)

The Bells/Brothertons came with us so it was a real boy weekend. The Mystery Machine was the best part! The rest was ok but a bit of a let down really. Not really well run, lots of stoppages and down time, especially when they turned the lights off in the middle of the program to showcase the mystery machine, but someone forgot it took half an hour for those lights to warm up again! Still, it was something different so we don't regret going.

Just after this I had my first ever go at digi scrapping when I discovered free templates on the Kaisercraft site. I've always stayed away from digi because I have way too much actual "real" scrapping stuff to get through before I get addicted to digi! And I know I would get addicted and want lots of papers and embellishments etc. I don't have a real program either so I just had a play in Publisher and manager to do some pages I was really happy with, so imagine how much fun I could have if I had all the right "stuff"!?

Here's some of the pages I managed to do....

This one is my VERY FIRST EVER DIGI!

Need to finish  this one with journalling...

Oops, bit lost in the white! Was playing around trying to have lots of white space..guess it worked!

Did this one photo size, just for fun, to stick on my fridge.

Finally felt well enough to do some paper lo's this month too. Here's a couple:

Mostly these were sketch or colour challenges. Because I am so far behind, I won't worry about including details yet but from now on I will!

My Page - The Boxx

My Page - The Boxx

The Year so Far

Well obviously we've missed more than a year but I figure if I get this year up to date, I am more likely to keep updating from there. I just mentioned to Phil (DH) that I had found my blog and that I was going to update it. He thinks it's "just another Facebook", so I told him it's like our very own facebook...all about our family and no one else's dribble about games they have played or people who have upset them! I don't know what we all did before Facebook (hmm...wonder if my introduction to Facebook was about the same time I "lost" my blog??? That would explain it...lol)
Okay, so a quick recap.....
January: School holidays. Early January Dad took the boat out to O'Briens at the end of Cape Le Grande Beach. We drove out and then walked/swam/got ferried around there. It's like having your own secluded beach in the middle of nowhere! When we got back to the main beach late in the afternoon, there would have been 60 4-wheels drives there, yet we had O'Brien's to ourselves. Amazing!

This is an Australia day challenge lo I completed using these photos.

 We spent most of January at the beach. For my birthday we went to the Kelp Beds. Close enough to town but far enough there aren't too many people or motorbikes. Always a bit of surf for the kids but gentle enough for the little ones. Got a few cute photos of my boys. And then made them into a lo for a Kaisersketch challenge.

Caits even made me a birthday cake but we didn't get a photo. Was very yummy though and a bit special to have a triple choc mud cake at the beach!

We also had the 2nd "Payne family" Annual Food Fight. We held the first one one Mother's Day last year. Since then our kids and some other friends who missed out have been wanting to do it again. This year we included the Wards who were moving the next week, and who are like family to us. We used all the out of date food in our pantries and leftovers. We learnt some things from last year (like taking the shampoo to the beach for after so the kids don't have to spend 3 days int he shower trying to wash out dried egg/flour/spaghetti/cat food mixtures!)
It is very messy but so much fun. It's almost too scary keeping my camera out with all the baked beans and flour flying around, so I took a couple hundred quick photos then packed the camera away and joined in! Last year I missed out on the fun but got heaps of photos. This year I did both.

I did a photo shoot for a friend In January. I'm no photographer but I'm lucky enough to have a good camera (well it was until it fell off the tripod at Xmas! Still waiting to see how good it is now!) plus I know what I like in a photo so I'm happy to play around and try to get some nice photos. I think they turned out ok....

It certainly helps that they are all good looking and were dressed co-ordinated!

I did this lo afterwards for the Kaisercraft Sketch Challenge in February. I just love it and was so happy with it and then I WON the sketch challenge for February with it!!! A lovely $25 pack from KC was my prize so I chose one of the brand new ranges...Devonshire.

We finished January with  a trip to Perth for Callum's 12th Birthday and to take Caitlyn back to school. We went to the Great Escape last year for Callum's birthday and all the kids wanted to go back again. They have trampolines, mini golf, high ropes, water slides, icecream, kids rides and if that's not enough you can step outside onto the beach and come and go as you please!

You'll notice I'm not in the photos. Nothing unusual, I'm always BEHIND the camera. Phil did manage to sneak one photo of me this time though...

About a week or so before this I went to the pool and ended up with an inner ear infection which turned to Larynthitis (an infection in the inner labryinth of the brain!) I was a bit dizzy at first but by the time we got to Perth I was pretty much not able to do anything without feeling really sick and dizzy. I got through the morning at the Great Escape 9soem sort of "Mother's willpower", then as soon as we ate and played a bit, I crashed out on the lawn outside and couldn't get up! The rest of the holiday was the same, I went downhill pretty quick from here.

We drove home and I went to the doctor and he booked me on a flight back to Perth for an MRI! I was so sick, I couldn't be upright with vomiting and I couldn't lay down because the room was spinning constantly (in the opposite direction to my brain!) I described it as having severe morning sickness on a boat in the middle of a very big swelly ocean, after drinking champagne in the hot sun all day! YUK!

The MRI showed I had Neuritis but luckily the the floaty bits in my brain hadn't joined to form a tumour. I was so sick I almost wished they had so they could cut it out and I would feel better! As it was, there was nothing I could take or do to improve. A couple of months later I am almost back to normal, bar a constant ringing in my right ear and limited hearing in that ear. Also, if it's dark and I can't see, I stumble and fall a lot. No guarantees if I will ever get my hearing back to normal or my balance, but the good news is, it's very unlikely I'll ever get it again. (Well not severely..maybe little "lapses"!)

Phew..think that's enough for one post. I'll be back to get February updated..soon! (Definitely not in 2 years!!) :)

OMG!!! A couple of years ago I finally created a blog....THEN I LOST IT! I've looked for it before and couldn't find it but luckily one of my scrapping buddies had listed my blog on her blog and this time when I searched I found it. (Thanks Sharon for posting that message telling me that 2 years between blog posts is a little too long!)
Looks like I have lots of catching up to do...where to start???
Hmm.....firstly I am going to post a heap of layouts I have done recently as I am quite proud of how far my work has come (IMHO) lately, then I will endeavour to update the family/personal stuff. How does that sound??
I have a couple of friends pushing me to apply for design teams lately but it seems you need a blog to enter (well, maybe not, but I think it helps!) so this time I am going to get it done and keep it done.