moving houses and so much more

moving week went well, we were all out of the other house on tuesday and it was all cleaned by thursday morning and the keys handed back, im still unpacking here and going through things and getting rid of things we no longer need.

as promised the start of what im calling

a tour around my house, i will share part of our home every month as we change it and make it ours

i started with the outside

because these r going to be my veg garden beds. i have 4 of them going up the side boundary of our property. tomorrow dan is going to hoe them up, im going to add some cow poo and compost and then on the weekend i have ordered some organic garden soil to be delivered. and come sunday afternoon i hope im showing u all some planted out beds. i have lettuce and tomato ready to go...some cucumber and zucchini, a popcorn, carrots, beets and much more coming on. i cant wait. we will add a makeshift fence around this garden to keep the dog out and the rabbits...and the kids! i also have an arch for the veg garden entry and a grape vine to grow over it. we went with recycled railway sleepers..c grade ones they were $20 each and we brought them home while we had the moving truck so we saved on delivery charges too. dan put them all in place today, and i had two left over and we found some old ones out in the yard so we have added a garden bed to the front of the house, i will share pics when its organised.this is the view down the back of our block, just through those trees is a road. but i love this view makes me forget that we live in town. we have some landscaping plans for this to thicken it up i would like to put a bike track through it for the girls to ride on, also we have a natural low through the bottom part of the yard im going to get some river rocks and turn it into a dry creek bed, we dont want to lose it because its the natural drainage of our property...but we will work on the landscaping plans slowly one small part at a time. forgive the scared looking dog, she could sense the storm that came and didnt do anything, it sort of missed us, we did move her inside after this pic. i think this is one of my fav parts of my house this view. i love the older machinery around the place. i love the painting, of which we r lucky to have being in a hertiage house and all! this is the little porch outside our loungeroom and side door way. i can so see sitting out here watching the girls play. or looking at my veg growing. i want to find a new location for the wood there too. beside this is a lovely OLD rose im going to pop in a few other roses in this location too. they will be nice to bring inside for flowers too. we r waiting on a screen door for here too as this will let in that lovely cross breeze we seem to get here over winter. we will put one on the very front/back door (we havent worked out what to call it yet lol) too. but the house has been really lovely during the day.

as we work outside alot this month i will share more. water tank going on the other side of the house next week by friday i hope.

well i managed to make it through another round of sytycs. i so didnt expect too its so close the voting. i had no internet this week so the lovely rach from scraptacular text me all the details and my interent was back today, thats a whole other story.

this week we had to make two layouts

this is based on a pencillines sketch

emilys first visit to the park after her accident. she was pretty funny. screaming wow the part wow, wow the park, with a im going to play inthere somewhere too lol. everyone was looking she was just so excited.
this one had to have a title, journalling and an 8x10 photo. this is miss lilly last weekend at her preschools 30th birthday. pockets the clow was there, and he kept her entertianed while i took some photos.

and yes finally im back with an internet connection. bigpond was having a minor moment i think, i actually felt bad for the people working there it wasnt their fault. if u r waiting for a bigpond anything atm and it hasnt happened RING THEM my order for a connection was held up 4 times! with no real reason at all. we have come to the conclusion that telstra empolyee's need to speak to people and not computers. on monday telstra man rings, im coming to connect your phone...huh! we have no line, it has to be built u guys sent me an mobile homeline. ok he says im coming anyway. ok...he gets here goes for a walk around our property and comes back. your phone line is coming from the stree in front of yours. werid but true, there is no record of this line anywhere. ok so that solved one problem. by 6.30 that night we had the phone up and going no worries. woohoo. other phone was returned to telstra and we were set. we were told to ring bigpond again for adsl line tests etc, but there was a heap on concern over the very old phone line holding adsl no worries i said we r going wireless. he said ring u may not have too. so i ring. the firstof 3 1hour phone calls with bigpond. spoke to a guy he said thats great lets test the line, shows it should be ok...great...he says im not cancelling your wireless order just yet...great i say, he says lets get your old account transfered and see what happens. super...by 12 the following day u should be good. next day 2pm..no internet. im left thinking thats ok we didnt think it would work. i ring bigpond to let them know its not working. turns out they had not even turned it on yet! the order was stuck in an error. oh ok. whats the status on our wireless...also stuck. great. can u fix it. yep no worries. thanks great. but instead of fixing the orders we had, the orders were started all over again! r u kidding me. phone gets cut off battery ran out...bugger. later that night i ring back. explain i was cut off and want to check its all good. explain what i want. he looks. ok yep its all good your adsl modem will be sent out to u u will have it in 10 days...huh! umm i have an adsl modem. oh ...turns out my transfer experiment was turned into a brand new internet order. i dont think so! he fixed it, and checked everything and found out it was all stuck. finally someone fills out a form and within 24 working hours its fixed and im here. im here sitting on my adsl line, the line we shouldnt be able to have but do have...go figure. no only that but today 4 weeks to the day of the order my wireless modem also turned up! we now have to send it back. i tell u i dont think they know what the hell is going on. i dont blame telstra workers u could tell they were pulling their hair out with me. thankyou sara for everything u did too. we partly buggered up stuff witht he land line experiement. we r going to experiement with this connection this week and see if its ok and then decide on the weekend about the wireless. i so dont want to change my email addy.

anyway i hope everyone is having a great week. i am...im even sleeping again...funny how the change of one thing can change something else. this house makes me feel happy! i had forgotten that feeling.

im back!!

got my internet back today...after much buggering around from telstra
but ime here

backwith a real update later

sytycs 8

yep 8 weeks and im still here

ok this week was about colour blocking...heres my entry...but its only pretty fluffy around the term of colour blocking so we will see how that goes

i love the photo of my girl but...she is so photogenic and beautiful...oh hang on im her mother i know lol

she is such a funny little thing...tells the worst jokes and cracks herself up everytime...its safe to say i smile and nod but her father laughs along with her lol...too funny

we had a funny conversation this morning

we were talking about jobs people do, daddys a chef, mummy is a teacher just like linda (preschool teacher etc) what would u like to do lilly...i want to be rapunzel...yep as in let down your hair

i repeated my explanation of a job and asked again....answerdoesnt change i was in stitches. we told daddy this afternoon and he got more out of her...you see rapunzel paints and dances all day with a little bit of gardening on the side. ive got no idea how she gardens in her tower but there you go LOL

ok i probably wont post much now until late next week

ODE to sara who has successfully pushed through our internet order so i expect my modem by maybe wednesday next week. im so thankful to her for that as i was getting no where fast.

mason family im so happy that you are all home safe and sound all at home together. a huge thing u have all gone through these past weeks. wishing chelsea a fast recovery now.

ok all...i will be back next week some time with i hope all sorts of news and photos to share

im going to spend the next few months taking you all on a tour of our beautiful new home as we set it up and change some furntiure to match our 1870's antique home! stay safe everyone

MOVING DAY

hi everyone
we r in the mists of moving up the street
from monday looks like i will be without access for about a week
i will do a proper update before then..:)

toilet training

well its beginning to look like that time in toddler world!! she is over 2 and its warming up. keen to not make the same mistakes we did with lilly we decided we would not purchase pull ups (im sure thats why lilly didnt get it..what was to get it was still like she was wearing a nappy), but last time we also didnt think much of store bought training pants u know the ones with the thin foam layer...that does nothing! so i ended up searching modern cloth nappy sites thinking maybe that was what to do when i found this pattern for home made training pants http://www.geocities.com/songshirah1/?200811 ive so far made 4 pairs. we would like a dozen or so, they r pretty straight forward to make, but i will next time make the crotch part just a little wider to make the elastic casing eaiser to stitch. i couldnt get ripstop nylon out here, but its basically a shower curtain so we went with a fabric shower curtain. and i reused our old flat cloth nappies as part of the padding. this way is no cheaper than buying them, but hopefully its a better product that will at least hold one wee and last better. i remember lillys foam crunching up after a few washes and having to buy new ones hence the not using them all that much...seeing as that cant happen with these ones and they look like they will withstand lots of washing...these ones r made from polarfleece like the pattern says, but i might have to look into something more summer for dec and jan...i will report on how they go.
nothing better than straight from the oven fresh homemade bread roll. i was blowing on my fingers as i cut them open they were so hot. i get 10 rolls mediumish in size from my loaf of bread that i have blogged about before. i love that they turn out crusty...YUM...we had some for lunch but they will make hamburgers for dinner tonight.this weeks so you think you can scrap entry. had to have fabric x 2, handmade embellishment, 3 photos 2 different style of sewing and 75% had to be stitched down. well there is more stitching here than i know what to do with. 2 different materials - stems green pokadots and some heather bailey folded like ribbons with ricrac and zigzaged down. the orange blobs r french knots and there is some backstitching. the flowers r handmade.

9 days until we move..u would think i was be stressing, but no, im not living in a sea of boxes either oops..hmmm dont know if thats a good thing or not lol. we r starting to move the smaller things from tuesday but. so i guess that will help..:)

heres my apple (granny smith) in flower.
its full of flowers, in fact we will have to pick of some i guess if they all start to be apples. we have an apple tree here in the yard we didnt know about so im expecting the apple sex happened hehe....but we also have an apple tree at our new house we didnt know about too...so that willl be 3 apple trees woohoo, the one we r getting is older so i hope we get some apples off it, dont know what sort it is but.

nothing else much going on...we r going to try putting some seed potatos down in a new old style garbage bin on tuesday to see if we can get a harvest seeing as its getting late to put them down, im going with the fac tthat its still been quiet cool here until this past week and that they will be ok heh...but i know nothing im just guessing really.

so you think you can scrap 6

ok this weeks theme almost saw me pull out. i didnt know if i could do it, but u know since i got it on the paper and ive rewritten it and read it now a few times i havent cried since?? im sure there will be more tears but for now i take the cheap therapy!
the theme...journalling (about something sad..eek), only one pattern paper (bo bunny doubled sided i used) had to have 100 words or plus and have handwritten something on the page.
the journalling reads:
one moment, one decision, one split second and life as we know it changed forever. Ive asked these questions of myself a million times and more. WHY were we there? at that moment WHY was there a truck reversing when its illegal in the snow and WHY wasnt emily in my arms?? WHY WHY and it doesnt matter how many changes i make to the story on THAT day disarster was going to happen to us.
I know how lucky i am that emily is alive and well. Im all to totally aware that things could of been so very much worse on that day. That truck did so much damage. Emilys arm was damaged, the type of damage that lasts a lifetime. We were all emotionally damaged I HOPE NOT BEYOND REPAIR. but I was and still am ROCKED to the core. I will never understand WHY this happened. What was the purpose??? WHY??I didnt need reminding to look after my children, I already knew i was blessed, they are always the focus of our life. So WHY?? what was the purpose of this? Emily doesnt deserve to carry this her whole life, so WHY? and so continues my unanswered question... WHY

this stuff is in my head and heart all the time. this was a great way to get it out. but i also feel like a bit of a heal when u read some of the journalling in the gallery, while it doesnt take away from what happened to us it gives me a little more perspective i think...hard to explain...i guess i was left with she is still here and pretty much ok, get over it sort of feeling....i know i wont ever get over it...but im thankful that i could have her in the first place and that we didnt ever lose her.

an emily update: i havent done this for a while. my girl had her hand therapy transfered to ballarat to a wonderful lady called jen. she has a little boy not much younger than emily and i sometimes think this makes a world of difference in whats happening. when we left the hospital we had a list of exercises to do with emily..they quickly became agony for us all as she didnt like it and screamed the house down until it was over...and when u r spending 5 or 6 minutes like that 5 times a day its wearing!! anyway enter jen. and a big change to home therapy. its all play based and manipulating what she is playing with...woohoo!!! this last two weeks...a bag of rice for playing with a pouring and digging in. we r on the look for turning toys too. emily has alot more function back in her hand and arm too...its still slow and and its still limited but we can see huge improvements. some wrist turn...its so slight but its there when she picks up a spoon and pours the rice. her thumb is starting to strengthen slightly too which is helpful for getting her pressure garmet on! an overall improvement in fuction. she still wants to write and draw with her left arm and always tries it first then changes when she cant move her arm and wrist, but i watched her the last few days get that wrist and hand in nearly a good enough position to make a mark on the page.....I HAVE HOPE. i hope it continues for her second surgeon accessment, but at the same time I HOPE kind of that they deal with the remaining surgery soon.

ROUND 5 - The Finals

well im in the finals of so you think you can scrap

i think the finals will go on for quite some time yet but.

this week arty/freestyle

oh im not a freestyle scrapper at all

its safe to say its just not me...ive tried it before and feel a bit of a spaz when i look at my freestyle pages. i like some of the pages out there in freestyle land, and some i dont understand. but its all inspiration to try something new.

this week as well as being arty/freestyle

we had to have funny edges - i have embellishments hanging off everywhere

use paint - i flicked paint with my finger

handwrite or make a title - i drew the no and then cut it out

thrift something from around the house to use. - i used masking tape - not orignial i know and i used the pull from my diet coke can as a photo turn down the bottom.

i like the overall page, i dont think its finals material but its missing something to me just cant put my hand on it but.

scrapping and sewing

round 4!
this week we had to use rubons, tape, write on a photo and use bright colours. very collagey look this week. gauze up the side that i inked pink before i stuck it on. i had little to no plan when i started this, it just sort of happened as i scrapped.

are these not the cutest little baskets. i made two...super easy and quick heres the tutorial i found here http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/05/tutorial-fabric-basket.html

i plan to mess with the measurements and make bigger ones for storage in the girls room.

i made this dress for emily. its my first attempt at following a pattern on my own. its just a basic spotlight get creative pattern. it was very easy to follow.
http://www.oliverands.com/blog/2008/08/lazy-days-skirt-free-pattern.html

this is the easiest skirt in the world i think there r only three lines of sewing! and one cut. doesnt take much material either. both my girls got one. i did pretty well out of $10 material. 2 skirts and a dress! cant beat that.

the funny thing with all the sewing ive been doing, when we left brisbane i gave away my fabric stores. it was all very country looking. im not a country decorator and i really thought i would leave sewing behind....so not! the materials that are around at the moment r fantastic. i love the colours...i could just go silly!

So you think you can scrap 3 plus a rak winner!!

this week i almost gave up. ive been busy. but i took this killer photo of lilly today while i was taking photos of suzannes little man today and i knew i had my official im five photo and well its the first thing i wanted to print off and scrap.

this week we had to use a pattern paper background, plus another 3 pattern papers on the page. so my background is mm, i then used pink pasilee, around the block, ki lace and fancy pants.

we could only use one 4 x 6 photo and the embellishments had to be clustered together. we had to INK everything including the photo and use staples.

a close up of the clustering. i like the page, but its still missing something, but its done and if i done make the next round i dont...im not all that concerned. its been fun to get scrapping again above anything.

I had a great week showing suzanne around our country town, we had trips to ballarat and out to the vineyard and lots of lunching! it was so nice and laid back. got to show suzanne inside our new house which was nice, i also enjoyed seeing it again and i still cant wait to live there. soon!

a rak winner

Kerry - Ann

email me and i will send you out your things.. :)

i will be back tomorrow...wait til u see my new sewing project...think childrens dress up clothes and it couldnt be as easy as a fairy dress either!!!!...5 year olds need i say more

so you think you can scrap 2

i made it to round 2 with last weeks entry

this week the instructions were as follows

1 large photo

3 pattern papers (not from the same coordinating line)

all weighted to one side

ink (lots of it)

dimension

strip journalling

i think that was it

heres what i came up with

i went the close up photos for this round

and ps to anyone worried - im ok today.. :)

dont forget my rak lilly will draw a winner on sunday night

masters layouts

well i dont think these will get picked up now
i love the double that i did, im going to pop it into frames for our new bedroom wall for when we move.. :) i put old book pages down and tore them back and then white washed the background for blending. cant remember what the papers r, i know they were nice quality
my single layout is not outstanding, it was the one part of my eNtry (that i didnt get to finish) that wasnt up to scratch! no matter what i did i couldnt make a shaped layout what i wanted. the flowers i crocheted myself

i think the thing that im disappointed about is the money spent on my entry. im not concerned with missing out and not getting the entry in lets face it i was in the middle ofsomething way more important than a scrapbooking contest at the time, but still i look and think of the money! at least i will use the calendar when i get it finished

scrapping share

this is my so you think u can scrap entry...its my second take...im working on some hospital photos and while i want to scrap them, they r quite memory provoking and therefore hard to scrap....im happy with the above one but. emily loved music therapy, she used to have it every few days, it was a lovely way to fill in the long days of trying to entertain her inside the hospital, esp when alot of that time she was stuck in that little cot day and night!
this was my first effort for so you think u can scrap, but something about just isnt right, its ok as a layout, but wasnt what i had in my head for the comp. something about the title not sitting right, i wont fix it, its scrapped now and on to the next thing..: ) this was about emilys visit with tlc in hospital. top organisation.

i know the tutorial is coming!

photos to go and its good to go...:) tomorrow

we r all still a little slow around here

scrap jack

heres my scrapjack for this month...its all on canvas...im not sure im 100% happy with it...something about the white squares...i wish i washed them yellow....but two late now. the photo is a fav even thou it was taken in low light so the quality is a bit yuck...therefore the missing eyes...but sometimes u just have to scrap the yuck pics. cause they r really not yuck. some of the stuffon this page came from last months lime tart kit.
this came out while we were in hospital...the one today card is mine...made with the inspiration of emilys first birthday last year.

and finally
on thursday emilys hospital visit went well...no drugs at all and the only thing she cried about was the tape that was on her skin..not bad really....no tape really used this week. there is still one mucky part at the top that wasnt grafted and was just left to heal...its not responding as quickly as they would like...so im not sure what that means...its wait and see that bit...i guess it could be another graft if it doesnt improve over the next 2 weeks. other than that the large graft itself is good...we now have to take the dressing down each day and rub cream into it to keep it moist which is good and bad...good that its at that point because its healing...bad that i have to deal with it in a totally visual way every day now...it takes all my guts to see it every week, but i think its partly because im wishing it to be so much better and not infected and all that...anyway i hope it gets easier to see on a daily basis. she is also allowed big breaks in wearing her plastic brace to play and use her arm and hand as well as she can...we also have exercises to do with her to get it freely moving which it isnt...but only on the second day of those and it seemed eaiser for her to do today. we r working on doing 3 exercises 10 times 5 times a day...we got it done 3 times yesterday...going for 4 times today and then 5 tomorrow!

some scrapbooking

well one page to share anyway, miss lilly in the tree. i worked on this at my lss using my lime tart kit of pink pasilee products, the bird was an addition, is that not the cutest rub on u did ever see. the layout is called birds eye view...its hard to see the missing part of the title up there.

i have one more but im still working on it. I hope to spend some time with that layout tonight or tomorrow

everything else im working on atm is a secret for a few months yet... :)

6 weeks of challenges

ive been playing with the dt search at scraploot

6 weeks of challenges that have come to an end. it started with a card and went threw to layouts with certain things and finally a life of a dt layout...i chose one by sheree http://www.scraploot.com.au/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=886 see it here

i have fun for 6 weeks, got some scrapbooking done and got to see some fantastic layouts by the other people in the challenge

thanks everyone

a quick one

heres my next pages for the scraploot challenge , in the gallery over there under jacqui j

heres a sneak peak today

the close up certainly looks alot better than the whole layout!....on a time limit with this one i was, and well the creativity just didnt flow, mine is else where...its ok but certainly not dt comp quality in my eyes. but oh well as i said no time to wait for it to happen it had to be done today and today only

because

tomorrow we FLY home for a weeks visit...woohoo....we leave tomorrow night, but lilly still has preschool, and then the 2 hour drive to get to the airport and well i havent actually packed our bags yet! So no time to fix dt challenges tomorrow im afraid. we r however looking so forward to going home for a little visit. Just me and the girls, but we have grand plans for a week of social butterflying...: ) including a visit to the scrapbook convention on sunday and a creative photography class as well....again i say woohoo, im right into my camera at the moment. and excusing todays photo of the above layout for the scraploot gallery {edited : i just fixed it i couldnt stand the yukko photo upthere} im actually getting better (i just didnt have time today to deal with getting a better photo) best part of doing the photography class i need no tools cause i couldnt handle kids stuff, scrap stuff kids and myself all on my own at the airport and well my camera will be coming anyway so it so suited me. I will post some of our queensland adventures next week, it all feels so shiny and new when u havent been there for a few months....and while for u qld'ers it might be cold....its a big 10 degrees warmer than here most days so i say bring it on!

have a great week everyone

scrapping

well i havent been doing much in the way of it this week
ive actually been making some quilted bags for our hot water bottles and one each for the girls to store their toys in that they like to have in the lounge room.
but i did take a little break today from my sewing so that i could scrap my next entry into the scraploot dt seach comp
not sure if i can share here but heres the link to my layout on the site... :)
http://www.scraploot.com.au/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1018
all pink paislee stuff that is oh so nice to play with...YUMMMO
the challenge this week was more than 6 buttons, no cardstock, felt and colouring in. i had to think about this one.
nothing really going on here but we do go home for a visit next week..woohoo

heres my scrap jack entry

http://www.aussiescrapjack.blogspot.com/



heres my entry

photos of lilly throwing autumn leaves this is a bit of fun for us, being so used to trees that dont lose leaves one that do r a big deal right at the moment

i was also playing with my camera ont he manual settings here...not the best time of the day for pics at all, but im learning lots now ive turned to the manual settings!

Becky Fleck

there is a great Becky Fleck sketch up at scraploot

heres my version, changed the sketch to suit 11 x 8 1/2

and even thou this layout had a reason behind the making of it, it was fun to do something for fun...ive been bogged down the last few layouts i have done trying to work on things for my et entry this year...as soon as u add major comp to my thinking my mojo and brain walk right out the door!

sorry about the pic of the layout. had to use the flash its dark and rainy here today

im going to work on the scrapjack today, something else just for fun! be back to share later

scrapbook creations 53

i really enjoyed this issue

lots of great pages in it

heres mine..: )
love this photo of emily it seems that i took it an age ago, the journalling reflects the title and tells of lots of little things that i think are beautiful about my baby girl