Our christmas card photo

Some random December happenings

Lily performed with the Mini Strings Ensemble at the end of year Strings Dept concert for the Conservatorium they day after we went to the V8 Supercars (no sleep in either as that Sunday was also a Nippers pointscore day!)
Here's a collage of snaps from the V8s & Guns n Roses. Wasn't selective with whose cars were left in out of Holden or Ford. We volunteered to collect donations for Surf Lifesaving Australia.....gold coin for a hat. That's how we got in on the day & why I was wearing those patrol clothes


The following weekend was the opening of the Peninsula Precinct Recreation area, where Lily was lucky enough to perform with the school choir as part of the official celebrations on the day. Everyone had lots of fun. Later on that evening we went back down to the oval for the Carols by Candlelight. What a fantastic asset this place is to our area. We've definitely been spending lots of time there since.


Some photos from U2, which we were lucky to have it to, after snapping the timing belt in my car on the way (another long & expensive story, culminating in getting home at 3.15am)


& some photos from Bon Jovi, great concert & a fun night out with Lily. What a week!

School's out for summer!

Both girls got fantastic reports & both also received awards for their efforts & achievements throughout the year @ their Presentation Days

Lily received the award for "Consistent Effort" for her class & also a "Premier's Reading Challenge Gold Award" (for completing the challenge for 4 consecutive years......funny thing is that there has been a different Premier for each year of the challenge she has undertaken!)

Lily also performed with both the recorder group & the choir as well. We're very proud of her & all she achieved & learned this year. She's had the most wonderful school year with Mr Jackson as her teacher. I'm sure she'll miss him, as eager as she is to find out who her teacher will be in 2011.


Unfortunately we never did get around to taking a photo of her banner on the day because she received it with her name spelled incorrectly. It has taken pride of place in the TV unit in the lounge room now though.

Mackenzie received the Citizenship Award for her class, which really is outstanding as she is one of the youngest & also the smallest in her class. She has a very caring & compassionate nature which doesn't take long at all for people to see. It was definitely a very beautiful & proud moment seeing her up on stage having that recognised so publicly. Mackenzie also received an award for completing Kindergarten & her first Premier's Reading Challenge. The Kindy kids put on a fantastic Christmas performance also.


And so ends the Kindergarten stage for our family..... forever! Mrs Charles was a wonderful first teacher for both the girls, hopefully somewhere in the next few years, they get the opportunity to be taught by her again sometime.

Onwards now to Year 4 for Lily & Year 1 for Mackenzie in 2011.

9 years ago today

Lily was born. She is growing into such an amazing & talented girl of who, we are so very proud. Happy 9th Birthday beautiful girl.

These photos are from her special day, she managed to even fit in a game of touch footy. I love how she's still sleeping with her very favourite soft toy, Funshine, her Care Bear.



& this is her using her "big" present, her very own foam Nippers board @ Copacabana (what a brave girl she was too, the waves & swell were massive at this carnival)



This lot of photos was taken @ Aqua Fun at Avoca Lake where we celebrated her birthday with some of her friends. It was such a fun party!

Last photo as an 8 year old

Tomorrow our big turns 9!

Hard to believe that time has gone by so fast. I had to take one last photo of her before her big day & a lovely one it is at that.

WOO HOO Premiers for 2010 !!!!

The mighty Dragons have finally, finally done it!

31yrs since their last competition win (as the St George Dragons) & 11yrs since they made the Grand Final as a joint venture, where Craig & I sat amongst the capacity crowd at the Olympic Stadium, eventually seeing them lose to the Melbourne Storm (that was shattering....lol!).

Today's game was a ripper, after a close 1st half, the Dragons stepped up a notch which the Roosters could not match or keep up with & ran away convincing winners with a 32-8 scoreline.







Awesome skill, discipline & patience shown under very wet & miserable conditions with such a fantastic result for a champion team!

I LOVE MY TEAM!!!

*Photos from SMH website

Where to begin when your memory is blah........(lol!)

It's been a while between updates & I've kind of forgotten most of the goings on of late. Really looking forward to next week when we can all wind down for a bit over the school holidays. Can't believe Mackenzie's year of Kindy is 3/4 over already!

One thing I can't possibly forget is that Lily did awesomely well in all aspects of the NAPLAN tests & we are so proud of her.

& look what arrived for me the other day, courtesy of a giveaway from Steph @ My Little Bit of Whimsy. How lucky was I!!! Thanks so much Steph. I love them all, they are just so gorgeous.

The cute little purple birdie has already found a new home on one of my pages from the weekend's cyber cropping @ Red Earth Scrapping.

These are the last of my creations using the September Mini Kit.



The next few piccies are for Red Earth's 1st Cybercrop held over the weekend. Challenges need to be posted by Wednesday midnight to be in the running for some great prizes, so why not stop by & have a go!

This photo was for Helen's photography challenge & the cards below are my samples for my challenge, Challenge 1. Love those Echo Park papers.



I created this one for Mistra's challenge


then this one is for Helen's sketch challenge using one of Stuck's sketches which Red Earth Scrapping is sponsoring this month too & is where the cute little purple birdie now lives.


& last but not least, is my Round 6 entry for Scrap that Ad @ Scrapz. Thoroughly enjoyed that competition & hanging out to see who the winners will be, after Heike experienced some unexpected technical hitches with the site last week.


Take care & wishing you all a very lovely week.

Looking for some scrapping fun & challenges......

Mark your calendar to join us for 6 days of wonderful challenges, plenty of chat and of course loads of PRIZES up for grabs too, including shop vouchers!!!

Bring a friend ... or 3 and let's celebrate SPRING and our love of all things papercrafting together.

Keep checking the forum HERE for all the hints and updates.

Red Earth Scrapping Creations

......for September.

Firstly using some of the very lovely My Mind's Eye "Pretty" range




& then the Mini Kit, a massive bargain for just $9. I've made 2 L/Os & some cards (which I'll share another day) & still have some usable scraps left over!





Thanks for stopping by & leaving such lovely comments too. I really appreciate them & they do brighten my day!

Hope you are all having a great week.

It was a Happy Father's Day

.......for Craig & the girls which is the main thing (not so much weather-wise & I unfortunately had a tummy bug)

Lily & Mackenzie spoilt their Daddy with the special pressies from the stall at school & their own handmade creations. It was mainly an indoor day with very strong winds blowing a gale. A fallen tree took out the power lines in the next street which luckily didn't affect us.

They also took Craig out for a lovely chinese dinner, which they all loved & brought me home some fried rice for lunch on Monday. It was yummy, seems the local may have either had a change of management of at least a new chef. In the 4 years we've been here I pretty much have avoided chinese because none of the local restaurants were as good as the ones we used to go to in Sydney. We still drop in at our favourite on the way back up to the Central Coast occasionally after visiting friends or family in Sydney.

Anyway I digress, here's a piccie of the three most important people in my life, enjoying each others company & a hug on the lounge after a great day together.



Here's Mackenzie with her awards for her excellent public speaking. She has just blossomed so much since starting school this year.


On Friday night Lily & headed out to Berowra Library to meet Andy Griffiths, she absolutely loves his books. A bit too much poo, wee & other gross stuff for me but so funny just the same. He certainly has a fantastic personality, his talk was quite entertaining for everyone. Even though our girl is quite a girly girl, she does have that "just one of the boys" side to her as well which probably makes her quite well rounded but honestly I never thought having 2 girls that we'd be reading books called "The Day My Bum Went Pyscho", "Just Stupid" & of course his new one (which she had autographed) "The Very Bad Book".....lol!

& here is my Round 5 entry for Scrap that Ad @ Scrapz, a bit of a challenge to scrap myself again. This round was based on the very famous Dove ad from a few years ago.




I'll be publishing this post several days after Father's Day but I did want to record everything around Father's Day, time just has not been on my side & in the meantime poor Craig picked up my bug. He's on the mend now & hopefully we've gotten it out of the house!

Creating, creating, creating......

This is my page for Helen's weekly challenge from a couple of weeks ago. It was a sketch challenge, but the tricky part was to scrap yourself, can't say I've ever done terribly much of that!

Pretty happy with how it turned out. The photo is actually a photo of a newspaper article I had in the local paper, some 16yrs or so ago, when I was an apprentice painter/ decorator & was nominated in the NSW Training Awards.


How good does this next piccie look?

Well it's the Red Earth Scrapping September Mini Kit, which is going on sale in a couple of days for just $9! Perfect if you've got autumn photos that need scrapping. There's also plenty of little bits & pieces to make some great cards too. I'll be sharing my creations in a few days.


The next couple of pages I created for the Red Earth Scrapping Election Scrap-a-thon last weekend.





And these last 3 pages are my entries for Rounds 2-4 of Scrap that Ad @ Scrapz.biz. I'm having so much fun with these challenges at the moment. The next one is due to be posted in the forum tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing which ad Heike has chosen this time!






These photos were taken last weekend when we visited the Australian Reptile Park @ Somersby. We were lucky enough to have been given a family pass by some friends & it made for a fantastic impromptu family day out!



In other "kid news", both Lily & Mackenzie presented their "If I were....." speeches to their class this week & both went over quite well which is very pleasing. So proud of them both for getting up & having a go.

Lily chose to pretend she was a photographer & planned a trip around the world with various destinations of sites she'd love to see & things she'd love to do, including visiting the pyramids in Egypt, an animal safari in Africa & climbing the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Mackenzie chose to be a "Masterchef" & described how to make ladybird cupcakes!

Lily also received a merit card for "producing quality work at all times" on Friday which we're off course very proud of too.

I also a little stroke of luck (after a stroke of very bad luck.....lost a very expensive & sentimental earring earlier in the week), my name was drawn out at the My Little Bit of Whimsy giveaway. How cool is that! Thanks so much Steph.

Thanks for stopping by & for checking out this monster post. I'm off to have some lovely brushcetta for dinner.

Get ready to scrap @ Red Earth Scrapping

This is what Helen has got going on over the weekend @ Red Earth Scrapping, so pop on over & join in the fun with us............plus there's a sale! (& who doesn't love a bargain)

Sick of hearing about the up coming federal election? Sick of the media hype and constant polls and debates?

I know I am ... so on Saturday, once you've played your part in Australia's political history by casting your vote, you can forget ALL ABOUT the election ... and think about SCRAPPING!!!

If just scrapping isn't incentive enough, how about some goodies and vouchers to help get the mojo flowing this weekend?

Here's what's on offer ...

MME Combo Pack of your choice - these are the new release CHA ranges and have arrived in store TODAY

Prima Flowers

Green Tara Flowers

And the big one ... an election day only SALE!!! Stay tuned for details about this one

How do you win these goodies?

1. Scrap up a storm this weekend - Saturday 21st & Sunday 22nd August. Upload all your layouts or cards or off-the-page creations to the gallery by midnight (your local time) Sunday.

You will receive 1 entry in the draw for each layout etc you upload.

Please ensure your layouts/cards/projects are created this weekend only (see the competition guidelines).

2. Place an order any time between Friday 20th - Monday 23rd and for each dollar spent you will receive 2 entries in the draw.

Keep your eyes peeled for details of the SALE

3. Introduce a friend to Red Earth Scrapping - your friend needs to register as a member any time between Friday 20th - Monday 23rd and you will receive 1 entry in the draw for each friend who registers.

Please e-mail me with the names of your friends you invite so when I approve their registration I can be sure to put your entry in the draw. Your friends will also receive an entry in the draw, and they can earn more entries by participating in the above activities.

So are you READY TO SCRAP?

It is sure to be waaaaay more exciting than an election, surely!

*** Helen ***

My Blog "Musings & Memories" www.countryscrapper.blogspot

Spaghetti bolognocchi.......

that's what Mackenzie named our dinner last night, it's made me giggle all day!

Craig's not a fan of gnocchi so he had the spaghetti with meatballs version of bolognase thus causing the conflict with what our's was actually called...lol.

The things she comes out with are so funny & cute sometimes & generally I forget to write them down.

Actually whilst I'm talking about Mackenzie, I should mention that today she had some of her artwork displayed in the school newsletter. Another piece of Kindy memorabilia to keep for her!

(she's not actually a child prodigy artist by the way, she did however draw the emu's neck under it's head, which was drawn by a teacher I'm assuming & then she painted the whole picture, which is kind of hard to tell from the B&W copy shown)

This is another thing that made me smile yesterday, our first daffodil of the season. Spring can't be far away, although today's weather definitely has been the polar opposite to the last few days, so who can tell! Funny how some bug has beaten me to see it too, seems you have to quick around here.

Helen has put up some very enticing sneak peeks of some upcoming classes at Red Earth Scrapping. Mistra's class will be in October & she'll be using this divine prettiness to work her magic.


& Penny Hackney will be using this lovely & bright collection for her class in November. I can't wait!



& last of all, this is my entry for Round 1 of the Scrap that Ad competition currently running at Scrapz. Go & check it out, as with all of Heike's competitions you can join in at any time. The criteria she chooses & challenges she sets are always so fun.





Reposting this for a fantastic giveaway at My Little Bit of Whimsy. Thought I might try my luck, you just never know & everything there is just so cute.

Vacation Alert! & Super Duper Whimsy Giveaway


Hi Whimsy Folks!!!
Vacation officially begins today and I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to it! I will be away from the shop between August 8th-15th and any orders placed during this time will be shipped out August 16th :) The shop is up to date, so feel free to place your orders while we are enjoying the foot-loose and fancy free week ahead! hehe
I thought it would be appropriate to have another Whimsy Giveaway while we are away, with many chances to win! See below:

- Be a follower of this blog (= 1 entry)
- Post this on your blog with a link back to here. (= 2 entries)
- Be a "Fan" on Facebook (= 1 entry)
- Send out a Facebook referral to the Whimsy Fan page to your friends (= 2 entries)
*So if you do all 4 of these, you have 6 chances to win! Yay!
Leave a link on this post with your entry details and I will draw a name when we return from vacation!
I've been spring cleaning in the shop, so this giveaway will be a doozy!!!
Have a wonderful week :)
Steph
xo