Attitude of Gratitude - the missing days...

Ok, the weekend got in the way, so I have three things in my life to be thankful for today!


First - I am SO VERY thankful Matt has finally finished his last exam. He had french on Friday and was probably the most nervous I have seen him as french is his weakest subject. In the overall scheme of the HSC, this is most likely the one whose marks don't count (they only count your top 10 units, and this has to include English and Matt has done 13 units so a bit of leeway).


He has been to two parties over the weekend and we are currently planning his 18th - finally - for this coming weekend, nothing too big - and we might finally get to meet his girlfriend...


Secondly - I am very pleased that we have raised my children to be polite and welcoming.

We went to some old friends house on Saturday night and took Meaghan and Henry along as they have two daughters, one 2 years older than Meaghan but who goes to her school and the other daughter who is Meghan's age although a different school.

And they completely blanked her!

I was so cross, I would have been horrified if Meaghan had shown anywhere near that amount of rudeness to guests in our house.

and lastly - I love my friends so very much. We were out for dinner last night (except Jo - hope you are better soon xx) and it was just a lovely night. We have reached such a comfortable, happy stage of our relationships with each other, the support is always there.




what I am not grateful for at the moment is our internet speed - it is so deadly slow, it is driving me bonkers - arrgh. it has taken 10 minutes for it to download each of these photos, and they are only tiny file sizes. It's like we have gone back to dial up. Stupid Transact.

have a great day - we are anxiously awaiting news of some close friend's eldest child (age 15) who has gone in for some very major surgery today. I hope that the results will be on my thankful list tomorrow. xx

Today I'm a Dolly!!

Well a guest Dolly anyway - and I am very excited about it!! Today is sketch day and here is my interpretation of the wonderful fun sketch.


I flipped it around and of course misted and splatted the background. I also made my own kite (very tricky!!!) I'm quite pleased with the end result.



So please come and play with us over at the Dollhouse - we'd love to have you!!

Today my gratitude will be completely gratutuous and superficial (and it has been a long time since the world cup) but I am enormously thankful to the makers of true blood who gave us this




and this

and has managed to cast very close to what I had imagined the characters to be (including Bill, who I found dull in the books and comtinues to be on screen.) I will admit to being completely addicted to the series and am curenty finishing off series 3 (don't ask how we got that...).

and then the long wait for series 4.

ok, I HAD to put in the bonus picture - enjoy..

sigh...


have a great day.


and don't forget to go check out the Dollies and the Southern Girls. xx

A new Southern Girls Challenge

And this challenge is all about transport. A bit tricky to start with but then when I thought about it, there were many possibilities. Parents and grandparent transport, my first car, road trips, even amusement park rides. I went with the holiday theme as that is my obsession at the moment (like you hadn't noticed - sorry...).

This is from our last trip to Vietnam/Cambodia. It's funny when we first left home and read all the advice from the travel Bureau (don't hop on bikes, don't get into cars without seat belts etc) and we were going to stick by those rules. Well that lasted until we were out of Malaysia (approx 2 days). We didn't have the choice for seat belts and overcrowded cars, that's all that was available. And the bikes, we didn't go very far but they were so much fun - I suspect that option may be used more this trip. It's worth it just to see Geoff balanced on the back of a tiny bike - very funny!

Anyway go check out the challenge and the wonderful prizes! I think the other girls work on this challenge is my favourite stuff (technical term..) so far.

Which leads me to my gratefulness (???) for today. I am so grateful Louise and Trace chose me to be part of the team at Southern Girls. I have met some wonderful girls and been exposed to some art that I would not have come across. And that is always a good thing.

Back tomorrow for my first LO for Design Dollies. I am Guest designer this month and am very excited to be part of the team. I love this site!!!

have a great day xx

Holiday planning

Today I am more than pleased for the wonderful internet that allows me to book a holiday to suit us and not need a travel agent to do it for us.

We are spending close to a week in a place called Luang Prabang in the North of Laos. I have just booked a couple of nights at this place , very rustic but rave reviews about the experience from people who have stayed there. And each bungalow has it's own bathroom, my only requirement, I DO NOT like sharing bathrooms with strangers!!

When we showed Henry the pictures and asked if he wanted to stay there he asked if they had mosquito nets, and got the thumbs up when we confirmed this. Doesn't take much to satisfy our littlest traveller!! (I'm not sure if we will show Meaghan yet or not, she likes a little more comfort...)

We will then spend the rest of the week (including Christmas) in the town itself. Getting excited now...


Oh and we have booked our flight back to Melbourne from Kuala Lumper (very cheap), so now we just have to get from Laos back to Malaysia, hopefully via Vietnam..

have a great day. xx

PS I'm thinking about my 7 unknowns for Jo and will post tomorrow.

A digi Lo

for no particular reason. These photo's were taken earlier in the year and I have had this digi lo half done for a while now, so it is now finished. hooray.

and today I am thankful for RAIN.

After 10 years of less than average rain (ie a Drought!!), this year we have had lots of yummy rain. And it has turned our front yard from a weed filled dust bowl to something closer to a park. We have put chairs on our front verandah (very small one really) and spend most of the weekend there, reading or ignoring housework...



It is very pleasant indeed, now we have to paint the wooden frame work (not sighted in these photos) from mission brown (oh too common in Canberra) to something else. Will let you know.

have a great day xx

Thank you

Wow, what a blog hop!!! It was wonderful to have all you lovely ladies drop by and to make breast health a nice big issue. yay!! Ok on to the draw for my little pile of blog candy - this is exciting

Anyway, I plugged in the numbers to random.org and it came up with number 44. and that means our winner is Nadia!! I just went and checked out her blog, Nadia's world - it has some very cute stuff on it. So I will send you an email soon Nadia for contact details, congrats.

Ok, next item on the agenda has been started by Tessa at her blog, Perfectly Precocious. She has just the loveliest stuff, and has some beautiful embellishments for sale at her etsy store. Time to be grateful for all we have in our lives is the theme of the month.

And a jolly good time to do it too. I think I need to be reminded daily that my life is wonderful, no doubt about it but occasionally I whinge and complain about stupid things. Esp as Christmas is getting closed and everything gets busier and busier.

So today it an easy one.

I am grateful for all those who visited me last week for the Breast Cancer awareness blog hop. I love this online community and the lives we can reach and be included in, if only for a minute of two.

Go check it out and maybe put some time aside to think about the good things in life.

And lastly a Lo. I have recently joined an online community at Deb's creations. A few of my friends from Southern Girls hang out there as well. Last month was a sketch challenge for the scrapbookers (card challenges are also big!!). Here was my little entry. I have been struggling with using a plain cardstock background (other than white or black!) lately so I went with some red this time. A bit of mist and paint to break it up and I think I quite like the end result..


Ok, off to finish a couple of DT Lo's. Hopefully inspiration will strike and something nice will be the end result....

have a great day, will be back tomorrow. xx

Welcome to Inking Pink Blog Hop

This is my first blog Hop, so be gentle..

Welcome to our Inking Pink Awareness Hop! I hope you enjoyed Jess' blog. Our paper crafting community spans the globe and brings all of us together under a common roof. We are grandmothers, granddaughters, mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, best friends, wives, cyber-friends and design team teammates.I am sure we have all been touched by breast cancer, either personally or knowing a close friend or relative who has been diagnosed. Please, please regularly self examine and also get your Dr to check your breasts at your next appointment.

This is an enormous hop, which just shows what a great community of crafters we belong to. I love that we have access to talented people world wide - how lucky are we?? This is the perfect excuse to kick back and discover new blogs (you can always say it's for a good cause if anyone should enquire about how you spent your day..)

Our hop starts at Patricia's blog (she has done an amazing job putting all this together) so if you started some where else please start there you don't want to miss what we have for you.

Ok, this month why not put together a Lo or a card that has pink on it somewhere, just to remind yourselves that it is Breast cancer awareness month?

To help you with that I have some very pink and yummy blog hop candy that I am giving away (to anyone, anywhere!!). All nice and pink with some chipboard, stamps and a few other bits and pieces thrown in. Just leave a comment and you will be in the running for my little pile of goodies.

I am not a pink person but I have done a Lo with pink (well some pink..) for my daughters 14th birthday. So grown up now -sigh.

(using the latest Design Dollies sketch, more news about them soon!!)

Thanks for dropping by. Off to Kellies blog now, she has some very cool stuff to look at over there, have fun

In case you get lost along the way here is a list of hops (25!!).

Patricia

Betty

Bonnie

Carisa

Catherine

Chelsea

Danielle

Emma

Gini

Jamie

Jennifer

Jess

Karen (yay me)

Kellie

Liz

Lorie

Marlene

Meredith

Nicole

Shelley

Stephanne

Susan

Trudy

Kim

So, off you go - lots of yummy sites to explore, much bounty to be had in the form of blog candy, leave love wherever you go and SELF EXAMINE!!

PS will be drawing a winner on November 1st so check back in. xx