Happy Belated Birthday Anita

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Anita aaaaaa, Happy Birthday to you ou ou ou ou!!!

Sorry Anita, couldn't get onto the computer yesterday - had the grandchildren round!!!  Say no more!  I hope you had a lovely birthday and were thoroughly spoiled. xxxx

Courtesy of Google.co uk

Sunshine Award

How cool!  My first award and I've been given it twice by two of my lovely friends!  Thank you Lynn and Linda, you are very kind.  I love visiting your blogs and seeing what you've been up to and the beautiful cards and scrapbooking pages you both do.  I also appreciate so much the help and support you give me both at Jill's crop but also on here when I can't sort out my blog!!  Many thanks. 

I would like to send it back to you both with love from me, and also nominate Jilll and Anita for being my 'buddies' too.

Thank you again.  xx

Haven't I been busy ...?

When I got back from Oz I didn't go back to work immediately so had time to play!  Here are some cards I made.

This is from the Glitter and Glitz CD from Debbi Moore Designs which I have fallen in love with.  I got carried away and made one or two more!!

I can't show you the other one I did as I made it for someone's birthday and they've not had it yet!!!

Whilst in Oz I went to the scrapbooking shop I always go to and came away with a cute little stamp - here is my take on the example card in the shop.  I was rather pleased with it.

Its just one bird on the stamp - stanp it three times on the white card, then stamp again on two different papers and then decoupage it onto the card.  Clever I thought.

I also have to admit to buying the Crafter's Companion Peter Rabbit CDs - well I've been away for a month and not bought much card stuff so why not? !!   So I had a little play -

                                       

This is called a tunnel book - here's the cover.

                                     

This is what is inside

                                     

and this is how its put together.  Cute, eh?

Then I made a 'dual aspect card - bit more time consuming but quite effective, don't you think?

                                      

There's still more but I'll leave them for another day.  I'm off now for tea.  Hope you all have a nice evening.  Byee xxx

Back again ....

Hi me again with a further instalment of my trip down under.  I've been off poorly this week hence the delay.

Right, where was I?  Oh yes, we were staying in Chris' father-in-law's beach house in Portsea which is about 2 hours' drive from Melbourne, on the Mornington Peninsula.  Portsea is fascinating as one side of the beach is on the Bay and the other side is on the Pacific Ocean.  So you can actually walk along a spit of land and one side is flat and calm and the other side is windy and choppy.  Quite odd.

We walked all the way out there, exploring as we went - I believe it was about 3km - it seemed a lot longer.

We had to walk all the way up this stairway, why I'm not sure! but it was flippin' hard work, I can tell you.

The girls did manage but were so weary at the top that 'good old uncle Nick' was roped in to help out!

On the way back we caught the tractor and trailer which took us back to base, and very welcome it was too.

A very tired Adam having a cuddle with daddy.

Chris and Fi like to keep on the move so the next stop was off to Portsea beach. Absolutely brilliant weather and right by the beach where they had the reception for their wedding 5 years ago.

In fact whilst we were there a bride arrived by sea plane and walked along the very long pier to her groom and friends and was married on the beach!  Now that's the way to do it - unfortunately I don't think they had practised beforehand and the bride nearly fell in trying to get out of the plane and jumping onto the pier.  She did get wet!  Unfortunately I wasn't able to take pictures as we were all paddling in the sea.

Everyone had great fun making sand castles and playing in the water and at the end of the day everyone decided it was time for Chris to be covered in sand.  Not sure why but it did seem like fun at the time!

Chris thought it was fun, but I don't think Adam did!!

Right I've bored you enough for now.  I'm off but will be back with some examples of what I've doing at home.

Byeee  xx

Continuation ....

Me again!  Been to work today - yuk!  Would you believe I had almost 200 emails to get through!  Why go on holiday - its not worth it when you get back to work!  Don't really mean that!

Right where was I?  Oh yes - we went to Cape Schank which is about 2 hours from Melbourne.  Chris' mother-in-law Judy lives there in the most stupendous house ever - it is on the first tee of the golf course!   We went down for the weekend staying in the family beach house in PortSea.  We went to a bar-b-q at Judy's and showed Kate round the house.  We were made so welcome as always. 

This is the kitchen behind the sofa.

This is where we'll have the barbie and through the window you can see a bit of the view.

And this is the stand-alone fireplacce and behind that is the view out to the sea!

Now here is the master bed-room which is to the left of this picture.

which has these views:

this is the first tee of the golf course and this one

is out to the sea!  Can you imagine waking up to those views every morning?

The rest of the house is down stairs and has another three large bedrooms, another lounge and work room. 

Judy's husband Bing has a electric golf caddy and the treat for any children visiting them is for Bing to take them chasing rabbits in the golf caddy!  Chloe had to hang on the back and the two younger girls went inside with Bing - here's a couple of pictures

Here's Chloe hanging on the back and here are the others inside

waving goodbye and this is them trundling down the road.  How cute is that?

The last picture is a sad one.  This shows Chris and Adam making a fuss of Judy and Bing's dog Jacko.  He was such a lovely friendly dog.  Two days after this picture was taken, whilst they were out, Jacko fell down the stairs and broke his hip.  The vet advised he  put Jacko down.  You can imagine Judy and Bing were absolutely devastated.

I've bored you enough today!!  There'll be another episode later.  Probably not tomorrow as I'm going to Anita's class at Jillybeans - can't wait!

Byeeee xxx

Well I'm back .........

Well I'm back!  Its taken me rather longer than I thought to get my head together and actually sit down and a) do some card making and b) to write my blog!  Don't know why but just couldn't get round to it.  Anyway I wasn't idle - oh no - I've tidied up my work room and re-arranged everything and its so much better.  Whether I will be able to find anything remains to be seen!  Before I left for Oz I bought a job lot of scrapbooking stuff from a lady who had to give it up and wanted to have her room back!  I just assumed it would be a couple of boxes but there were five black bin liners plus about 7 lovely boxes all jam packed full of stuff.  I was in seventh heaven unpacking it all!  So that's what triggered me off re-arranging my work room.

Right, well as some of may know I've been to Australia for three weeks to visit my son and 2 grandchildren.  We flew Air Singapore and went on the great big AirBus - it was very large.

At the same time my daughter and 2 other grandchildren, together with my middle son also came out too and we all stayed with Chris!  It was fun - noisy, crowded but fun and the children all got on well - 1year old boy, Adam, 3 year old girl, Emma (Oz), 5 year old girl, Emily, and 10 year old girl, Chloe. 

The two elder girls were very good on the flight out - they managed to sleep for quite a lot of the journey, lying across my daughter and myself!  Obviously they were very excited to be in Australia and we went to the beach and paddled etc before Emma and Adam came back from kinder school. 

However once the excitement of everything and meeting up with their cousins had passed, they just collapesed in a big heap whilst watching the tv just before tea.

I'll be back with the next installment - I warn you, you'll be sorry!!! xxx