What happened in the past 2 weeks

Eeeeks! 2 weeks! It's been 2 weeks I blogged. So sorry... no wonder people are not coming to my blog ... dang. OK... let's see how much I remember over the last 2 weeks.

Oh bugger... not much. I've got brains like swiss cheese.

Last Wednesday. We were having dinner at my father-in-law's place. Kids had finished and was running around, playing. Phaedon tripped and fell, hit his head on a step. The step had one of those aluminium strips screwed onto it... and it made a gash on his head. Blood was oozing, and everyone was panicking. Amazingly, I'm the calmest person in the room, with him in my arms, trying to access the injury. 2 napkins later, he kinda stopped bleeding. And by this time, he was already trying to struggle out of my arms to continue playing. I had to force him down just to put a bandage on the wound. Then we left soon to take him to the doctor's to put some 'glue' on the cut so he wouldn't have scar tissues forming. The cut was about 1cm long, and it split a good 2mm wide.

Wednesday. We have been told by the swimming instructor that Ellen is ready for the next class in swimming. So we changed her swimming lessons from Saturday to Wednesday. Because Phaedon swims in the same class with her, we thought we'll put him on Wednesday as well, just a different class. The downside... I will have to take them both myself, no Peter. BUT we'll try it out for 1 week. Phaedon hated the class cos Ellen was sitting on the bench waiting for the next class, and not with him. He cried, whinged, screamed.... did all he could to get out of the pool. When his class finished, and Ellen's class was up next, he wanted to stay in the pool with Ellen. I swear... the mothers hanging around the poolside were all giving me the "I feel for you" look. On the upside, Ellen did fantastically well on her own. 2 other girls were in the same class with her. The girls will hang around the steps, while they wait for their turns to do solo with the instructor. And my show-off of a daughter would constantly dunk (or she calls that dive) herself into the water, sometimes long enough for some mothers to worry whether she was drowning. The other 2 mothers will always turn around and look at me in shock horror! I wasn't quite sure what their looks meant.... was it because they were impressed with what Ellen could do... or was it because I sat there and wouldn't move a muscle even though it looked like my daughter was drowning... or both. But I think Phaedon is going back to the Saturday class... and Peter will take him. They can have some father-son time.

Thursday. I got a call from Janet from The Scrapbook Scene.... a long-distance LSS in East Burwood. I call it long distance LSS because it will take me about 45 minutes to get to her shop. She had gone through my album and wanted me to be on her design team. YAAAYYYY!!! More free stuff! More discounts! kekekeke.... And the 1st layout I'm doing for her, is going to be displayed at Paperific, a Melbourne Scrapbook Expo. I got all the Making Memories Cheeky range of products, and used some of my own. This is the layout.



Friday. Nothing much happening.. except that I'm packing my scrapping tote. Tomorrow will be the Dylan Hartung Fundraising Crop. I've never been to a crop of this scale, so it should be fun.

Saturday. AND FUN IT WAS!!!! Man! It was such a huge success for the organiser, Jody White. They managed to hit their target of $10,000 for the Dylan Hartung Fund, and apparently, still counting. There was lots of games, raffles, auctions, lots of chat, lots of shopping, lots of ooohing and aaaahing over albums and lots of how-did-you-do-that over layouts. Oh, and some scrapping, of course. There was a game where the first person to run up to the host with a 1" circle punch, will receive a 12x12 scrapbook album. I didn't know my legs could do such miracles. Without tripping and making a fool of myself, I got there first and won the album! My whole table of girls just roared with laughter at what I did.

Just chillin' today. Didn't want to do anything. Didn't feel like it.

Just some layouts I did over these 2 weeks.

Title: Pure Joy
Photo by Katie Toland




Title: Be Brave


Title: White Chocolate Mocha .... with an extra shot of white chocolate.



Have a great week ahead, everyone! :)

mich

Our first "Girls' Weekend"

It's Sunday. Peter wanted to go to a colleague's place for a BBQ, and he wanted to take Phaedon with him. So he called it his "boy's day out". I wanted to stay at home today cos I had a crappy night last night, and I wasn't in the mood to meet strangers and then think of how to hold a conversation. Then I felt sorry for Ellen if I stayed at home, cos she'll just be glued to the TV. So I decided to be adventurous and take her to the movies. HER FIRST MOVIE.

We went out to lunch, then bought tickets to the movie "The Wild". While we still had time to spare, I decided to do some quick supermarket shopping, drove home to put those perishables
away, and came back to the cinema.

I could actually tell she was genuinely excited. The high-back "aeroplane-style" seats, massive screen and ear-drum-blasting volume .... kept her amused for 10 minutes. 15 minutes into the session, movie hasn't even started (still playing commercials), she said she was hungry. We just had lunch an hour ago. Now why didn't I think of packing some snacks? Just bloody forgotten how to be a mother? Luckily I had a snack size Snickers in my bag, so I gave that to her. Half way into the movie, she started to get ants in her pants. Squirming and struggling to find a comfortable position to lie down. She asked for a blanket, so I had to give her my jacket. Then she asked for a pillow, so I let her lie on my lap. Then she stood up from her seat, to examine what was around her. Then she got out of her seat to go up and down the aisle. Then she started whinging... cos now she is missing her Daddy and lil' bro. Then she started her drama queen routine... said she was afraid of the wilderbeasts in the movie and what not. Finally, I had to let her sit on my lap and cuddle her.

When the movie ended, she was all happy again. By the time we got home, she asked for more TV, which of course I disallowed. So she started crying and asking for Daddy. At one stage, she even said with anger,
"Mummy! Next time don't take me!"
"Why?"
"I want Daddy to take me!"

Awwww... this poor little ..... ingrate! Because I disallowed more TV, and she's missing Daddy, she wanted to disown our "Girls' weekend". Hmph! But at least I can now say, that despite her squirming, she made it through a movie, without a tantrum where I have to leave the cinema! LOL...

Oh, overall, the movie wasn't that great. I was quite disappointed when I saw that Kiefer Sutherland was the voice behind Samson, the Lion! Quite a wimp, really. Far from Jack Bauer. I do like the Koala bear though. kekeke....

OK, layouts for this week.

My Scrap Pile DT layout for October. No patterned paper, just blings.
Title: Simply Fabulous


Title: Lick It!
Scraplift of Kristina Contes' Art layout. I was inspired by the use of 2 different background papers and the very striking centrepiece. Oh, and the fuzzy photo. This was the "fuzziest" one in my system.


Title: Peek A Boo
Scraplift of Katie Toland's Just a Trim. Oh.... really LOVE the Hambly Journal Spots! So cool.



Hope you had a great weekend and have a good week ahead.

mich

Phew! The month is over....

Sigh of relief ...... the month is finally over.

In my last entry, I said that I have been busy with deadlines. Well, there was a competition in For Keeps Scrapbooking magazine, called Awards for Excellence. I would say it is a major competition because the prizes are fantastic. There were a few judging categories... Excellence in Design, Excellence in Photography, Excellence in Creativity and Excellence in Craftsmanship. On top of that, 4 entrants who displayed overall excellence will receive the ultimate accolade in joining the 2007 For Keeps Elite Team. The closing date was 22 September. I had decided not to attempt cos I think it's way out of my league. But less than 2 weeks before the closing date, Ruey told me that they were also looking for their Design Team from this competition! Apparently this was mentioned in the "Conditions of Entry" !! You can tell I'm a person who go into details. So there was a mad rush to do 5 UNSEEN layouts in 1.5 weeks! Nevertheless, I made it in time. Even if I didn't win or get anything from this comp, I learned 2 important lessons:
1. READ all terms and conditions of entry.
2. SAVE some of my layouts as secret weapons (and not show them off everytime I do one) for "rainy day" situations like this when they require NEVER BEFORE SEEN layouts!

In any case, I am very satisfied with my submissions and can only hope for the best. I will display them when the mag sends them back to us.

There was another comp that I entered earlier in August, organised by Scrapbook Creations. The grand prize was for a set of Scrap room furniture! We had to scrap about our current scrap room (or lack of it), and collect 3 tokens from the mag and incorporate them into our layout. It was really fun to do! This was what I came up with .....


I finally got the layout back about a week ago. And to my surprise, there was a letter that came back with it. The letter said that my layout made it to the Top 20 of the contest!!! Although I'm not sure what that means. I guess I'm not the winner cos I'm assuming that they would have contacted the winner by phone by now, and there was no phone call for me (just picturing Bridget Jones checking her message bank every day only to find that there are no messages). LOL... Anyway, I'm happy that I got that far.

OK, more layouts to show. These are my Everyday Moments album comp (ongoing till next year) for the month of September. The theme is Celebrations.

This is my nephew. He is so cute in this photo.


This is a photo taken when I did my Sydney Harbour Bridge climb in 1999 when I was there for a holiday. I'm 5th from the left, dwarfed by the giants.

This is my brother and sister-in-law, one of their wedding portfolio photos. They are the proud parents of the little baby featured in the above layout.


My U for Underwater for Ellen's ABC album.

My V for Vanity meter for Ellen's ABC album.


To end the month, we took a 1+ hour drive to Mornington Peninsula yesterday to meet the lovely Katie Toland, for a photography shoot. I have made this a yearly thing to have photographs of my family taken by a professional photographer. We couldn't have asked for better weather yesterday - 21 or 22 degrees celsius, sun is just warm, and a slight breeze at the beach! We all had a ball just splashing and kicking water, kids playing with sand, blowing bubbles (compliments of Katie), watering cans and buckets (all props of Katie's). Ellen got her pants and top all wet 10 minutes into the shoot and started stripping herself, totally lacking in virtue. All the "wardrobe co-ordinating" efforts went down the drain. I can't wait to see the proofs, Katie! :)

Last night, Ruey and Joseph came around for a poker game night. We had coffee and I made dessert for us before we started and played for a few hours. Had lots of fun. So into the Texas Hold'em game right now. Need to buy the poker chips!

These are it for now. Sorry for not keeping up with my blog ... again. I thank you for still coming back. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, everyone!