Friends

OK, I finally think it’s done, after much ado, I present my new blog (and site)! I won’t be making any changes for a while now, AND I will be blogging regularly again, well, I’d better, since I have spent two weeks on this without a night to bed before 2am… several after 4am…. well, I will say, I am tenacious…Please leave me some love and tell me it wasn’t all for naught!

I do know that I have an issue with the header and centring, but when I fix it in Firefox it goes awry in Internet Explorer, so I am aware of it and will attempt to fix it soon!

Some bits….

~ Congratulations…

To my dear friend Megan, who recently achieved her dream of becoming a police officer, I am so proud of you hun, and I know you will be great!

Thanks to Kate, for mentioning my new blog and saying such sweet things about me, right back atchya Kate…. If you enjoy an amusing read head over there, she is wonderful at telling bits about her life in the most amusing manner. Check out a recent one called The Trouble with Double.

And just because I prefer posts with some sort of graphic here is a layout I did a month or so back, my usual, “Embrace The Whitespace” style, hmmm I should coin that phrase… when I looked at these photos I couldn’t get the song from the Milo Ad out of my head, so of course, what better way to get it out, than put it in a layout… so here ’tis…

Update on the Puerto Rico, last time we played, we had 3 games (they are getting quicker now), I won all 3! Very happy indeed.

Hugs to Odette, who recently broke her leg, we are thinking of you babe and hope you are feeling better soon.

Also went to a trivia night on Friday night, it was a fund raiser for the Make A Wish foundation, last year we won (yay) and this year we came second, which does make you wonder about the rumours that alcohol dulls the brain, since last year the end of the evening was quite, shall we say, blurry, and this time we were all, well, much less affected by our drinks, however we only came 2nd, but that, of course, is nothing to sneeze at! So we came home with lots of lovely prizes and knowledge that we are good at, ‘knowing useless stuff’.

Hmmm just noticed I seem to have an aversion to fullstops in this entry, I’ll try harder next time…. put it down to the late hour…

Oh and Lincoln Eddy, yes you, stop nit picking on my blog spelling/grammar/ errors, you’ve had some that I have opted to overlook, and besides, Judy likes the way I type PLease….

Which reminds me! Go and check out the lovely Judy’s blog, she is lucky enough to be travelling around France at the moment and has been updating her blog very regularly, with lots of pictures and wonderful entries about her time there…. go on, go now, leave her some love!

OK check back soon, I have plans to add some pages and stuff, maybe some freebies, some tweaks…. so many plans…..

Thought I’d better blog this before Link beat me to it. He is winning the blog war at the moment….

Last night we went to Suzy and Lincoln’s and had dinner with our dear friends Mandy and Dave who recently moved to Melbourne. Mandy and Dave are in our inner camping friends circle and since the weather is getting cooler we haven’t seen as much of them as we would like. Anyway, we went to Waratah Bay with Mandy and Dave about 6 weeks a go, and while we were there they taught us a game called Puerto Rico , which is ranked as number one game on www.GameBoardGeek.com. After the initial confusion of trying to learn quite a complicated game, we finally ‘got it’. And ended up having 3 games in one day, which is quite a feat since the game we had last night lasted over 3 hours…. Any way, Brian emerged victorious and a good night was had by all, it’s not an easy game to describe, but it is vaguely like Monopoly in trying to acquire wealth and property, but instead it is setting up a new colony…. OK that doesn’t really describe it well at all, but if you like games, this could be worth a try. Mandy and Dave have left the game so we can have a play since, despite it’s ranking, it is not easy to get locally. To prove our level of addiction Suzy and Link our coming over shortly for a follow up game…. stay tuned….

I have recently purchased Foto Fusion and have created a few basic layouts with it, the first one below is of a night late last year at Suzy and Lincoln’s for a BBQ, so here are all the people that were there Puerto Rico-ing it up last night… Click on Pictures for a larger view.
Below is a layout of our weekend at Waratah Bay with Mandy and Dave. Dave was teaching the girls how to surf. I really enjoyed doing this layou as the photo’s made me smile and remember a great weekend, also the kids will remember this forever, they had a ball learning to surf with two of their best friends, Mallory and Odette. They really didn’t want to get out of the water, but all good things must come to an end. I think this is something they will try again next summer.

Below is another quick one on our Easter trip to Bright, we stayed both at the caravan park and also at Lincoln’s Mum and Dad’s house at Harrietville. Brian (Link’s Dad) was a wonderful host and we loved being there. The kids had a ball and made some new friends, Claudia and Mitchell who we have arranged to camp with next year.

Just like the divine Miss A, I too did the Smudge course at DAA along with a few other MAC girls, this Smudge I did of Quinn, before I really knew what to do. Scott Deardorf was an excellent tutor, with excellent video and written tutorials and the class was very chatty and full of inspiring people.

Here is the Eagle which was what we all did in the class.

Since Link has told you what he is reading I thought I should. I have had a bit of a reading hiatus lately, due to late nights and also the fact that I have been enjoying audible books on my iPod, but I recently caught up on all the First Tuesday Book Club vodcasts that I had missed on the ABC and it inspired me to get back into one of my loves, books. I went and bought “The Broken Shore” by Peter Temple, which had had a good review on the show and while I was at the book store I picked a book off the shelf called “The Book Thief” by Marcus Zusak, I bought this primarily because it was written by an Australia about the 1st world war set in Germany. Well, what a fabulous read… I like to read books slowly and savour them, but this I read in 3 days, reading the last 1/3rd of the book in one sitting, finishing at 4.30am. I can highly recommend this book, it was written with an unusual style, and was extremely engaging, I can’t recommend it enough. Unfortunatley I trued to start The Broken Shore straight after it but the writing style was so different I had to stop, will start it in the next few days.

Lastly, we ended up having a big sleep over here on Friday night, trying to take advantage of having Mallory and Odette visiting from Melbourne. So with six little girls staying in our rumpus room there was lots of, Wii-ing, SingStar-ing and DVD-ing happening, they were of course Angels and looked after themselves pretty much. Also in these pictures is Jesamine (Quinn and Bronte’s cousin) and Chantal, who is also belongs to one of our camping families. They had such a great time and here are some pics to prove it….

OK off to Puerto Rico it up now! Have a great day :-)

Updated to add: 5 games… (they ended up staying for pizza…bad I know….Lincoln NONE (although he thinks he has a better average because he kept coming 2nd…)

Score
Lee won 2
Suzy won 2
Brian won 1

Well that title is a bit ambiguous…. I’ll leave it at that I think, suffice to say, it’s a little dig, because despite my obvious disadvantage, I got to blog first, what did I get to blog first, well, that I went to see Juno today. Yep Suzy and I have started up our weekly Friday movie again (although we had a non-human gatecrasher today). And what a way to start the movie year… if you haven’t seen it, do. Right now…seriously now, the rest of this won’t be that exciting, trust me…. Anyway, I intend to rush out and purchase the soundtrack tomorrow, assuming of course, there is one, haven’t checked that yet, really loved the quirky bits of music, with some great classics in there too. Anyway, I highly recommend, it really was great and I am sure few films I see this year will rival it, we all enjoyed it immensely, even the non-human amongst us.

OK below, a layout…. tried to personify the amazing Anna Aspnes with the word art here, sadly, it didn’t work, but it’s the effort that counts…. right? CC welcome…. click for a larger view…

And this one was made for my dear friend Shez, it was made as a belated birthday card…again so sorry I was late Shez…. or maybe we could just say I am amazingly early for your 41st!

And for those who don’t know, we finally got a new BBQ and outdoor setting, see below, so we can now finally use our deck for some real entertainment, it’s been bare for 18 month now so it’s nice to be able to use it, even if we don’t have a step! There are no pics of the outdoor setting as it wasn’t set up when I took the BBQ ones.

Clinton and Jen, if you’re reading this again, we will have you over in the next two weeks or so. There I am locked in now! We look forward to seeing you….. Wow, is this a first? An invite via blogger? I wonder…..

OK, think that’s it for now… happy weekend everyone! BFN

We had our MAC conference on the weekend, and I met THE most wonderful, fun, caring, happy, special girls and could not have gotten along with them any better. We all got along like a house on fire and I wasn’t at all suprised, after all, we have been friends for a while now, even though we hadn’t met.
Sadly our good friend Karen was unable to make it (from NZ), but we talked of her often and drank to her more ;)

The pics here were taken on Sunday on Southbank, some at the restaurant and some walking around. Unfortunately these pics don’t include Lis and Ruth as they weren’t there on the Sunday, I will do another one of these from the Saturday night when 8 of us were there. The pics also include our own little MAC digi mascot, the gorgeous Deb and the lovely Dr Tax (AKA David, Judy’s DH). We also got to meet the gorgeous Trent and lovely Matt on Saturday when they dropped Lis off, just wonderful, meeting all these fabulous people! Click for a larger view

All I can say is that I am truly blessed to call ALL of these girls my friends and I know they are always here for me and I will be for them. Cheers MAC girls, you are the BEST!

~ SLIP SLOP SLAP ~

OK Here are some pics taken while we were camping. As you can see Footy Fever was rampant, with at least a couple of people having a kick, most of the time. First pic on the left is Bronte, in throws of sunscreening herself! Next is Odette, Mandy and Dave’s daughter keeping Bronte company, during said sunscreening :)

~ FUTURE STARS ~

Here’s Quinn and Bronte showing off their skills, with a big drop punt from Quinn and a magnificent Mark Of The Day from Bronte! Bronte is absolutely footy mad at the moment and loves to have a kick, she proved her devotion with a fairly admirable attention span while the football was on (better than mine at least). Quinn has a soccer ball and leans more towards that, but still enjoyed a kick with the gang.

~ THE AUSTAR GUY ~

This is John, behaving a little too much like the Austar guy, taking marks over his daughter and crushing her in the process. Emily was only laid up for 2 days and with some chiroprachtic care was able to overcome her injuries and should make a full recovery. She should be OK by pre season. (Just kidding, of course)! Gotta love the look on Emily’s face in that top one. Classic!

~ JUST ONE I LIKED ~

Love the smile on Quinns face in this one, so thought I’d share too. I really must get some scrapping done, I have scrappers block at the moment, and need desperately to unblock!!!

~ THE FRENCH DOORS ~

This last one is just for Judy, she was pretty excited to hear we had French Doors in our bedroom, so I took this pic, whilst in bed one day, so I could show Judy what I look at when I wake up in the mornings, you can just see the corner of Brians bedside table, the pic isn’t the best, but you get the idea. Who would think that view is a 7 minute walk to the CBD! Gotta love it!

Have a great night :)

When we are camping, for some reason we are all very tired at the end of every day, despite the fact we don’t actually DO a great deal. We all sigh, sitting around the fire and say “Another Big Day O Nothin’ “. LOL

I always come back feeling so refreshed, happy and feeling lucky that we get to spend this special time with our families and close friends. We were pretty lucky with the weather although we did have one particularly windy day, other than that it was great. We had extra friends come over on the Saturday to spend GF day with us and we had our traditional hotdogs for lunch and then “The Big Roast” for dinner. “The Big Roast” is big, usually 3-4 peices of meat and copious amounts of yummy vegies. Suzy even managed to bake a cake for Bronte and Mandy who have birthdays today and tomorrow, it was very yummy, especially since it was baked at the last minute! And finally ended with marshmellows around the fire. Of course, as tradition dictates, we had perfect weather on Sunday we packed up LOL. oh well, better than rain. We unpacked in record time and were completely sorted by 6pm, we are getting good at the end bit! I didn’t take many pics but did get one or two good ones, which I’ll post soon.

After such a relaxing time, work was a big shock today, very very busy and just non stop, I didn’t get half as much done as I wanted too, but enjoyed it anyway. Especially when I got told we are getting a big reward soon! Yippeee, the dates are yet to be announced but I am hoping like mad I can make it! Fingers crossed.

Also it was Bronte’s birthday today, my baby turned 7! Oh even when she is 57 she will always be my baby! She got a little mini stereo for her birthday which she loved and then after school all her cousins came over for cake and a play, while all the adults chatted. Just lovely! I did take some pics of the blowing out the candles, but they are still on the camera and I’m too tired to get them off, so I’ll do it in the next day or two.

Lastly, I came back to the news that another two of our MAC girls met! Judy was in New Zealand visiting family and caught up with our resident Photography Guru, Karen. They had a lovely time and Judy commented that “it was like meeting a family member rather than just a friend!” How lovely. It’s not long until our get together and I can hardly wait to meet these great ladies. Sadly not all of us will be there this time, but we will all be together in spirit, and those not there won’t be forgotten.

Lastly I thought I would do my first “Imagination Prompt”

The question that came up was “What did we do before the internet”

My answer is “I have no idea!” LOL

Have a great night everyone!

As promised, this is John at our recent Karaoke night, wowing the crowd with his rendition of, well, I really don’t know what he is singing, do you?

Pitch or no pitch? You decide….
and if your ears can take it here is another of John even worse than this :)
John 2

And also one of Quinn singing Love Me Tender

Also Lisa sent me this the other day and I think it has some lovely sentiments…thanks Lis :)
1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.
2. At least 15 people in this world love you in some way.
3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.
4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don’t like you.
5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.
6. You mean the world to someone.
7. You are special and unique.
8. Someone that you don’t even know exists loves you.
9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.
10. When you think the world has turned its back on you take another look.
11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.
Always remember….when life hands you lemons, ask for tequila and salt and call me over!!