OK seeing as I’m sending out Mini’s to customers from today, I guess it won’t hurt to show you the rest of that layout from a few posts ago, it uses the brand new Scribble This set, which I LOVE. I’m hoping to get time to create a few more samples with this set over the next few days too.

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That’s my Mum with Kelsey at Grandparents Day at school - love how the kids scribbled drawings go so well with the scribbly images from that set of stamps! The colours are Always Artichoke, Creamy Caramel, Ballet Blue and Real Red.

And this is a card I finished last night while I was watching House (mmmmmm Hugh Laurie) and then Medium. It’s also using a new set from the Mini catalogue, Polka Dots and Paisley. The colours are Apricot Appeal, Certainly Celery and Tempting Turquoise. The only other stamp I’ve used is the Weathered background. Nice set hey?

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My initial plan with that one was that the word window punch would punch out the words evenly, alas it didn’t quite work out that way, but I’m liking the way the words ‘nest’ into each other like they do now. Love the clear buttons too, add a little something without it being overwhelming!

Thanks to Yvonne for lending me those sets, I bought two others from the mini, so we did a swap for a day. You never saw such frantic stamping in your life

Hope you like them!!

David had the day off yesterday, and Kels was home sick from school with a nasty hacking cough, so what better thing to do but get out into the open freezing air of Mt Macedon? We went first to the tearooms up there and had a yummy hot lunch, then trekked up to see the Cross itself. The kids love it up there, even though it always feels about 30 degree’s colder than at home .

This is Quinn, David and Kelsey at a little lookout on the way to the Cross, can you tell it’s cold LOL!?

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This is the Memorial Cross, those two little black and pink specks at the base of it are Kelsey and Quinn - and the town off in the distance behind it, is Gisborne…….. can you see our house???]

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Times like these I wish I was one again!! The simple joys huh.

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Here’s the cake before it was demolished by hungry hoardes of children, that icing was delish (obviously, just look at that child’s face ) sort of a meringue type thing, light and sweet and fluffy.

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I can’t believe how old that makes me feel! :O

Anyway, here is his birthday card, just very simple and colourful for a little boy -

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This is using the Eat Cake set, and the Typeset lowercase alphabet as well.  Colours are tempting turquoise, gable green and brilliant blue, with a smidge of only orange for the candles.

I think he liked it…. although he was pretty impressed with the wrapping paper off his present too. Hmmmmm.

Only 13 more sleeps until the official release of the 2007 Spring Mini Catalogue!! There are some gorgeous sets in this one - here is a little sneak peek at one of them…

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Not only is this set divine…. it’s on my SEVENTH ever layout, which makes it even more special to me LOL!!

Hoopla! The girls went back to school yesterday, so I finally have some time to update here.

We drove up to our friends in Swansea Heads, and stopped in Goulburn on the way (about 7 hours drive from home), we stayed in a really old hotel in the heart of town, we had a king bed and three singles in one big room, so the kids had a fantastic time bouncing from one bed to another to another, all around the room! There was a huge balcony running along the front of our room, but we didn’t have a door to get out there….. that didn’t stop the kids checking it out though

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And apparently someone from the Newcastle Ports Authority read my blog :O, and saw how devastated I was about not seeing the Pasha Bulker, so they towed it into Newcastle for me to get some photo’s of it! How nice was that! Thanks guys

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This is a photo of the sunset on the night we arrived at Swansea Heads, at our friends (Deanne and Rob) place. They are right on the water as you can see, and have an apartment under their home which they rent out, called Salts Bay Retreat. If anyone’s interested I can give you details on how to get in contact with them to book a little holiday yourselves. It’s fully self contained, can sleep up to 8, and it’s just gorgeous sitting out on the deck with a little drink watching the sun go down, while the kids play in the cubby, or the blokes go out on the Squirts (little canoe boaty things).

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Anyway, we had a ball up there, just pottering around and relaxing - had delicious takeaway pizza from Deanne and Rob’s restaurant called Salina’s in Belmont one night. I thought I would explode I ate so much! We even went bowling, which the kids loved - the girls thought it was fantastic that both of them beat their father tee hee.

Saturday night on the way home we stayed at Auntytraci’s house, and had a ball - she is not only a really cool friend of several years now, she is also a fellow SU demonstrator so she and I got to do a little bit of stamping and creating, inbetween glasses of Omni. This is the second time she’s opened her home to my family (and the first time she did it, she hadn’t even met me in real life yet!!) , she is just gorgeous, and I’m glad I met her way back when on Stamping Top 50 Australia. (We are both glad that neither of us turned out to be a) axe wielding maniac’s, or b) 13 year old boys masquerading as stamping addicts )

This is us, and is also the moment I decided I will probably have to have some kind of neck surgery - what on earth is happening there with my adam’s apple? I’m obviously the one on the left with the freaky neck.

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We came home via Wagga Wagga, we’ve never been there before so it made a nice diversion, and as you can see, Quinn thought the RAAF museum was the bee’s knees. Look at the grin on that childs face!

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I do have some more photo’s, but I thought *gasp* some of them might make it to a scrapbook page, so I’ll keep them to myself for now…. or upload them next week when I realise I won’t scrap them at all, it’s just wishful thinking!!

We are currently away in Sunny Swansea Heads NSW, but I’ve snuck a little bit of ‘me’ time to pop in here and write up a quick post. We’re staying in our friends apartment under their house, right on the shore of Lake Macquarie, and it’s gorgeous up here - the sun is shining, the palms are waving in the breeze and the water looks very inviting from up here on the balcony while I sip my Chateau Cardboard Chardonnay (AKA Cask wine). This is the life.

We were going to zip up to Newcastle today to see the Pasha Bulker stranded on Nobby’s Beach, but as our luck would have it, they managed to float it off the beach only last night! Come ON! It had been there three weeks, they couldn’t wait one more day for us??? Hmmph. Ah well, we had the most delicious fish and chips in Swansea for lunch instead, then the kids had some fun in the park at Belmont.  As soon as I get up from here we’ll be heading downstairs to the beach for a bit of fun in the sand there too. Hopefully that will tire them out and they’ll go to bed early again!!

I can’t believe I was prepared enough to upload a photo of a card before we left, but I suppose amazing things are happening all the time…

It’s a quick one I did for a workshop recently, using Sassy Stems.

I love the combo of Pretty in Pink with Sage Shadow - I’ve used the corner rounder to do the scalloped edge down the side of the card. Other sets are It’s Your Birthday, Itty Bitty Backgrounds and the Garden Annuals stampin’ around wheel.

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Thanks for looking!!