Craft from the ETSY lab!!

I actually used this method yeeeears ago to make small boxes using old Christmas cards...I glued ribbon onto the bases so they could be easily pulled out of the lids.. My intention at the time was to make an Advent Calendar with them and put small treats intot he boxes...but alas life happened and I didn't get around to it...maybe this year?! lol

Courtesy Ideas for you - 1st wedding anniversary gift ideas

March smells good

This is a hint I have given on SM forums... A _________ is coming and I know all about it!! ;) Wonder who will join us?!

House

Wow what a holiday season! Drama drama drama!!! TG it's all over and we can all go back to our normal routines! I know that may seem mundane but I like order and I am actually learning to stick to the routines I create LOL.

This house is starting to come together too. I've cleared the gutters from the front of the house...just have to do the rest of it. It has plants growing in it...guess it is time I did it?? We've only been here for about four months and I know that's heaps of time for us to have done it...but seriously these gutters haven't been done since the birth of Christ!! There is beautiful topsoil in there though, so I will have pots ready to be filled I think!

I really like that we have tidied up the front part of the house. It's pleasant to be greeted by prettiness when one comes to visit :D
This was the state of it... before I'd cleaned the gutters. I had to dig through the gardens to make trenches, so the water wouldn't come into the house!!

A right rotten mess it was!!! And it was getting me down...so last weekend I got out of bed and made a coffee then got to work!!
this is the result of about 10 hours work here!!
Murray was working for the morning then he came home and mowed the lawns. Then when I wasn't looking (lol) Murray layed the pavers. They had been randomly put in the gardens as potstands...they looke dreally good in their day...but their day was over!!!
Here are some more 'before shots'






(in the last pic, the three pavers are lifted up so I chould drain the water from the other side of the garden!!
Pretty uninviting eh???
I read somewhere that one's pathway to the front door should be a direct line, because the Chi flows way too fast...rather it should be curved...ok so mine isn't curved, BUT I will eliminate that by placeing a round pot in the corner where the pile of pavers are in the pic (when I get one!!)
This is the progress pics of the path...




OK so what about now??

and here is the pavers Murray laid...

The following pic is taken from the same place as the FIFTH before shot above!! big difference eh? lol


Ahhh I'm so in love with the progress here. Obviously it's not finished quite yet. Our bedroom is the last set of French doors (right of the front door) and it's all kinda messed up still...btu I'll get there once the kids are settled at school :D

Please leave me a comment :D I like comments !!!

Logan Reserve flood

These are some pics my father took for me of Logan Reserve Road. Not unusual that it would be under water after the amount of rain we had...it goes under with less rainfall

^my boys^

Rising Waters Flood Appeal for Crafters: Rising Waters Flood Appeal

Rising Waters Flood Appeal for Crafters: Rising Waters Flood Appeal: "Hi all, Like most of you I am sitting here watching the TV absolutely devastated at what is going on in Queensland at the moment. Going thro..."

Cherished Treasures: Toilet Paper Mini Album for Valentine's Day

Cherished Treasures: Toilet Paper Mini Album for Valentine's Day: "It's been snowing here since yesterday morning, the snow is the consistency of powdered laundry detergent.The snow is very pretty ..."

our driveway today...

Just thought I'd update our driveway issues...
I have been watching all day the news and reports n the flooding and it is just devastating. I am one who will do what I can to help whee I can... but ... gotta be able to get out of my place first!!! No visitors for a while, and I can't go anywhere...for now it's not bothering me but it will annoy me sooner or later!





That's it from me for now.

Scrap the Girls - January

Scrap the Girls January challenge
Summer Loving - Scrap your favourite summer memories or moments (girls only!)

Here is my effort for this month "D

thanks for looking! and Thank you to STG!

scrappy shares...and lols

LOLS to the previous post of mine... I forgot the radar image would update ROFL kinda doesn't look so bad as I write this...and it makes the text seem like total weirdness! LOLZ oh well never mind!!

Here are my newest creations... I have been having so much fun eing alone! lol. Murray went to the pub for dinner last night. I was going to go too BUT I only had my purple DOCS to wear on my feet (imagine wearing thongs into the pubs all covered in mud! at least my DOCS I could have wiped down rofl) but my boots were hurting me just from walking around the house for ten minutes!! let alone dowen the driveway and around the pub and back again! no thanks! I stayed home and played 'painty scraps' LOL!




HUGE credit goes to scrapwitch for being a big influence over my painting abilities...although she didn't know it she has been 'teaching' me for years! I have just never had the freedom within myself to just go for it and PAINT! lol... I will I'm sure adopt my own styles as I go...so don't freak out...

HEY! I see a light in the sky!! what is that called now? the mooooo...no wait, the moon is the night time one...the SUN! yes that's it! it's the sun...oh wait...it's gone again :( rofl


ok...next!







O that's about it for now...well for this post anyways. I have joined in at Scrap the girls too, so that will need a seperate post ;) :D

have fun and thanks for visiting!!! I love comments ;) lol

what is happening in this nasty world?

It's so hard to make things beautiful when we are all suffering these terrible weather systems!! Everywhere in the world!! Is it mother nature doing a 'cull' ??? problem is - I bet anyone who dies in these disasters are good people tragically taken! we don't need to cull good people!
And we are in LOGAN and at the time I am posting this here, while it says there is hardly any cloud over us? I can vaguely hear thunder, and it is wanting to rain so badly... there is a few sprinkles here and there... apparently tis crappy weather will last now, till MARCH!!?? march? are you kidding me? how will I get the kids to school? I can't get out my driveway with a car, and it's probably too far to walk, but it might have to be the way!

I hope all the good people stay safe! posesseions can be replaced...lives cannot

Should I start a challenge section in my blog??

Not really sure what is happening with Scrap the boys. I know it's a busy time of year and all, but some kind of update as to what is happening would be nice yes? Does anyoe know???

Maybe I should host some kind of monthly challenge ... *taps chin* hmmmm ... what do you think?

Epic catch-up...grab a cuppa!

Well I said I'd write out an epic so here goes!
Just to catch up a bit...

So the kids finished school ok. Glad it;'s over they were! Jaana's and Mika's report cards were great! Jade's and Trent's well...not great. Jade thought hers was 'pretty goo' ... yea for a sp'ed! Jade is not a sped...she is very intelligent...just doesn't care enough anymore. trent had a problem seeing, so now that he has glasses hopefully his grades will pick up. He actually enjoys reading now so that's a start!

Jade and I clashed one too many times and now lives with her father and step-mum. I have too many conflicting feelings about all this to make a comment... all in all though - we are all much better off and happier. I know that sounds really terrible because I am her mother...but can I just point out a couple of things here...

1. She is turning 14 in February this year, she's not a baby
2. I din't put her up for adoption!
3. SHE IS WITH HER OTHER PARENT...how can that be a bad thing?

She didn't hug me - or even look at me - when they left. Since leaving she has changed her facebook family members - her step mother is her 'mother' ... that's great...it only hurt because she never had me down as 'mother' on FB...ever! We've hurt each other a lot over the years guess. Anyone who has known me since Jade was a babe, knows that we have locked horns since her birth...it's just the way the stars wrote it. i'm Aries/Fire Dragon...she is Pisces/Fire Ox ... anyone who knows about these things will know we are pretty much mortal enemies on this front!!! that's life I guess. No need for hostility when the fact is we don't get along!

Enough said on that.

So then we get really excited about finally going camping to beautiful Flanagan's Reserve, past Rathdowney from here. YAY!
or not...
Everything was fine and dandy but then the rains started...and just didn't seem to stop!
this is the 'meandering creek' that we normally see when we camp there...not so gentle! more like a raging murderous torrent of a river!
It actually rose up 7.5 metres, and went from being only like maybe 5 metres across and you could touch the bottom...heck you could SEE the bottom LOL! ... to being i'd say 50 or MORE metres across!!! saw a wallaby that had gotten to close to the water and drowned :(




we had to pull the tent under the tarp, because a mangey possum made a home there while we were away for a few days (we set up the weekend before Xmas, went home for a few days so Murray could go to work, then returned on Wednesday b4 xmas) so the roof was leaking too...

By boxing day I'd had enough and cried and cried "I want to go home! this isn't fun. the kids aren't having fun, the dog's depressed!" (yep, that's her curled up in a tight ball in her basket, water flowing freely like a river under her, god love 'er!

Murray was very sympathetic to us, he on the other hand was ok with it all still on Boxing day (that was day 4 of the rainy camping!) So pack up we did...only the valuables. We left the tent and tarp and beds etc, just secured it all. We had every intention of returning when the weather fined up. We didn't intend to return an hour later when we realised my car wouldn't SWIM over the bridges and flooded roads :'( so we tried again on the Monday to leave...again no go....



then Monday night we ate soup for dinner, at 6pm. (By this point Murray had had enough too.) The rain had stopped, so we went to bed at 7 praying the rain would not return till we were gone. We knew if the rain would just stop for a few hours even the roads would free up a little... I told the kids time goes faster when we sleep...and it did. As soon as our eyes were open we were securing our belongings again into the tents and we were GONE! thank the gods! we were going home! then we got all the way to Jimboomba -

some 15 kms from home and Mt Lindesay Hiway was flooded OMFG! lucky Murray knew the back roads and we came out at Camp Cable road ... HOME AT LAST!

Yea. great. home. washing machine and dryer going for 10 hours a day three days in a row...still raining at this point, and everywhere int he world it seemed!
then home was about to be flooded too. perfect.
The amounts of rain we have had is just mindblowing. They are opening the flood gates AGAIN at Wivenhoe dam...but y'all don't go using it from the taps now! still the restrictions stand (can't fine people without restrictions right? lol)
This is the 'flood threat' of our home...

It actually came right up to be licking at the top of the brick under the door!
This is around our yard, not at it's worst - I had no time to take photos at the worst - I was busy digging trenches and diverting potential disasters!

I know the last few pics don't look bad...and they aren't really, but the one that has a river you can see behind the lattice? well that river was a real RIVER last week, about two metres wide and up to my knee deep! COPIOUS amounts of water with no where to go but into Murray's shed! so I opened the back door of the shed to let the water out then go tto work first diverting the river to go out past the shed, using planks of wood, funnily enough it worked! then I dug trenches in front of the shed to drain away what was lef there.
this is the front of the house, now that the gutter had fallen I had to dig trenches here too...the place looks just depressing :(

this is the area into the carport... can't use it or the car will sink!

and this IS the carport..


The only reason I did it was because...well Murray was at work, and even if he was home...this was him on New Year's Day...



His hand started to swell on the middle knuckle a coupld of days before NYE. on NYE it was reeeeeally painful, and he doesn't have a lot of feeling in that arm because of a previous injury that had damaged a lot of nerves. took him to the GP on Saturday, he sent us straight to QEII hospital, who of course had no surgeons on that day being new year's day, so they put in a canula and sent us to Princess Alexandra Hospital...yea you read it right - QEII PUT IN A CANULA (that's the thing for the drip, into the vein...making it an 'open vein' !!) and sent us away - how unprofessional! anyways. the lab reported no culture growing in 48 hours, so we have no idea what bacteria caused it, as it wasn't caused by any injury nor insect bite... well it's getting better now, and he has an offsider to help him on deliveries, Murray is ok to drive but can't lift anything for three weeks.
We have also given away smoking. When Murray cme out of the anaesthetic, he almost died. He told me he could hear the Dr say 'we're losing him' his oxygen level had dropped to 23%. So we haven't smoked since then. I haven't even wanted one, there is no craving it's bizarre! Murray on the other hand, isn't coping very well. He was a pack a day smoker though - I only had a few a day. He had two yesterday because he was gettng the shakes. It helped and he is being really strong, he hasn't bought any...I told him I had thrown his packet away last weekend but I knoew he wouldn't handle it and I kept them for emergency LOL. I will admit I lit one when the gutter that I'd just spent two hours cleaning out (they had top soil in them - never been cleaned in FOREVER!) had collapsed and that broke me...but as soon as it was lit it was put out because I almost puked! and that's a good thing!

we won't be having visitors for a while...

this is our driveway...what's left of it! and this is only the worst part of it. It's pretty much a wreck all the way up. Our next door is the same, just a huge canyon all the way. SCARY! a small car would simply vanish.


And yes, I know could whine all day about our troubles and problems, knowing well that there are hundreds of families out there in much worse situations...but like I was taught...my issues to me are just as important as other people's are to them...
I am doing what I can to help those people worse off than us. I will be donating clothes, and scrap supplies. Also I will keep an eye out for other things I can do to help... Lucky Murray has a 4WD - my bets are on my car not moving for at least another two weeks...the ground is just too soft!

I have moved into Jaana's old room now, as she moved into Jade's old room. My room is a craft room, and I am so thankful for it!!! I just love having my own space that I do not have to share!! WOOHOO!!!!

Anyways, there's the epic update. There is a few other little things, like Murray and I both have reading glasses now, so Mika is the only one in our household that hasn't got them, and my guess is he doesn't need them, although his eyes will be checked early this year.

Well I guess that's it for now. When the days brighten up I'll be able to take better photos of my art and scrapping I've been doing!

Wait...one more thing...we have to have our hot water system replaced...it's about 2012 years old and has leaked...so now the carpet in our hallway is wet because...yep the hot water system lives in a cupboard down rthe hallway...not outside or in the laundry like NORMAL houses ohhhh no...not this house!! such a gorgeous house though! the real estate keep offering us the option to move but I just can't...I refuse to let it beat me for a start! and I love it so much!!!

I have also uploaded a tutorial on how I make flags. Check it out

Till next time! xxx

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