the midnight scrapper

52 weeks update...

I'm taking the photos, just forgot to post them, so here is the catch up.

Week 3: Evening

Our bedroom is small and really consists of a king bed, 2 bedside tables and a tall boy each (not in picture) and it does look inviting when it's dark outside and just lit by the bedside lamps. And no, that is not a charcoal sketch of me - I wish!!!!

Week 4: Shadow

Took lots of "shadow" photos but this one made me smile. Byron doing "the fonze" if he knew what that was LOL

I will be stalking Monika's blog tonight for this weeks prompt.

happy australia day...

There was hot (and sticky) weather, and a BBQ, and flags

And these awesome vegemite & cheese scrolls that I found here about an hour before lunch. So easy, so quick, so Australian and so good.

And then a volleyball death match in the pool!

Sausages, steak, devon doovies - yes, some one brought these with them (not sure what others call them we have always called them devon doovies), damper, cold beer, white wine and a birthday cake for my cousin.

A fun, hot, lazy day.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie...oi, oi, oi!

it's here...

Let the fun begin!

There is no "me and my project life" photo as it was delivered when I was in my PJ's, wild hair and puffy, I just woke up eyes. Best not to scare anyone. Ha! 

it was so worth the wait...

My birthday lands just 5 days after Christmas, and often I will get a combined gift from my family. This year my sister was heading to Anaheim - Whistler - Vancouver - Las Vegas - Santa Monica,  straight after Boxing Day so it was decided by all that my gifts would be a little light on Christmas Day with the promise of good things to come once they returned.

I would trust my sister to buy me anything; she has great taste and a knack for finding interesting and unusual things. Well I just want to say the wait was worth it.

Here's my little Christmas / birthday haul fresh from the USA (thank you Aussie dollar for being so damn good LOL)

Clinique skincare (check) Canadian maple syrup (check) ginger room spray - the best smell ever (check) my signature perfume (check) and...oh, what's that in the little blue box?

I was so surprised to see that come out of the bag.

And to find these beautiful earrings. Thanks family, totally wasn't expecting a treat like that :)

And just for fun, here are Mickey's ears on Byron, only they are Mickey's butt. Ha!

So I can now say I had a very happy birthday indeed :)

a quick and easy new year gift...

We were meeting up with friends for New Year's Eve celebrations (dinner and fireworks - yep we are the ultimate party animals LOL) and I decided to make all the girls (my friends have daughters, I have the only boys) a little new year present.

A quick check in blog land led me to this and after downloading and printing the calendar (a cool freebie) I just trimmed, punched a hole in the corner, threaded them onto a ring and put a little ribbon for decoration.

A basic topper was made with clip art and printed onto scraps of card stock. I put the calendar into a cellophane bag, stapled on the topper and...instant present!

The lighting in the following photos is insanely bad, but you can use your imagination!!

Not the sort of thing that would get my boys all excited, but the girlies were happy :)

December Daily 2010*...

* warning, photo heavy post!

This was the year that I was going to play along each day. I had a cunning plan to keep my album SUPER SIMPLE (which I did) and I downloaded Ali's templates and printed away.

I loved the idea of 6" x 8" photos on each layout and had planned to print at home. Then I started thinking about the fact that I would need to get another job to pay for all the ink I churn through!!

Then I saw that Big W had their 6" x 8" enlargements for 68c. Woo hoo. Score. Hi five. So I saved up those photos because it is an hour round trip, and I was busy at work. I headed to Big W after work about day 20.

My thumb drive would not read in their machines, and trust me, I tried every single one. OK, I was bitter and disappointed but thought I would try again. December 23 down I go again with a CD of the photos as I was told that was more reliable. Yes, you guessed it...would not work. Not happy at this point, not happy at all.

And that's when I threw in the towel and accepted the fact that that I would not get those suckers printed before Christmas and I go to my happy place.

I make my final trip on the 28th, thinking I will just print the last few days at home. And guess what...it would not work. Arrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh. A young guy took pity on me and checked behind the counter on their computer and told me that "oh, these have been photoshopped (Ali's overlays) and we can't process them. Sorry.

So I went home and I printed out all 31 days of 6 x 8's and the price of ink be damned LOL

So here it is...

 

 

 

 

attack of the mutant vegetables...

Little did I know back in September when I blogged about our new "super sized" garden that we would be marvelling at "super sized" vegetables come summer. We have had a bumper crop of tomatoes, herbs, cucumbers, squash, zucchinis, corn, spinach and even a few potatoes.

We love to pick fresh zucchinis, split into 1/4's, splash a bit of caramelised balsamic on them and then put them on the barbecue . Heaven. So we have picked, and eaten a few over the past months and all quite normal.

Then one day Gary yells out, come look at my big zucchini (I appreciate that in a house full of boys this is a snigger worthy comment so feel free to have a little chuckle before continuing LOL). I did get up and go look and this is what I saw...

Oh, OK Gaz, that is a big one (yes more snickering!) Now he had our attention and the family all gathered. 

 I'll spare you some of the other, um, less flattering photos that the boys insisted on posing for!

Now we got serious and dragged out the tape measure...we needed cold hard stats.

Then we thought we had better give a comparison to a "normal" zucchini,

Now you are all really impressed aren't you? And just incase you think that it was a fluke...

We also had some mutant squash (normal size on the left, super size on the right).

I'm pretty sure that the mutant zucchini will be woody (yes, yes, snigger, snigger) and tasteless but they sure do make a great gardening story.

one of my many projects for this year...

During the last lazy days of 2010 when I was doing nothing more strenuous than blog surfing I came across a challenge that seemed totally do-able over the course of the year. It was a 52 photos in 52 weeks challenge (you can read all about it here). 

Each week, on a Thursday, the theme for the photo is announced and you then interpret that through a photo every Saturday...for the year, or 52 times. Of course I will then have to make an album to house all those photos but for now I will concentrate on taking the photos, and really thinking about the prompt.

Having said that, I was sort of caught off guard with the first prompt as it snuck up on me and I nearly missed it!

Week 1: 20:11

The challenge this week was to take a photo at 8.11pm, and nearly missed it as we had just finished eating dinner so I looked up and this is what I snapped.

OK, so not very exciting but I did follow the prompt!

Week 2: Independence

The ideas had been percolating in my brain for a day but Saturday morning the photo just presented itself...here it was, barely 10am and I had an empty house. Oscar was off to a movie with friends, Byron was away camping with friends, Gary was taking his guitar to the guitar doctors (string problems, nothing it won't recover from LOL) and I was ready to hit the shops myself. That's when it struck me; this is what independence means right now and so I took the photo.

It only seems a few short years ago that a Saturday morning would find us all at home together or madly getting ready to head off to soccer. 

Anyway, that's the photo challenge I will be following along with this year. I will try and be organised and post my photos each week along with the prompt.

it's that time once again when all things must be sorted and purged...

Yes the annual clean up / clean out that I do in the boys room has come and gone and what fun it was. Just ask the boys how much they love participating...Byron actually begged me not to make him do it. Now aside from the joy I get from the completion of this task there are valid reasons why I put them through this torture:

1. They share a really small room and it fills up fast

2. They are growing like crazy and so much no longer fits, but still takes up space

3. Byron collects / hoards / keeps / saves EVERYTHING that crosses his path.

And so against a barrage of protests we began by dragging everything out on the bed...

And then we have all sorts of fun trying on everything. If it fits and we love it, it stays. If it doesn't, it goes. I even got Byron to clean the skirting boards in the cupboard after I swept them out. Nice shot hey?

Then, as I was refolding what had to go back in, I got Byron to empty out all his baskets and bedside drawers. There are no words to describe the things that came out of those drawers.

Lots of bags of rubbish resulted from this step alone (oh gee Byron, is that 2 asthma puffers I see there, when you assured me you did not have a single one and is that the missing charger I see LOL)

Do you guys really need more deodorant...not until this little collection is all used up!

And so we continued to work hard [ insert more whining] until we had dealt with every single thing in that room. And then it looked like this and all was right with the world.

Just so you know the bed skirts were still drying on the line...a night soaking in a tub of bleach sorted them out LOL. And for what it's worth, I walked into their room about 2 hours later and Oscar had dropped all his dirty clothes on the floor and left his wet towel on the bed before he went out. OK, so for 2 hours it was a picture!

just play along and pretend it's the first of the month...

                                  

Yay, it's the beginning of a new year and a new month and we all know what that means...yes there is a new gallery up at w.c.s. Go now to check out the scrappy goodness!

Here's my offering for the theme of "black & white" photos:

And here's my December layout, because I don't think I posted it. Actually pretty sure I didn't post anything in December!!! The theme was "holiday food & drink".