A real catchup is in order

Wow, it's been such a long time since I've last updated my little blog, I don't even know where to start.  So, I've decided I'll do a post of totally random things including photos from over the last few months and a few words to go with each.

In no particular order:

1. Our family photos.
Our 2010 family photoshoot took place in October in a semi-rural location outside of Rocky.  Last year we went urban photos with bright colours, so this year we decided to go a bit softer and use the oh-so-fashionable peacock colours, with the boys in black.

We used Ali Russell from Live Laugh Love Photography again, and the photos turned out really wonderfully.  Here are some of my favourites of the couples, the groups and some singles:

 (I don't often like photos of me, so I thought I'd throw this on in there as one I'm really pleased with!)

I do of course have some favourite photos of John as well, but he would never let us take his photo again if I posted any more with him in it!

2. Backyard works

The major project that has been taking over our lives since November has been our backyard project, or 'The Great Wall of Bankswood' as we've taken to calling it.

When we started in November, the yard looked like this:

 Then, after a little bit of this:

 

and some of this (how disgusting!):

 We now have this:

Well, these photos are nearly 1 month old - you should see it now! I'll post some latest photos soon, but we now have soil, plants, trees, and capping blocks! The last two mornings (and with one to go) we have picked up a load of 1 tonned of capping blocks, and unloaded them before we went to work. The yard looks fantastic. I'll post a pic after this weekend, when we should get some more done.

3. Crafting/sewing/scrapping

I have been pottering around here and there, but most of my time outside of work has really been spent in the backyard.  There are also some things I can't show (for a new baby that is due to arrive any day now) but they'll no doubt get posted eventually.

A baby mobile for a guy (and his wife and new baby) at Mum's work.  I used felt to make the little birds, went old school and made some pom poms, and hung them all together on some wire rings I got from Spotlight - I think they're for making lamps?  Anyway, apparently these are the colours of the baby room and I'm so happy with how bright and cheerful (and dare I say it - lovely) this has turned out.

There has also been some throw-cushion sewing.  My favourite one is the beige one in the middle - it's made from linen, and I shirred the whole front using elastic for my bobbin thread.

I also used some core-flute sheets that I cut down to size to make some mini-bolts for my fabric. Now I can see it in my shelves, and it keeps it nice and neat.

4. Family gatherings

Since Auntie Karen and Uncle Gary have been in Mackay (which is actually years now!), it's been so great to spend time with them quite often, and Mum and Dad come up quite often too for some family get togethers.  This time, my cousin Chris(sy as we still call her) came up with her 10 month old son Linc and we had a bbq along the river.  Here are just some photos from the day, he's so gorgeous!

5. My first photoshoot!

Fiona asked me to take some family photos of her extended family (on her Mum's side) as a present for her Grandma's birthday. I was nervous because it was my first photoshoot, but John and I went to the location the weekend before to scope out some good spots.  Here are a couple of the photos:

6. Christmas antics


This probably should have been further up on my list because it was such a long time ago, but never mind.

We had a number of Christmas celebrations last year - one in Mackay (which was held at our house this year for the first time), one at John's parents' place in Baralaba, and one in Rocky at my parents' place. For some reason I didn't get too many photos from the Mackay Christmas, despite me spending the couple of weeks heading into it preparing the different bits and pieces, and spending all of that day cooking and baking stuff! So I'll head straight into the Rocky Christmas photos.

Stacey and Trent bought Mum and Dad a Wii for Christmas, and it was hilarious watching Mum do the Wii sports! Stacey and Trent also got a Move for their PlayStation, so the family spent some time doing that as well.


Mum 'helping' Dad with the dancing game - funnily enough, Dad did much better without Mum's help:

Trent doing the long (though very high) jump, and Stacey and Mum 'racing' each other in the hurdles at Stacey and Trent's:

Mum, very seriously playing Wii baseball and tennis.  There was nearly an incident where Mum was so excited about hitting the tennis ball, she raced up to the TV and violently swung, coming oh-so-close to smashing the TV.  Luckily we had made sure she had the wrist-strap on or we could have had a couple of disasters:

One of Dad's presents from John and I was this fertiliser spreader for his lawn. Boring, I know, but he had previously said that he couldn't find a good one anywhere. So, despite the miserable weather, he had to try it out while lunch was being cooked.

I made both Stace and Na a quilt (my second and third one ever), loosely based on their colour-combos. I don't know why I didn't get some good photos of them before I wrapped them up and gave them away, but these are the best ones I have. The one of Na's quilt on the floor isn't even finished!  Anyway, I actually quilted them myself this time.  I had Stacey's finished quite ahead of time, and had Na's materials for months. It wasn't until about a month before Christmas that I really got into Na's, and I ended up taking my sewing machine and other stuff down to John's parents' place to do the basting, quilting and binding for Na's quilt.  The quilts take a lot of time and effort, but I think they're worth it in the end.

The (unbound) quilt for Na:

And the only photo I have of Stacey's:

And a shot of us girls cleaning up after Christmas lunch.  I feel obliged to point out that Na entered the kitchen for the purpose of this photo only!

7. Roxy!

No blog post of mine would be complete without a photo of Roxy. She has become very easy to deal with lately, not actually needing to be on John's shoulder/lap/head every second of the day. She's even started putting herself to bed at night.

He thought that she might like some red cordial one afternoon after work (and no, it's not good for birds):

Well, I'll say that more or less brings me up to date.  I've missed a fair bit of stuff, but I'd be here forever if I included everything!  Like the flooding at John's parents' place, and how it wreaked havoc on their property and nearly meant that we couldn't make it to my parents' place in time for Christmas.  Like how, because of the flooding, we left our Commodore behind and brought home the Hilux ute instead and it's been an absolute god-send while we've been doing our yard and we really don't know what we would have done without it.  Like how the constant rain here since December is getting really old, and I'm sick of de-moulding every bit of wooden furniture in our house and buying 'Hippo' moisture absorbers. Like the number of trips we've made to the landscape supply place and how many loads of dirty washing I've had to do because of the yard.  Or how I can't wait for John's brother and his wife to have their baby.  But I won't go into all of that.

I'll try to be back soon with some more recent pictures of the backyard.

The latest from our GSG

We had another great scrapbooking weekend (aka GSG) the weekend before last, with Mum, my two sisters (Stace and Na), Auntie Karen, Fiona and a 'newbie' Tracey who I know from the photo club.  Here's what we produced (in no particular order!):

Finally, a page about Stacey and her first car (from 2006 - yes, I'm quite behind):

Just another page using the photos from our family photos 2009. When I looked at these photos, the one thing that struck me was how all of our eyes (even the boys, who aren't related) are nearly exactly the same shad of blue/green, and how much they stood out in the photos.  Perhaps I should have called it something a little more meaningful, but at least the title draws your attention to look at all of our eyes:

I wasn't actually here when these photos were taken, but I love how they look like they're having so much fun:

One of John's 'middle' brother and his wife at their wedding in 2009.  I've done quite a few of these two now, so, though it pains me to say it, this is probably the last 'Ian and Prue Wedding' photo that I'll scrap.  I need to do a few more of John's other brother and his wife now:

A nice simple one of Auntie Karen and Uncle Gary, who have become so special to us in the last few years since we've all been in Mackay together:

The same layout as above, but this time using one of my favourite photos of the two of us (taken on a lunch cruise in Dubrovnik, Croatia).  The picture itself is showing nothing special, but I just love how relaxed we look:

Another simple layout, this time showing our new car (well, new this time last year anyway):

This page was challenging to put together because I tried to pull together different colours, textures and patterns that didn't necessarily 'go together'. I do love how it turned out. The photo is Mum and Auntie Karen, with their 'other sister' (sister-in-law, really) Auntie Debbie.  The three of them are just so wacky and just love being together:

A 2009 New Years Eve layout showing some of the silly antics my parents and Auntie Karen/Uncle Gary get up to when they're together:

Now, this one was just fine - actually, I really like it - until I took to it with the Maya Road mist and ruined it! We each got two bottles of spray mist as part of our kits, and I kind of went to town! The idea I think was good - I put down some letter masks and misted over the top. It worked great! But, to try to protect the photo, I placed a piece of scrap paper over it, so the mist had a very distinct line where it finished and it looked funny. So, I did a few more sprays, and ended up making it worse, and covering up the photo of Mum with green paint! I then tried to wipe it off with a damp paper towel, and just smeared it! So, I think I will be doing this one again.  It's obviously of Mum at her 50th party:

As I said in a previous post, I've decided to just scrap some of my favourite photos from our trip, rather than do a whole album of them.  This is obviously one of my favourites! It's not the best photo - I look flat because I'd been so sick that day, I had to use a flash which meant the Eiffel Tower itself isn't well lit, and we're probably a bit too close to the camera.  But I love it! It's so special to me, as seeing the Eiffel Tower was part of a childhood dream of mine and it was finally fulfilled:

And of course, I had so many good pictures of the tower that I had to dedicate a whole page to it.  This is the same layout as the Mr Q layout above:

Finally, another layout of my cousin Chris and her husband Andrew at their Las Vegas wedding.  I just love so many of these photos, so I wanted to do just one more page.  Now this is how the mist is supposed to look! Nice and whimsical without making a mess!

All in all, I think it was a great weekend! We all got heaps of pages complete and I think everyone was pretty happy with them all. As always after one of our GSG weekends, I can't wait for the next one so hopefully everyone else wants to do it again!

I'll post again soon with some photos of the completed photo book - it was delivered a couple of weeks ago. There are a couple of things I'm not happy with, which are the fault of the printer, so they've offered a replacement which I need to get off my butt and order!