Just some random pics...

Matthew and Tysha after the school concert......she doesn't have cooties Matthew!

The veiw from the upstairs bathroom in the new house....I can not wait to sit in that spa.

The house as it stands now...it is going sooooooo slowly.

Tori in my pjs.....too cute.

Me and Dianne - it was great to see you! (I love this pic of us)

Thats all folks...

Hugs all round

MWAH

xox

Matthew is 10!

OK -so I am a bit slow in posting, but what's new?

Happy Birthday to you Matthew. We love you so very much and we wish for you nothing but the best in life. I can't believe that our baby boy is in double digits now......I remember the day you were born vividly. You were just beautiful with your black hair and blue eyes....nothing except the black hair has changed.

We all love you. Even though Tori is sometimes the biggest pain in the butt to you....I hope that you realize and treasure just how much she truly adores you. I love that on your birthday, you pulled her close and deliberatley cut the bottom of the cake so that you had to kiss her.........it was heartwarming.

I love that you are funny, smart and kind (when you want to be). I love that you still love to have me read to you. I love that you still kiss me goodbye in the morning (with your friends watching) and still kiss me goodnight everynight. I love that you still love to hug me! Even though I get frustrated with your extreme stubborness and dogheadedness (is that a word?), I know and love that will help you go far in life. I hope you know that you can be anything that you want to be.

Matthew, you may be 10 - but you will always be my baby boy!

This is Matthew's last day of being 9.....

This is when Matthew had to kiss the closest girl for cutting the bottom of the cake! (OK - I made him re-do it....but you get the idea!)

Blowing out the candles.....(and yes there is 11 candles....one is to make him grow).

Matthew putting on his new shoes.....(he MADE me take this pic!)

Here is Matthew with 2 of his friends. They stayed over Saturday night and we all went to the movies to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. The movie was in 3D and here they all are with their 3D glasses.

That is it for now....

Love and Hugs to all.

Anthea

xoxo

The spoiled under - 30 crowd!

I got this e-mail again today and it gave me a chuckle (again), so I thought I would share it all with you. Hope you enjoy!


THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!

If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill... barefoot... BOTH ways Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!! There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe! There were no MP3' s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone. Cause - that's how we rolled, dig?

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen.. forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

Have split my blog....

into two!

Decided that splitting the scrapping from the other stuff might be in order. Will see how I go. As I get more organized - I will add a link to the other one. But if you are interested - my new blog is redantscrap . Hope to see some of you there.

Other than the usual colds and coughs at this time of the year. We are all doing well. We are meant to be camping, but the weather is so cold and wet it is just not funny. The house is progressing slowly. Just so that I can say I have kept you updated - here is the latest pic - although from what I hear, the trusses are now up and the roof and gutter will be going on this week. Yeah!

Also - just had to show you this pic of Tori. Last week I go to pick her up from child care and they tell me - oh and tomorrow is dress up day. "What? It is 5.30 at night and you are telling me this now?". "Oh there is a note on the door - it's been there since Monday" they say. I am thinking yeah - I love reading through masses of notes to find the one that applies to me....and it is ONLY Tuesday and Tori doesn't go Mondays...... Anyway - I try not to panic. I mean I have NO costumes at home at all and finding an outfit with less than half an hour before the shops close - that will even come close to fitting Tori is really stretching the friendship - OK killing it really! I don't even try!

I do come home and think what I am going to do?

I have a pile of clothes that someone has just given me to go through - I find a red t-shirt - that needs mending. Well, I decide I have to mend it anyway and that is likely to happen - NEVER - so I draw big black spots on it and some wings on the back with marker. OK - now I need antanae! Yes - it just so happens that I have these massive red pipecleaners on hand (don't quite know why) so I attach them to a black headband. I added in some black pants (which as luck would have it,I had bought the day before), some red socks and some black shoes and voille - what do you have - one very cute Toribug. Not too bad - considering the costume was finished and ready to go at 6pm.

Have a good one everyone....and take care.

Hugs and kisses

Anthea

xox

Some recent scrapping

As usual, I have not been scrapping as much as I would like of late. Between the house, work, kids, etc - just no time.

This weekend however, (between the house, work and kids) I decided to participate in my second Cyber Crop ever and have had a blast. The gals over at Scrapbooking Top 50 have been a blast to hang out with. We are from all over Australia and there is even one gal from the States there.

Anyway - still haven't done a heap of scrapping, as I have been too busy gasbagging with the gals and getting to know them; but this is what I produced on night 2.

This is an all time favourite pic of Matthew and Lily when visiting Canada last year. I reckon they could be models. The challenge here was to have 90% white and the other 10% had to be one colour only - Despite the fact, that I can't get a decent photo - I really like the result.

This second pic is from an online class that I did at Scrapbooking Top 50 about a month ago - I didn't have the kit that everyone else had so had to put it together with my own stuff. I originally did not like this LO too much, but I must admit, it has grown on me. I have included the link to the class if anyone is interested in checking it out.

Well thats it for now! Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Hugs to all and MWAH

Anthea

xoxo

Please - tell us if we are crazy?????

OK - some of you might already know, but Ray and I have been pretty stressed the past few days over the colour of the bricks that have arrived at the new house.

We ordered a sandstone/cream/beige brick (whatever you want to call it) and we feel we got more of a brown/ tan brick. The 1st and 3rd bricks in this pile are the sample that we were shown and that we ordered (the first brick is slightly darker than the 3rd because we soaked it in water as we were told that is why the bricks were different.)

The 2nd and 4th bricks however is a sample of what has been delivered to the house and the builders have started to lay.

Tell us - and please be honest!!!!!!

a) Do these bricks look the same?

b) If this were your house, would you be happy to take the darker brick (even though you ordered the lighter one), because it is close enough and they are 'only a couple of shades darker?

I really would love some opinions here....from everyone and anyone who visits - we just need to know if we are stressing too much and is this really is an 'acceptable difference' that we just need to learn to live with.

Thanks for your opinions.......

Anthea
xoxo

Some photos

Not much to share. On Saturday we headed to Walwa for the day to visit Mum and Dad and Shell and Brian who were up there camping. Here are some pics I took (bear in mind they are re-sized for easier loading so the quality is not as good as IRL.

The one of all of us was the best of a bad bunch - guess we are just not that photogenic...not at the same time anyway. Someones eyes are closed, some one is looking away, someones belly is showing. (I'll give you one guess as to who that could be?)

Oh - the concentration just blows me away. We might just make a football player out of him yet.

To really appreciate this, I should of taken some video. This is Tori pretending to be a seagull. The noise she makes is truly horrendous, but gee it makes us laugh.

And finally - my favourite shot of the weekend - possibly worthy of blowing up and framing - the gorgeous Tori in Aunt Shells hat....

On that note - have a good one everyone.

Hugs all round

Anthea

xoxo

All dressed up...

Ok all, here are some pics of our night out on Saturday. The ball was alot of fun and I think that we all scrubbed up OK! Michelle and I felt great and the boys....well...what can I say? A man in a tux. "Hubba Bubba Baby".

This is one of my favourite pics of the night.
A huge big thank you to our darling sister Debbie who drove and hour and half to come and babysit for us - you have no idea how much we appreciated it. Thank you.

Thanks for looking.

Anthea

xoxo

Q. How do you end a drought?

A. Have Ray and Anthea build a house.......lol!

Seriously, it has barely stopped raining since they did the site cut two weeks ago. The block is looking a little like a mini lake (OK maybe not that bad...but you get the idea). The slab was meant to go in this week, but nooooo it rained and it really hasn't stopped and doesn't look like stopping for a while yet. Now for the past few years I have not complained about any rain we have had. In fact, regardless of what was happening I have thanked the Lord above for ANY rain he has sent our way...but this week...my thanks are a little half hearted. I am glad we are filling up the dams, but slightly disappointed about the fact that nothing will happen with the house until that slab gets laid...oh well....maybe next week?

On another note.....we are looking forward to going out tomorrow night. Ray and I will be dolled up to the nines for a black tie ball we are attending. Stay tuned for some pics....nice ones I hope!

A few tidbits and our block.....

OK - first things first. Beth - this LO was the one that I did in response to the journal it challenge a few months ago. I know, I am a little slow in uploading, but better late than never I guess?


Secondly, the other week with me trying to encourage Matthews new found love of cooking, I asked him to cook us something in the slowcooker. I took him shopping and he picked the ingredients.....(OK - I did recommend the tomato and I forgot to take a pic of the meat, but this is what he chose.)

In case you can't see everything, there is celery, leak, mushroom, eggplant, onion, asparaus, tomatoes, garlic, some herb mixture thingo, capsicum, bok choy and not shown is the meat. The strawberries and cherries were for desert. Matthew cooked and prepared nearly everything - seriously the only things I did were the leek (cause I had never prepared it before), the eggplant, and I the bok choy (cause I didn't want to eat grit). Matthew tried to cut the onions, but gave up very quickly. This is what it turned out like....

Let me assure you - it was DELICIOUS. I am glad I took a photo, cause now we can replicate it.
What can I get him to cook next time?????

Next. Here is a photo of Tori in an outfit made especially for her by two very kind and special people. Sonia, a co-worker hemmed the jeans and added the butterfly as she knew how hard I was finding it to buy jeans for Tori, especially pretty girly ones. The jumper (or sweater for my US friends) was knitted by a patients wife who knew I was having trouble with finding jumpers...(you just can't hem a jumper). She has made it to fit, but has also put press studs in the head opening in case Tori couldn't get it over her head. I gave her free reign on the colours and I LOVE what she had come up with. Thank you to both of you for your very special gifts.....they are truly appreciated and I hope you can see from the photo how much Tori loves them.

Now - last but not least.....some pics of the block before the building begins tomorrow. These first 4 photos are from the 4 corners of the block. Excuse the sun flare in some of them...it was going on sunset. I have had to compress the photos for blogger, but if you are really observant, you will see Ray and Matthew in the 2nd one, Tori in the 3rd one and Matthew in the 4th....but it will take some looking.

This was a photo I took while standing there talking with our builder......this was taken from where the patio will be......This is part of the veiw that we will be looking every day and night while we are living in this house.....This was the beginning of our first sunset on this block. THIS is part of why we fell in love with this block.

And... this is us.....as a reminder of where we are now. Yep, we are worn out and tired from running around today...but this is us.....as we start the next phase of our lives....wish us luck and please pray that this house turns out just the way we envision it and that we will indeed live happily ever after.

If you got this far...thanks for reading. Have a great day,evening or night, depending on where you are and when you read this.

Hugs to all.....

Anthea

xoxo

Good enough to eat??

Matthew had his foodathon at school on Friday....just thought I would share a pic of what he looked like. Now I am not the best drawer and these are not the best photos, but it should give you an idea!

I think he looked good enough to eat....hehehe.

Hugs to all.

Anthea

xoxo

I've been tagged...

so without further ado, here are my answers:-

8 things I look forward to:
Catching up with Nonna on the weekend and making sure for myself that she is doing OK.
Catching up with the rest of the family on the weekend.
Going and picking more stuff for the house tomorrow.
Building the house.
Holidays.
Weekends off.
The day that Matthew figures out how to do as he is told....hehe.
Finishing this assignment (yep -I am still procrastinating - I think someone needs to put a bomb under me)

8 things I did yesterday
Worked (hard).
Laughed.
Watched some TV.
Hugged my husband and kids and told them I loved them.
Phoned my Aunt.
Chatted to my sister on the phone for an hour and a half.
Checked my email.
Had coffee with Ray before the kids woke up.

8 things I wish I could do
Wake up feeling like I had actually slept.
Speak Italian.
Cook.
Hire a house keeper.
Help Matthew be a better person (right now it isn't good).
Do my job (but in a voluntary capacity).
Be more patient and less angry with the kids.
Paint.

8 things I’ve watched lately
Play School.
The Night Garden *screws up face and breathes really deep*.
Pokemon.
Merlin (new fav in the house).
Master Chef.
Everybody Loves Raymond
I really cant think of anything else right now.....

8 People who I tag - sorry if you have already been tagged!
Kim
Mejane
Katie
Melisa
Sarah
Sue
Jenni
Dina

Night all....hugs all round
Anthea
xoxo

Master Chef Matthew

OK - the other day in the supermarket, Matthew announced that he wanted to cook dinner that night. He proceeded to tell me what he wanted to cook. We had to have carrots, peas, red pepper and meat "in strips". I already had a cauliflower in my hand at this stage, so he agreed that I didn't have to put it back.

We came home and the process of creating began. Matthew peeled and cut the carrots, boiled the beans....(yep the peas I thought we had at home were beans)....and helped cut the caulifower. I taught him how to cut the red pepper and Ray helped Matthew cut the rib eye steaks into strips.

We steamed, boiled, stir-fried and sauteed the various foods and Matthew arranged them on a plate. Now the meat in strips had to be placed in a glass for a few minutes after being cooked to give it a roundish appearence (that is the best way I can describe it) and put in the middle of our plates in 'circles'. He then cut up the cauliflower and filled the circles and decorated the plates with the remaining vegetables

..... this is his creation.....

So - who do you think has been watching too much Master Chef.....!?

Hugs all round.

Anthea

xoxox

One Lovely Blog.....

I received my very first blog award from my lovely scrapping friend Sue. Thank you Sue.

Here are the rules:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.


Now picking 15 people to send awards to is going to be difficult...so I am just going to say I nominate everyone who I visit on a regular basis for this award. Everyones blogs are amazing in my eyes. I love sharing a little bit of my life with you all and I love that you allow me to share in yours. So to all my blogging friends, this one is for you!

MWAH

Anthea

xoxo

Busy times...

Sorry it has been a while...life is justa bit too busy right now.

I have 2 more assignments till I finish my post grad -now 2 doesn't sound like much, but it just isn't happening for me right now. Finding the time and having the inclination to do them is like pulling teeth! Grrrr. If I could find some positive in doing it, that might help, but all it is going to give me is a piece of paper telling me that I can do what I have been doing for the past 10 years! I am not saying I haven't learnt anything - how can you not? I am just questioning the relevance of some of the stuff that we have learnt. Oh well, it can only be good in the end! Just have to finish.

Work is busy - when is it not? Lots of people off sick and too many patients. Seriously - so many new patients of late - not good!

The new house will officially start within a week or two - just finalizing contracts. Will have to get down to the block to get a before pic....ohhhh...very exciting. Yesterday we started picking out baths, taps, sinks, etc. I love this part...am not looking forward to tiles and bricks though - they are hard to change if you make a mistake - lol. Will keep you all posted. Hope it all goes well. We really like our builder and think he is going to do a great job.

The kids are well, Matthew is off today as it is parent teacher interview day. Both him and Tori are driving me mad...! LOL

On a sad note; my Nonna (grandmother) is not doing so well. There is a pic of her in my previous post. She is in hospital right now and not looking to come home for a while yet. I pray she is OK, and ask that everyone spare a thought for her.

On a good note; Rays sister is getting married this weekend - unfortunately with the house stuff going on right now, we couldn't spare the funds to be there with about a months notice as a trip to Canada for 4 isn't that cheap. Nancy and Greg - we wish you all the best together and can't wait to see some photos. We truly are thinking of you on your special day and wish we could be there.

That's it for now - no photos for today. Hope everyone is well.

Hugs to you all.

Anthea

xoxo

Scrapping Fun

Ok -for those of you that don't know, I dabble in scrapbooking. I certainly am not the best scrapper around, but I have a bit of fun and find it very therapeutic. I also love that it is a great way to preserve history and tell a story. In the year and half that I have doing this, I really am lucky to have created about 20 - 25 pages....and this weekend I did 5!

This weekend I participated in my first ever cybercrop (actually my first crop of any kind) and had a blast. A cybercrop is where a bunch of scrappers get together online and participate in challenges set by the organizers and sponsors. Now none of my pages are by any means good enough to win any prizes but I thought it might be fun to show you what I created. So without further ado.....

Here they are...

The journalling reads:

On this bridge – we played, we laughed, we cried. We shared dreams and hopes. We fished. We put on concerts for the birds. We pretended we were birds. We raced. We waved at Mum and Dad, or anyone else who passed by. We were captains on our own ship. We were famous explorers. We were anything we wanted to be!I *heart* THIS BRIDGE

This challenge was particulary hard....had to use orange, hot pink, polka dots and the word buzz or bloom in the title. I didn't have any polka dots to match..so I made it with paint. The colours are not really coming through, but the heart is bright orange.



This is perhaps my favoutite LO of the weekend...but I will be changing the title to "I'm Here" as in hindsight I think it works better. Here is a link to a you-tube video of the song if you are interested.... "I Volunteer" . Pretty much sums up what I want for Matthew to know.

This challenge was the hardest of them all - producing some of the best pages. You had to use only black and white patterned papers and cardstock, had to use button clusters to accentuate your journalling and the photos had to have a strong connection between the past and the present. I nearly backed out of this challenge, but am glad I didn't as I really like the result.

And it opens up to this.....

And last but not least (according to the judges....cause I just found out this one won!)
A sketch challenge. Tori meeting Alex for the first time. I am surprised it won and figure the judges were just being nice to me - for whatever reason?! There were alot more entries in this challenge that were far more deserving.

If you got this far...thanks for looking. If you were one of the people participating in the CC with me...thanks...I enjoyed your company over the weekend and look forward to another one, everyones work was amazing!

Hope you like my pages. Better go now...and tidy up all the mess I made while creating.

Bye for now...

Hugz to all

Anthea

xoxox