Calm Before The Storm...

Yesterday was a perfect day, twins woke early but happy, we were super-early getting ready for school, twins walked up to and back from school nicely, they played well through the morning (didn't eat much lunch though), napped well etc etc The sun shone, the birds sang and I did a layout and started designing something new..perfect!

Today I got up extra early so I could shower before twins woke up early..and they still beat me up and were destroying my bedroom when I got out the shower, they hardly ate breakfast, argued and finally got ready for school..just as we were leaving my Mum called in tears.
Earlier this year on April 25th my Nana passed away, she was cremated and my Uncle has her ashes while decisions were being made on where to scatter her (despite the fact she had clearly stated in her pre-arranged funeral plans *where* she wanted to be scattered)
Today is Nana's 90th birthday, and I suggested to my mother some months back that this would be a perfect time to scatter her ashes and give her a birthday send-off. After a lot of nagging and ringing about on my part (Mum's life is far too busy to worry about such insiginificant things as fulfilling a dying person's wish) I managed to get Mum to arrange with her brother to head to the cemetary today to spread Nana's ashes.
Deep down I knew this was never going to happen, and sure enough my Uncle rang this morning and cancelled on her. I am so angry and hope I never encounter my Uncle again, I just have no words for what a piece of crap I think he is right now. I am positive that he never ever intended to go with my Mum today, thing is she doesn't drive and she doesn't have the ashes..so Nana will have to sit and wait until my Uncle decides he can be bothered to do anything. He's way too busy having a little cold to worry about anything else right now, he's well enough to be looking after my cousins two kids while she swans off on yet another holiday with her husband for a week though! I'm ashamed to even be related to him.

Happy Birthday Nana, and don't forget to take that slice of pizza out of your bag later!

A Series Of Events

Can't shut me up now eh? It's been a busy day and I am exhausted.

The day started normally enough, I got up and got myself ready to take Ab to school, twin sdecided to sleep in a bit longer so I quickly fixed the hem on Ab's pinafore before heading to the kitchen to start breakfast, I opened up the blind to let the light in and found this...



Yes, our patio was filling fast with water from an unknown source! I went outside and paddled about and found that the neighbours had decided to drain their pool..straight into our back garden..idiots! It was coming in from under the fence at a very fast rate and was deep enough to cover the tops of my feet. Not sure how much damage they may have done to our pavers yet, I have a feeling it has washed out the sand from underneath them but will have to wait for the back area to dry out a bit more first. Needless to say the neighbours had me on their doorstep at 7.30am in not the best mood (but I was everso polite about it!)

After dropping Abs at school G, the twins and I headed down to the shops to pick up a few bits and pieces, Joe has outgrown his jeans so we picked him up some new ones and some new jammies! We bought Ab a shirt to wear for Sports Day this week, and some cute denim capri pants..she's outgrowing so much of her stuff lately too.

I had a great surprise shortly after arriving home when a delivery van pulled up and my new 19" LCD monitor was handed over. I was pretty gobsmacked as we only ordered it from dstore.com.au on Sunday around midday, and at 8am this morning I got the email to say it had begun delivery..and by 11.45am it was here!! Talk about speedy, and I am very happy with it. I can now also proudly show off the "Poppy Monkey Design Studio" hopefully in the next day I will have moved everything I need over to the other PC (well G will) and I will be up and running!



Yeah yeah I know, it needs a few cool knick-knacks but am still searching for just the right items, I do have my Mojo Jojo monkey there though!

The Bad Blogger Is Back....

and ready to fill you in on what I have been up to..well some of it anyhow!

We've been continuing our mission to declutter the house a bit, on the weekend I bagged up two FULL garbage bags of baby clothes to give away and another lot that hopefully I can sell. I still have more clothes to get through but at least it's a start, we moved some furniture around so twins now have more room in their room (when the toys aren't all on the floor!) and we are getting rid of a chest of drawers and side tables that my sister left here many years ago!

Friday morning we went shopping briefly while Mum watched the twins and Ab was at school, we bought a new mouse and keyboard for my PC, and yesterday we ordered my new monitor so once that has arrived I can shift onto my new desk.

We also celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary last Wednesday, the 13th of September. To be honest it was a bit of a fizzer. G had worked a late shift the night before and then had an early shift the next morning, giving him a grand total of 5 hours between going to bed and getting up again! Needless to say he was completely knackered by the time he got home Wednesday and I had had a horrendous day with the kids..we had a takeaway curry and watched TV so not all was lost!

To other news now and I will be hosting my very first chat at Pickleberrypop.com this coming Friday night! Come along from 9pm Australian Eastern Standard Time or from 6am US Eastern time for some friendly chat, a free mini-kit and some prizes!
Here's a peek at the kit you will get just for coming........



I am also starting a new project at Pickleberrypop and I will have more information on that in the next day or two so check back here for the details, or better yet..head to Pickleberrypop.com and find out about it there!

Been A Bad Blogger!

It's been almost a week and can't really say for sure why I haven't blogged, partly no time and partly no inclination and partly not a whole heck of a lot to say!
I'll come back and blog properly tomorrow!

Everything Has It's Place

Our house is somewhat cluttered, we need more room..and frankly considering the size of our house that's a lot of clutter. We need to get this under control, we need to be able to move in this house.
Yesterday G and I went to IKEA, we now have a brand new PC desk (from here on to be known as "The Poppy Monkey Design Studio") I am getting G to set up the old PC with all my scrap stuff on it so I have my own space and own PC to work at...yay! I will have a neat desk, and do my very best to keep it that way and I will no longer have paper everywhere, I bought a storage tray for that, I am going to get a cute container for all my pens and pencils, some post it notes etc and have everything right where I need it when I need it!

We also stopped at Big W on the way home to get some more HUGE storage containers for the kids toys as the other tubs are overflowing (I'm dreading Christmas!!) I don't know where it all comes from but I am sick of trying to balance toys so they don't fall out all over the floor during the night! Scarlett seemed very impressed with the new tubs too!

I also managed to finish off a layout this morning which I am really happy with using Carole Neale's - Jaffa Boy kit, and her Ready Steady Scrap Templates Vol 2 and Atomic Cupcake Chalked Action.

G is working a mix of late and early shift this week so things are bound to be all over the place but at least he is home on Wednesday night for a nice dinner to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary and hopefully we can get some more clearing of the house done too. We seem to be lacking motivation a lot lately so need to pull our fingers out a bit!

I'm off out to dinner tonight and can't wait!

Kitchen's Open!

"Retro Kitchen" is now instore at Pickleberrypop it contains 10 rich, textured papers (4 solid, 6 patterned) in funky colours that was inspired by the kitchen we had as a child, like I say..it was the '70's! These colours were so fun to work with and I can't wait to get a chance to scrap with these myself!

I have also managed a couple of layouts this week, both of which I love. I feel like my style has changed significantly lately and I am really enjoying whatever this new style is.

Papers are Carrie Stephens- Portobello Road freebie

Photoblast Action - Dark Chocolate available at DigiScrapShak

Papers and staples: Carole Neale - Best Buds kit (available at DigiScrapShak )

PhotoBlast Action - Vivid Colour (also at DigiScrapShak )

It's been a busy week around the house this week. Lots of little interesting (well to me anyhow) things going on and I was looking forward to a peaceful weekend but seems like we have managed to book up the weekend a bit too, at least it's with FUN stuff. Am taking Abbey to a book launch tomorrow for a new series of her favourite books as the local book shop is having a fairy party to celebrate. Her two best friends are going as well so afterwards we are headed to McDonalds with them as a slightly late birthday lunch.

I have a date for Saturday night with G, we are going to cook a big yummy dinner (probably chicken enchiladas) and then veg out on the sofa to watch the RockStar SuperNova episodes we taped this week, can't wait!! I just love that show and will miss it so much after the big grand final is over with next week

Anyhow it's early here so plenty of scrap time ahead of me if I get moving..be sure to head over and check out my new kit!!

Happy Birthday Ab-Kebab!


Well today Abbey turns 8 years old, blimey that has gone fast. We took her to the Royal Adelaide Show yesterday where she had a fantastic time. She rode on the Dodgems with G, went on a pony ride, played a camel-racing sideshow game (where G won her a big toy horse which we then had to carry around for the next 5 hours including it riding on the ferris wheel with us!), she had her picture taken in the farmyard animals barn, she bought showbags and we ate hotdogs and hot sugary donuts, she watched some show-jumping with her new pony pal, and galloped through the carpark on the way back to the car.









She was pretty exhausted as we headed home via McDonalds for a quick dinner and then home to decorate her birthday cake before her godparents arrived to sing Happy Birthday and watch her blow out the candles. She was sluggish getting up for school today (she's also a bit under the weather) but headed off without complaint and we'll try to have her basketball hoop (yes it arrived on time!) set up for her for when she gets home. I just hope it doesn't rain or she will have to wait a while to play it! She's requested my homemade lasagne for dinner so I also best get started on that shortly too!

I also wanted to say a big Happy Fathers Day to G, he is a great dad to our brood of 3 and puts up with alot from me at times as well, but he is loved and appreciated in this family for all the things he does for us...even if none of us listen to him :)

And Here's The Proof!

This here is my chick Amanda (on the right)....just to prove we really did meet!

We had a great time and she is everything I thought she would be, I miss her so much already and I wish she lived nearby so we could hang out a lot more often, though if that were the case I would probably get even less done around my house than I already do!
I was nervous in the couple of days before meeting her but I think on the actual day I was just excited and couldn't wait to actually get there and see her, my nerves disappeared and I knew it was going to be fine. We met in a play cafe and my three super polite kids didn't even stop to say hello to Amanda or Piper (her two year old daughter) they just raced straight to the play equipment and ran amok for the next two hours!

So after that highlight for the week everything else has just been average :)

As I sit here blogging I am awaiting a phone call from a local sports store to see if they have managed to locate Abbey's birthday present that we went to get off layby last night and it's gone missing! Honestly how easy can it be to lose a basketball hoop? Not only that but they mucked us about for 40 minutes yesterday trying to figure out where it was (although the first 20 minutes we were waiting they weren't even looking!!) Her birthday is on Monday so they better sort something out VERY quickly. Last we heard they were going to deliver a hoop to our house today from their city store but I have yet to hear when that is due to arrive. Wish us luck on getting Ab's present here in time for her birthday!

So Monday is Ab's birthday but on Sunday we are taking her to the Royal Show, well that's the plan but she is home from school a little under the weather today so we will have to see how she goes. The Show is on for 9 days but Sunday is the only day we can take her due to G's work, and also I have booked in some other stuff for her to do next Saturday. She will be gutted if she misses the Show as she has been looking forward to it since the start of the year.

Haven't managed to scrap or design a thing all week, it's been hectic and G has been unwell also with sinusitis and had a couple of days off work so I am well behind on anything scrap-related!

I did take some pics of Scarlett yesterday which I am pretty proud of...

She's so easy to photograph (most days!) I would love to get some great new close ups of Joe and Abbey too but Joe moves pretty fast and seems to have no attention span at all at the moment, and Abbey tries too hard to pose. I shall have to catch them unawares I think.

Abbey has decided this week she wants to learn piano so we have let the school know and will wait and see if they have a spot for her in piano next term. I think she will be really good at it (so long as she practises!) and I think she will enjoy it very much.

I also won a "Best Rock Chick Wife Of The Year" Award this week when I not only learned to play some Deep Purple on the guitar (what can I say I had a very cute and talented teacher) but also bought G tickets to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers in concert next year! I am in the good books for a while now :)