New Years Eve 2010

Quiet Night In. Cheers!!!

Thursday dressups

On Thursday Daddy got out all his gear from his time in Bosnia ready to send off to the Australian War Memorial where he is donating everything he has from that time. He is also going to write up a piece about his experiences, and while we are very proud of all that he has achieved as an army officer and veteran, this will be another step in the journey in leaving that time behind. Tassie thought it was great fun playing dressups with Daddy.

Wednesday

Ian very sweetly offered to be the Mummy-Daddy today so I could have some project catch-up time. Having these two small children at home is a fulltime job, and without his help I'd get no break! So I sat outside on this warm day, going through years of newspaper and magazine clippings - a job I've been putting off for ages but that has become interesting for me again since I started my journal in November. And at about lunchtime first Mum then my sister dropped over and I had to press pause on the project. But it was actually really lovely to be outside relaxing on the deck, and I still had a break from being the Mummy today.

Scrap pages and more applique and embroidery

This was a page made a couple of weeks ago, the last one I made before the month got hectic. The photo was leftover from another project, so I grabbed and made this sweet, simple page. Exactly my favourite kind of page, simple and colourful.






These are the little tops, left over from Tassie's baby days, that I saved for baby Delilah, but added some applique and embroidery embellish them for a great Christmas present.

Tuesday - visiting day

In the morning, I took Tassie with me to visit Mum (Gandy) and later, Manda and Delilah. The images don't really show how amazing the view is from Mum's unit. She has a view of the magnificent hills behind the trees. She also has a unit in the village positioned in the best possible place, in my opinion, to see all this from her bedroom and kitchen and lounge room windows. Sigh! Mike finished building the new IKEA desk too, so Mum was keen to show it off. It looks exactly right in her unit.

After returning from a visit to Manda and baby Delilah, who looked so sweet in her Jolly Jumper, holding Tassie's hand, we returned for lunch out on the deck with Angus, while Ian took the car to spend some more time with his son, Josh. They went for lunch again, before returning together to stay for the curry chicken I'd made in the slow cooker.

The VERY long Christmas post

Friday 24th - Christmas Eve
Tassie rushed out to greet me when Daddy brought her home from Little Playschool - she immediately wanted to show me her journal. It was truly special. The staff at childcare had carefully put together this beautiful journal of her artwork from throughout the year, with a photo on the front. She went through each page carefully with Daddy.




25th December - Christmas Day
We woke up to bulging Santa sacks. We had one each - I got a generous scrapbooking voucher, Ian got egg rings in the shape of Australia (well I thought it was supposed to be silly stuff!) and the kids got lots of little, fun things. Proper presents tomorrow for the Christmas Part II party, plus presents later today from extended family.

This was where we went for Christmas Day this year - Ian's parents' place. There were about 4000 presents under the tree.

This is my absolute favourite photo from the whole of Christmas - Tassie was going around handing out presents saying "Happy Christmas"to each and every person and her eyes were lit up with such joy and wonder.

Sunday 26th December - Boxing Day
Christmas Part II. I so missed my family on Christmas Day. Ian woke up feeling very unwell with a (stress) migraine that we had to put our Christmas get-together back until late in the afternoon. I was so busy getting everything ready on my own that I left out nearly everything I'd planned for the day and we went with the basic version - the turkey, ham, and salads. And you know what? It was perfect. I took a photo of myself to prove that I was indeed there. And I also got some beautiful portraits of Manda with Mike and Delilah, exactly like my cousin Noni took for me, Ian and Tasmin almost exactly three years ago. Can't wait to see them.







Monday 27th December
There's Daddy, STILL building the jumping toy and it's two days after Christmas! It was eventually finished and presented to the children the next day. And who can resist the Christmas tree lights at night?

scrapbooking pages

This is going to be the start of a new approach to the blog this year - Rock Paper Scissors is being merged with Scrap Happy Valley so there will be lots of scrapbooking goodness to see here plus the photo-a-day project which I am definitely continuing with.

Here is a page I managed to complete before Christmas:

This cute little plastic doll is a found object - I picked it up off the street recently - she goes well here, don't you think?

Thursday - first applique project

This was purely experimental but I was really happy with the results. I'd bought some fusible webbing at the Craft fair recently and it turned out to be so easy to use with the shapes of fabric I cut out of some fat quarters. You iron it on to activate it, then it's just like using double-sided tape in scrapbooking. I then used a combo of machine and hand stitching for the rest. Easy! They went off in the post to baby Kirrily who was born on Sunday night, for her first Christmas.







...and a card to match.

Wednesday - wrapping pressies

This is such a fun week, before Christmas, with all the Favourites at home together. This morning we had an enomous pile of soft toys to wrap in festive Christmas paper. They are actually some of the toys we have been given since the children's birth that aren't played with anymore and still look brand new. So we decided to wrap them and take them to the K-Mart wishing tree for other children to enjoy who may not be getting much/anything this Christmas. We enjoyed doing this so much, that we are going to make this an annual tradition, and I will ask the children to give up one toy each year, as well as buy something new to give as a gift.

I hadn't realised you can give gifts of any age, even grandparents. I love the idea that you can just buy an extra gift while you're doing Christmas shopping and pop it under the tree. Brilliant.

Tassie found this little candy cane with eyes and reindeer antlers, but couldn't quite work it out.

Later in the morning we caught up with Tassie's friend Addisyn for a playdate at the Gardens, which gave the children a chance to run off some steam. When I got home there was a bit of time for my proejcts. There's an exciting new project in the works - the Christmas album - with dobule page layout for every Christmas since Ian and I met, 2002. In the evening I took Tasmin with me shopping which we actually really enjoyed. It was surprisingly relaxed. I took nine photos for enlargement to the 6x8" size, and bought a couple of last minute things while I was there.

Photos coming soon.

Tuesday - reindeer nose

Tassie came home from Little Playschool yesterday with a glittery reindeer nose. She was only too happy for pose for me. It's been overcast much of the day (the month, even!) so today outside the light's not great and the photos aren't quite in focus. But you get the idea!