Passing a note about some cool blog candy ....

If you go to Kylie's blog you will see some very cool blog candy ... just in time for Christmas!!!

I'm a boy, not a vegetarian!

For an 8 year old, Conor certainly has a way with words - and really, always has, ever since he started talking.

Last weekend I was making soup for dinner. Although I used a chicken stock base, it was vegetable soup. When Conor asked me what was for dinner and I said "soup" his words were "for crying out loud mum give me something more filling. I'm a boy not a vegetarian!"

I had to ring Anthony to tell him that his son had spoken words close to Anthony's heart - having grown up in the country a meal isn't a meal to him if it doesn't contain meat.

I guess growing boys need something more substantial in their tummies, especially sports mad ones like mine!

Happy Birthday Conor

My baby boy is 8! It was his birthday yesterday. It doesn't feel like I've been a mother for 8 years. Usually when you've done a job for 8 years you should feel like you know what you're doing! But sometimes I really don't! I love being a mum, but it is sometimes challenging. But looking at my gorgeous boy and how proud I am of him all I can say is that I can't wait for what the future brings.

He had his birthday party on Sunday at mPowerdome, which is a local indoor sports centre. There were 16 of his friends and 2 party hosts ... the party hosts wore the kids out playing European handball, indoor soccer and dodgeball. He wanted an ice cream cake which was eaten up very quickly.

Then yesterday for his actual birthday we had a family bbq - mum and dad came over too. He requested vanilla cupcakes.

Anthony came up with a great idea: he asked me to get some photos from all of Conor's birthdays and we put them on the digital photo frame. So we've been playing that all week. I think I'll do the same for Christmas too!

Happy birthday cutie pie! I love you!

Stamp Storage

Quite recently (since the beginning of my obsession with Copic markers) I've found that my unmounted stamp collection has increased. With the majority of my stamps, which are Stampin' Up sets, storage is pretty easy - they are all in the bottom cupboard of a bookshelf in my craft room.

But with these new unmounted ones, I was worried they would get lost on my desk. So I decided that a binder ring was the best solution. I have a series of hooks hanging up on the 2nd desk in my craft room and the binder ring lives on one of the hooks.

So, why am I sharing this now .... I talked about my obsession with Copic Markers. In large part it's because a friend of mine directed me to Lime Tart who have a fantastic Copic Marker Club. And of course they sell tons of cute stamps and other stuff too. And they have a fabulous blog as well.

They have a great blog candy right now, if people share their stamp storage systems on their own blogs, and then link back to the Lime Tart blog they will be entered into a drawing to win the cutest little stamp storage tote. And it's open to international members ... so get blogging!

Happy Halloween part 2, aka "trick a treat"

I'm still learning and fiddling around with Blogger ... can't seem to get the pictures to be the way I want them. Anyway, I decided to start a new post rather than wasting more time formatting the last one!

Trick or treating is still not really big though. I'm not sure why, but Conor LOVES the idea of Halloween. Last year he wanted a Halloween party for his birthday. And this year he really wanted to go trick or treating so I eventually decided "why not". He has this great pirate costume that my sister gave him for his birthday 3 years ago and it still fits him.

He had a whole act he was going to do .. knock on the door and say "trick a' treat" (that's the way he pronounces it). Then if they didn't reply he would say (in a pirate-y voice) "do I have to get out my sword?". Then he would say "just tricking" and walk away. Of course he was too shy to actually do it! We went to 3 neighbours houses and he struck gold (or rather chocolate) at the first one! Nothing from the other 2 though. Then we walked to to of his school friends houses who live nearby. At the first house it had been his friend's birthday party so he got a big handful of goodies. And at the second house they'd had a Halloween party the night before so he was lucky enough to get some candy corn that had come from America! Then we went to mum and dad's where he got 2 packs of chips! So he was more than happy

He had a really nice idea too .. he took along a treasure bag of gold coins and decided that anyone who gave him lollies would get a gold coin!

The interesting thing was that as we were driving back from mum and dad's we saw 2 groups of people out trick or treating. And we got a doorbell call that night!

Belated Happy Halloween!

As any Aussie will tell you, Halloween is not celebrated here. However, over the past few years, we've seen more and more Halloween products available for sale. In fact when I was doing the grocery shopping the week before Halloween I was surprised at how much stuff was available, from bags of lollies to decorations to pumpkins for carving. I was horrified at the price of the pumpkins though ... excuse this bad pic taken on my iPhone which I must have moved just as I clicked the camera button

First Lay-By

We've been giving Conor pocket money for almost 2 years. He gets $5 per week and he needs to save $1. Most weeks the money burns a hole in his pocket and he wants to spend it as quickly as he gets it. As he's getting older we're trying to get him to do a few more things around the house (nothing big, just helping with setting and clearing the table, putting his dirty clothes into his laundry basket, etc).

I bought a special ledger book to keep track of his pocket money. And we give him pocket money on Tuesdays as we don't have any sports or after school activities on that day. When he wants to buy something worth more than a week's worth of pocket money, he can usually save that himself. But if it's more than 2 week's worth he asks to go into credit. When we do this, I write it up in the ledger book so that we know when he's back in the black again. The only problem with him going into credit is that he wants to buy the next thing before he's paid for the first.

Right now Conor and Anthony are really into building model aeroplanes - Conor is getting quite the collection. There is a really good model shop in Philip. Mostly they get the 1:72 size which is recommended for beginners. Last time they were at the shop, Anthony asked about lay-bys. And they do them! So Conor had a model on lay-by and we went and paid it off last week. He now has another one on which will take a few weeks to pay off. This works much better for him than credit with us, because he's beginning to understand the importance of savings. In this picture he is about to pay off his very first lay-by

Bad Blogger

I was worried this would happen ... I would start a blog and then my excitement would fizzle out and it would go nowhere

I'd be interested in tips from other bloggers. How do you keep current? Do you aim to write an entry a certain number of times a week? Do you always have photos with your blog entries? What types of topics do you write about?

I've been thinking about setting myself a schedule but then worry that I'd be writing just for the sake of writing

Any and all thoughts would be appreciated!

TSR Blog Hop

Hi everyone! I hope you're enjoying the TSR Mod Squad blog hop so far. I've found a fantastic sketch from Page Maps, way back from June 2009! I have been organised enough to file the older Page Maps sketches that I have printed out but can't seem to find the ones I just printed at the beginning of September! Oh well, I really like this sketch. I think Becky Fleck designed this card to be 3x8. I did my card 4x8 so it will fit in a letter sized envelope.

I used the Fancy Pants My Family kit from The Scrap Room's September kit. I used the Bazzill Lily Pad cardstock along with the Aunt patterned paper. I cut up words from the Family Words sheet and matted them on black cardstock. I made the card from the Bazzill, added a matte of Aunt and then used some of the Fancy Pants ribbon from the kit under the matted words.

I like this style of card which I can use as a general friendship card, a thank you or even a birthday card! And I love that I can use even the smallest pieces of paper (leftovers even) from a TSR kit to make a great looking card!

For your next stop on this blog hop, please visit Rebecca at her home on the web, Pieces of Me.

Happy October everyone! And Happy World Card Making Day (2 October!)

Famous!

I was telling Anthony and Conor this afternoon that I had started a blog. Conor asked how I knew how to start one and Anthony asked Conor how he knew what a blog was. Conor knows because of Club Penguin! So I showed Conor the blog to see what he thought ... his words when he saw the LO of him "I'm going to be famous". So I think he likes it!

Autumn Ice Cream

Just finished this LO for the September THAW (Three a week) challenge over at Willow Traders .... thanks for the inspiration Julie! The challenge was to use 2 of red, orange, brown and yellow on a LO. I used a sketch by May Flaum to create this page ... Conor getting ice cream on a gorgeous autumn day 2 years ago. And he still gets so excited when he hears the Greensleaves music that the Mr Whippy vans play. I don't think he's ever once actually finished an ice cream, but that's OK!

Welcome!

I'm finally getting started with this whole blogging thing, thanks to my friends at TSR (www.scrap-room.com). We are having a blog hop to celebrate TSR's 6th birthday and I couldn't let myself be left out of the fun!