If The Shoe Fits

hi there....

See...not that long between posts this time...lol. Thanks for all the comments on the last entry. I haven't been getting around to visiting a lot of blogs. Will do that soon.

We bought Abby a drawing easel last week. We had been wanting to get her one for the longest time because  she loves the easel at kinder and it is usually the first thing she heads for when we get there. It was already the last day of toy sale at Big W and Kmart and we rushed out one hour before closing time to look for one! The only ones left were Spiderman and Shrek at Kmart and they were all sold out of Disney Princesses ones at BigW too. Abby was really upset (crying but not throwing tantrum) when we left without buying her one. She's usually ok with us not buying her toys when we are at the toystore but we (meaning i) made the mistake of talking about buying her one so much during the day that it built up her expectation. Colin had to promise her to get her one the next day when Target toy sale starts.

We looked at the catalog and saw one for $20 and another one that was around 3x more expensive. He said he was going to get the cheaper one but he came back with the expensive one! Abby was already in bed and we had something on the next day so we waited till the weekend to surprise her with it. She loved it and had been painting or drawing on the chalk board everyday since then:) So far, she knows how to write A and B. Trying to teach her to write more letters of the alphabet. She already knows how to read them.

She has brushes but she always end up finger painting!

More photos from the weekend.

A favourite from a while back:

Colin had been working really hard till pretty late every night. He went to work slightly later in the morning last week and every time Abby sees him still around when she woke up, this is what she says.

A: "Daddy not working today?" or "How come Daddy not gone to work yet?"
C: "Daddy is going to stay at home and play with Abby today."
A: "No...Daddy must go to work!"
C: "Can't Daddy stay at home?"
A:"No! Must go to work so we have money to buy books, toys...etc. etc."

Too cheeky.

I was tagged by Deborah to write 7 things about yourself and tag 7 other people. Thanks, Deborah. I think I might have done this before and a lot of you might have too so if you haven't, consider yourself tagged:)

Since I can't remember what I wrote last time, I will just write about my sleeping habits:)

1. I have a cup of camomile tea and a little snack before bed every night.
2. I have to wear bed socks to bed. It doesn't matter if it's winter or in the middle of summer, I just have to have something on my feet. If it gets too warm, I will just kick them off during the night.
3. I have to lie on my right side before I fall asleep. I think it is just because I would be facing the opposite side to Colin because I can't sleep facing someone.
4. I have to hug a pillow/cushion when I'm sleeping.
5. I don't snore but I grind my teeth.
6. In the winter, my head is always hidden under the doona/duvet (Abby does this too).
7. I go to bed too late...trying hard to change that!

I don't know if I ever mentioned here that the mad people we had as neighbours previously moved out. The current neighbours are pretty normal except their dogs are bored silly at home all day (never seen them walk the dogs ever) and bark non-stop during the day and sometimes at night. They discovered that there are dogs too behind and next to them so they bark at those dogs and then we have an orchestra of dogs barking. That's fine during the day (well, not really when I want Abby to have her nap) but they did it during the night for 1 hour or more. We told the neighbours about it (they said they couldn't hear because they slept too well!!!) and it was because the other dogs started first but then since then they had kept their dogs inside during the night and we had had peaceful sleep till the neighbour's car and garage door wake us up  in the morning when they go to work. That's what happen when all our rooms are just right next to their driveway. They have this "near" vintage car (2 near vintage cars infact) that they have to start the ignition a couple of times and warm up for quite a while before driving away. Then they have to slam the garage door and close the gate and stop the dogs from running out of the gate. Right after they leave, the dogs would go to the fence and start their barking at their canine friends. Happens every morning except Sunday mornings.  Maybe we should just move to the countryside where we don't have neighbours...LOL.

Some more DT layouts.

That's it from me, take care everyone and have a good week next week. One more week till my birthday....ooooh, I'm looking forward to getting one year older....NOT!!!

About time...

for an update...LOL. Even my parents and brother had been asking. So sorry to all those who had been checking this blog for an update and thanks to everyone who emailed to check up on me. I'm alright. Just had been feeling a bit sorry for myself some days not having family to help but it's ok now:)

I don't really know what I've been up to. With winter being colder than the past few years, we stayed home most days. Today, we were invited by my SIL who works for the management of Village Cinemas for an advance screening of Disney cartoon "Ratatouille". I think screening starts here in Sept. Definitely a great movie to take the kids. Very funny unless you have a phobia of seeing colonies of rats...lol.

I haven't really been scrapping much. Just some layouts for CHA and a few swap layouts.

I was lucky enough to play with some new Fancy Pants Designs new CHA products and managed to send my layouts off to the US within 2 days of receiving them. Otherwise, they would have never made it there in time for the show. Here are my layouts.

Be sure to check out Fancy Pants Designs spanking new website. It has a new gallery and I think you can upload your layouts using Fancy Pants products.  Lots of cool ideas using Fancy Pants products on there too.

For Queen & Co., I won't be getting the new CHA products (drooling for them like everyone else) till later so I was asked to do a few layouts with last CHA products which I still love:) 

I did a couple of swap layouts with two lovely and very talented  girls from Netherlands. Thank you girls for my layouts. I really love them:)

Here's one for Revlie.

and here's Ellemieke.

This layout is in this month's Scrapbooking Memories. I was asked to do a layout for the Babies gallery and I didn't really have a lot of photos of Abby as a baby so I asked Charmane for one of Harmony. She's so cute. Thanks, Charmane, for letting me scrap Harmony's photo.

Just one more thing before I forget. I was nominated by my fellow Fancy Pant Designs dter, the super sweet and talented Amber Tosh, as a Rockin' Girl Blogger. Thanks, Amber. I'm very flattered to be nominated but this is a blogger that hardly update her blog...lol. I will in turn nominate 5 bloggers. I wish I can nominate more because there are so many of you that inspire me daily.

Janine Kaye
Revlie
Claire Bremner
Vita Thai
Sarah Van Wijck

Sorry, this post is almost all layouts...lol. I really don't have much to say. I will post some photos next time I update (hopefully it won't be too long). I have been taking lots of photos.

Take care.
                                  

happy anniversary....

to my dh. today is our 7th anniversary. i can't believe we've been married for so long. what do people say about the 7th year?...the 7 years itch???? lol.

we came back from marysville this morning and colin took us out for japanese tonight. we ordered way too much appetizer so when the mains arrived, we didn't feel like eating much any more. colin doesn't care much for japanese but he knows i love it:)

let's backtrack to friday. we left for marysville on friday morning. it's about 21km away from lake mountain resort. we decided to only go up to the mountain on saturday. that way we don't have to rush at all. abby got carsick on the way there and vomited in the car. that aways happen when we go for a long drive. it's not even that long a drive...abit more than an hour but it was a windy drive up the mountain. good thing we were prepared with a plastic bag. still managed to stink out the car though.

we reach maryville with plenty of time to explore the town. we went to  steavensons fall and abby had a whistling lollipop throughout the walk and it never left her mouth so all the photos i had of her were with the lollipop in her mouth. by the time we got to the car, both her hands, face, hair and jacket were all sticky...lol. she was a bit scared of the waterfall and didn't want any photos taken near it. we didn't go all the way to the top because it was a 40mins climb (return?). after that we headed back to the cottage we rented for a bit of r&r before dinner.

the next morning, we headed out to lake mountain resort and remembered not to give abby any food or drinks before the drive...lol.  it was snowing on the way there already.  the cottage provided a brand new pink toboggan for us to use and abby was really protective of it and didn't want to let go of it much at all. i went down with her on the toboggan a couple of times. there were a lot of people there and the area wasn't big at all so we had to avoid collision with other people. it was pretty tough pulling her back up the hill...lol. we built 3 snowmen. it was more colin and i doing the building. abby just asked us to give her snow to pile on because she couldn't hold much with her mittens. she was only really interested in sticking the carrot on the snowmen...lol.

it was snowing the entire time we were there. i didn't get to take much photos because it was making my camera wet. i had a clear shower cap on the camera but i couldn't see well enough to  focus through the shower cap. i think abby did have fun and she didn't complain about the  cold at all.

the snowman's got my scarf and beanie and i had my gloves off because i wanted to take photos so i was freezing...lol.

there were a lot of lorikeets and cockatoos that visits the cottage where we stayed. the hosts of the cottage provided some bird seeds and abby was spreading the seeds on the driveway and waited for them to eat them but they stayed up in the trees...lol. there was one particular cockatoo  that came to the porch to eat the seeds but it was a rather scary one with it's crest bitten or pulled off  from a fight and it was staring right at us at the screen door when it finished the seeds and wanted us to give it more and it came back a few times. i'm not a really a big fan of birds so i didn't want to put anymore seeds at the porch.

sorry about the boring post full of photos but my mum and dad will be happy:) thank you so much for all the comments and emails to congrats about my layout on the cover of for keeps:)