weird and wonderful weekend...

It started out on Friday night at my work Christmas Party. They had a hypnotist. They asked for volunteers. Need I say more? Fortunately it was the Christmas Party for the place where I used to work and I don't anymore. So I don't have to see anyone on Monday morning. Let's just say that during the show when a certain piece of music was played, a certain person had to get up and do a belly dance on the stage in front of everyone. By herself. Twice. Enough said.
So, Saturday was the day from hell. I had about 4 hours sleep. The kids were nightmares all day. It was about 1000 degrees. It was just one of those days. The best part was my BF Vanessa and her gorgeous baby Piper came for a visit. It's always good to hang out with V. In the afternoon the kids swam in the little clam shell pool, but they fought over the hose, the bucket, the toy mower, the water pistols. You name it, they wanted it, exactly the same time the other one wanted it. I was over shouting at them to stop. The neighbours must have loved it.
Today was Vic's Mum's birthday so we went over there for lunch. It was lovely. I made her a scrapbook canvas for her birthday. It was kind of like a mini scrapbook page mounted on a canvas. I painted around the edges and it sits on a cute little easel. The layout was a lift of a page that I had seen online.
Tonight my Mum and Dad are coming over for dinner. Jordan is making pizza. Yum!

playing with photoshop...

I have had Photoshop on my computer for a few years, but have had no idea how to use it. I decided today that I would sit and fiddle around with it and see what I came up with. I love it. It's fantastic how you can get the colours to really "pop". It may not be to everyones taste, but I like the effects. What do you think?

you'd better not pout...

Well, we kind of expected it, but then Mackenzie can be a little bit unpredictable. She was so excited standing in the line. She was waving, saying hello. He asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she said a scooter. It was all good. Right up until the part when she had to sit on his knee to have her photo taken. Then it all went bad. In a big way. At first I was upset because I really have a thing about getting the perfect Santa photo. So I figured we would just come back later and try again. So we did. But it didn't go any better the second time around. We tried lollipops and dummies and bribes of McDonalds for lunch. Nothing worked. I resigned myself to the fact that I just wasn't going to get a Santa photo this year. Then I thought about it and decided that I would get the Santa photo. This is Mackenzie. This is where she is at right now. Tears and tantrums or not. So I went back right before they closed and bought the photo. Five copies. One for my Santa photo frame, one each for their scrapbook albums, one for Nanny and one for Grandma. And it isn't the perfect Santa photo, but that's okay. It's my Santa photo for 2006.

1,2,3,4, Hi-5...

We went down the coast to Mum and Dad's for the weekend. It was great. The weather was lovely so the kids got to go to the beach. On saturday night Vic and I went out to dinner with my friends Darran, Wendy, James and Michelle. We went to a very fancy seafood restaurant, The Lagoon. It was fantastic. The food was great and we all had a great time just hanging out and enjoying the night. On Sunday we had the Hi-5 concert. Jordan had been looking forward to this for weeks. We went with my friend Lori and her daughter, Jorja. The kids absolutely loved it.

a little "elsie" inspiration...

Today I took a class at the Papercrafts Festival with Elsie Flannigan, a scrapbooker whose work I admire enormously. She is a super cute, super fun person and it was a pleasure to take her class. We made a great little album from scratch containing our favourite photos of 2006, as well as sewing a cute little felt bag for it to go in. The best part about the class, I actually finished the album. Usually there isn't enough time to get the project done and so it sits unfinished on my desk for months...like the projects from Kiwiscraps in August...lol. Here are some shots of my mini-album.