MissyMuh

Bloody computers

ok just poking my head in to say sorry for all the people that have sent me emails/messages in the past few days (why is it as soon as i go off-line everyone wants me for something?? LOL).

I haven't been snobbing everyone or fallen in a big hole, my computer just had a bit of a hissy-fit on Sunday and decided it didn't want to start anymore. It has taken until today to get someone out to fix it and thank goodness it was only a minor problem with the power supply and no data or programs were lost or damaged.

Anyway it'll take me at least most of tomorrow to catch up so if i'm a little slow then you'll just have to be patient with me LOL...

in the mean time here are the sneak peeks i promised back on Sunday...

Lazy weekend at home

I'm booked out pretty much every weekend from this point for the next 4 weeks so i thought i'd make the most of this one and do absolutely diddly-squat LOL. On Thursday i met up with Dannii and her girls and we headed over to the park for a while.

Then that night we headed over to Dannii's house again for a Stampin up party which was good fun (VERY hard to resist not buying stuff but i'm trying hard to stick to a budget this month LOL). On Friday we didn't get out of bed until well past 10:30 and then bummed around the house and today has been pretty much the same. Luke went out last night and saw the Foo Fighters, so i had a quiet night at home knitting in front of the TV.

Here is a progress pic of the cardigan i'm making Charlee, the wool is gorgeous 100% organic 8ply from here and the color is divine. It's so soft and squishy as well...i want one for myself LOL

if everything goes according to plan this is what it should end up looking like

You can download the pattern for free from here but you may have to register first before you can see it (it's free and quick).

Just look at the glorious autumn-ness outside my back door... and my sweet pussy cat as well, just because she was there.

And just because i thought this post needed more photos, here are some recent scrapping pages

That's all for now. I'll be back tomorrow with some sneak peeks for a recent client.

little bit of cute

can be purchased here

Happy snaps

As a photographer you'd think getting a decent photo of your own family wouldn't be that hard...well with mine it is near impossible... Luke HATES having his taken and the kids are usually not too keen on the idea of sitting still with us together either and then there is also the tricky task of coordinating the family with the self timer on the camera...you have to get everyone in position, focus it, push the button without moving the camera and run like all hell back to your position before the shutter goes off...

Now this task becomes even more difficult when a certain five year old insists that he wants to be the one to push the button... anyway here are the results (and yes i only managed to get three...after that everyone was over it).

outtake one...koby bumped the camera as he tried to run back to us at break neck speed.... (said camera was balancing rather precariously on a picnic bench at the time)

outtake two...koby yet again bumps the camera on his way past so we all had to lean in to get in the shot this time...

finally a keeper.... yay!

In other news i am in the process of setting up a store over at WAHMania. I've been meaning to move all my Charlee's Closet stuff over there for ages and finally put that process into action. Just waiting for it all to go live... ok it's all up and running. Not much there at the moment but i will be updating every week hopefully. Just go here.

Been busy with work which is great, i also decided to rearrange the lounge room yesterday (i can hear you giggling from here Dannii LOL) and i am quite happy with it. I didn't take a before shot so there is no point showing an after, but it is actually clean and has stayed like that for a whole 24 hrs...mind you the kids haven't really been home enough to make it messy yet...

anyway that's all for now.

three new friends

I made this one last week (which is why he already looks quite well loved)

I finished this guy on Monday. I completly improvised the pattern and was quite pleased with how he came out. The ears are a little odd in places but i am planning on fixing that and making up a few more to sell when i restock Charlee's Closet in a month or so.

And we came home from the shops to find this little guy on our front step. I thought he was dead at first but he started to crawl away from me when i tried to poke him. So Charlee ran inside and scooped him up in her bug catcher. His wings were already a little damaged so i don't think he will last very long but she has been talking to him for an hour now, and i let him have a crawl on her before.

I've said she can keep him until it's time to get Koby at 3 and then we need to let him go...probably for the best because i don't think she would take it very well at all if she woke up tomorrow to find our little friend has moved on to the big butterfly house in the sky....

Mummy Monday

Well Mondays use to be known as Mummy Daughter Mondays but for ages now (at least 12 months) i've had them all to myself. MIL now takes Charlee to playgroup and then to her house for the rest of the day and most weeks they even go and pick up Koby from school for me, so from about 9:30 am till 8ish at night i am a free woman. Most weeks it involves lots of shopping and banking and post office visiting and the occasional Op shot wander but today i am broke so i'm sitting at home doing nothing.
Don't get me wrong i actually have a lot to do - mostly cleaning related - but as usual i'm procrastinating LOL.
So here is a few photos...

First a top i crocheted for charlee. The fitting is a bit off, it sits funny at the front mainly because i was using the wrong type of wool. It was all i could find at home after the terrible "day of the lost knitting supplies" , but it'll do.

I actually had a bit of a happy-happy-joy-joy moment last night when i pinched all of my mums knitting needles and left over wool. She has issues with her wrist and can no longer knit so i promptly swiped her entire stash so i'm back in busines YAY!

and just to even things up a bit here's a few photos of the boy

Speaking of photos i'd like to thank everyone who has taken me up on my Autumn/Winter special. I've had a great response but there is always room for more. The details can be found here and also on my website in the Specials section.

I also came across this great resource for people considering having custom photography done with their family. It is really helpful in explaining the differences between hiring someone like myself as apposed to going to a cheaper alternative at a shopping center.
a consumer guide for custom photography

I caught up with Dannii and Jodi the other night and did some scrapping. We had a "crap scrap" night which was Jodi's idea, basically all brought along out crappy old supplies that we have never used or finished using and had to create pages using mostly what was brought. We all shared around our crap and had a good night. I think i got home just after 1am (luke was not impressed) but i managed to get through a whopping 7 layouts and i was really happy with all of them despite the crappy old supplies that were used. Anyway i have keep a few aside for some other projects and one was for Blue Bazaar, so here are the ones i can show off.

Well that's about all i can think of for today, i should get up and do something more constructive....

Shameless plug

A few months back i created somethings for Fiskars. And a few weeks back i did an interview for Living Creatively. You can now read the interview over here . It's in the pink section on the right of the page titled Truely Madley Deeply. ( i had a giggle about the reference to me living in "rural" Victoria...i'd hardly call where i am rural PMSL, i'm only 30 min from the city for goodness sakes)

Back to normality

Well school is back and things are settling back into a normal routine. Koby has slipped back into school with no problems. Charlee is missing him more so than before. In fact the last three days she has cried all the way home in the car after dropping him off. I'm having to spend more time entertaining her than normal but hopefully she will get use to it again soon.

I made her a new top yesterday, i'm starting to get stuck into her winter wardrobe and i thought this plaid flannel top was a perfect way to start. Luke says it makes her look like a bogan (especally when paired with her new bright pink Ugg boots) but i think it's quite trendy, and super comfy. I'm gonna make a few more tops like this soon.

We had a play over at the reserve across the road today to burn up some of her energy

I also have some Scrapniques DT pages to share. There were made with the April kit which is now available

Nothing else to share at the moment. I managed to rummage around my craft room the other day and found a spare crochet hook and some wool my sister gave me ages ago so i have been happily crocheting away in front of the telly at night again. It means i'm not quite as desperate to drive all the way back to Venus bay for all my other knitting stuff...i think i can hold out for at least one or two more weeks anyway. . .

time to get my boy....

DO you ever get the feeling you should have just stayed home in bed???

Ok here's the run down.... Here in Melbourne we had a mighty big storm hit on Wednesday which knocked out the power to a lot of places. We didn't really think much of it when Mum, the kids and I headed down to Venus bay on Thursday but on the way down we spotted a lot of damage. Lots of trees down and debris everywhere.

Anyway we finally get to the town and pop into the milk bar to get some essentials only to find that the power was out and had been since lunchtime Wednesday.  Great, so we drive around to the house and sure enough, no power.
Now just to give you some understanding when there is no power at venus bay it means you have nothing. No lights (obviously), no heating, no cooking and you can't even run the taps or flush the toilet because the pump is electric...so we had nothing.

Once it started to get dark there was no way we would have been able to see anything and we didn't even have any candels so instead of trying to entertain two kids in a freezing cold, dark house with no hot food or flushing toilets for the night we decided to head back into wonthaggi (about 30min back towards Melbourne) and find somewhere to stay for the night.

It seems like every one else had the same idea because the two half decent hotels were booked out so we were left with the stingiest, most ancient of pubs that just happened to have half a dozen rooms above it that were built sometime in the late 1950's.  We should have twigged when he said we were the only ones staying the night...this place was bad. It had no heaters and the ceilings were at least 8 foot if not more so the little heat that did come up from the pub/bistro below quickly vanished. Koby shared a room with my mum which had two single beds and i took a room with charlee and we shared a double.

There was a "tv" room where we were able to watch a bit of TV and we had tea at the bistro down below which wasn't too bad. That night i froze, even with little miss toasty next to me i was still freezing. Charlee also has a bad cough at the moment so i had her coughing in my ear all night as well. Anyway we survived the night and hot-footed it out of there as quick as we could in the morning and headed back to the house.

Still no power. Bugger.... but the good news was that there was at least three trucks parked on our block of land next to the house busily working away on the power box and they said they would have it up and running in a few hours. So we hung around for a while and then headed back to wonthaggi to see "Horton hears a who" (hilarious) at the cinema there and when we got home again the power was back on. Hooray!

From then on the weekend wasn't too bad. The weather was less than desirable but we did manage to get the kids down to the beach for an hour on Saturday.

On the way home i managed to spill a bottle of coke in my bag all over my phone and it now doesn't work (note: this is actually the second time i have done this...i did the same thing to my last phone...luke was less than impressed).

...and to top off my lovely weekend about an hour after getting home i realized that i had left my entire knitting stash at the house. Everything. All my needles, wool, pattern books...everything. I was livid. I remember carrying my bag out and thinking "i'll come back in for those" and then got distracted packing up the car, breaking up another fight between koby and charlee and i never gave them another thought until last night. No one is heading back down there (two and a half fricken hours away) until...i dunno...at least the next school holidays in July.... *sob*

so yeah... that's the weekend i had...here are a few photos.

this is charlee literally begging to go to the beach despite it being about 10 degrees and pouring rain....

Mum and I got so desperate for coffee we boiled a saucepan on the barbecue  LOL and a shot of the lovely electricity man trying his darnedest to get the power back on.

And some shots of the kids at the beach

   

We came across this caterpillar on the beach. It literally came in on a wave. Charlee found it fascinating. Goodness knows how long the poor thing had been floating around out there....

Home again...

A very eventful weekend was had by all. I'll be back tomorrow with the details....