1 Year Photo Shoot ...

I have been trying to get some nice photos of Samuel sitting on this little blue chair! It hasn't been easy! :-)

Even when I turned him round the other way and poked his legs out the back I still didn't get a nice pic (although I do like this one of his feet hehee)
A lot of shots were like this!
I should have had a flash filler on for this one as his face is quite grainy.
When he got engrossed with the Thomas the tank engine hospital I gave up trying to put him back on the chair! ;-)

Then we went for a little walk instead :-)

Here's Aaron at 1 on the chair in our garden back in Auckland.
And to show what his hair was like then :-)
Maddison at 1 :-)
She spent most of the time being cheeky though hehee
Oh well I'll try again another day! Thanks for visiting.

Samuel

I have been meaning to take a photo of Samuel doing this for a while and now I am cross with myself that I haven't as the other kids were around 9months old when I took their photos! Anyway I have them now! :-)

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For some reason they love the front loader washing machine! If the laundry door is open Samuel is in there like a shot! (hehee excuse the dribble on his chin!) :-)

Cheeky fella.
If you want to see what the other kids looked like around 9 months old doing the inspection of the washing machine check it out here.

Kids on a Monday ...

Just a little bit of what the kids got up to today :-)

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Samuel and I went down to Aaron's class at lunch time as it was his teacher's birthday today and the assistant teacher's birthday yesterday. So us Mum's had got together and done some "delegating" and organised cakes, pizza, drinks & balloons and a signed card for them both. Of course it was more for the kids than the teachers!!! heheee

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The teacher's cake had Kanga & Joey on it (she's Australian).

And the assistant teacher loves cats :-)
The kids had just come back from PE so were very hot and sweaty! I think they were pleased to sit in the classroom in the air con and cool down while they had their lunch!
I took down a big bunch of balloons for the kids and of course Samuel had one too! :-)

Today it was Aaron's turn to bring home Kanga & Joey again. The kids all have turns at bringing Kanga & Joey home for a night or two and they draw a picture and write what Kanga & Joey get up to! The kids have nearly filled two exercise books. Quite cute to read and neat to see the progress with their writing (and drawing!).

I enrolled Maddison into an after school art class once a week for this term. Today was her first time and when I asked her what she did she just said "it was fun". I haven't managed to get any details of what she created at all! I asked her again at bed time if she liked it and she said yes and gave me a kiss! hahaa She sure does love colouring. This afternoon she asked me to draw us as a family so she could colour them in! I am SOOOO not an artist when it comes to drawing people! Anyway she's happy with my stick figure people thankfully!! (note the tongue poking out in concentration hehee)
This is our family! :-) We must be feeling the cold I think with the blue faces! And I wonder how Lyndon feels about wearing purple trousers!! heheeee
Our kitchen door currently looks like this ... covered in drawings the kids have done :-)
Samuel received another birthday present in the mail today from some cousins. He liked the card :-)
And the ball! Thank you very much :-)
He also likes Maddison's pink princess hairband :-)


Very nice! I must get a video clip of him strutting about wearing it and laughing. He thinks he's the bees knees! :-)

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Tonight while dinner was cooking and I was feeding Samuel his dinner Aaron did this huge clean up in their bedroom, the lounge and picked up all the toys that Samuel had taken into the kitchen!! I was blown away! There was a motive though! Ha ... he told me he wanted RM100 so he could buy some more hotwheels! RIGHT ... I had to tell him as much as I really appreciated him cleaning up so well, I didn't really think it was worth RM100, but I would give him some money for his piggy bank (he got RM3 hehehee) :-) I will be most interested to see if he cleans up again tomorrow :-)

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Thanks for visiting.

Aaron's Rice Baby

Aaron has been learning about weights & measures at school and as part of that they were asked to bring in a pair of pantyhose and a bag of rice. The amount of rice had to be the weight they were when they were born! So Aaron took in 3.8kgs of rice (man his backpack was heavy that day!).

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Yesterday he came home with his rice baby ...

Samuel was very intrigued with it too!
I wonder how long it will last ... the poor thing has that many ladders in the pantyhose now! Can you just imagine the mess when it gives way completely!!!!

Get Picky Sketch #8

Get Picky's sketch this month is for 3 photos. I went through my stack of holiday photos looking for a group of 3 and ended up with 2 lots. So decided I would do 2 LO's. :-)

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Here's the sketch.

Because my photos were already 6x4 I just trimmed them to 4x4 so to make them work I tilted the sketch and put the grouping of 2 photos differently. Really simple LO using Tim's tissue tape, journalling tag and tickets and some very old Maya Road felt buttons I found. (Don't even ask how long I have had them!)

For this next LO I kept the sketch the right way up, except for the grouping of 2 photos again (photos are 4x4). This LO goes alongside the LO in yesterday's post, so I just used paper scraps that co-ordinated with that, little doilies & alphas from Studio Calico's March kit, used up some bling and christened some new stamps :-)
Thanks for visiting.

Scrappin Studio Weekly Challenge

The weekly challenge at Scrappin Studio is to create an 8.5"x11" LO. I decided to use this sketch from PageMaps (one from January 2011). I turned it on it's side and did a bit of a jiggle with the title and journalling! (as you do!) Also left off the circle and the dots as I felt the embossed cardstock didn't need any bling.

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I've used a piece of embossed cardstock (Jenni Bowlin I think) which I sanded, along with rick rack, bracket stamp and brad from my stash. Patterned papers and alphas are from the Studio Calico March kit (using up the scraps!) :-)

Used Tim Holtz Tattered Florals die for the flower.
Cardstock is really lovely (forgot I actually had it in my stash!) :-)

Fun challenge ... but I am going to confess that I will adhere this LO to a 12x12 piece of cardstock to put into my holiday album! I am not going to decorate the 12x12 ... it's just going to have this LO stuck on it (nearer the top, not in the middle). Otherwise I have to purchase 8.5x11" page protectors or fiddle about adapting a 12x12, so I am going to take the easy option! :-)

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Thanks for visiting.

Teacher Appreciation Day

This morning Aaron & Maddison went off to school with presents (I cheated - it was just a box of chocolates!) for their teachers. I pulled out all the thank you and blank cards from my card box and let them choose which cards they wanted. They decorated and wrote in them (well Aaron wrote and Maddison wrote her name) :-)

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Aaron's card for his Teacher ... I sure hope they like cars hehehee :-)

And one for his Assistant Teacher.

Maddison's card for her Teacher.

And one for her Assistant Teacher.
Maddison is left handed ... found out recently that it's from Lyndon's side of the family! So interesting these little quirks that are in the gene pool! haha Anyway she's just started wanting to write her name on everything she does. She's finally got the hang that her name starts with an "M" not a "W" and I think what she does is just writes the letters in her name she's comfortable doing and if she runs out of room she just leaves the rest off hehehee Love that she's wanting to write now. :-)

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Thanks for visiting.

SiL 2nd Anniversary Blog Hop - Mini Album

The last challenge for Scrap-it-Lah's 2nd anniversary blog hop is to create a mini-album using packaging! I went through my stash and pulled out this pile of packaging, some were bits I had saved, others still had the product in them :-)

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In 2009 I made a little mini album with photos of the kids cousins. It's very out of date now, so I decided to do another one using pics from our holiday back to NZ in March/April. My finished album looks like this.
I painted the 3 pieces of Jenni Bowlin packaging with celery paint.

Decided I wouldn't use any patterned paper, just stickers, stamps, buttons, ribbons, rub-ons and tissue tape.
A few of the pages I actually glued together because I couldn't cover all the manufacturing info and I didn't want it showing. The page on the right was packaging from Cosmo Cricket and it had their name on the little red bracket which I cut around. I just covered it with a sticker. :-)

Sorry don't know why this is on it's side! You will just have to turn your head.









And of course my little stamp on the back :-)
Fun challenge ... wondered why I had kept all that packaging! Ha :-) Finished this album off this morning, so can't wait till the kids see it when they get home from school.

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Thanks Scrap-it-Lah for the challenge and thanks everyone for visiting :-)

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