Goodbye 2011

2011 has been a great year for us, and I guess I'd have to say that I've loved pretty much every crazy busy minute of it! Sure, there have been some ups and downs. We had a heartbreaking death in the family, and a bit of a health scare and hospital stay for me, but on the up side, Jack is the healthiest he's ever been, with hardly any asthma at all this year, and just a few of his nasty migraines. The kids are both happy and healthy, and doing really well at school, and that's pretty much all it takes to make me happy :)

One thing that did kind of suck this year, was not having much time for scrapping. Although, I did do around 80 layouts, so I guess that's not too bad. Here's ten of my faves, in no particular order...











Ahh...I've missed scrapping these last few months...most of these pages were done in the first half of the year! Most of my spare time this year has gone into Purple Pumpkin, and scrapping has had to take a back seat. Hopefully I'll be a bit more organised with my time in 2012 to make time to scrap!

With only a couple of hours left of 2011, it's been so nice to look back at some of my photos from the year. Here are some of the highlights of our 2011...

LOVE this pic of the kids with their cousin, when they were flower girl and page boy at my brothers wedding :)



Jack turned 10 this year!


And Emmy turned 8...



Love my mum and dad! Family time is always the best :)


We got 4 beautiful new family members :)


Jack is famous! So excited to have my layout on the cover of SBM.


We had a holiday in Sydney. SO MUCH FUN!


Waiting for New Years fireworks on the beach tonight...


And of course, no NYE is complete without sparklers :)


Happy New Year! Hope your 2012 is wonderful xx

Our Christmas 2011

As it always does, Christmas day seemed to come up way too fast. There were so many things that I had planned to do in the lead up to the big day that never happend, but in the end, it didn't really matter. We had a great day!

On Christmas Eve, the kids dad came up to stay the night, along with his little puppy who peed all around the house. But he was so cute that we all forgave him. The kids were in bed by 10, but not before they left out a special snack for Santa!


I was pretty impressed by the earlier than ususal xmas eve bedtime this year, but Em was up at 4am, ready to open presents! She dragged me out of bed to show me all the pressies under the tree, and off to the side there was a desk and 'spinny chair' with her name on, with a cute little fish in a pink topped tank, just for her. (oops, forgot to get a piccie of those!)

After she showed me the stocking hanging on her door, stuffed full of goodies, I managed to convince her to lay down for a little while longer, and not to wake Jack up just yet. So I staggered back to bed for a little while, but before long, both kids were up, and ready for Christmas morning to begin!


Hmmm...I tried to get my usual Christmas morning photo of the kids in front of the tree, but they were too busy singing and swaying in time, for me to get a decent pic, so this is it!


Then it was time to rip into those pressies! Jack was thrilled to finally get a Wii, the look on his face says it all :)



And Em was so excited to get the Powerwing that she had wanted sooo badly :)


And that's where I put my camera down this year, for Christmas morning at least. I just wanted to enjoy the kids opening their pressies, instead of watching it all through the camera lens. And it was awesome, and over so fast. Jack of course was pretty happy with his Wii, and he got 5 games for it as well, including the Skylander game that he REALLY wanted. He got a couple of big legos too, and some DS games, some board games, ds accesories, touch screen MP3 thingy, water pistol, and some other stuff that I can't remember. And that was just from mummy and Santa.

Em was thrilled to bits with her desk, her little fighting fish, which has been named Santa Fish (the kids are not sure how Santa transported him from the North Pole, but they were pretty impressed), her powerwing of course, a TONNE of art and craft supplies, DS game, a couple of Barbies (she got 5 new Barbies all up this xmas, they are taking over the house!!) Hmmm...what else was under the tree...a touchscreen MP3 thing, board games, hula hoop, pin board for her 'art'. I should really have taken a photo of it all like I usually do!

A bit later on, Em had to try out her new scooter...


And then it was time for the kids to open their pressies from Poppy and Gek.





Portable Dvd players and DS games for both of them, as well as more Barbie stuff for Em, and clothes and shoes and I can't remember what else. Lots of stuff!

And lookie what I got from my gorgeous mum and dad...


OMG, I have never been so excited in my life!!! My first DSLR camera! I think I nearly died of shock when they gave it to me. Best present EVER!!

So in the afternoon, my little brother and his family came over, and there were MORE presents, and lots of time to just hang out together :)





Mum saved this pressie for all the grandkids for last. 3 monkeys for the 3 little monkeys...


The kids were so happy to have their cousin sleep over for 2 nights, and on Christmas night, the girls didn't go to sleep until 1am! It was such a great Christmas, the kids say it was the best Christmas EVER (they say that every year though), I think I have to agree though, I loved every second of it, but at the same time, I'm glad it's over for another year :)

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too :) I am looking forward to getting my house back to normal now, and seeing as the kids have gone to spend a couple of days with their dad, I'm hoping to get some scrapping done too!

Today...

Only 3 days to go, and it's feeling a lot like Christmas!!


We didn't end up going to the zoo the other day like we'd planned, but we did today! I even took a Santa hat with us, in the hopes of getting a Christmassy photo of the kids. But someone else was feeling a bit festive, and was more than happy to pose for a Santa hat photo :)

Hehe, actually, I thought he'd hop away once we popped the Santa hat on his head, but he couldn't care less, lol!


We only stayed at the zoo for a couple of hours. We've been too many times this year, and the kids are a bit bored of it all. The highlight for the kids today, was the little 3 week old piglets! Omg, I could have popped one in my bag and taken it home, they were SO cute! They were all running around like puppies, with their little tails wagging, and when we'd pat one, it would just freeze. With this one, Em scratched his scratchy spot on his back (just like a dog!), and his little legs buckled, and he just laid on the ground enjoying a scratch. As soon as she stopped, he was up and running again.


The best part of taking the kids to the zoo for me, was that I actually got a half decent photo of the kids!! The older Jack gets, the harder it is to get any photos of him, so even though he's not really looking at the camera, and looks like he doesn't want to be there, I'm pretty happy about this one.


After the zoo, we went to see Arthur Christmas!


It was actually pretty good, and I didn't mind sitting through it at all :)

And lastly, another Christmas layout...


Em was so tiny there!! I've used all Imaginisce on this page, including some coloured foam tape! I sure am going to miss getting all those parcels from Imaginisce, but I'm soooo looking forward to no more scrapping deadlines for a while :)

Hope your day was a good one!

Christmas Cooking

It's one of the things that the kids look forward to most in the lead up to Christmas...making all the yummy treats! So today we made a start on it, and first up on our Christmas cooking list is this marshmallow shortbread...


Next to Caramel Truffles, this is Emma's absolute fave, and it's soooo easy to make. I got the recipe from friend ages ago, and can't remember exact quantities, but basically this is how it goes...

1 pack of Arnotts Scotch Finger biscuits (crushed in food processor)
1/2 pack of Pascalls Marshmallows (chopped) - you could also use mini marshmallows
3/4 tin of condensed milk
60g melted butter
Dessicated coconut

Place crushed biscuits and chopped marshmallows into a bowl, and add melted butter and condensed milk. Stir until combined, then roll about half of the mixture into a log shape. Place it on baking paper that is covered in coconut and roll up and put into the fridge (repeat with the other half of the mixture too)When it has firmed up, cut it into slices...yum!

You could also just press it into a tin and sprinkle coconut on the top, then cut out some shapes with cookie cutters, like we've done here...


So far today we've also made some fruit and nut truffles, and at the moment Jack is making peanut butter cookies. They're not really part of our Christmas cooking, but they're Jack's fave, and the kitchen was messy anyway, so I just let him go for it. He's just put them in the oven, and they smell sooo good!

We're also planning to make rum and raison truffles, rocky road, caramel slice, shortbread, and a few other bits and pieces. Oh and of course, the gingerbread house! Probably save that for Christmas Eve. The kids are looking soooo forward to decorating it. I can't believe we didn't do our first gingerbread house until last year. Here's a page (one of the doubles I did for Australian Scrapbook Ideas magazine) about last years gingerbread house...


Oh, I hate how double pagers come up so teeny tiny on the blog!!


And just because the oven just dinged, and I had to get Jack's cookies out (he never likes to get them out himself!), here is a pic of them...


He was so impatient to try one, that by the time I'd turned around to grab my camera and take a photo, the little greedy guts had cracked off a corner of one of them! Still, it's nice that he is able to cook things on his own these days, so I guess he is entitled to do that :)

Well, I guess it might be time for me to go and cover the truffles in chocolate. (mmmm...melted chocolate!). Hope you're having a fun day!

She's got the Christmas Spirit

Well, so much for my plan to wake the kids up early. It's heading towards 9 o'clock, and they are still asleep. It's just so nice and peaceful this morning, that I couldn't bring myself to wake them! We are heading to the zoo later on, so hopefully that should tire them out for tonight, lol.

So I have another double pager to share today, using the very cute Imaginisce Santa's Little Helper range...


I really do love this range, the little die cuts are just the cutest! I've used a Purple Pumpkin flower on here too...



Em is just as obsessed with all things Christmas again this year. She keeps accusing Jack of not having 'Christmas Spirit', because he gets tired of listening to Christmas carols all day long! Every night when I tuck her in we have to discuss all aspects of what things might be like at the North Pole, and whether I'll let Em sleep in the lounge room this year, so she can ask Santa for a ride in his sleigh (that's all she wants for Christmas!) She would also like to make Jesus a birthday cake. This girl has enough Christmas spirit for all of us!