Exciting Week - We won the Award

Some great exciting news this week. A couple of months ago, Outreach Services at USQ (which is the section I work for) won a Carrick Citation ($10,000) for Programmes that Enhance Learning in the Services Supporting Student Learning. We were then nominated for the Carrick Awards for Australian University Teaching ($25,000). GUESS WHAT - WE WON. This is a huge achievement as The Carrick Awards are extremely competitive, well-respected and highly sought-after national awards amongst the top universities in the country , so as you can imagine, winning one is a huge deal. Three people from our team will be flown to Canberra for the Awards Ceremony at Parliament House in November, where we will be presented with our prize money of $25,000. This will add to the $10,000 we have already won earlier. Now our boss and the second in charge are going, and she is going to put all our names in a hat to see who will join them in going. It is not likely to be me at all - but what a wonderful birthday present it would be if I was selected to be able to represent the University at a function like this. Still nothing can take away the pride we feel at having won such a prestigious award, and we are all just so excited by the win.

Life has been pretty steady here the last week or so, so I have had lots of fun scrapbooking. Bit of a horrendous start to term at school last week - got called all the names under the sun, and none of them were nice - lost my little mate for a week, whilst he gets a chance to sit at home and think about his actions. Hope things improve somewhat this week when he comes back.

Chloe has had lots of work during the last three weeks and is enjoying having money of her own to spend. She has been pretty generous and took her Dad to the movies with her first pay packet.

Other than that not much else to report. Looking forward to having the Clifford Family come visit for a few days this weekend. It will be good to catch up with Sal, Mark and the children. We have our monthly crop on this weekend, so Sal will get to join us for that. Should be fun.

Thought I would share the layouts I have completed this week. I wanted to do a layout about meeting Lusi and Kerryn and catching up with Nat and Sal from Scrap of Faith. Feel so blessed to know these girls and they have been a huge encouragement to me over the period of time that I have known them. I had heaps of individual photos of my girls from the day we did the photo shoot for Father's Day, so thought I would do a layout reminding Chloe that she is the daughter of a KING - the God of Heaven and Earth, so that makes her a Princess. She acts like one at times too - and she definately has her dad wrapped around her little finger.

This third layout is a photo that I particularly love of Chloe - the day she was bridesmaid for her sister was sort of like her coming of age. She was transformed from an absolute tomboy into quite a beautiful young woman. She shocked a lot of people on this day by how beautiful and grown up she looked. She was only 13 here.

This layout was inspired by a layout that I have in my saved folder for scrapbooking ideas. I am not sure who to give the credit too, but I wanted to play around with the paper doilies, and also use the tulle that was in Chloe's bridesmaid dress. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. This is something really different for me.

The last two layouts are basically scraplifts of Gina Miller. Gina is a digital scrapbooker, but I so loved the large scallops, that I just had to do something like this with paper though, myself. These layouts are pretty funky, but just love the way they turned out. Especially suits the photos, as both of the girls are very much out there kind of people.

Lastly I finished the layouts for Chrissy CJ (from Scrap of Faith) on "Beleive". Had fun doing this one Chrissy - hope you like it.

Finally I would love to congratulate Lusi Austin on her awesome new range of stamps and chipboard. They really are awesome Lusi, and I am having real trouble deciding on which ones I want to get first. It is so exciting to see your new range and I just know that they are going to become very popular - go check them out at Buzz and Bloom and make sure you get onto your LSS to order some and stock them.

Things to be grateful for this week:-

A husband who is totally loyal, totally loving, and totally supportive of all I do.

Raindrops on roses - the fragrance of my "Mr. Lincolns" - how I love my roses.

Jobs, that we both enjoy and which provide for all our needs and more.

Friendships, not only at home here. but all the wonderful girls I have met online.

God's goodness to us each and every day - his awesome plan for our lives which we don't always understand straight away.

that Sal and Mark and the children are coming to visit this weekend.