A weekend with the Cliffords

Well I am afraid I have no scrapbooking to share this week. Was on a roll there for a couple of weeks and got a heap of layouts done. I'm afraid I have been too busy this past fornight to do too much at all. I am working on a layout at the moment for the November Newsletter for Scrap of Faith, but I can't share it just yet.

Last weekend we had Sal and Mark Clifford and there gorgeous family come visit us for three days. We had a really great time with them and the weekend went way too quickly. They arrived Friday night and I am afraid that it was a very late night as Sal and I caught up. Katrina (Millie) also dropped in for a surprise visit and it was just great to see her.

Saturday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and then Sal and I went down to Embellished to catch up with Ali Russell and also to do a little scrapbook shopping. Saturday afternoon we had our monthly crop. Sal and Mark took the children up to the Botanical Gardens to visit the zoo and then Sal joined us a little later in the afternoon - unfortunately she had a really bad headache so didn't get much scrapbooking done. In fact, other than unpacking it all, I don't think she got any done.

On Sunday we went to church in the morning and then went for a drive to Emu Park where we visited the Singing Ship. There was a great breeze, so the ship was really singing this time. We had afternoon tea at "Ritamada" - the Grammar School beach property and the kids had a great time rolling down the grass hills. Now when I say the kids, both Steve and Mark were huge kids too and were racing the littlies down the hill.
We dropped into "Cool Waters" so I could show Sal where we hold our Scrapbooking Retreats, and everyone had heaps of fun on the "Jumping Pillow". The kids just loved the fact that Mark, Sal and Steve all joined them. Just goes to show that you never grow up and get old.

We dropped into Yeppoon for a bit of a play on the beach before heading home. Unforunately the tide was pretty much in so there was very little beach to play on, although the children enjoyed collecting some shells.

Sal and Mark left on Monday - It was hard to beleive the weekend went so quickly. We have been looking forward to their visit for so long and in no time the weekend was over.

On Tuesday, my neice Natalie and her husband Nathan and their girls came in for a couple of days. We had a great time with them also. Natalie is on 24, but has four children and is an absolute awesome mum and woman. She is such a positive person and I enjoy her company immensley. It was great having them in. We all went to Hog's Breath Cafe for dinner on the Tuesday night, and then Nat very kindly offered to cook dinner on the Wednesday night. I got to bath the girls. So nice to spend time with them. They left Thursday, so this past week has been pretty full on.

We have had a lovely relaxing weekend though - they come and go way too quickly.

By the way I have been tagged again too - by Anne and Karma from Faith Sisters.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).

4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

My 7 facts:

1. I am a Christian.

2. I travelled overseas when I was 17.

3. My favorite card game is Phase 10.

4. I love the beach and anything to do with the water.

5. Most of all I love spending time with my amazing Husband and wonderful Kids.

6. I love watching sunsets.

7. When I am really tired I tend to rock backwards and forwards.

My 7 Taggees:

1. Nat: http://nat-mardon.blogspot.com/

2. Anthea: http://www.our-life-story.blogspot.com/

3. Lali: http://scrappingmad.blogspot.com/

4. Chrissy: http://chrissy3.blogspot.com/

5. Julie: http://random-thoughts-of-a-heard.blogspot.com/

6. Gayle: http://gayles-scrapbooking.blogspot.com/

7. Rowena: http://willrownco.blogspot.com/

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.

Great week of creating

Not a lot has happened this week. I've had a weeks holiday at home. First one this year. For both the Easter and June/July holidays we were away the whole time. I haven't done much other than scrapbook this week. The ironing is still piled up, the sideboard is still dusty, the floors still need a mop. I did manage to keep the washing up to date, the dishes done, the beds made, and the floors swept. Also got the curtains washed, and the blinds washed, as well as a few windows. I never did get around to cleaning the linen cupboard and the hall way cupboards, but I did have a lot of fun creating. I did manage to fit in a foot massage and a back massage, lunch and coffees with a few girlfriends as well. All in all it has been a great week - just wish it wasn't ending - just wish I didn't have to go back to work again next week. Ah well that's life I guess, and I truely am thankful that I am in a job which does allow me to have extra holidays a year.
First layout is photo of Pete and his ex house mates (well Chris, the guy sitting in the middle on the couch, is still one of Pete's house mates) taken at Josh's wedding. This is like the first of them to get married. The next one is similar - sort of like the end of an Era - all single guys. I guess life will change a bit in the next few years for them all.

"We are Family" is Steve's favourite layout. He really likes this one. Love how he always enjoys looking at my work, and is happy to show his appreciation. (Even though he grumbles occasionally about my shopping). I know that he appreciates the work that goes into them all the same. This next layout is a direct scraplift of one of Ali Russells (Embellished) layouts even down to the choice of papers. I particularly loved this layout - really loved her choice of papers, and it was one of the classes that I really really wanted to go too, but couldn't because I was in hospital. She is such a talented scrapbooker - her layouts are amazing and she does them so quickly.


Took lots of photos of the girls whilst Sarah was home on holidays, not often we are able to take photos of our kids together, especially with the older two living in Brisbane. Had to make the most of the opportunity, so have scrapped the last three layouts of the girls. The "Beautiful Girls" layout did not photograph real well - it is not true to colour, it actually looks better in real life.



Have a house full of teenagers here at the moment. Think there are 15 of them, all here for a movie night and sleep over. At the moment they are madly running around outside playing the tradition Latham game called "Smack in the Dark". I am sure the neighbours will think they are all being murdered by the noise they make.

Thanks to everyone who visits my blog and leaves such lovely comments, I really appreciate all your lovely thoughts and well wishes over the past couple of weeks whilst I had my brief visit to hospital.

Before I forget - I have been meaning to draw the names for the "PAY IT FORWARD" from September 10th entry in my blog.
The lucky three are Diane Lovell, Lali Torres, and Casey Baldwin (Scripture by Design).
Girls if you could email me your address I will pop something in the mail for you all.

Remember you have to keep it going forward too, so you will need to post it on your blog if it's YOU!

Don't forget to say HI if you drop in and visit this blog and have a great week.

Back Home again.

Wow so much has happened since I last posted. I went in for surgery - all good news, Praise God, and then headed off to Brissie where I caught up with my kids over night. Got in plenty of shopping - too much really, and even got to all go to the movies together before I had to head off to Toowoomba for my week on campus for work. I have even managed to do a couple of layouts since I last posted which I will share.

Although most of the layout is mine, I have to admit I saw the felt sun and title on a layout some time ago and though wow I really like that so have scraplifted the suns and title. Really am happy with this layout.

This second layout was a layout about why I liked to scrapbook.

Perhaps the highlight of my trip away was meeting up with the Scrap of Faith girls in Brissie on Saturday for a picnic lunch and finally getting to meet Lusi Austin and Kerryn in real life. They are such beautiful woman. I also got to meet Lusi's friends Jill and Lu and their families. It was also really lovely to catch up with Nat and Sal as well. It was a great picnic (and lots of photo taking). Even the kids were taking photos.

Thank you to all of you who prayed for me when I went to hospital. The results were good, and the whole experience was no where near as bad as I remembered it from the last time I had this procedure. (which I might add was over 20 years ago) It is true - medical science has come a long way in the last twenty years.

I spent last week on Campus at USQ in Toowoomba for our annual weeks seminar. We get to meet with all the faculties and learn about any changes to courses for 2008. Also had some hands on sessions in the computer labs and also in the library. One of the highlights of the week was being able to attend the "International Woman's Conference" which just happened to be on the same week we were on campus at USQ. We were able to attend a few of the Keynote speakers addresses. This was really interesting and I particularly enjoyed the addresses by Proffessor Linda Duxbury from Canada on "Work Life Balance" and also the address by Cr. Di Thorley the Mayor of Toowoomba. Whilst the week is pretty full on, we do have some great social times as well. On Tuesday night a few of us went to the club and joined in with the Engineers in their trivia night. There were 8 of us and we were no match for them- we didn't do so well (came second last I think) but we had a great night and didn't have to buy a drink all night. Think we also managed to trade our spare drink vouchers in for a bottle of red and white wine which we then took to our PJ party the next night.

On the Wednesday night a special dinner is held in our honor and this year we had a PJ Party. What a hoot. It felt a little weird going out to dinner in our PJ's and Nighties. Not used to going outdoors in mine at all. We had a great night with some light hearted entertainment and lots and lots of good old belly laughs. The RLO's are spread from Melbourne to Cairns, and this week is the only time in the year that we all get together. Although it is really a very full on week and we all come home exhausted, we all kind of look forward to it too as in a way it is a bit like a family reunion. There are 16 of us with most of us working for USQ in excess of 10 years. I think we worked out that collectively we have over 187 years of experience.

My friend Karen (the RLO from Emerald) then spent the weekend in Brissie with me and we got to catch up with my older kids. We were also able to catch up with the Scrap of Faith Girls on Saturday for a picnic lunch at Mt. Cootha. It was so good that my visit in Brissie also coincided with the weekend Lusi was flying to Brissie was the same weekend to catch up with Nat. We have emailed and kept in touch with each other through Scrap of Faith and our blogs but have never had the chance to meet IRL. It was so exciting to finally get to do this and also to meet Kerryn who is also just a very delightful lady. It was also really great to catch up with Sal and Nat again and get to have a cuddle of the absolutely gorgeous Miss Lani. Just love catching up with you girls. You are so inspiring and encouraging and I really do treasure and value your friendships. Needless to say we had a great time catching up and we took heaps and heaps of photos. (Love for you to email me yours too girls)

Saturday night got to go see my Son-in-laws band perform at West End. Sarah, Karen and I went out for dinner first and then went to check out the boys. They have been playing in a "Battle of the Bands" competion and the semi finals were on Saturday night. They made it through to the finals which will be on this Saturday night. First prize is $10,000 worth of sponsorship, so I hope they do well again this weekend.

Thought I would finish off by sharing a photo of my my gorgeous daughter and a mother daughter shot. I had a great time with you Colin, and Pete darl - I do love catching up with you all and I feel so blessed to have such terrific kids.

I know that this post is long but I am so thankful and grateful for so many things so want to finish off with just a few of the things I am grateful for today.

1. For a God who loves me and has an awesome plan for my life.

2. For the blessing of family whose love and respect I will always treasure.

3. For wonderful friends, both new and old. How blessed I feel.

4. For having work that allows you to encourage and support others.

5. For Spring, the cool breezes, the sunny skies, the perfume of flowers - just the beauty that surrounds us each and every day.

6. For LIFE itself - for love, and laughter and tears and frustrations, just every aspect of being able to live life.