A Little Birdie Has Come to Nest

On Tuesday I was letting our dogs out for the day when I noticed this bird's nest hanging from the "clothesline" we have hanging under our back veranda.

There was no bird in the nest so I decided to have a peek inside and what did I spy?, a tiny little egg!

The tiny egg inside the nest

I was curious to find out what sort of bird had built this strange looking nest so I of course jumped on to the computer to Google what new life we will be seeing in the New Year.

After a little while I found what I was looking for and discovered we had a little family of Olive-Backed Sunbirds (commonly known as Yellow Bellied Sunbirds).

 Olive-Backed Sunbird Nest

I have been keeping an eye on the Mumma bird and she has been sitting on her precious little egg all day long. Can't wait until Rhyley is home after Christmas to see the nest with the Mumma bird in it and wait for the egg to hatch and watch the Mumma and Pappa bird raise there little baby in the New Year!

 Mumma Sunbird sitting in her nest

So today I was actually in the mood to do a little scrapbooking!  

Here are the layouts and with these two layouts I have achieved my goal of 52 layouts for the year!!

YAY!!! GO ME!! 

This layout is for the December Pimp My Page Challenge at Peppermint Creative (head over there to grab the freebie template) 

Credits are here

This layout I made using Grow With Love: Kids Edition by Sara Gleason & Crystal Livesay, Valorie Wibben's Platform 9 and 3/4 and Miss Mint's awesome new freebie kit Movie Night  

Credits here

Well I really must finish up got lots to do tomorrow before our trip away!

Until next time,

Only 7 More Sleeps

Yep that's right!
There are just 7 more sleeps until Christmas!
So excited for Christmas to get here!

I have done all our Christmas shopping I just need to wrap everything up.
Last night I made a Cheat's Fruitcake seriously it was the easiest cake I have ever made.
It only contains three ingredients! Yes you read that right, just three ingredients!
The ingredients are:

1 kg dried mixed fruit
600 ml chocolate milk
2 cups self-raising flour

(For the method check it out the recipe here )
I used Ice Break Iced Coffee in place of the chocolate milk, I added glace cherries (my favourite) to the fruit & I added 1/4 cup of Bundaberg Rum.
Luckily there was enough mixture left to make a tin can cake so we could try it before taking it down to Ballina for Christmas! This cake taste SO good, though I might try it with the chocolate milk next time to see if it changes the flavour.

I seriously can't wait to go away for Christmas cause I get to snuggle my little man who is currently away visiting Nanny & Poppy after visiting with Grandma for a few days before.
He had a great time with Grandma & got to see Aunty Melinda, Phil & all the cousins which was great! Now he is busy helping in Nanny & Poppy's Christmas shop & playing with Coop!

So here are the last of the layouts I have done so far:

Credits are here

This layout was made for Minty Mixed Bag Challenge at Peppermint Creative using Sunkissed Summer

Here are the credits 

Credits are here

Here's another Minty Mixed Bag Challenge layout using Chill Factor, Dear Santa, & Jolly Gingerbread from Peppermint Creative (all perfect for scraping those Christmas photos) & Grow With Love Holiday Edition by Sara Gleason and Crystal Livesay

 Here are the credits

Credits are here

Here's a layout for the August Pimp My Page Challenge at Peppermint Creative I did of Rhyley's trip to Ekka this year with Grandma I made this layout using Pinwheel Bubbles Kit

Get the credits here

Another Minty Mixed Bag Challenge layout with Miss Mint's Artsy Fartsy Kit

Credits here

Credits here

Here are the credits

And to wrap up this post I will share with you two hybrid projects I made.

I haven't had time to get this one printed yet but I plan to in the New Year

Check the credits

Here's a little Christmas Wall Art I made using Commercial Vectors by the super talented Tay Silver at Peppermint Creative. You can grab a freebie product here!

Credits here

Well that's it for now I am off to bed 

Until next time,

What A Month

Hey there.
Well Christmas is almost upon us. It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating Christmas, 2011 has really flown by.
So we have been really busy this month with school (seriously this term has been hectic), being of holidays, preparing for Christmas, organising our holiday.
This term at school Rhyley went on his first school camp, this was his first trip away from home that wasn't to a relative's house! They went to Action Challenge and he had an awesome time his favourite part was the giant swing they used there and hopefully we will get some photos from school in the new year. After camp they had 2 performances to attend, swimming lessons, end of year break up party (which was a trip to the cinema to see Puss In Boots, swimming and pizza for lunch), &their Christmas Concert and Party!
We have also been busy decorating and baking for the holidays, we decorated our Christmas tree & welcomed our cheeky Elf on the Shelf to our family- his name is Bumble aka SuperElf but I will write more about him and his antics in another post (Yes! he deserves a post all to himself!)
Rhyley & I made Gingerbread Heads for his classmates this year.
They were so cute & were a BIG hit with all the kids & parents too.

I definitely need to work on my icing skills and maybe I will have to practice a little more & (of course by making more cookies) but first I will need to by some decorating goodies on the web since they're harder to find here.
I got the idea for these Gingerbread Heads from Bakerella's website (I swapped Molasses for Golden Syrup that's why mine are lighter).

I packaged two of them up in a bag with a topper I made using Dear Santa & Jolly Gingerbread Elements from Peppermint Creative & Cookies for Santa by Kate Hadfield

Close up of the topper

We also made Rhyley's teacher Mrs Dyson a Crayon Art Monogram and these adorable Apple Containers which we filled with Mini Toblerones!

I got the idea for the "apples" here.
I made the apples out of recycled 600ml soft drink bottles & added a few "tweeks" by adding a piece of bottle to make a lip to place the lid on top. 

Anyway onto sharing with you some more layouts I have completed:

Layouts from July:
The Frosted Fun Elements & Papers where perfect for scrapping these photos of Rhyley first ice-skating attempt :)

Credits are right here

 

Credits are here


Check the credits

Well this post is alot longer than I expected so I will wrap it up for now.

Until next time

Catchin' Up!

Wow the last time I posted was at Easter time and obviously we have had alot happen in our family since then.
So much so I will not bore you with all the details.

The biggest news for our little family is that we moved. 
I don't mean just moved house I mean we MOVE 1200 kms north from Ipswich to Mackay. It was a huge decision to move the whole family and uproot our lives in Ipswich, have Rhyley change schools and leave old friends to make new ones. Despite the fact I had to pack our 3 bedroom house by myself I think we made the right move (haha pun intended)


Anyway here the layouts I have made since my last post

 April layouts:
This was made using MissMint's beautiful Hoppy Easter Elements & Papers

Credits are here

Credits are here

This layout of Rhyley showing off his Paper Jamz guitar was made using the rockin' kit iRock by MissMint

See the credits here

Slowly getting these baby photos scrapped!

Credits are here

Here are the credits 

Layouts from May:

Another baby photo (awww...)this page was made using the cute collaboration kit Sleep Tight, Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite by Sara Gleason and FruitLoOp Sally

Credits are here

Credits are here

This page came from one those things your kid says that is so funny/cute you want to remember it for when they are older (& possibly have kids of their own)!

Check the credits here

Credits are here

This page was made for a Minty Mixed Bag Challenge at Peppermint Creative

Credits are here

This layout made for the May Pimp My Page Challenge using MissMint's Sunkissed Summer Kit

Credits are here

Layouts from June:

Credits are here

Check the credits

There are more and I will post them next time this post is getting WAY too long so I will leave it here for now.

Until next time,

Hoppy Easter

Well, I have been busy lately which has meant no blogging for me but hey what's new!
So anyway the school term is almost finished and I have been a busy Mummy making up 24 of these wonderful Easter Treat Cones for Rhyley's classmates.

Credit can be found here

To make these adorable treat cones I used the following:

Treat Cone Template
Hoppy Easter Elements & Papers
Lightweight cardstock
Glue tape runner
Tissue paper
Ribbon

I printed all the treat cones and elements for the front and cut them all out by hand then I followed MissMint's tutorial on how to assemble these treats and filled them all with a small hollow egg, m&m's and candy-coated mini easter eggs before tying with ribbon.
They were easy to make once I got the hang of shaping them and I had heaps of fun doing it too!

Anyway that is not all I been up to I have been busy scraping to and add 4 new layouts to the count for this year here they are:

We celebrated Earth Hour this year so I decided to scrap this photo I took of Rhyley during our hour with NO lights. This layout and the next were both selected for Mintspirational Monday :)

Credits are here

This layout is of Snoopy trying to get a small piece of chocolate
(I would like to mention we don't allow the dogs to have chocolate all the time and if they do get some it is a very small piece. We are completely aware that chocolate can kill dogs in large amounts)

Credits can be found here

This layout I made using the awesome Child of the 80's doodles by Kate Hadfield

Credits are here

And the last one is yet another baby pic of my little man (one day I hope to finish the 8 year backlog lol)

Credits can be found here

Well that is it for now!
Until next time,

Illness and Stitches

Last Saturday we headed up to Toowoomba for the show and to see my parents.
Jason wasn't feeling 100% and of course forgot to take a jacket with us, so naturally it's a cool day which turned into a cold evening.
I am sure you have guessed where this is heading: He got SICK!

On Sunday he woke up even worse than the day before which is unusually cause he doesn't get ill often so off to the doctor I sent him. He returns home to inform me that he's has a sereve case of Tonsilitis!
By that evening I am feel abit scratchy myself and the Monday I am sick too.
Crazily Jason actually goes to work but his boss forced him to come home so we end up watching Smallville Season 9 on DVD together for the afternoon until we had finished the remaining episodes.

Tuesday came around Rhyley headed off to school and by the time he gets home he's not feeling crash hot either so we all head to the doctor.
Jason gets checked to see how the penicillin's working and is informed he has oral thrush as well because of the medication. Rhyley and I are checked next and Jason's shared his yucky germs with us both and we too have tonsillitis!, though it's mild compared to Jason's grrr....

So Rhyley had the Wednesday and Thursday off school and was feeling heaps better by Friday.
I am pretty sure he willed himself such a speedy recovery because he had a birthday party to attend at the local swimming pool.
Jason took Rhyley to the party and he was having a great time until he smashed his chin on the side of the pool and split it open. The pool staff cleaned it up and covered it with a bandage but the wound was pretty deep so we had to take him to the doctor to see if it needed stitching.
We waited 2 hours just to be seen, but finally we were seen and the doctor felt a couple of stitches were needed.
So after lots of tears and pleas to go home, the doctor managed to get the stitches done quickly.
Well that's about all the excitement I have got to share before I go though here is the layout I managed to get done during all the illness and drama.
It was also picked for Mintspirational Monday!

Here are the credits

Until next time,

April Fools!

Well, it's April 1st today which of course brings with it April Fool's Day!
I am definitely no fool though ;) (haha one of the many perks of being a Stay at Home Mummy) but it has given me a chance to get 2 more pages done today!

Yay for me and here they are:

Find the credits here

Credits can be found here

Well until next time,


P.S. Just had to metion that my layout above Hugs was featured on Peppermint Creative's Mint-spirational Monday!