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