Friday, December 11, 2009

2009

It's not quite over yet, but this year has been... woah.
This time last year I had *just* received my first full time teaching post and if you'd told me then where i'd be at now I'm not sure how I would've reacted.

Some parts of this year have been absolutely amazing... others have been shocking moments that I'd rather forget forever. Others still have been tremendous learning curves both professionally and personally.

Overall, I'd still say it's been a great year... though the most accurate adjective would be INTERESTING...

Best Bits
TERM 1: Things were going well and i was honestly LOVING my class of year 7s and felt good about the whole thing... it was going to be a fantastic year.
The Pre-Wedding Surprise Party put on by the kids of 7B. There was a slushee machine!!
OUR 4th OF JULY WEDDING!!! best day of our lives. enough said.
BUYING OUR HOUSE (just those two points alone smell of 'great australian dream' coming true in the space of about 6 weeks)
YEAR 7 CAMP. I can honestly say I loved every minute of it, it's just a shame that things took a turn for the worse at work the very next day.
MEETING MY 4th COUSINS... the timing was brilliant, they came into my life at a time when I really just needed someone to talk to about everyday stuff, to distract me from the bad stuff that had just happened. (Not to mention that they are fantastic people and i love them to pieces)

Big Achievement
Sticking out my job for as long as I did. Considering the factors that stacked up against me to make things rather miserable for me for a while there, I did well most of the time. So yes, I TAUGHT A YEAR 7 CLASS FOR THREE TERMS and the majority of my kids learnt many new things with me and just loved me to pieces, I know this for sure so I know I must've done SOMETHING right.

Big Curveball
Aforementioned Great Australian Dream came under attack when I abruptly left my teaching career behind. There was an on/off period of unemployment/casual work and I started studying a Certificate III in something completely & awesomely different.

Another Big Achievement
Kicking the black dog's butt. While it could be argued that i was suffering from a work-related depression of sorts for awhile there, the "true" depression that plagued me in 2007 & 2008 did NOT make its way into 2009. I wouldn't let it. So even when things were incredibly crap... even when I had left my job, even when i was painfully unemployed, even when things just weren't stacking up for me and it seemed I'd been dealt an incredibly unfair blow, i didnt let it get me down.

I'll probably add another similarly themed "2009" post before the year is through... it will be more of a highlight of the little moments that made this year just awesome in its odd way.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Recent Stuff












These are some recent, and not so recent layouts. Have been really slack with updating my blog especially now that this computer isn't working too well. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't have cropping software sooOooo i have to try and edit on here (my old desktop pc) and hope for the best... hope that my stuff doesn't disappear or get virus infested while i'm sleeping :)

Oh, and I thought I'd share what my scrapdesk looks like on a tidy day...


Thanks for looking!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Long Lost

I don't normally celebrate Halloween, but when a long lost 4th cousin (who is just about MY AGE) invited me to her party, i just had to say yes! I really wanted to meet my cousins who, while they are only distantly related to me, are the only relatives i have that are CLOSE TO MY AGE. As someone who has hated being an only child and being so generationally challenged in my extended family, it was a hugely big deal to finally get the chance to know family around my own age. I went all by myself knowing NOBODY and had a fantastic time with Kat, Jase, Jessica and Mark as well as some of their mates.
Me & Jessica... she's been trying to tell me that, from my photos on facebook at least, she thinks we look alike. I was like nahhhhh i don't see it.. until we had this photo together on Saturday night. I sort of see it now :)
Jason & Mark


Jessica (devil), Me (minnie mouse) and Kathryn (witch)


Thursday, October 8, 2009

Let's Get Shabby Sketch Challenge


Here is my entry for the current LGS challenge.
This month it involved a sketch and "something vintage" so i used some of the lace i found at the op shop a week ago and some random bits and pieces i got off ebay or as gifts as well as gorgeous prima flowers, heidi swapp alphas and journaling tags from both Daisy D's and Bella. Phew.


Uploading Layouts











Here are some recent layouts.

The wedding ones were completed during the month of September. There is one in there that is based on the current 'sketch to inspire' over at Pinkalicious Sketches. Can you guess which one it is? The ones that are of normal, everyday life were completed... TODAY! I finally did some more scrapping after taking a bit of a break from it for a few weeks.

They're pretty average, but... meh.




Monday, October 5, 2009

Yikes, it's been a while!

Life has been... busy in a fun way. I really REALLY enjoyed my school holidays this time.
I resigned from my job at the end of last term. LONG STORY!

Here are a few photos of some recent happenings at our place and around here somewhere :)


Meet Cocoa & Vader, our guinea pigs.
We got them just under two weeks ago and it's been love LOVE LLLLLOOOOOVE ever since.
I had originally named Vader "MILLIE" but that lasted all of about 3 hours, and then Ben came home and decided he looked like Darth Vader. Hrrrmph. Cocoa is my baby and I just adore him.


I went up to Atherton and killed two birds with one stone. Originally made plans with Antonella but, look who else was in town!! Frank (who i went to uni with and who is Ant's good friend as well) was up from the Isa and so he joined us for our catch up sesh at the Coffee Club.

Oh, and a few weeks ago we had to dog-sit the Dog-In-Law, Milo, for a night. He's such a pleasant pup. Love him.


Riiiiiiight at the beginning of the holidays, the ROSHC girls came over to my place and we had a little morning tea. It was sooo good to catch up with the girls. We're going through a similar sort of stage of life at the moment... Karina and her boyfriend just bought a house, as did Katie and her boyfriend a few months ago.

Chloe was up from Townsville last week and so we caught up and made things right. It only took a year, some chocolate cake and a random op shop hop to make everything better. Here she is, pictured with a random "kool" car we saw at the shops.

Ben bought these BEAUTIFULLY scented roses at a road side stall on the way home last week, just because. Isn't he just awesome?!


Oh, and I had a tupperware party a few weeks ago too. Ben's mum just started demonstrating Tupperware a few weeks ago and so I had a party.


And here's a pic from our Housewarming which was a while ago now. It's just Stephen, Katharine and Benny pictured here. It was a good night with about 20 of our mates over for a BBQ and quiet drinks. Good times.


This was just Saturday night. The usual crew, our fantastic five. My best mates.

Annie & I being posers.
Adam's ute yesterday at Ross & Locke. He managed to drain the battery by playing music the whole 3 hours or so that we were there so we had to push start it to get it going again. I'd like to think that my awesome wheel turning, braking and then finally "pushing" actually did help the boys get it going again. Cocoa and Vader having a look in the mirror and just playing around during their Very Secure free range time in our room teh other day. I was completely anal about making sure they didn't poop on the carpet and surprisingly they held it in. Well done, guys!

And finally.... the hutch that Ben has been working on for the last week or so is finally finished. Well done, Ben!! :D

...I haven't done any scrapping in a while. Just haven't had the time or inclination for a few weeks. Lots of photos and great stories to document so i should probably get onto that when I get days off!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Alive & Scrapping...


That's my entry for the new Let's Get Shabby challenge. I've always liked the lacey lumps on other people's layouts but have never felt confident enough to give it a go myself. Today I thought, meh, might as well give it a go.... it's a huge stash of op shop lace i bought for some incredibly low price a few months ago and haven't had the inclination to use so... there it is. Whacked on my shabby layout in a Lace Lump. By the way that is Vanilla cardstock underneath... it's just incredibly poor lighting for some reason.

I've been at home sick today so I decided to take some photos of my more recent work... I haven't uploaded ANYTHING for over a month because we've been so busy moving into our very own home. So here is four weeks' worth of scrapping work:










Phew... that's a lot of uploading. Thanks for looking.
:)