A Creative Life

Better than Brilliant!!

I never exagerate! If you belive that then you may be a little gullible!  But my dishwasher is better than brilliant!!  It has revolutionised my life this week!  My sink has been dish free since it's appearance, my kitchen clean, my life feels more in control!!  All of this from 1 appliance and I ask myself why on earth have I not insisted on this much, much earlier!!  I am NOT exagerating here, the dishwasher saves me at least an hour and a half a day, possibly 2 hours some days!  How amazing is that!!!  Yes, I have hugged it, given it an affectionate pat and smiled at it fondly.  It is my new baby and does not keep me awake at night!  I could bestow its virtues further but I think you get the idea!!  For the record, I ended up buying the more expensive Bosch and am very happy with it!

Well last week I was relating the story of Ethan being in trouble at school!  This week it is Cameron!  Aaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!! Is there no end to being a Mother!! I swear that the school is going to groan when another little Koczwara enters those gates to attend!!  They will be looking for the duct tape to keep their mouths closed to prevent interruptions in class!  Needless to say, there is another parent / teacher discussion scheduled to work out a management plan for Cameron this time and I will just shake my head in shame that I have a child (ahem, make that a couple of children) who are so disruptive in class it requires a double approach of both teacher and parental intervention to try and improve the situation!

I have also had some pages up on the Aussie Scrap Source Blog . This one was for featuring the new Anna Griffin papers.  I created this LO using Fifi and Fido range which is supposed to be a pet range!  I may have omitted all the cute pet images while using it!  Just love the fresh spring colours in this one.

Soooo, onto my exciting news.  I am so delighted to be continuing with my favourite manufacturer, Prima!!  I am so honoured to be amongst such amazingly talented ladies in this industry as one of Prima's Core Education Team.  The Educators will be posting to their own blog, with projects and tutorials so be sure to check it out regularly!! Prima Education Blog, bookmark this link for future reference so you can keep up with all the updates on this site as it is seperate to the normal Prima blog.  I have a LO with  complete step x step instructions coming up shortly, so keep your eyes peeled.

Huge congratulations to everyone else on the team and I look forward to the year ahead!!  I really can't wait to get started on this amazing venture and if you are a store owner, and want to have some extremely talented Prima Educators in your store, contact [email protected] for more details.  Thanks for stopping by!!

 

Random Ramblings

This week I had a melt down!!  Yes, the piles and piles of dishes I have to do have become more than I can bare ( feel like half my life is spent between the kitchen and the laundry!) and despite not being able to afford it, i decided, "stuff it" I am going to get a dishwasher!!  I thought it would be a simple process, but of course the more I looked the harder my decision became!  Despite my grand plan to have ordered one by Wednesday last week, here I am still debating the pros and cons of a couple of machines!!  The only thing standing between me and my first choice......the price of it!!  So now I sit in limbo land trying to decide if I can justify the extra expense to get my first choice.  In the meantime, my hands are getting more dishpanned by the day!!  Hopefully by my next post I will have made up my mind, purchased a dishwasher and be enjoying its benefits!!!

On the family front, I had the most amazing surprise!!  My friend Estelle made me cry tears of joy this week!!  How did she do that you ask?  Well her son Joel and my eldest Lachlan are best friends and he is regularly over at their house.  So much so they feel like he is part of their family!! LOL!  In this instance that included them offering to take Lachlan on their holiday with them.  No ordinary quick trip away!  They are going on a crusie and have asked that Lachlan join them as it will make it so much more fun for their son Joel to have Lachlan around for company!  All I have to do is make sure he has a passport!  I was so blown away by their kindness and generosity and for Lachlan to have such an amazing opportunity, one that we are not able to offer him due to financial constraints of having 5 kids! Words are inadequate to express how appreciative I am to Estelle and Chris for giving Lachlan this amazing opportunity!

Cameron is super excited to have made it to the Cross Country squad for his school! He ran his little heart out on Friday and came 12th out of 45, so I was very pleased with that!!  He thinks he is invincible so was a bit disappointed he didn't come in the top 3!! LOL!  Love his confidence!

Ethan's teacher has requested a meeting with me to work out ways of dealing with Ethans disruptive talking in class.  He has been banned from sitting next to his friend Olivia!!  At the end of last year they made sure they split Ethan and Hannah into seperate classes and this year it is Ethan and Olivia!! He tells me Olivia is "hot"!!  He is such a Casanova!!!  He has been sat at a table all on his own to try and stop his disruptive behaviour but still he manages to talk to all within earshot!!  I am at a loss!!  I jokingly suggested she masking tape his mouth shut!!  Even when he is home, in a room by himself, he talks constantly to himself, so how much worse is he going to be with an audience!!!

Ashton is making his presence felt with a lot of demanding, angry noises eminating from his little self!!  If he is not happy you sure know about it!  He loves nothing more than to try on everyones shoes!!  Let me tell you, Paul's size 15 shoes are almost as big as Ashton so that is one hilarious sight to see! Another new development with him, when he sees a dog he makes gutteral 'woofing' noises for quite some time afterward!  Very funny!!

On the scrapping front, I have created this LO for the May BAP for Prima!!  Anam always makes beautiful sketches and I have so much fun working with them.  I adjusted the number of photos but kept many design elements similar to the sketch.

Once again I added layer upon layer of details.  Just adore the look of rich layers at the moment.

Well that is it for this week.  Hopefully I will have more to share next week!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

Mother to a Teenager

I am now officially a Mother to a Teenager!!!  Lachlan turned 13 on Friday!!  His plans for a birthday celebration did not quite pan out the way he had wanted as his best friend could not stay over due to a prior comittment, so that was a bit disappointing for him, but he has been enjoying gathering together his monetary gifts in his wallet!!  I think he has more money than our household combined!!  

He announced that he wanted to invest in shares!!! Which amused us quite a bit  We have convinced him to start a bank account and add a minimum of $20 per month to it!  We figured that this way, by the time he reaches 17 he will be part way to having enough to pay for a car and by adding a bit more each month should definately have enough for his first car.  Lets see how this goes, but at this stage he is very keen!

Over the weekend we caught up with friends for a picnic at Mt Crawford. The kids have heaps and heaps of fun running around in the forest while the adults tried to relax by the fire. (the sword fights with sticks between children didn't put us at ease!)   I did take a couple of photos of the youngest members of the family!  The rest of them were off at warp speed, racing through the forest, so no pictures of them!!

Ashton has now reached 19 months of age and he has started to increase his repertoire of words quite a bit!  He has been saying Hello and Goodbye since before he was 12 months old, but has not said much else since then.  In fact he has barely ever said mumma or dadda!  But in the last few weeks he has added "bag",  "ta", "no" and a few of the kids names to his vocabulary.

Little Miss Kaitlyn always amazes me with her brilliant smile.  She is a pretty girl all the time but when this girl smiles, I swear she could light up a room and bring joy to anyone who looked at her!  I keep wondering if I should enroll her with a child modelling agency but I really object to having to pay the joining fee as I think that they prey on proud Mummy's like myself who think they have a gorgeous child and get money out of them for nothing!!

OK, enough about the tribe!!  I created this LO as a tribute to my Grandmother.  We are so alike it is quite amazing.  Not just in personality but in many of the experiences we share as well.  At 93 she is quite the trooper and I really hope she can make the 100!!  I want my kids to all remember her so I need her to stick around quite a bit longer!  She still lives on her own, so that is pretty darn good.  she may have to go through 5 or more family member names before getting it right, but heck, I can say one or two before I get my kids right as well!

Mothers Day saw lots of handmade gifts and cards for me and the kids made pancakes for me, that included the extra crunch of eggshell!!  Bless their sweet little selves, it is the thought that counts. I also got an electric throw rug to keep me roasty toasty warm at night while watching television!  I do enjoy being roasty toasty warm at night!!  I hope those of you who are Mothers had a lovely day!!  If you have got to here... thanks for stopping by!