Bella the elephant packed her trunk …

Picture this … Monday of the last week of term at school … Bella brings home a note – all Pre-Primary students are to dress as a letterland character on the last day of school (Thursday) and bring along a plate of food to share at lunch time.  Mum is working all week, recovering from the flu, feeling tired and burnt out and just can’t WAIT for the school holidays to hurry up and get here.

The conversation goes like this ….

Mum (M):  “So who do you want to go as Boo”?

Bella (B): “Golden Girl”.

(M): “But you don’t have any yellow clothes”.

(B): “Oh” … pause … “Clever Cat then”.

(M): “Okay, we’ve got those little tiger ears on a headband and a tail somewhere.  You can wear jeans etc. and ears and a tail”.

(B): “Oh no, I need a PROPER costume.  I can’t just wear jeans”.

(M): (rolling eyes) “Ah, it’s Monday night – we have to have this ready by Thursday morning and I’ve got heaps on.  I know, how about you go as Eddy Elephant instead?  We have that REALLY cute little elephant costume in the dress up box”.

(B): “Nah, I don’t want to be a boy”.

(M): “Okay, go as Elley Elephant then”.

(B): “No, don’t want to”.

(M): “Please … you would look so gorgeous and I GUARANTEE you’ll be the only elephant there (I hope!)”.

(B): “Don’t want to”.

(M): … in desperation … “I’ll pay you $5 to wear it”.

(B): … pause … “Okay”. 

LOL.  The things us working Mothers do!

She wore the costume, called herself Elley Elephant, and looked absolutely gorgeous.  And she WAS the only elephant there on the day – there were about 10 Clever Cats.  Can’t think why??!! 

I’m procrastinating.  I should be doing some legal transcription, but typing about elephants on my blog seemed more appealing somehow!

Hope you’re having a great weekend.  It’s really cold here.  I might even have to put the heater on tonight!

Thanks for stopping by … I’m going to be good and do some work now.

Fx

More Photoshop

It’s been a wet, blustery day here.

I did a small typing job this morning for a lovely lady who called me the other day to ask if I could type a letter for her husband.  They were from out of town so dropped the letter off to me this morning, I typed it then delivered it to them as the kids and I had a few errands to run.

Further to the Nintendo DS saga of the other day … Angus has decided that he doesn’t want to keep it – so George has stepped into the fray (willingly) and purchased it off his brother.  Of course now Angus is getting upset because George wants to trade in the game he bought.  Sigh!  A mother’s life is certainly never dull. 

The kids are all watching the Igor movie, so I thought I would spend a bit of time doing a couple more classes from Jessica Sprague.

I found some childhood photos the other day on a memory stick (which I had forgotten about!).  I thought I would use a few of those – nostalgia and all that!  This one is of my brother Paul and I – we were going to a family wedding (I think?) and Dad snapped this pic of us.  I must have been around 15 or 16 – still wearing the dreaded plate after having braces on my top teeth.  Don’t you love the flicky hair??  My hair is pretty straight and I always wanted the Farrah hair style in the 70’s.  Alas my hair didn’t do flicky – but obviously this day I’d managed to get it to do something other than just be straight.

The little “celebrate” stamp is a brush tool which you use in photoshop to make it look like you’ve stamped onto the photo.  Pretty neat eh?

This next photo is a vintage hand-tinted look.  I chose a photo which my Dad had labelled Hiawatha1979 – so I was 11 years old – in Intermediate (equivalent Year 6 in Australia) – the same age Angus is now.  I was such a tiddler Mum had to make my school uniform (they didn’t make them small enough!) and my school bag was just about bigger than me.    I reduced the tint in the original photo, and hand painted in the blue of my dress.  I’ll put the original photo below it as a comparison.

Photoshop is fun.  I’m enjoying having a play with the different tools and can see the software has amazing potential.

I hope you are enjoying the school holidays, if you have school aged children at your place?  I was very proud of myself last night – I tidied my room!    The kids were giving me a hard time about telling them to tidy theirs when mine was none-too-gorgeous looking, so that was the task for the evening.  Bella even commented on it when she trotted into my room for her morning cuddle this morning.  “Wow Mum, your room looks amazing”.  Now I just have to keep it that way.

Thanks for stopping by…

Fx

Using Photoshop

For a long time I’ve wanted to buy Photoshop software, but it’s one of those things that is never a “necessity” so I’ve made do with free software like Irfanview for “playing” with my photos (which mostly means resizing them for putting on my blog or emailing to family).

Last week I came across a free online class which was being offered by Jessica Sprague.  I decided to sign up for it, and I’m using the free download from Photoshop which gives you a one month trial.

Here’s what I created from the first class:-

This class was learning to use Frames and Wordart.  What do you think?  I had fun, and I can see this is something I’d like to experiment with a bit more for my new you-beaut scrapbooking book (which I’m yet to start BTW).

It’s always fun to learn new things.  I’d better start saving my pennies now to buy Photoshop software!

Fx

This is F-u-n-n-y!

I received this as an email to a group I’m a member of for my business.  I laughed and laughed, so thought I would share it here.  I’ll keep it all in mind should I ever decided to go for Husband 2.0! 

Installation procedure for HUSBAND 1.0 system

Dear Tech Support,

Last year, I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the romantic word, flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as  Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1.

Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.  What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate

DEAR DESPERATE,

Keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme. html, try to download Tears 6.2, and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.

If those applications work as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1.
Please note that Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Passing wind and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0-program. This is an unsupported application and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend  Cooking 3.0 and   Hot Dressing 7.7.

Your Support Team

We are enjoying the school holidays here.  I even managed to SLEEP IN this morning – such bliss!

Angus has been saving his pocket money (and recent birthday money) and today bought a Nintendo DS Lite.  Except now he’s having second thoughts and saying that he didn’t really want to spend the money (we have been to the shop about 10 times in the last few months and he can never commit).  Do you have children like that?  I’m at a loss to know how to deal with it.  He should be really excited and happy that he’s finally got a DS, but instead he’s in tears and saying “I don’t know … you made me buy it” (and perhaps I did because I’m SICK of visiting the shop and him never making the commitment).  Ahhhh, the joys of parenting! 

Anyway, hope you are having a good week.  I’m off to tidy the house up a little….

Thanks for stopping by,

F x

My first year in business

Well, last Friday was a fairly momentous occasion for me.  My Virtual Assistant Business turned one! 

This time last year I was very excited to set myself up in business, doing secretarial work from home.   It was an answer to prayer – a chance for me to work and earn income, but still be available for my kids.

It’s been a pretty steep learning curve for me.  I’ve been really busy this past six months, and I think I need to do a bit of work on separating work and home life.  I haven’t done it particularly well and there is a definite need for some improvement.  When the kids tell you “you’re always on the computer”, that’s a bit of a concern.  I’m not “always” – but to them it seems that way.  The past few months I’ve been careful to try and keep my Sunday’s free, just to have fun with the kids on my weekend day with them.  If I do have work to do, I do it in the evening once everyone is in bed.

I really love what I do …. I enjoy helping my regular clients and they almost feel like family to me.  I’ve been very blessed with the amount of work I’ve had.  I’ve especially loved having some work at the school where the kids attend.

I am tired though at the moment.  Working the extra 2 days at school for the past 5 weeks has really taken it out of me.  I am looking forward to the school holidays.  Next week I have to work Monday and G will have the kids for the day.  The rest of the week we plan to SLEEP IN (every day!), catch up with friends, maybe do a project here and there, go to the Library, do some baking … just chill out and enjoy being together.  Then the following week I’m going to Perth on my own – the kids will have the week with G and I’m going to visit my bro & sis-in-law and just have some relaxation time.  I can’t wait!  My niece and I always like to go op-shopping and we might get to a movie. Later in the week the kids and G will come down and we’re to catch up with his cousin & family visiting from NZ, so that will be fun.

I’m looking forward to a good rest and recharging my batteries, then we’ll be back home again to start Term 3.  Crikey – we’re half way through the year.  Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?!!! 

On that cheery note, I’ll bid you adieu.

TTFN,

F x

p.s.  I had a sense of teenage-dom this aftternoon with Angus and two school mates “having band practice” in our games room.  The Music Teacher has arranged for each class to put on a concert for Parents this week.  George’s was yesterday and tomorrow we get to see Angus.  He’s joined with 3 classmates and they’ve written a song which they will perform – Angus is playing drums, another boy on acoustic guitar, and two vocalists.  I can’t wait to see how they go.  Just listening to them having fun and “jamming” gave me a glimpse of the teenage future – which isn’t too far away!  Yikes.

Sambucus Syrup

My lovely friend “H” (and no, she doesn’t live at Sesame Street!) asked about the name of the tonic I mentioned in my post yesterday.

I had to go back to Dad (via email) to ask the name of it again, as it had completely left my head.

It is Sambucus (elder or elderberry) – see Wikipidea description here.  Mum and Dad said it was really great at clearing up their recent bugs – so if my cough persists I’ll be trotting down to the local Health Food Shop to buy some.

TTFN,

F x

Bye Bye Roxy

Well, y’all remember Roxy came to live with us earlier this year?  In the past couple of weeks she’s moved house, and is now doggy-friend to Buster – he was in need of company – and I was in need of sanity – so it all worked out well really! 

Roxy was a very cute little dog, but man was she FULL on.   I thought I was getting this cute, placid little lap dog – instead we got a hyped up little minx who was even too much for the kids (now THAT’s saying something!).

I had a gate installed in our backyard so we could move the rabbit and guinea pigs to an area where they wouldn’t be constantly terrorised, but then the kids became almost too afraid to enter the backyard for fear of Roxy.  Plus they couldn’t enjoy their other pets because she made such an awful fuss, even if the kids were trying to carry them inside.

So, long story short – she had to go.  And luckily (for me!) a friend mentioned that they were looking for a companion dog for their dog, and she said “a dog like Roxy would be great”, so I said “Do you want Roxy?” and the rest is history….  I love a happy ending, don’t you? 

So now we are back to being a 1 giant rabbit, 4 guinea pig, 2 mice and 1, oh hang on, make that 2 cat family.  We are cat sitting at the moment.  This is Princess and she is the loveliest little lady:-

Her favourite thing is to sit on the kitchen bench and watch the mice in their cage!

And scenes like these have returned to our house….

W-H-A-T?  People at your house don’t sport guinea pig hats?  Don’t you know they’re the latest style?!

Do you remember the guinea pig babies we had last year?  Well they’re all grown up now.

This is fat-cheeks (can’t think WHY they called her that??!!)

and this is Sparkles … sometimes also known as Sparkle Bear:-

Right before she peed on the sofa!  Ahhhh, isn’t it nice when things get back to normal! 

We watched the Bedtime Stories movie together this afternoon and really enjoyed it.  Of course the kids loved Bugsy the guinea pig.  Our male gp Patch is going to have a holiday with some girls soon.  We might ask for a baby from the litter if they have a grey and white girl.  George said this guinea pig can be mine (wooo hooo) and that perhaps I should call it Bugsy like the one in the movie.  I’m thinking about it.

I hope you’ve had a great weekend?  I’m still trying to fight off flu bugs, not very successfully I’m afraid.  I spoke to Mum and Dad this arvo and they’ve suggested some health tonic thing so I’ll go and have a look into that – if I can remember the name of it that is!

Thanks for stopping by….

F x

Scrapbooking … the easy way

The other week I signed up to do an Everyday Life Class with Jen Hall. I like scrapbooking.  I never have TIME to scrapbook but I love doing it! 

Jen is a pretty amazing lady.  She does these Journals for her 4 daughters – which are everyday moments put into journals (or similar) – very casual, rough and ready in a way, but capturing everyday life so well.

I’m a “plain” scrapbooker – I just get the photos on the page, nothing fancy, and certainly not beautiful works of art like my friend Donna creates. 

In amongst all the computer angst with my laptop dying, I lost the password to the course – but Jen emailed it to me today so I could catch up on all I had missed out on.

In Jen’s class she started talking about the 365 Project by Becky Higgins, so I started looking for a bit more info on it.  It sounds right up my alley … easy scrapbooking which won’t take forever, but WILL get the memories into a book and preserved for the kids in the future.

You can read about it here , see what’s in the kit by watching Becky here, and you can get free downloads for the project here (because the kits sold out in record time which left a lot of unhappy campers in the US and around the world!).

It seems so simple, and achievable – especially for someone like me who is time-poor but wants to record  family memories.

So I’ve just spent time online ordering some supplies to start my own “Year Book”.  Once everything arrives and I make a start, I’ll take some pics to show you what I’m up to.

I’m full of a flu bug at the moment, sore head, croaky voice, occasional cough.    I don’t have time to be sick though as I’m proof reading High School Reports all week.  The Head of Primary at School very kindly dosed me up with jaffas today though, so that kept me going.

I hope you’re having a good week?  I’ll try to pop back later in the week with the Roxy update.  Sounds like a spy mission doesn’t it?

F x

Look what I got!

It’s 11pm, I’ve just finished some legal transcription and SHOULD be in bed – but I couldn’t resist a little blog post before I go.

I just bought this (and I hope she’ll forgive me for ‘borrowing’ the pic off her blog!)

My VERY talented friend Donna (you know, the one who always tells me that EVERYONE can be an artist – love ya Don!) has been painting since November last year.  I’ve been wanting to buy one of her pieces for ages but none of them seemed quite right for me.  However, the other weekend she had a bit of a painting frenzy – and this gorgeous creature was the result.  The words by the flower say “collect happy moments” and that’s right about where I’m at these days.  I can’t wait to get her and hang her on my wall (have to pay for her first – I’ll be over soon!).  You can check out what Donna is working on at the moment on her *heart* life blog.  She’s really finding her own unique style – and I think the faces she paints are just exquisite.

I also had another little splurge and bought myself one of these… Locket Sets which use the art of this amazing lady Diane Duda, check out her Duda Daze blog.  I really love the “believe” locket, but also like the little girls and I’ll be wearing this heaps.  Sometimes it’s nice just to treat yourself ‘because’!    Aren’t there some seriously talented people about?  p.s.  The locket is made out of recycled car bits – how cool is that?!

I hope you’re having a good week?  I had a lovely peaceful day today at home – I did THREE loads of washing which all got hung out and dried AND brought back in – all in the same day (that’s a real achievement for me lately – sad, but true).  The kids and I also went to rescue a dog and cat from a friend’s house.  Long story short but this friend’s husband had a stroke on the weekend and they had to rush down to Perth – and the poor animals got left inside for a few days.  I had hoped to find a neighbour to look after them – but I couldn’t get an answer from door knocking – so today we decided we’d just bring them home.  The cat is absolutely gorgeous – kind of a grey and cream tabby-ish cat.  It happily sat in the car with George while we drove home.  Our own cat, Winnie, would have seriously maimed and hurt bystanders if we tried that with her.  The dog is a Jack Russell cross and she’s very sweet too.  So the pet count is up – except Roxy went to a new home at the weekend… I’ll save that for another post.  Better go to bed!

TTFN,

Fx

Grieving

I’m just home from my Divorce Care Course.  Regular readers of my blog will know that I started going to Divorce Care earlier this year.  I started at Week 3 of the 13 Week Course – and we’ve gone full circle and tonight I finished with Week 2.  It’s been an amazing journey – and the Course came at the perfect time for me (well actually I know God played a part in me starting the Course exactly when I did!).

I’ve learnt heaps, I’ve made some new friends, and I know that I’m walking the path to healing and recovery from the pain of separation.

Tonight we were talking about grief and how the end of a marriage is actually a tearing apart of your souls.  Ouch – “tearing” – that’s a rather nasty sounding word isn’t it?  And it’s truly what it’s like.  In my case I had spent nearly 19 years with this man who I thought was my “one and only” – the person I would grow old with, enjoy grandkids with, travel the world with … but sadly it’s not to be.  You have to let go of everything that you thought you had and start afresh – trying to rebuild something new from the ashes of the past.

One of the Course Leaders asked me tonight if I still had grieving to do and I answered with a very definite YES, and to be honest I’m not sure that I’ll ever fully get over it.  It’s always going to be there … for years to come … watching our children grow into adulthood, celebrating 18th/21st birthdays, seeing them become engaged, get married, have babies … all of those events will be painful in their own way – seeing each other together as a family, and yet not together.  No doubt we will move on and perhaps get re-married.  G is already re-partnered and I’m coming to terms with that.  For myself I’m in no rush to find somebody else.  I’m enjoying this time of single-ness and just enjoying being “me”. 

I was thinking that I would give Divorce Care up and just try and go once a month, but I’m going to ask G to consider changing the nights we have the children so I can keep going.  I feel like it’s really helping me deal with a lot of “stuff” and it’s so nice to be amongst a group of people who “get” where you are at and how you feel.

Being single is quite lonely in a lot of ways – and I don’t just mean as in being “alone”.  You somehow don’t fit like you did before when you were “a couple”.  That’s all part of the adjustment too.

Anyway … sorry if this sounds melancholy.  It’s not meant to.  I’m moving forward and getting on with my life.  I am so blessed with 3 awesome kids, heaps of work, and a faith which sustains me in these (sometimes) trying times.

Divorce Care is wonderful.  If you know friends or people who are struggling after separation – encourage them to see if this Course runs near them.  It’s been just fantastic for me.

I hope you’re having a great week.  A parcel arrived from Grandma today for Miss Boo which I think contains the repaired dress (I found the parcel on the doorstep after the kids had already gone to their Dad’s – so I can’t wait to see her face when she opens it up tomorrow).  Thanks Grandma for doing the fix-it job.  You’re the best!

AND I’m getting a new, you-beaut computer tomorrow.  Did I tell you my laptop died?  Sadly it seems that the hard drive has failed – after 6 months!    Not happy Jan!!

Anyway, I have a friend who runs his own computer business so I’ve decided to buy a new computer tower and go back to having a desktop.  I can’t afford the hassle of a laptop breaking down on me frequently (it will be fixed for nix under warranty) but I’ll go back to a standard desktop and still have the laptop when I go away or if I need to work for a client offsite… the joys of technology eh?!  One thing I’ll say is that I’m glad I got an off-site back up system.  I use Jungle Disk and I’ve been able to use the kids computer and get any work files I need as easy as pie off the web.  Very handy indeed.  Only bummer for me was that I hadn’t backed up my photos (WHAT WAS I THINKING??!!) but computer friend to the rescue who copied the hard-drive for me before it gets replaced so all is not lost.  Phew!  Needless to say I’ll be organising a separate hard-drive for backing up my photos (they take forever if I want to do it through Jungle Disk).

Well thanks for stopping by and reading my rambles….

F x