AGHHHH!! KIDS!!!! (oh and some layouts!)

Anyone want mine?! Or has anyone got mine? I think mine may have been abducted by aliens again and we have some MONSTERS in their place! They are in bed now, and I almost did a happy dance about it! They have been naughty all day long. And Richard has done more screaming today than he has done the last two weeks in total! But not because something hurt or so, but because he didn't get his way! But I won't bore you with that - I'll show the surprise my friend Dinphy had for me this morning. That will cheer me up again

These layouts are just gorgeous. The fascination in Dinphy's daughters eyes, the extraction and placement of my firework! AWESOME! thanks so much Dinphy!


And I love the journalling on this one, and how she is looking out of the window!

I am hoping for some good pictures this year in the years previously Robert has been really scared of the fireworks, he just doesn't like loud noises! (*edited by Florian: Unless he is making them himself!!!)

OK, I am off to relax by scrapping, I need to see pics of my boys looking cute and not acting like monsters!
Bye 4 now

A cold walk yesterday

So, I'll start today with the pictures from our walk yesterday, it was GREAT fun, although it was just that little bit long for poor Richard, and Florian had to carry him on his shoulders for the last 20 minutes! But he did really well, we were walking for about 90 minutes altogether!
Robert wanted to give up too, but understood, that standing still in the middle of a pitch black woods was NOT a good idea! And carried on carrying the fire and showing us the way.
The boys wore their Xmas present - a torch for the head, that was good too, Richard watched the light on the floor all the way (well, until he was on Daddy's shoulders!)
So those were the pictures from when we first turned the fire on. And here is one of me and Ricahrd at the restaurant where we had our tea after the walk. Florian ordered a tomato soup, and it was the BEST tomato soup I had ever had! And we will definitely be going back there again! I had deep fried mushrooms with garlic sauce - ooh that was delicious too. Richard enjoyed them too, here he is dipping his chips into the sauce, but he had mushrooms too. And quite a bit of my salad (in fact ALL of my cucumber!)


today was a quiet day in for us, it was -10°C (14°F) outside, so we stayed in with the log fire on! I did a bit of designing - expect a GREAT (well I think so) posting bonus in the DAC forum next month, and the boys played.
thats all for today, I'm off to play with my new toy now!

New Kit, Special Offer and a FREEBIE!

Well, as promised I am back today with my new kit, a special offer and a freebie. I'll start with my new kit!
I have been working on a New Year's Kit for you all to scrap those party photos you will be taking in a couple of days time! Complete with all those things we relate with good luck, ie. chimney sweep, lucky pig, ladybird and 4-leaf clover! (images are linked to the store)


these are the papers, there are 5 solid papers, 9 patterned papers and two papers with glittered edges all with some lovely textures!
and then I decided that the kit needed a special sort of Alpha, and look what I came up with! You get the complete upper alpha and numbers along with a bit of rope and a peg to create whatever title you need! I am really pleased with it! I hope you like it too.
So before I get to the freebie, what is my special offer?! Well, if you buy the kit between now and January 7th, email me (kayjaydo (at) yahoo (dot) com) the Order No. then I will send you a coupon to get the Alpha for free! Not a bad deal, right?!
Oh and if you head on over to the store before the 4th January, the kit and alpha are 20% off!

And now on to the freebie. I decided that EVERYONE needed the New Years Wordart to match the kit, and have created these international "Happy New Years" for everyone. Should you stop by and not find your language in this pack, then drop me a line (kayjaydo (at) yahoo (dot) com) and I will be happy to oblige, you'll just need to send me the correct spelling - I am afraid however that this particular font only has latin letters, so I cannot do it all in Russian or such, sorry about that.
At the moment the freebie has,
English (Happy New Year and Auld Lang Syne),
German (Prost Neujahr and Guten Rutsch)
Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Danish and Swedish
Image linked to the freebie, which is available in the store, if you are not already a customer there, you will have to register to download, but there are no additional charges or anything.
I hope you all enjoy it, and have a GREAT party at New Year. We are still undecided what we are doing, but we will be having fireworks, that I know!

And for all my regular readers, I'll be back this evening (probably late) with todays update. Late because we are off on a walk in the woods with torches (real flames and battery powered), its the annual Xmas party from the mother and toddler center. Should be fun!
Bye 4 now

I'm BACK!!

And we had "the best Christmas EVER" to put it in Robert (my four-year-old's) words!
But no we really did have the best time. Lots and lots of presents - check out the mess here! And wow, did we all get some surprises!
I think mine was the biggest though, I got a Wacom graphic tablet, just like my Dad's I still can't believe it, but it is sat right next to me as I type, and as soon as I finish blogging, I am going to practise using it! I think it might take a bit of time to get used to, but already I can see the advantages!
Want to know what else I got, i got my photoshop bible, that comes with a Tutorial CD, so that will be interesting, I got a kitchen mixer and chopper! My one broke back in May I think, and since then I have been chopping manually, it will be great to have the machine do it again, so much quicker! I got the book that all the scrapbooking blogs have been raving about "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyers, so hopefully, they weren't all wrong. And so much more, but I won't bore you all!

The boys got everything off of their Xmas lists and more! So they both got their computers! So cute, aren't they. Robert is already really good at sorting out the largest and smallest numbers!
I won't list all of their toys, as I'll still be typing in the new year!!!

For all of those who know - Florian LOVED his calendar! I have been making him a CD Calendar these past few weeks and have been longing to show off the layouts I made for him, but as this is HIS blog, I couldn't BUT I have been posting them in my gallery at Been there Scrapped that, so if you fancy having a look at them, do pop on over. the cover page is linked to the gallery!


I also got Florian a digital photo frame for Xmas so that he can have it in Augsburg on his desk there, and see us all the time. Well, its a good job I used Mum to help organise it, as Florian had originally had the same idea for me!! AND exactly the same offer!! So funny, Mum managed to somehow dissuade him without giving the game away! So he was surprised when he opened the present! So funny!
oh and he also got a Chocolate fondue set, he had asked for one of those chocolate fountain things, but Mum had said, that no way was he getting one of them for xmas, but she did get him a fondue set. Which we tried out tonight, with all sorts of Mums fruits (her fruit bowl was much fuller than ours). And it was DELICIOUS!

Now with all of the presents we got, I will have a LOT of thank yous to be writing, I'll have to see what I can come up with!

I hope your Christmas's were as much fun as ours! (here is our christmas family photo!)


I'll be back tomorrow with my new kit, a special offer and a freebie!

Busy, busy, busy

but then again who isn't! Yesterday I just never got around to posting, not even sure why now. I did get my kit nearly ready to go, but the preview....If you have ever made one, you might know what I mean. Or if you are like Liz, you can do them in 30 minutes, whilst chatting to me on Yahoo - still jealous about that. Well, me it takes forever. But I'll get there in the end, I hope. Don't want to miss out on anyones vouchers after Xmas ;o)
Anyhow, today was spent tidying up, ironing and getting the house shipshape so we can go to Mum and Dad's tomorrow and come back and wreck the place with all the new toys Santa will be bringing!!!
So, can't stop now, we have guests downstairs (just done Raclette, I am soooo full now), I might be back later, depending on how the wrapping of the presents go.
Bye 4 now
OH, PS, Robert is fit again no more temperature, just in time for Xmas!

still poorly

Yep, Robert woke up this morning with his temperature still way too high. So Robert and I stayed at home cosy in front of the TV (about the only thing that would stop his whimpering, poor thing) and Florian and Richard went to our breakfast date. We told Richard that he was just getting the bread with Daddy, as he wouldn't have wanted to go on his own. I actually thought they would be back quite soon, cause of the fact that Robert wasn't there, but he quite enjoyed himself I think and they got back in time for lunch. By which time, Robert's temperature was nearly normal and he was almost his normal self (just a bit pale). Unfortunately this afternoon it shot right back up again. So again he is dosed up and hopefully sleeping now.

We did have some fun this afternoon though, we baked "Plätzchen" (German cookies). What a feat! Luckily I didn't dish out all the dough, cause they were not letting ANYONE help them, so the dough was rolling out too thin, sticking to the rolling sheet, and when they tried to get it off to put on the baking tray it was coming off in tiny pieces. A real mess. Eventually we were allowed to roll it out for them, they cut the shapes and I put them on the baking tray. It didn't last for long though and Richard particularly wanted to do it all on his own again. So mean Mummy that I am, once the first batch was in the oven, I sent them off with Daddy, and finished up the baking with out the little helpers!

here are a few of the pictures Florian took!

The first ones of the boys going it alone!
Then we have one of the so-called cookies NOT! Had to redo that lot!
and here are the ones the boys really did make, they did a great job really!
Bye 4 now

A Storewide Sale at DAC and an update

First things first:

Now isn't that fun news, if you have had your eye on something over there, now is the time to go shopping - and hey, if you haven't yet, then why not quickly do a challenge over there and get 15% off of any 3$ purchase on top of the sales prices! Can't go wrong really!!

OK, so where was I yesterday, anyone wondering?! Well, it was my SIL's birthday and party, so after Kindergarden, I drove straight down to Mum and Dad's the plan being that the boys would sleep on their way down there, and would be fitter for the party (which wasn't going to be starting til 7pm which is normally their bedtime) - GREAT plan, BUT it didn't work. Neither of my little monsters slept a wink on the way down. In fact worse than that, they didn't shut up all the way down there (it's about an hours drive depending on traffic!). Richard must have told me about 60 times "Mummy, I love you lots and lots", Robert was a REAL back seat driver. He told me when I had changed lanes, kept asking if I was sure this was the right way, etc. At one point a car cut me up and I had to brake quite hard, I made a fist at the car that did it, and Robert just had to find out all about that. Only to tell Pop all about it whilst we were having lunch there. My times of having secrets are OVER!!

Pop kept them happy all afternoon with the Lego and the "blowing things" off of the Xmas tree. They were allowed to help themselves to one chocolate off of the tree, but they chose those party blowing things that unravel, toot then roll back up - I have NO IDEA what to call them, neither in English nor German so I can't even check the online dictionary for it!

The party was good and the boys did last out til 9.30pm, which was a huge surprise. Well, we got back at 11pm and it was straight to bed, so no blogging yesterday, sorry about that.

Today, Florian and the kids tidied up their bedroom, they got rid of a lot more baby toys and re-discovered some. It was cute to see Richard playing with them again.
Unfortunately at about 3pm Robert crashed - he had 39.4°C/102.92, by bedtime it was 39.8°C/103.64, poor thing, he is all dosed up now, and will hopefully sleep through and be better in the morning! We are supposed to be going to breakfast with friends and their kids tomorrow, so we'll see how he is doing tomorrow, whether or not we make it.
OK, back to work for me - still working on my new kit...
Bye 4 now

Kids!!!!

it was a bit yucky at the time, but really it was hilarious! the boys were playing silly games this afternoon, chase and such, when they ran in the lounge where I was. Robert bent over as if to let Richard jump over him, and said "go on Richard push me", so what do you think happened next!!!
Richard pushed - Robert fell flat on his face, nose first! Needless to say a lot of screaming and a NOSE BLEED! I tried so hard not to laugh!
Robert once equipped with a wet flannel on his bleeding nose, turned to Richard who had said sorry no end of times and said "Naughty Richard" upon which Richard burst into tears, as he doesn#t like being called "naughty". I explained to Robert that he himself had asked Richard to push him, and that therefore he is not naughty, but I don't think he really understood! Such a funny - all be it painful moment!

So what else is new. I got the last of the Xmas shopping today, I needed a present for Robert, got him Sodor Airport for his Thomas Take Along track it comes complete with Jeremy the Jet Plane, so I am sure it will go down well. Then I needed presents for all 4 kids for on boxing day - only a little something. Well I got a unicorn in a handbag for the girls (1 each), it was nice to get something really girly for a change. And then I got the boys some tools - a chainsaw and some other kind of saw, both came complete with safety glasses. So cute. I think they'll love them too, not sure we will after 5 minutes of their noise, but oh well! that's what Xmas is all about! I can't wait!

OK, I have been trying to finish this post for over an hour now, the cat got between me and the computer, now I have lost the plot, so I'll finish for tonight

OK, I'm back, I pressed post and remembered what else I wanted to tell you. Leigh and I are entering the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race - Season 4 together. It is basically 6 weeks of fun challenges with the chance to win a prize at the end of the 6 weeks. If you want to know more, I linked the blinkie to their blog. And check out Leigh's and my blinkie for the race! Cool isn't it?! MissLilly a dear online friend all the way over in Australia made it for us. She used Liz's kit "Snow Blind" for it, and we will be doing our blog up to match. I have linked the blog, but there is NOTHING there yet, you'll have to wait til January for that. It will be sooo much fun I know! I'll keep you posted. OK
Bye 4 now

dominos and a picnic!

Woohoo for Richard, well sort of - after me literally cheerleading him as he was sat on the potty, he actually did a pooh on it. I felt a bit of an idiot, but he liked it! Unfortunately just before storytime tonight, he forgot that he can do it properly now and did another one in his pull-ups (freshly put on! GRRR!) Oh well, maybe tomorrow he will get it right, wish him luck!

And that was the most exciting thing of the day, boring right?! We played dominos most of the afternoon, only this time the sort that you stand on end in swirls and lines then watch them fall as you knock just one over. In Germany once a year they make an evening event out of it on TV, it's called Domino Day, I think it is quite boring really, clever yes, but not for a full 90 minutes or more on TV. But after today, I think I might record it next time it is on for the boys, as they would LOVE it!
Oh and I let the kids have their tea in front of the TV tonight, something that I NEVER normally let them do. I do however let them watch TV whilst I make tea, and tonight it was the Koala Brothers Xmas Special, which was on for 45minutes instead of the usual 10! So I put a picnic blanket down for them, and they had a picnic. They have never eaten tea so well! Even asked for more! Wow!

So I have a new kit in the making, so I'll be getting back to being creative.
Bye 4 now

A new hairdo!

Well, I did it, I actually let them cut more than just an inch off the bottom! I let the hairdresser layer it all! Uhoh! I hope I haven't now made it difficult to handle! Florian has seen a picture and has withdrew his threat of divorce, as although I had a lot off, it still doesn't look short, just more curly and less like "rats tails".

Hold on, I'll show you the layout I did at lunchtime! Credits:
Mischief Makers by Sweet Digi Scraps at BTST

The after photo could be better, but I did it myself with the self timer, I found it hard to smile for myself! the journalling reads "Florian threatened to divorce me if I cut my hair short, so I opted to keep the length, but layer it! I hope it is easy to keep. I'm not used to high maintenance hairstyles".

The boys reaction was funny, they new I were going, but when I picked them up, Robert said he didn't like it and went into a "huff", meaning he didn't talk to me, didn't put his coat or shoes on, just stood there with his arms crossed and his back to me. Richard liked it, until he saw Robert's reaction then didn't like it either! By bedtime though they both decided that i was still the same Mummy, just with a bit different hair! So funny!

this afternoon, we did a bit of sorting of toys in their room. Robert thought it was a great game, Richard was wiser and realised that Mummy was just after cheap helpers! And found a tight corner to play in whilst Robert and I sorted through the boxes and boxes of toys. I got rid of quite a bit of rubbish in those boxes - broken cars, baby food lids (we used to play with them when Robert was a baby, long, long ago!) the packaging from Kinder Eggs (chocolate eggs with surprises in them), and so on. We also sorted out the toys that are for babies so more to go to the charity shop, or on Ebay!

Oh, and if you think I am looking a bit tired on the photo, you are right, Richard had me up for a long while last night, he is still coughing badly and last night so much so, that he was sick, so at nearly 2am i was at the washing machine putting it on, and then he had to sleep in with me, cause I couldn't find another bottom sheet for his bed, and I never sleep well, with the boys in the bed with me. Hopefully tonight will not be a repeat! and on that note...
Bye 4 now