How disgusting am I!!!!!

I am absolutely disgusted with myself that it has been sooooooooooooo long since I have been on my blog. I am so out of touch with everything right now. I can see I am going to have to devote at least two maybe three whole days with many packets of biccies and lots of tea to catch up on the beautiful things that you have all been up to. I am not posting any pics today, but I promise that by the end of the week I will definately have lots to post about.

Today I am just posting a quick hello to everyone to let you know that I have not fallen into a crack somewhere and disappeared forever. But where has the year gone?????? I can't believe that I have neglected my blog for so long.

Well, where have I been all this time I hear you ask....................Absolutely nowhere. I started work again this year (for the first time since having my boys) and it has taken up alot of my time. Not that that is any excuse. Between work and looking after my boys it has been a very busy first half of the year. I got offered some temporary work in the office at one of our local High schools this year which has turned into a full years work. It has been absolutely wonderful. I get school holidays with my boys and get paid for it. I work with a great group of ladies and I have had a blast so far. Who knows where it may lead.

Jaden started Prep this year and all is going so well for him. Reading already. I am constantly in awe of my little man. It seems he is growing all too fast...... Boo Hoo. It seems that between getting him to all his extra activities of an afternoon and on weekends I hardly get much time with him. So we have now started a special Mummy/Jaden time now on a Sunday afternoon. We have taken up golf together and I must say he is not doing to badly either. Of course, I am just the caddy as I know nothing about golf just that any shot forward must be a good shot right... Anyhow, it has been really nice going around the six half holes he plays on beautiful sunny afternoons just the two of us.

Bailey is also doing well and also growing up soooo fast. He will be starting Kindy next year and I wonder of course how I will cope (lol). I know he will do just fine. Of course he is doing everything that Jaden does of late. He loves his big brother so much and just has to be doing what he does. It is beautiful seeing him sitting next to Jaden pretending to read and using his finger following the made up words he uses. Just like Jaden.

Jamie has been an absolutely wonderful dad and husband. He has cut his hours back this year to help me get back to work. He does all the getting ready for school (since I have to be a work by 7:30 am) and dropping off and I do the picking up. It has been working really well and he has been enjoying being more involved with the boys (though he has always done lots with them). Jamie has started doing the reading with Jadens class this week and both he and Jaden are excited by this. I did activities with his class for the second term on Monday's and it was great to be a part of these things. Oh what fun it is to be a Mum (or Dad).

On the craft front.....well, not much has been happening there either. So you have not been missing out on much. I have caught up on a couple of quilts though. My Rosewood cottage quilt is all finished and quilted. My Angel Story quilt has been machine quilted in the ditch and is decorated on the boarders but I am diligently hand quilting all the squares so it has been what I have been working on. I have only got the last boarder on my red and white jacobs ladder quilt to go which will mean all I have to do is get it quilted. Janelle you will be happy to know that I have finished putting all my blocks together for my table runner that you gave me inspiration for. I have just been waiting to find the right fabric for the boarder and binding (I'm still trying to track some down). I have done the odd little gifts for friends here and there but nothing too serious.

My goal for this second half of the year is to complete my red and white jacobs ladder and keep up with my blogging. This I hereby promise (just the blogging part, tee hee...).

I have also made my top priority getting my PIF's finished for my three recipients. These will be coming very soon. I already have some ideas and will be contacting them shortly for their addy's. So ladies, if you are reading this feel free to contact me.

Anyhoo, I had better get myself organised and get my boys fed and into bed. Another big day tomorrow (Jaden off to compete in the Maryborough Eistedford with his Prep class, very exciting). Then of course off to bed with me too.

(P.S. I just previewed this post and realised how long it is....Sorry) Great to be back. Missed you all.
D. :=)

Cupcakes Galore!!! Mmmmmmmmm!!!

Well ......last Friday we had to take Jaden off to Brisbane for an orthodontist appointment. Don't tell the Dentist though but we celebrated Jaden's bravery by a trip to the Cupcake Parlour at West End. We just happen to stumble across it when dropping off Jamie's RM's to be repaired (to a shop across the road). We didn't plan to go there but it was certainly a very nice treat and of course you just can't walk on past.......Not with all the yummies we could see inside......ohhhhh this is not good. I'm salivating just thinking about it all over again. They were very delicious little morsels. The boys (including one big boy - Jamie) really enjoyed it.

We cut all three cupcakes into fours and each of us got to have a taste of all of them. The one on the left was a choccy cuppie with beautiful choccy icing and malteesers on top. The middle was a little piggy (Bailiey's favourite, mine too) plain vanilla cuppy with lovely pink icing and marshmello nose and choccy bits. The one on the right was a rich choccy cuppy with peppermint icing. Yummmm. All deliciously moist with lots of icing. Perfect cupcakes. Of course we washed it all down with a lovely vanilla milkshake. The parlour was very pretty in its pink and white finery too. Such a special treat that I just had to share it with you in case you are in the area. I will definately be going back again next time I'm there. Shame I didn't bring home a doggy bag then on second thoughts....it wouldn't have lasted anyway. lol. Hoping you had a great weekend. D. :=)

Drum Roll Please............

I must apologise firstly for the delay in posting the winners of my giveaway. I have been having so much trouble with uploading stuff to my blog today that I gave up in the end. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!! I had to make sure I did it today and definately before I went to bed tonight as I have to take Jaden back to Brisbane for the Orthodontist tomorrow and will be away for the weekend. Anyhoo better late than never.

As you can see my wonderful assistant drew this earlier today. Soooooooooooooo without further adooooo....

Names ready to go into the draw..................................

All in ready and waiting ...............................

Would you be so kind as to draw the first winner from the magical box dear name plucker..........
And the first winner of my first ever giveaway is................... Yay!!!!!!!!!!!! VIVIEN!!! (Golf claps) Congratulations Vivien. :=)

And the Second winner dear name plucker is................... Woooohooo!!! Congratulations CHOOK!!! (Golf claps)
Congratulations Girls on winning the these two beautiful patterns by Susanna from Tilda and Filur. I will be emailing your patterns in the PDF format so please let me know of your email addy's for that to happen. Thanks so much to everyone who joined in and to Susanne for donating the patterns (and of course to my wonderful name plucker outerer - Job well done). Please make sure you visit Susanne's Etsy Shop regularly. Her work is really beautiful.
TTFN D. :=)

I'm so excited!!! I'm having a Giveaway!!!

I'm very excited to announce my first Giveaway!!! As you know my sister has become addicted to crochet and I have had such a wonderful response from people in regards to the cute little bear that she made for my DH. Sarah has discovered a beautiful Etsy Shop called Tilda and Filur belonging to a lovely lady by the name of Susanne in which Sarah has been purchasing her patterns. Please do visit her shop, as this is where you will find the pattern for the little teddy I featured in a previous post and lots of other gorgeous characters. Here are some pics from her shop to tempt your tastebuds. I'm sure you won't be able to stop at just one though, and I can assure you if you are like me, deciding which one to buy first won't be easy as it was hard enough just deciding which ones to show you here.

Susanne has over 50 patterns available to purchase from her shop and all at a very affordable price. The extra bonus is that once you have paid for your pattern you don't have to wait for snail mail to arrive. Susanne will email it to you within 24 hours of your payment clearing.

I have had so much pleasure in chatting with Susanne herself today and am very thrilled to announce that Susanne has kindly given me two (2) very delectable patterns from her range to share with two very lucky people. That's right I will be picking two winners!!! I can't show you any pics of the giveaway patterns as they are a surprise but I can give you a couple of clues. The first one is "Teddy Bear Hugs" which was one of Susanne's first designs and the other is "Teapot and Bears". Both are so cute.

Now here's what you have to do to go into the draw. Please visit Susanne's Etsy Shop and then come back here and share with me by way of a comment, which of her patterns was your favourite (I know it will be hard, you can have more than one). I will give you an extra entry if you make a link to this competition on your blog via sidebar or post. I will be drawing this giveaway Wednesday night (14th Jan 09) by way of the ever magic random number generater. So get cracking and visit Tilda and Filur. Be sure to let Susanne know when you are making your purchases that The Cackle Club Queen sent you. Good luck!!! D. :=)

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!

I can't believe I have not done a single post for the whole of December. I have hardly had time to scratch myself since the end of November with all the organising of a huge 5 year old birthday party for half of the kindy, (which if I must say so myself was quite a hit with the parents and kids) and christmas parties one after the other and everything else that comes along with Christmas. I can hear you all saying - Don't I know it. Here are some pics of the boys helping decorate the tree and two special packages left for me under the finished tree.

Because Jaden's birthday falls around christmas, we decided to have his birthday party early so he could celebrate it for the first time with special friends. He had been requesting a pool party so Jamie and I decided to organise his party out at our local weir where the council has a free pool and play area. It worked out really well. We all had fun over the road from the pool complete with jumping castle, games and minti man. We had a sausage sizzle and cake topped off with a swim. Good times had by all. I bought the cake from Bi-lo and iced it myself. It was so hot that the icing kept running off the cake. I think you should be able to work out who the cake is???

Jaden and I decided that we would make all his kindy mates a BonBon each this year as their christmas gift. Things snowballed then with Daddy wanting us to get more goodies to help him make some BonBons for his work team and us deciding we would make everyone one that attended the family christmas day lunch and also some friends that we give too. I think at last count we had made about 63 BonBons. We had fun doing them and they were well received but I think we'll think twice about doing that again next year (probably will). Well it's all over and done with for another year. Phew. Here are some pics of Jaden and I making the BonBons for his friends from Kindy. It was about 9.30pm before we got them finished. As we had to start them after poor little Bailey had gone to bed because he would have wanted to help too and then there would have been tears.

I did get to make something crafty before christmas though through out the christmas rush. I made this for my friend Barb. I was quite happy with the way this little christmas angel turned out. This pattern is one of Annie Smith's of Country Keepsakes which was featured in Homespun Magazine No. 66 (vol 9.11) I fell in love with these and had huge plans of making all my craft ladies one for christmas but only got one finished. I have all the fabrics all ready and will get the rest done (definately before next chrissy lol). They are addictive and I can't wait to make more.

Just before Christmas I received my secret santa swap present from Vivien in New Zealand. Thanks so much to Vivien and her grandchildren for putting my lovely parcel together. I was very excited when I received it and was lucky to only have to wait a few sleeps till santa came. It was an effort trying not to open any of them. This was what was inside all these cutie little packages - Some cute little santa tea lights, a lovely soap, cute and handy little torch light (great for the handbag), two cute little washers (Princess and Christmas) to carry in my bag that you just add water to (I use these a lot), a gorgeous handmade oragami box full of choccies (who doesn't love choccies) and a beautiful little handmade sewing caddy (my first one,can you believe it). I just loved everything. Thanks to Viv and her family and to Janette from Wildcraft Farm for organising this swap (also my first). Sorry about the lines in these pics but all of a sudden blogger is not playing nice, as the lines are not in the pics themselves. I will have to try and fix these later.

Here is a pic of the parcels I sent to Viv. I can't show you yet what is in them as I don't know yet if she has received them. Hope they got to her o.k.

I think that was all I wanted to tell you for now since it has been a while.

I will have a few weeks break now until I start my new Job (temporary/part-time) in admin at a High School and Jaden starts Prep (my first child to go off to school, bohooo). Time is just flying by me to quickly.

Hope you all had a wonderful christmas and an even more wonderful New Year!!!

P.S. My Angel Story Quilt and Rosewood Cottage Quilt are being quilted as we speak. Yippeee I can now start another quilt. lol.

My New Years Resolution is to complete my Sampler Quilt Top. Don't know if I've shown you that one yet. A lot of Needle turn applique to be finished. Another quilt, another day.

Happy New Year Crafting. D. :=)