A Life of Unlimited Possibilities

Wow .. I got an award!

.. and it is a lovely one too. My blog is one that puts smiles on faces .. now that makes me happy!  I was given this award by my lovely Italian friend Helena Virpi.  Make sure you visit her site and check out her wonderful scrapbooking.

Now I have to pass it on to 5 blogs that make me smile.  Helena and Elina (another lovely friend in Greece) would have been on my list definitely, but seeing as they have both received this award already here are 5 others that are definite favourites:

30 Days Challenge - This is an awesome blog created by my friend Donna Lingard.  If there is anything you want to achieve in your life you need to read this blog!  Donna is a fantastic motivator and if you take the 30 day challenge with her you will be amazed by what you can achieve!

Through the eyes of Moonie - Lisa is relatively new to blogging but doing a fantastic job.  Her blog always makes me smile and I love looking at her wonderful scrapbooking creations.

Karen Russell - I check Karen's blog every day to see if there are new entries.  Karen is an awesome photographer and her photos always blow me away. Photography makes me smile! She is also a very nice, down to earth lady.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks - My mouth waters just thinking about this blog.  Amazing recipes with a huge dash of humour thrown in for entertainment.  I simply LOVE reading his blog, it just makes me laugh out loud almost every time and also makes me want to be a better cook!  The Pioneer Woman is also a fantastic photographer so that makes it even better!

Kaisercraft - This is one of my favourite Australian scrapbooking ranges and I love to keep up-to-date with any new developments and products that they release. They also have lots of challenges and layouts for inspiration.

Thanks for reading about my favourite blog sites. I hope you visit them sometime.

Lisa xx

A truly fun weekend

Even though part of me wanted to be home unpacking those last few boxes and enjoying relaxing in our new home, I was very glad to have spent the weekend at a really fun relaxing weekend scrapbooking retreat.  I'll write some more about that later but for now I have some photos to share.  I disappeared for a few hours on Saturday and went back to Noosa to celebrate with my Niece Jacqui who has just turned 21.

 
  

Jacqui's sister Carli made this awesome book or everyone to sign as a momento for Jacqui's day.

My gorgeous nieces and nephew!

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACQUI .. hope you had an awesome weekend of celebrations.

Love Aunty Lisa xx

We are in our new home!

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately but I have been busy moving house.  On top of that we had no internet at home for almost a week .. gee, that was a challenge but I must say I got a lot done instead of spending time on facebook and reading all my favourite blogs!

This would have to be one of my quickest and smoothest moves ever!  I first viewed the property last Friday, loved it and signed a lease on the spot. It was perfect for so many reasons - great position, close to the river, work and buses for Duncan, partly furnished and just so happens to be a gorgeous property.  Even though there were others that wanted the property we were lucky to be chosen as the new tenants.  I started moving things across in the car each day and on Thursday had a removalist van come and take the big stuff over.  So within a week we were in and sleeping there!  I've moved so many times that I have the process down to a fine art so it was pretty stress free.

We are so happy to be back in Noosa.  No more 30 minute drive to work each day and so close to all the things we love about this area.  Have done a fair bit of the unpacking already, the kitchen was the first to be done (on the first night), now working on the bedrooms and office/craft room which probably has the most boxes!  Duncan is doing well with his unpacking and it's looking good up there.  By "up there" I mean that he has the entire second floor to himself which consists of two bedrooms and a bathroom.  He has set up the second bedroom like a media room with a lounge and telly set up with game consoles etc.  It will be a great private area for him.

Well, I'd better get back to the unpacking.

Lisa xx

Happy Birthday again!

Tonight we had a family birthday party for Duncan.  His birthday was a couple of days after we got back from overseas and we were so jet-lagged, so Mum decided to have a party for him this weekend.  We had pavlova for his birthday cake .. yumm!!!

Lisa xx

So many fun things to do!

When you are two and it's your birthday there are so many fun things to do!  This is Isla (my great niece) yesterday at her second birthday party which was held in a park.  The weather was perfect for an outdoors party and she had lots of fun.

First some fun on the seesaw.

Then some water play.

 

Time for some presents.  Rip off that paper!

A play on her new scooter.

A kiss for mum.

Some fun on the swings.

Time for some cake.

Some more presents.

Play inside one of the presents.

Play with friends.

Create giant bubbles with the new bubble maker.

Play peek-a-boo under the table.

Happy birthday Isla, glad you had a fun party in the park.

Love from Aunty Lisa xx

Spring cleaning the blog!

I know, I know, 5 days without writing in the blog .. oh dear!  In my defence, while recovering from the worst bout of jetlag I've ever had, I have been doing a bit of spring cleaning at home, rearranging and clearing out.  Have also been catching up at work and have had the head down getting lots done and planning new initiatives.  So in honour of the spring cleaning, and seeing as it is spring after all .. I have made some changes on the blog.  I loved the previous design, it was so pretty, but it was very narrow.  So I've moved back to a wider template.  I love it because the photos view larger.  I do intend to design my own banner soon, but for the meantime I am cheating and using one of the premade templates.  I do love it though.  Great colours and nice and fresh.

I've got lots of ideas for things I would like to do with this blog and I'm slowly investigating and building, so keep checking back for further developments!

Lisa xx

Jet lag and a week of birthdays

Jet lag recovey seems to have been slow this time around.  Duncan and I have both really felt the effects of it with weirdo sleeping patterns and muddled brains.  I thought I was finally catching up this morning, was feeling good and thought yes, this is it, back to normal.  Then while I was in the shower I put shower gel into my hair instead of onto my body LOL.  Ok, so it might take another day or two!

This week was birthday week.  Firstly Mums birthday was on Tuesday.  I won't reveal her age, she might smack me :)  We had a nice dinner out with her on Tuesday night.  Then yesterday was Duncan's birthday.  Sweet 16!!!  I can't believe he is that age already, surely the time hasn't gone that fast?  You know what this means .. he is now able to get his learners permit to drive a car ... nooooooooooooooooo!!  I'm trying not to think about it too much.  So last night to celebrate his birthday I took him out to the movies in the afternoon, followed by dinner at a local Noosa restarant.  It was great fun and delicious food but thanks to the crazy jet lag we both went straight off to our beds when we got home!  He had birthday cake for breakfast this morning because he wasn't up for it last night when we got home.  Nothing like cake for breakfast I say!

Lisa xx

Home Sweet Home

Finally home, rested up and back to work.  Haven't blogged for a few days but most of that has been travelling across the seas, and then sleeping off jet lag!  Here's a catch up of what we did on our last day.

I think last time I blogged we had arrived in Birmingham for the night.  The purpose for stopping in Birmingham was to attend a show that I have been wanting to go to for years. It's called Miniatura and it is a showcase of the best U.K. and European dollhouse miniature retailers.  This is a hobby that I was involved in for many years and although I don't make many things these days I still like to collect the odd piece of artwork.  I call it artwork because we're not talking about kids dollhouse toys here.  These are collectors items.  It's a hard hobby to explain to someone who has never experienced it.

Anyway, this yearly show has been on my "to do someday" list for a very long time and when I realised I would be in the U.K. while this show was on I was so excited and made sure we would get there.  I was so glad I went.  It was everything I anticipated and more!

It was hard to take photos at the show.  Firstly because it was so crowded you often couldn't get near to things to photograph items that are so small.  But mostly a lot of the crafts people are a bit funny about you taking photos of their goodies.  They are very worried about people stealing their original ideas I think.  Copyright is such an issue in many hobbies these days.  We always asked first and a large percentage said no.  After a while we just put the camera away and stopped asking!  But here are some we did manage to get early on.

 

This will give you a little bit of an idea about the crowd!

After the show we had to head back towards London Heathrow as our flight was leaving that night. On the way we made a quick detour into Warwick and had lunch at this gorgeous old pub.  Fantastic meal, good old hearty pub food, lamb shanks and mash .. yummm!

 

Two long flights later we arrived in Brisbane about 6:30am.  Picked up our car which was totally covered in red dust from the dust storms (one the day before we left and one while we were away) and drove home.  Got home about 9:30am and Duncan decided he wanted to go to school.  Talk about keen, all I wanted to do was sleep!  So he showered and got in school clothes and I drove him up to school.  Only missed the first couple of lessons.  I made it through till about 1pm then had to go to bed for a nap!  Got up for dinner then went back to bed and slept most of the night.  Think I have caught up now!

Nice to get back to work today.  So many cool things to work on.

It's Mums birthday today .. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM!!  Going out to dinner to celebrate.

Lisa xx 

Can I buy a vowel please?

After driving to Northern Wales yesterday we arrived last night at our B&B just outside of Conwy. What a lovely place.  Our room was so sweet, even though Duncan was horrified that our "twin room" was atually two single beds pushed together LOL.

The owners were so helpful and gave us a great recommendation for dinner and rang and made reservations for us.  The dinner was fantastic but eavesdropping was way better.  There were the most interesting and funny people in there and we laughed so hard.

The town of Conwy is dominated by a huge castle and most of the town is encased by a wall.  We wandered through the castle today.  It is really big and took ages to explore.

Here are some photos taken from the top of one of the towers.

I took this following photo in the castle chapel.  Check out those ghostly figures!!  I can see a face and everything!!  So spooky to download your photos and find something like that.  But very cool!!!!!!!

After exploring Conwy we started our journey to Birmingham where we would be staying tonight.  The B&B owners had drawn us an alternative route to take (avoiding all the major motorways which are totally boring) and we were so glad they gave us this info.  What a beautiful drive through the Welsh countryside.  This is a place we stopped for lunch along the way.

Had a beautiful meal in a lovely atmosphere.  These were on the shelf near our table.  So cute :)

 
We have been constantly amused by the town names here in Wales.  We can't even imagine how you would pronounce these words that have very few vowels .. in fact some have none at all!!  Check this one out ...

Seriously, how on earth would you say that?

Our short visit to Northern Wales was lovely and I look forward to coming back sometime to explore and see more of this great place.

Our time here in the UK is coming to an end (way too quickly!).  Tonight we are in Birmingham.  Tomorrow we drive down towards London and tomorrow night we fly out of Heathrow about 10pm and start heading towards home.  We will finally arrive back home Monday morning!

Lisa xx

5 things I love about the UK

Just a quick post before we pack up the last of our things and head off to Liverpool for the day.  I love a lot of things about the UK but here are 5 that spring to mind ...

Church Bells chiming on the hour  (this is the view from my bedroom window here)

Bangers and Mash :)  Comfort food!

Wonderful old crooked buildings

Old pubs covered with window boxes

Banoffee Pie .. OMG, a taste sensation

Lisa xx