The Delightful Insanity {Of My Life}

Super Sunday

 I call it that because we did so much today. We got up early this morming to arrive on hour early for the kids Surf Awareness class (by accident , of course). So we went to a cafe and had cofee ...well, baby caps for the kids and real coffee for me. Then the kids did their class, which involved Entoni and Tatiana getting on a surfboard for the VERY FIRST TIME. Very freakin cute. Mum took some pics, but she was prety far away from us so the pics are kinds distant. I had to go in the water with the kids when they surfed. I didnt know that, otherwise i would've put my bathers on this morning. So in i went, in my dress and all. Yes, i mean all the way in. Must have been an interesting sight, i'm sure.

Heres me and Entoni in the water. The waters just pulling back, but he was actually riding a little wave. Very cute.

After our morning at the beach, we came home and did some more decorating for the Halloween party. I downloaded some spooky tunes, and we rocked to those while destroying our house...

This is our Count Dracula. Needs a bit of work still....

And these are some cute little drink bottles i picked up for the kids the other day...

The kids put on a couple of "Trampolline Performances" for me (song and dances that they had created to perform on our large trampoline). Very funny and very cute. And when we were all worn out we watched The Corpes Bribe and Caspers Scare School on DVD.

And after decorating, i painted a mirror in my bedroom i had been planning to do for some time now. Heres the before pic (i'll show you the after pic when its done.)

And if your into Halloween too, i've been posting heaps of cool stuff over HERE....so come and check it out!

Its amazing what you can do with some baloons and a couple of little chicks....

Yes, i actually got the hats all done. DONT ask me what time i went to bed though. But it was worth it. Normally, i actually get the kids very involved in making their hats. But this year i made the mistake of threatening them with the "if you dont behave....you wont get to make your Easter Hats this year". Yeah, obviously didnt think that one through before it came out of my mouth. So they didnt behave. Not once, not twice....but al week long. In fact, i'm almost ready to believe that my kids have been posessed this last week! And i used that threat so much that in the end i couldn't back out of it. No really.....see those who know me know that sometime i can be a bit too easy on my kids *ahem*, no, really.So i have been trying to make an effort to actually carry out the punishments i threaten them with. And since i dont normally do this, i am used to threatening them with most anything, because i know (and really....they know too) it's never really gonna happen. And because of this i began slowly loosing my power  authority in this house.

It used to happen like this...
me: tidy your room now or you wont go to that bday party your friends having
them: no, no, pleeeeease mummy, i want to go
me: then tidy your room.....now
them: OK! OK!

But weather or not they actually listened to me or not, they still always got to go. I never had the conviction to carry through on my threats! So now it goes like this....

me: tidy your room now or you wont go to that bday party your friends having
them :                                  (thats them completeley ignoring me)
me: i said tidy your rooms now!
them: (ignoring me again)
me: IF YOU DONT TIDY YOUR ROOMS YOU WILL  NOT GO TO YOUR FRIENDS BDAY PARTY....IS THAT CLEAR ????
them: yeah mum....whatever (thats them knowing i will take them anyway)

So i have started to carry through on my threats, but because this is not something i usually do, i make the mistake of making bad threats....like "if you dont eat your veggies we are not going to the beach tomorrow" which means i have to cancel meeting my family at the beach...something i wanted to do! You know, that kinda thing. Kinda like the Easter Hat thing, lol.

So anyway...back to the Easter Hats.
They are done.
Kids loved them.
I rock.
Hard.
and
i
am
tired
very
very
tired.
but I ROCK.

So we got to school, Kody and I , and sat there watching the parade. Well i tried to watch, while Kody kept jumping in front of the camera and giving me kody (combat) style kisses....not that i minded the latter much at all, lol.

And then they came, proudly marching past, and i jumped up...got them to pose....and got a BLURRY pic! Blurry, i tell you! Yes, my camera to focus properly....and i mean r.e.f.u.s.e.d.

ahhh well. lucky i took 6 million pics before we got there, lol.

But then their teacher  offered to take one of us, and apperantly my camera likes her better than it does me! (mental note: need a GOOD camera for goodness sake!!!!!!)

And that....ladies and gentlemen....was our Easter Bonnet Parade. 6 hours of craft maddness (i'm adding some procrastination time there) for one second of blurry photos ;)

To celebrate afterwards we went to our little deli and got baby-chinos (mine was a big-ol-mamma-chino) and lemon tarts.

And before this post i had just spent forever writing another post for my MessyArt blog with some more cute Easter links just so that my computer could cut out and not save ANY OF IT!!!!! So as i have written this post i have stopped to save every 2 seconds just in case! So i'll do that post again, but this time you'll get the shorter, i've written this all out once already version of the post.

Have a great long weekend!
xo
Z

Christmas Pic (yes, i know.....very behind on these!)

OK, so i got a bit slack on my Christmas Holiday posting. So whats new? ;)

Instead of going back through the holiday, i thought i'd start with Christmas Eves day....where we spent almost the entire day baking, decorating, and taste testing ...mmmmmmm. Well, mostly it was just me and Tatiana as the boys kept losing interest. I had finished wrapping my pressies a cuople days earlier, which left me feeling more relaxed on this day than previous years.

***MENTAL NOTE TO DO THAT AGAIN NEXT YEAR ( WRAP PRESSIES EARLIER)

So in the evening we got take away and watched some Christmas videos together. We were going to see the lights, but it started raining. But we did leave milk and cookies and food for the reighndeer before we went to sleep.

This year i spent less on pressies than i ever have. Finacially, things were tight, so the kids only got 2 pressies from santa (one was books and the other a toy) and one pressie from me (bikes). I was so worried that they'd notice they were getting much less than every other year, but in the end...it turned out perfect. Every other year the kids have torn through their gifts, spending about ...oh..say one whole second to appreciate it before tossing it aside to get the next. Then when they are done they always seem slightly overwhelmed by everything. Most of the time they get so much i end up putting some away for a later date. However, this year when they woke up and realised they only had 3 pressies each, things were different. The bikes weren't wrapped, so they knew what those were straight away. I got them to open the books first. After they opened them.....something that amazing happened. They didn't toss them aside and reach for their next gift. Instead, they them book and slowly flicked through each book, really appreciating thier new books, and taking their time because they knew the next gift was their last...and they wanted to make things last longer. Then they did the same with their last gift. And suddenly i realised that getting them less was the best thing i could have done. It was good for me (didn't send myself completely broke over one holiday), good for them (they appreciated what they got much more than before)...just good in general.

*** ANOTHER MENTAL NOTE TO REMEMBER THIS TOO FOR NEXT YEAR :)

 

Then mum came around with her pressies...

Santa got Tatiana got this bear with a matching outfit for her to wear. How cute is that...seriously!

Then , after unwrapping gifts it was off to Nanny Fayes (2 doors down) for xmas breakkie, then back home for some more baking ....

before heading off to my brothers for Xmas lunch.

This is a picture from a recipe book of one of the desserts i made for lunch (excuse the underlining...i cant make it go away!). My camera died (yes, i actually forgot to charge my battery for Xmas) so i couldn't take a pic of mine, Suffice to say...i think mine looked better anyway...and it was definitely a hit at Jamil's as it almost all when as soon as i put it down!

Christmas this year ended up being very relaxing as this year we only made the one visit, as opposed to previous years of driving from one family to the other. We saw my inlaws a week later, which worked out even better as it was like a second Xmas to the kids and Zali was with us by then.

This is little Marchella, my SIL's daughter. We've got her training to be a scrapbooker already ;)

Shes a natural with the camera!

And this is Uncle Scotty, sfter being attacked by some  of Spidermans web...

And this is all the kids together.....

I hope everyone had a great Christmas as well!

xox

Z

 

Wow....history was made today.

Are you watching the election on TV? It gives me goosebumps just realising the we are in the middle of a moment that will change so much for Australia. This is history in the making people. Will it be for the better or for worse....who knows. But i wish John Howard the best for whatever the future holds for him and i welcome Rudd as our new Prime Minister and look forward to the new leadership, new policies, to a new future for our country.

On a more personal note, we put up our Xmas tree today. And all our outside chrissy lights. But i have decided i need more decorations so i need to do some shopping. I'm going a blue , green and glitter theme this year (picture a soft version of theses colours). I have some ideas for handmade decor for the house that i cant wait to try. And i was thinking this year of replacing the Xmas stockings with some silver galvanised buckets that i can place on a table beside the tree. As a kid i LOVED Christmas stockings....but we had a fireplace to hang them on...so they made more sense. On the Gold Coast, we dont have fireplaces....so the stocking usually hang off a bookcase until filled by Santa. Then they usually end up on the floor because the stocking holders aren't srtong enough. And besides....they are all red (dont match with the rest of my Xmas decor at all, lol). Either that  or i could just buy some cute little handmade vintage fabric stockings.....mmmmm, like that idea. Or mabey i should just make some new ones myself. Oh, what to do, what to do ;)

The only thing that is slightly frustrating is that i'll be getting the whole house painted in the next coulple of weeks (no, thats not the frustrating thing, that i am very excited about)...and that probably means my nicely decoredted house wont get to be appreciated as all my shelves, pictures and artworks will be sitting in piles on my floors and my furniture will be covered in sheets.

Anyway...heres some pics from todays decorating. I only have one picture of us decorating and that was taken by Kody (my 3 yr old).

decorations

the mess

(this is the pic Kody took)

decorations that couldnt be hung up anymore (broken)

love this little wooden toy dad got from overseas

little tree from IKEA

Oh, and i got my new Green shag-pile rug today. Yes, i love green and i LOVE shag pile. I really wanted white but figured that might be a mistake with 4 kids, lol. So green it is.

And don't forget to check out my new blog over here.

xo

Z

Happy Halloween!

Boo!

Halloween is my all time fave holiday. It's not really celebrated here in Australia, but we certainly do our best to celebrate the day. Usually, we have a Halloween party for the adults and the kids, and we spend the week before making decorations and getting our costumes ready. But this year we did it a bit differently, celebrating with just my SIL and her little boy, Tash and mum. We decorated the front of our house, although we toned it down a bit as we were expecting a bit of a storm. But i love listening to the kids when they see our house. They just love it, as we are really the only one to decorate as much as we do. We made cupcakes and the kids decorated them with lollies, then we dressed up and did some trick-or-treating. Tash worked her magic with the face paint (thanks Tash!) and then afterwards the kids watched scary (ish) videos while we had dinner. It was Beaus first trick-or-treating halloween. He was a bit nervous by it all until he realised that he'd get  lollies out of it....after that he was pushing his way to the front of everybodys door. It was so cute!

Heres some pics from the night. Please excuse the bad photography, i only had my point-and-shoot.

Are they not the cutest little monsters you've ever seen?

Kody took the pic of me so the colour came out a bit funny on that one. Adds to the mood, i say.
Hope you all had a good one!
xo
Z

my christmas in pictures....

Wow....what a day! Christmas was chaotic and fun. The kids got totally spoilt, we all ate lots and lots of food and had a great time with family. Although next year, i'm not travelling from house to house as we did this year. We started off at Nanny fayes house, then my brother in Brissie, the adams mums place. Just too much for one day. And the kids were never in one place long enough to enjoy any of thier gifts. This is the second year i've done this, but next year i am standing my ground. We can all meet at the beach for one big Xmas BBQ with all the families!

Zali got in on Christmas eve. The kids were so excited to see her....especially Tatiana. She misses her big sister so much when she is away. Once Zali arrived Tatiana would not leave her side . It was so cute. We had a very busy Xmas eve together....we baked cookies for Santa, as well as more Xmas cupcakes to take to my brothers the next day. We made reigndeer food (oatmeal and red and green glitter) and sprinkled it on the lawn outside and left a few carrots for them as well. We left milk and cookies for Santa....

Oops, well they were supposed to be for santa, lol!

We have always had a tradition in my family that we all get to open one gift on Xmas eve. Adam and i have altered that tradition to be that the kids all open thier gifts from eachother on Xmas {each one gets $5 for each sibling to buy them a gift. They pick out (or make) the gifts themselves}. This way they don't get 'lost' amoungst all the bigger gifts from Santa, and they can really enjoy those little pressies before being swamped with more.

These were the gifts they had for eachother . Thay wrapped them all themselves (except for Kody, og course).

They all ended up going to bed really late as they were all over-excited from Zalis arrival and with the anticipation of Xmas. In fact, i could not get the boys to sleep till about 11.30 pm. Adam then put together a massive 3 m x 10 m trampoline we got for the kids....not an easy task so late at night, lol. I wrapped pressies till about 3.30am (i really take a long time to wrap, lol, i know. Love the wrapping part though. And love trying to make each gift different)

Just as i was about to head for bed, Tatiana woke up with a roaring fever. It took me awhile to bring it down. She then developed a really bad cough, and i was up with her until about 4.45 am. Finally she fell asleep, but as if on cue, Entonii woke up with a cough as well. Luckily it didn't take too long for me to settle him. Then Kody woke up and i had to get him back to sleep. I eventually put myself to bed at 5.30 am only to be woken up at 6am by the kids. Yes....believe it or not i got through the entire Xmas day on only half an hours sleep (and LOTS and LOTS of coffee).

Adam, however, who had been in bed since 3 am, was not as easy to wake up. I let him sleep till 7 am until the kids just could not wait any longer. Then i sent them all in to get him up out of bed....not an easy task i tell you, lol.

Then it was off to Nanny Fayes....then to my brothers and then to Sues..... (crazy!)

Thats at my brothers house. He put on a massive seafood lunch....i mean i had never seen so much seafood! We eneded up having a water pistol fight....or mabey i shoulkd say water bazooka fight....the waterguns were massive!

It was a very good, busy, happy day for all of us.

This is kody on the way home. He put on Entonis headphones and was out in 2 seconds flat. Literally.

They had all fallen asleep in the car on the way home as we didn't get home till around 9pm. So Adam carried them all to bed. I had planned on an early night (after my 1/2 hours sleep) but then kody was up all night with a bad fever and i ended up going to bed at 2.30 am. But when i went to check in on the kids, this is what i found in the girls room....

Tatiana must have woken up at some point and gone to crawl into Zalis bed and cuddle up to her. I just love this pic. So sweet.

Today, everyone has the flu, and pretty badly. So it's bed, books and dvds for all. i'm making a big pot of chiken soup and dosing them all up on vitamins. Hoping that should do it :) And whats with this weather? i'mwaering cargos and a jumper today, lol? Summer? What summer?

Hope you all had a great Xmas! Love to hear what you did.

Heres some final cute piocs from the day....

got quotes?

I am making a framed layout for my neighbor who's dad has passes away It's all pics of her, her brother and her dad. I'm looking for a quote about fathers or fatherhood to include in it, but have had trouble finding one i like. Anyone know of any good quotes? If you know one I'd love to hear it.

Things here have been so busy. Trying to finish up all my classes for next years retreats and conventions. I'm very excited about teaching next year...lots of exciting things to come. Had fun on Saturday scrapping with theses girls....

Tonight's the night they pick the next Australian idol...I'm watching it right now in fact and hoping for Damien. That man has one amazing voice!  Oh wait.....wait..... HE"S WON!!!!!! I am sooo buying his CD :)

The kids came up with a very interesting idea today....they turned the trampoline into a canvas! They leaned it against a tree and drew on it with chalk.

And this is my husband putting Kody to sleep.....

He's good at it....or should i say Kody's good at getting daddy to sleep.

Now , i know I'm only about a month late on this one.... but heres some photos from my Halloween Party. The kids and i had so much fun decorating this year. Mostly because we started 4 days before the party so we had plenty of time to do it instead trying to get it all done in one day.

These are the pumpkins my hubby carved. He spent hours on them. He loves carving and gets a little more creative with them every year. Unfortunately, this year it was really windy and we just couldn't seem to keep them lit for very long. But they still looked awsome. After our party we line them up our sidewalk in the front yard for all the trick-or-treaters.

The costumes were all so amazing. Everyone always puts so much effort into their costumes .

Mum came as a fortune teller with a crystal ball and all . Her outfit was amazing, and she even told a few fortunes, lol

.

There's nothing like a little white face paint to make your teeth look really yellow, lol.

So thats was our Halloween party. Sorry it took so long to share...better late than never, right?

Hope you enjoy the pics

Z :)

Easter

Well easter was non-eventful this year .On Saturady we spent the day at the beach. That was so nice, and the weather was just perfect! Adam tried to teach Tatiana how to boggie board, but mostly she just sat on it letting the waves move her about. Afterwards we went to one of our fave little cafes ,Elephant Rock and had snacks and coffee. Entoni, as usual, romanced all the waitresses and even a lady sitting beside him.Then on Sunday we  Just had a small family gathering at my mums place, good food and good company. I really missed Tash on easter thought, and really noticed it when we were all together for Brunch. So Tash, if you read this, i was sending you Happy Easter thoughts on sunday, lol!

We had an easter egg hunt in the morning. We usually have all the cousins here for that, but this year it was just us, which was nice. Entoni found almost all the  eggs and we had to keep slowing him down so that Tatiana and Kody could find some too! The attemted after-hunt photo shoot was completely unsucessful, as the kids really were to excited about thier eggs to pose for photos!Kody was the only one willing to pose for a few cute shots.

After brunch, Adam took Entoni to his first football game. Entoni was stoked to be going to the footy with DAD and have some JUST BOYS time.

Ooh! Did i tell you that Adam bought me a new phone?!? It's  samsung, and it has a camera, video, TV, and an MP3 player all in one! It's pretty cool, but i think it's going to take me awhile to figure out how to use all the functions (i am hopeless with technology)

I met up with roz on friday (after standing her up on thursday...SO SORRY babe!)We had coffee at elephant rock (told you it was one of my faves).Shes got the same phone as me so Roz sent me the coolest ringtone by infrared...now that was cool! I told my hubby how she just put her phone next to mine and infrared-ed me the ringtone, he still can't get over that! lol!

Well i hope you all had a  great and relaxing Easter!