Doing the things you love

What are some of the things you love to do? Here's my list:

• Cuddle time with the kids

• Reading the BoM with Daniel in the morning

• Reading a good book

• Going to step aerobics

• Time alone with hubby

• Looking for good craft ideas on the internet

• Internet shopping

• Making cards

• Skype time with my family

• Watching my kids sleep

• Waiting for my boys to come home from school and say "hi momma!" and love it when they say it over and over again until I answer "hi" back

• Looking out of our living room window and watching the lovely sunsets

• Hearing my family make music

• Blogging

• Going out with friends

• Long phone calls with said friends

This list in not inclusive but just a few ideas that popped into my head. Luckily my list of things I don't like to do is a lot shorter, with the main one being ironing. But I guess we've got to keep things balanced! :) (I have to iron tomorrow)

This afternoon I made a card for a friend whose birthday is tomorrow and although my office looked like a bomb had hit it, I felt happy, especially once I'd completed the card! Isn't it cute? Don't you just love Sarah Kay images? It takes me back to my childhood when I had Sarah Kay pencils/pencil case and notepaper.  Now to tidy up my office......

Hugs all,

Rebecca

Back again

Wow, the last few weeks have flown by! Sorry I haven't been around for a while, I seem to have had a writers block and nothing seemed to flow, so I just left it. Well I'm back now.....

What has happened in the past weeks? Well I turned 39 on the 16th and am holding on with both hands. The number 40 sounds scary to my ears and I don't know how I'm going to react when next March rolls around. What I do know is that I want to have a party.......we'll see if I laugh or cry!!

I decided that I wanted to spend my birthday doing something crafty, so I coloured in and cut out these lovely butterflies (my favourite embellishment at the moment) and made these cards. The kids thought I was a little mad, but it was my birthday and this is what I wanted to do! I received lots of birthday greetings and spent quite a few hours on the phone. All in all it was a good day.

The hubster took me to the opera a week after my birthday to see Verdi's relatively unknown "Alzira". It was sung in Italian and luckily for the audience there were sub-titles on a small screen above the stage. I thought it was a brilliant idea. At least you were able to get an idea of what they were singing!

Melissa has finally finished her 60 page paper on "Diabetes Mellitus Type II" and will hand it in today. She is hoping for at least a "B" grade. We are all glad that she is finished and life can become normal again for a few months before life changes again in September. Perhaps she can start dating again, now that she has time.....

We went to Basel after church yesterday to visit The hubster's grandmother who had taken a turn for the worse. René, (father-in-law)  was also at the nursing home with us. We had hoped she would reach her 100th birthday (her birthday is in July), but it seems it's not to be. She was very weak and wasn't coherent the entire time we were there. The doctors had put her on morphine to ease the pain as she was refusing food and water. We stayed for 3 hours and said our goodbyes. It was sad. I've know Omi, as the family call her since October 1988 and I even stayed with her for 6 weeks when I came over to Switzerland in February 1989. We had an interesting time as I couldn't speak German and she couldn't speak English. We used our hands and facial mimics an awful lot during those six weeks! :)

We saw her reguarly, and for the last few years before we moved away from the Basel area, we used to visit her nearly every Sunday evening. I have fond memories, and am grateful for her help with the Swiss/German cuisine. My potato salad recipe is from her as is my salad vinaigrette. 

Jordan and Daniel got a little bored so they took turns playing around with her wheelchair (I got side-tracked and didn't take any of Daniel....sorry kiddo!)

We got a phone call from René this morning informing us that Omi (Mina Zoller-Ludwig) had passed away at 00:15 this morning. We're now just waiting for information regarding the funeral. Another generation/era has come to an end.....

I went to the doctors this morning regarding the pain in my shoulder. If you remember, I fell on the ice last month and it is still causing me pain 7 weeks later. I have to have an MRI on Wednesday but he's pretty sure the tendon is not torn but just strained. I'll keep you informed....

It's my oldest brother, Brian's birthday today. He is 17 years my senior - work it out yourself to find out how old he is today :) He is already a grand-dad.......such a strange thought! 

I am the same age my mother was when she had me. I couldn't imagine having another baby at my age, although I don't think my age is the issue, rather that it's been 11 years ago since our last baby was born and 19 since our oldest. I can only imagine what my mother must have been feeling when the doctor informed her that she was pregnant! I wouldn't be too pleased either! You have so much more freedom when the children are older and I can only imagine how hard it was for her to lose that freedom especially as she thought she was finished having babies!

I was 19 years and 10 months old when I had Melissa. Can you imagine if that were Melissa? She is exactly the age I was when I found out that I was pregnant. 

I am glad that I was blessed with the opportunity to get married and have my children when I was young. I am aware that not everyone has that opportunity and I know that I have been lucky. 

Hugs all,

Rebecca

More snow!

Just when I thought the snow was going it came again with avengence!! I am slowly getting sick of it. Yes, I know it's good for tourism and all that but if I could have my way the snow would be gone with the snap of my fingers! You can see how bad/good life here is, if all I have to complain about is the snow. Everything else is more or less okay. The hubster is nearly better after his head cold and nobody else has been sick - fingers crossed it stays that way.
The weeks are just flowing one into another. I can hardly believe that January is almost over - where has it gone? Luckily for me I can tell you; all I have to do is go to my project 365 album .....hehe!!!
Week 4 has now been completed. This evening I said to Mr D, "I'm just going to print out my week's photos and journal them, it shouldn't take me long." Well, three hours and 4 phone call interuptions later, I am finished. Looking at the journal entries I can only say that we've had a rather uneventful week. Sorry to say it, but it's true. Week 4 of January wasn't anything special!
Here are some photos I took this week:

POTD for Sunday. These are the flowers that Mr D got for his concert on Saturday. They are so beautiful and look lovely on the table. (oops, just realised that these two photos were on last weeks blog - oh well, they are so pretty they can be seen twice ....lol!)


Daniel took the POTD on Monday - his Daddy. Then he took one of me making a salad for the hubster.


This was the weather on Monday. It was foggy and miserable but the snow was starting to melt :)
POTD for Tuesday - Brownies. I had so many eggs and I just knew that I had to do some baking. I'd made cookies on Saturday so I decided on brownies. I made one batch for us and another for our neighbours. Both parties appreciated them and I was happy to use up 8 eggs! :)


POTD for Thursday - Jordan shoveling the new snow off the driveway. Thank goodness we have Jordan. He is a star!


Here is Daniel eating brownies in the office - a tidied up office, mind you. It was such a mess, you couldn't even see the desk anymore except infront of the keyboard. I just wish it would stay tidy (big sigh). He was just starting a game of "Need for speed" and yes, he is in his underwear as his trousers got wet with playing in the snow. I tried to get him to at least put some pyjama bottoms on, but no, he was fine as he was!


Melissa wasn't feeling too well on Friday so she came home from work and spent the day on the sofa. Here she is playing with DANIEL'S Nintendo DS!!!! He wasn't too impressed that she took it without asking. But her logic was - he was at school and so she couldn't ask him :)


POTD for Saturday. We woke up to more new snow. Jordan shoveled again :) Can I say "I wish it were April"?


I made some more cards this week but I can't show the majority of them as they are going to be family birthday cards. But here are two that aren't family cards:


The hubster and the two younger kids are now off school for a week. We plan to go skiing a couple of times, go to the wellness park (sauna etc) and hopefully get a group of friends to go bowling on Friday to celebrate Mr D's birthday. Yes, the hubster will be 47 on Friday!!!! He's getting old....hehe!! Melissa flies out to New Zealand for 3 weeks on Wednesday evening with her friend Susanna. This place is going to be soooo quiet.

Hope you all have a great week. Until next time......

Hugs all,

Rebecca

Capturing the moments of life

Doing this project of taking a photo per day has made me look at life in a new perspective. I am now taking photos of LIFE; the day to day little activities that wouldn't normally get noticed or documented. Seeing Daniel eating cereal is such a common occurence in our family life that nobody notices it, but that's exactly what I want to capture with this project - the moments of life.

When we look back in 20 years what will we remember? Now thanks to this project at least 2010 will be documented in detail.
It's fun to take photos and then decide which one will be the "POTD" (photo of the day). The kids are asked for their opinion and I'm glad they are interested in what goes into the album.


Monday's POTD
-->(Aaron watching TV with the family)
Friday's POTD
--> (Melissa's birthday roses)

On Wednesday I went to Stephanie's again to help out with the twins in Gais. She went shopping and left me with the girls. They were a little fussy and as I only have two hands I had to somehow sooth both of them at the same time, so somehow I managed to get both of them onto my chest where they settled down and fell asleep. The day was gorgeous again and I just had to take a shot of the Alpstein and Säntis. We live in a lovely part of Switzerland.






Saturday morning was spent making chocolate chip cookies for Christian L. He was in NY for a couple of months and I had some craft stuff sent to his place and he brought it home with him a few weeks ago. He was visiting his brother, Mark and I wanted to make some cookies to say thank you. The house smelled lovely and it was so hard not to eat any. I hate diets!!!!
There was only one left on Sunday morning - I have a lot of cookies monsters living in my house.



This was my POTD for Saturday


Thursday's POTD was my finished Tilda card. I'm very pleased the way it turned out. The stamps are so cute!


Saturday evening the hubster had a concert with his women's choir in Goldach. The evening was really entertaining and I really enjoyed myself. Roland is an excellent conducter and it was pure entertainment just watching him lead the women. They sang pieces like "New York, New York", "I will follow him", "Barbara Ann", "Haliluja" and so on. Of course, he got flowers, which meant I got flowers :) Aren't they pretty? The photo below is my POTD for Sunday.


After church Jordan invited his friend, Tizian Forrer back to our place for lunch and here they are gaming. Aaron is still in his suit!


Life is good and I am content.

Hugs all,

Rebecca

Week 2 and 3

Today I went into town for two things, one to take Aaron's Macbook to see if it can be fixed and two, to see if anybody stocked Copic markers. Well it looks like they will be able to fix his laptop but they will have to install a new hard-drive ($) as the one inside was "mush" due to Aaron's cleverness in swiping a magnet (all be it by accident) across his Macbook. Just that you know, NEVER, NEVER let a magnet anywhere near your laptop.

But I had no luck finding any Copic markers in St. Gallen, all they had were Touch markers so I bought a couple of those so that when my Magnolia stamps arrive, I can colour in their faces. I can use my Distress inks for the rest. I ordered 5 stamps and they are so cute and the postage from Sweden was only Sfr. 5.10 - not bad at all! I can't wait for them to arrive!!!!

The view coming home from town was spectacular; I just had to stop the car and shoot this photo with my mobile phone. Sorry if the quality isn't good.


I have completed the second week of my project 365 and I am finding it quite easy. I just have to train my mind to remember to take a photo per day.


I thought I might as well load the two cards that I quickly made for Melissa's birthday. I was playing around with the distress inks, which are the background papers on the cards and I decided to emboss and distress the tags.

BTW, Melissa's party went well and they all seemed to have fun, although for our liking it was too loud for too long. At 3am I had to go and tell them to lower the level down and this was with earplugs. They were playing Activity!! Thank goodness the hubster and I could take a nap on Sunday afternoon, otherwise we would be dead. Although Mr D is now sporting a cold and is feeling quite out of sorts, so fingers crossed that he doesn't pass his bugs around! :)

Hugs all,

Rebecca

Photoshop Elements and more

I've been playing around with PSE and wanted to do a word art poster for the 2010 mutual theme ""Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest" (Joshua 1:9)
I saw something similar online but it was in English and I needed to have it in German so I played around with Photoshop and came up with this. I really had fun!

For the last half year I hadn't any desire to do anything crafty and then all of a sudden "bam", I couldn't stop! I've been making some cards using my new Cricut Storybook cartridge and some new stamps from Hero Arts. Now I have to keep everything in balance and not forget everything around me (like housework!!). Here are some of the cards I made. Enjoy!