Rubik's Cube Fun

And while I was out, what did Jeff do? Learned to solve the Rubik's cube! Of course. He did the 3x3. Then he went on to the 4x4 cube. Then the 2x2 cube. Then he tried to teach Catriona how to do it.

At last, we can put them away all neat!















The web site they are referring to here is something along the lines of "how to do a rubiks cube.com" --->

Big day at stamp club

We had a super day at Stamp Club - but I don't have to tell you about it here, I'll just send you across to the South Eastern Rubber Stampers blog.

Hermit Crab makes a break for FREEDOM

We saw this little guy on a visit to the beach, ages ago. He was making his way to freedom. A place where a crab can relax and blend in. Guess he didn't realise he was wearing his extra fancy shell!

Short Pants

"Quick, Miss Jones, I have an important business meeting, and my pants are way too long!"

"No problem, Mr Jenkins".

Delicious Postage Stamps

Oops, this one nearly got past me ... Australia Post have issued new stamps with DESSERTS on them! More particularly, desserts that have an interesting history, so as well as the luscious food, there is some useful Australiana. It's called "Not Just Desserts".

One of the stamps features the wonderful ANZAC biscuit. Want a recipe? Sure you do! Here's a link to my best one! Jeff has been adding his comments to my recipe. You think I'm pedantic? Wait til you see what he says about syrup!

No fancy designs in the gutters though, I checked. Check out the "With Love" designs though - pretty hearts in the gutter - that's nice! For the uninitiated, when a sheet of stamps is printed, they sometimes leave a gap through the middle, which is used colour registration (I guess). Lately, Aussie Post has been using the gutters to add to the design of the whole sheet. SOME stamp issues have had cool pictures in the gutters. They are the size and shape of stamps, but of course are not valid for postage. And, being smart, of course AP hasn't let them look enough like stamps to fool anyone. I stick 'em in my art journal. Why not?

I have to, the lady said...

At a church fete on the weekend Jeff and I had fun browsing at books. He picked a Carl Hiassen and a James Bond novel, $1 each, bargain! But I found the real treasures : a box of super-special, older goodies was hidden under the table. I crawled in and nabbed the best treasure of all - an old dictionary! It had damaged binding, but could well be a good candidate for collage work. And of course, for looking up amusing words.










A nice church lady crouched next to me, and whispered "That's actually the throw-out box. If you want anything, you can just take it."

So I have to use it, the nice lady said!

Need a spatula?

'Cos we seem to have THREE new ones. That's what happens when you send three scouts out on Blacksmith Camp.

They spent a weekend doing metalwork activities, and camping under canvas. Sounds like it was a blast!

And lookee what else they made :

Fancy flower pot holders, made with actual ARC welding equipment. WOW!

Diamonds! I'm rich!

A church fete find from yesterday - a tiny box, encrusted with REAL DIAMONDS. I think. One is missing, as you can see, but what do you expect for 20c?










The little trinket box was full of goodies too :













And one of the goodies was possibly my tiniest treasure ever - a miniature camera! Not a bracelet charm, because it doesn't have an attachment anywhere, just a miniature. Wow.

Ah, the camera phone

I was checking out the photos on my phone the other day. It's not a great camera (well, obviously) but if you see something nice, and you have a camera in your pocket... well, you have to take the photo. And these days, I'm not allowed out of the house without a phone. Sheesh, you wave over a stranger and get him to call you an ambulance ONE TIME! It's a phone nanny state.

This is a sunflower I saw on a walk in Perth, back at Christmas time.

Scout Hall Garage Sale - There's a Citybug scooter!

The Lions club is having a Garage Sale at our scout hall (corner of Canterbury Rd and Mitcham Rd, in Vermont). Starts at 8am, 16th May 2009.


I was helping set up, and they were investigating one of the items : it's a Citybug electric scooter, really posh!

So go an buy it, and give a decent price - it's supporting a charity!

More about my stamp club blog

I spent far too long yesterday playing with the SERS blog, for my stamp club. I'm not sure that a countdown timer to the next meeting is STRICTLY required, but it sure was fun.

Since starting it up, my concern has been to get it up towards the top of the Google rankings, so that anyone who wants to find the info, will.

At first, no luck. Of course, it takes time for the indices (that's the plural of index, folks) to be updated. Later in the day, I managed to get to the TOP of the search results, if I used the right search terms. The bad news was, the search terms had to include "Eclectus Parrot", and I'm not sure how many people would think of that.

But I just tried again today, and woo hoo, if you type "South Eastern Rubber Stampers" or "SERS Melbourne" or "Rubber Stamp Club Melbourne" or various other things that people would think of, you will see the SERS blog on the first page.

And just to keep Google on its toes, here's a photo of an Eclectus Parrot. At stamp club.

So, if you are interested, have a lookee at the SERS blog. If you are associated with SERS, feel free to add a link on YOUR blog or site. Your little link will help the blog to be findable to new people. Cool, huh? And no effort for me, which is a plus.

Picture To Page Scrapbooking Show is coming

This weekend, there's a papercraft show on in my very neighbourhood! Lucky me, I get to go to the Picture to Page show. It's a the Whitehorse Club, in East Burwood, right on Burwood Highway, quite close to Springvale Rd.

There's no actual web site for the show, but Shirley, the organiser, is listing details on her blog, so check it out.

I've been to this show several times, and it's lovely - not too big, but jammed full of goodies. Obviously lots of scrapbooking gear, which is not really my thing, but plenty for me to see.

Here's the times : 9am - 4.30pm Saturday 16th May 2009
10am - 4.30pm Sunday 17th May

The Melways reference is 62C7.

And I've copied the official list of traders here, hoping that's fun and useful for you.
ALISON ELLIS DESIGNS
ARTYPANTS
CINNAMON COUNTRY
CREATIVE DREAMS
CREATIVE MEMORIES
DEBLING IN DESIGN
DRAGONFLY CRAFTS
ECLECTIC IMAGES
FERNGULLY STAMPS
HANDPRINT
HEAVEN SCENT
JOURNEY THROUGH THE PAGES
KASZAZZ
KEEPSAKES WHOLESALE CRAFTS
L’ART DU SCRAP
LITTLE BITS
LIZ ZED CREATIONS
MY STAMPS
PICTURE 2 PAGE
RIBBON PALACE
ROBYN’S SCRAPBOOK
SCRAPBOOK MAGIC
SCRAPBOOK MEGA STORE VIC
SCRAPBOOK VILLAGE
SCRAPPY HOLLOW
SCRAPSADAISY
SKAT KATZ
STAMPIN’ UP
TG AUSTRALIA
THE SCRAPBOOK SCENE

My Mother's Day

Phew, what a nice Mother's Day! Plenty of fun stuff that I enjoy - that's what it's all about.

I visited the market in the morning as usual, and came home to find ...

... a scrumptious kid-made waffle breakfast (yes, those ARE penguin shaped waffles!).

There were presents ...

some of which were supplied by the most wonderful school Mother's Day stall (which of course I had organised). That's one way to guarantee nice gifts. A pretty mug with an Earl Grey tea bag; a massager; a handy torch; and a candle. Nice, hey? And Dad came through with an arty book!

Then there's the cards - wa hoo, three hand made ones!











Thomas showing his sense of humour :
Don't worry, the birdy gets it right in the end...













Jonathan made this card at school, and the teacher MADE them add a promise to do something nice for Mum that day. As you can see I've used my turn up, and had to mark the card accordingly. I had him make me a coffee (with the proper filter). Thomas had to teach him how to do it. Tee hee, now I have TWO sons who know how to make proper coffee.

Then Catriona just made herself at home in the craft room and used some of my nice stamping goodies.
AND, we went out to the movies, and saw Star Trek (which I loved!).

AND we tried to go to dinner (too crowded, in spite of making a booking) so we ended up getting yummy pizzas at the local great pizza place.

Yet another pretty cup

You know how strongly I feel about drinking tea out of a variety of attractive cups. I like to choose a suitable cup for each drinking occasion - it's on the of the little pleasures of the day.

Some good church ladies sold me a most pretty little mug on the weekend. It was 30c. It has a few scratches on it, so it's in no danger of being valuable to anyone but me. I spent some time trying to get a flattering photo of it. It really is a joy to drink out of. Would those be crocusses?

And what a lively colour combination! Yellow-orange, and purple, with green. Hmm.

My Stamp Club has a blog!

South Eastern Rubber Stampers, also called SERS, is my stamp club. We meet once a month, and have done for years. We have such fun!

Well, I finally realised we haven't had a web page of our own for a while, and it would make sense to have the basic club details out there where anyone can find them. So SERS has a blog now! No, I'm not expecting to do much with it, except note any changes to meeting times and dates. It's a low key, no pressure blog. Like the club!

So here's the link.

And one thing I will do, is take an up to date photo - the only ones I have are years old!

The doll show was fabulous!

I went to the Cloth to Clay doll show at Berwick last weekend as promised. It was fabulous!

I ran into Beverley, an old stamping buddy, who is mad on doll making now. This is one of her works - it's the result of a doll making weekend those nutty girls at the Cloth Dolls Association ran. They took a plain doll and a bag of fabric - then they swapped bags! Everyone had to dress a doll with someone else's goodies. This is the one Beverley made.






She's made the clothing so that it all works like full size clothes. No cutting corners, or sewing the clothes onto the doll. Well, I was impressed.
















Then here's another of Beverley's dolls. Pretty, hey? I'm not sure about posting photos of OTHER people's dolls - I don't know the makers, and I'd hate to take liberties. But check out their web site - they have some super stuff!

Stuff on my desk

There's some pretty interesting stuff on the craft desk right now. Nothing of any consequence, but nice, you know.

There's a card made from squares of paint-splat paper, made lovingly by offspring.

Needs a finishing touch, obviously.














Then there's some general pretty scraps, all meant to be part of something, but none of them have come together exactly right yet ...

















And there's this card, using a fantastic PSX cabbage stamp. Just how do you justify using a cabbage stamp? That's the question that has bothered me for years. Looks so cool stamped, though.

A house of one's own

Time to blog. So, you wanna hear about ways in which I've been expressing my creative spirit, or funny things the cats have been doing? Yeah, I could go either way. Let's start with the cats.

Mr Burns made himself a house. It's a roll of brown paper I use for packing parcels (it's usually put away, so it was an unusual thing to find in the kitchen.) He tucked himself under the edge of the paper, and made a little cubby house.

Jeff shooed him away, and wound the paper up again. Mr Burns ran a fast lap around the paper roll, making it UNROLL again, and climbed back into his little house. That he made.

I took this picture the next day, when he'd made it AGAIN.

Tulips in the house

Last weekend I went to the Camberwell Market - no surprise there, it's a lovely visit. As I left, I picked up a pretty bunch of tulips.

They were tightly closed up on the first day, and opened up through the week. A little touch of pink appeared on the edge of each petal too. It was lovely to watch.

It's been really cold in Melbourne, but one day the sun came out. Here's the tulips early in the day...










And here's how they coped later in the day!

They are still looking pretty today, and tomorrow is market day again.

Screwball Comedy Alert

ABC2 are starting a Cary Grant season - this Saturday they are screening "Bringing Up Baby" at 8.30. In this classic Screwball comedy from 1938. It's a scream - there's class conflict, mistaken identities, fast repartee, and a leopard. That's Baby. And a dinosaur too, in skeleton form.

Every handsome young actor who has any flair for comedy at all gets described as "a young Cary Grant" these days. See the real young Cary Grant for yourself!

I think they are showing "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" soon. That's a fun one too.