Kim Archer | Mindful Living

Rain, rain, rain

Lots of rain here in Newcastle again.

I think any sign of torrential rain in this town after the June long weekend floods last year, makes the locals edgy. Including me!

Yesterday Capri had a pupil free day so we dropped Jamison at his swimming carnival at Lambton Pool early and headed to Westfield Kotara for a mother/daughter morning! Arriving there SO early meant that most of the shops hadn't even opened yet and I was rather excited to score a park underground right near the front door - something I rarely manage.The park, I might add was where many cars were later submerged in floodwaters (again) only a mere few hours later. Thankfully we had left the carpark before the downpour and flooding happened. And the ceiling of Michael Hill Jewellers also collapsed due to the rain later in the day.

So, we headed up to meet Ken who has been transferred to another office near Maitland and the weather just turned nasty! A huge thunderstorm. Massive amounts of rain. And lots of water on the road. I was considering turning around and going home again but I could hardly see out of my windows and couldn't see where I would be able to turn around safely. So we continued on at a snails pace. And Capri was stressing out.

Eventually we met Ken. Got the royal tour of his new place. Met his new staff. And headed to a coffee shop for lunch. The rain was still bucketing down and I had spoken with Jamison at the pool and he said they were still swimming in this weather!

Then I got a phone call from Brandt. His school was flooded and they were being sent home as there was concern that the same roads would be cut off again which meant there could be kids stranded. And when he returned to his prize possession..his car..he found it with water up to the bottom of the door and he had to wade through the water to reach it..but he's an old hand at wading after the June floods!!!

Around where his school is was one of the worst areas hit (again) and several of his school friends had cars written off we learned today. THANKFULLY there wasn't ANY water inside the car and Brandt was able to get home but he said there was flooding over many of the roads in town he needed to drive through to get home. But he was fine. And so was the car!!!

So then with news that the same roads near our place could be cut off again and Jamison stuck at Lambton (another badly hit area) at the pool I cut lunch short and headed back to get him which was a 40 minute drive away. By the time we reached the pool it was still raining but not too bad and the waters had actually subsided and the roads were fine. While theres lots of images in today's paper and stories of the flooding, thankfully, it wasn't as bad as last year. But rain does make everyone edgy.

No photos to share today. Feeling blah actually. Sore throat. Aching. Just that flu-ey feeling. Brandt's got it too and stayed home today. The other two have been sniffling and sneezing all afternoon as well.

Tomorrow I am off to the Stitches and Craft fair with my crafty friend Jenny. Hope I can muster up some energy as I've really been looking forward to going. First time the fair has been held here in Newcastle.

And today is the last opportunity for your booking for the CELEBRATE CHILDHOOD SHORTS WORKSHOP to be included in the @Home donation to Crop For Kids. So ALL bookings for this workshop until midnight tonight will be included and sent off to the Crop For Kids girls early next week. THANK YOU TO EVERYONE who supported this workshop (and also thanks to everyone who has also booked into my other classes too...it's great to see new faces as well as my loyal regulars! THANK YOU!!!)

Oh yeah..and a HUGE happy birthday to my cousins..Trudi and Kristy who celebrated birthdays this week!! happy birthday you guys...

I think I have rabbitted on enough. Thanks for reading all this. Have a great weekend. I am off to bed!

One post a week?

I don't know why, but these days I seem to check in only one day a week with my blog posts..I'll be trying to post more regularly as I do enjoy recording what we get up to as well as adding updates for the family!!

So, this week so far...

I have been busy making some mini 6x6in layouts for the Southern Cross Kids Camp appeal which you can read more about here on Julie Stone's blog. The response to Julie's plea has been embraced and met with such enthusiasm from the scrapping world!! Lots of pages have been arriving at Julie's place and you can see read about the response here:

Heres a photo of the pages I have done so far. So simple in their design and not as many as I wanted to get done but I have intentions of creating more before sending off the layouts.

And yes, look at that photo..all nicely Photoshopped..it's that procrastination at work again...deadlines to be met, class stuff to do and I make a nice pretty pictures in Photoshop!

Other news...

The latest Boxx newsletter is out which you can read about here. It feels funny not to have any work in this issue!! As usual, the newsletter is packed with gorgeous creations from the team AND Maria is running a special promotion at the moment with her Pay It Forward promotion. You may have read the details on other people's blogs and things..take a look and read all about it here..

The Scrapboxx Design Team girls are involved in this promotion too...AND even though I am not officially on the team anymore I am also involved...here's what you can do but hurry because this offer ends midnight February 29..

SCRAPBOXX is running a special Pay It Forward promotion, where I get to give you a 15% discount voucher. Simply visit their store at http://www.scrapboxx.com.au/ and put in this code when you checkout your order:-

payitforward

and your 15% discount will be automatically calculated for you. The Scrapboxx Design Team are running their own special promotion - If you mention KIM in the comments of your order 5% from every 3 orders that mention KIM will be donated to the Breast Cancer Foundation. "

[The Breast Cancer Foundation is a cause very close to my heart with my mum's own story from back in 2001, my dear Aunty Chris (Hi A Chris!!!!) and also my good friend Mardi's journey happening at the moment too...}

And what else?

Um..kids are going ok. Jamison is getting the hang of this be up early to catch the bus-stacks of homework and assignments-highschool thing! And the footy season is about to kick off....

Capri's back at jazz/tap/cheerleading and netball training will start soon too with the netball season just around the corner. Plus she wanted to join the school band and follow in her brothers footsteps and play the drums PLUS start gymnastics and try out for some Primary School Choir thingo but I think enough already!!!! Far too many after school activities! Dancing and netball is enough.

Brandt went with Ken to buy a stack of timber last night for his major Design & Tech HSC project!!! HSC! Goodness. That's just around the corner too.

My school friends are all slowly celebrating their milestone birthdays too now that February has hit..happy birthday LOTTY!!! JENNY!! AND DOM!!! Welcome to the old timers club you guys!

Thanks so much to everyone who has already booked into the Celebrate Childhood workshop over at my site. There's still some time to book in before I tally up the totals and forward all the proceeds from that class to Michelle at the Crop For Kids appeal...Check out the class details here.

And I think that's about all for now..I seriously need a diary at the moment to keep track of all the TV shows I am hooked on. It's totally pathetic amd ridiculous but I am loving The Biggest Loser, So You Think You Can Dance, American Idol, Gossip Girl, America's Next Top Model and The Bachelor. And they are all on at different times, some times crossing over and all on different channels...I am struggling to keep track of everything!

And because I haven't shared a layout in a while as everything I seem to design these days is for my website, here's a recently published layout which appeared in Scrapbook Creations (my first appearance in that magazine actually..)for Jeni O'Connor's feature on scrapbooking styles...my style..shabby chic which was funny because I don't do a lot of that style anymore...but this was actually a load of fun to put together.

Have a great Tuesday! (This was a long post..i hope i didn't put you to sleep!)

Update tomorrow

Busy with stuff. Will do a proper update tomorrow..

Monday

Time for a bit of a family catch up..

This time last week we were enjoying the glorious sunshine at the local pool for Capri's school swimming carnival. She swam well and had signed up for almost every race possible...placed about 4th I think in her favourite stroke..backstroke - if they don't come in the top 3, it's hard to tell where they finish as they all seem to arrive across the finish line at once. And we were suitably proud of her for having a go with such enthusiasm! Bless her.

Here she is getting ready for her backstroke heat.

Mojo has fitted in nicely into the family. He's a quiet thing. And getting loads of attention from everyone.

I taught a class for Kim from Scrap Direct on Saturday. Was such a lovely fun group. A few new faces which was great to see and some regulars. Kim's off to have a baby now (yay!) so we are having a short break but we'll be back with more classes very soon!!! I'll keep you posted!

@Home news: I've changed my newletter format.

From now on, my newsletter can be read online. It's a PDF download (just like the handouts in the workshops on the site) which means you will need Adobe Reader to access the newsletter. IF you have trouble downloading the file it may mean you need to update your Adobe Reader - the link to do this is on the site. Mardi also had trouble reading the newsletter until she downloaded the latest version of Reader and then everything was fine..

You can check out the latest newsletter here!!

(thanks SO much for your support with the Crop For Kids Workshop too..)

SHORTS WORKSHOPS

NEW WORKSHOPS HAVE FINALLY BEEN UPLOADED and are now open for bookings. Thank you to the girls who have already booked into the classes!! Check out the new Shorts Workshops here.

So what are these Shorts Classes?

Well I have had lots of emails from people who were going through the @HOME classes we had on offer at a rapid rate and were looking around for more of our projects to do on a more regular basis. They were after quick and easy projects that they could do in a  short time. All of them were busy mums who often only had a short block of time while the kids were in bed etc and wanted quick but still creative and stylish projects they could achieve in under an hour. 

So I decided to create SHORTS WORKSHOPS.

These classes will be uploaded regularly. They will also be archived for a long time which means more choice of workshops and longer classroom access. They won't always be scrapbooking layout classes. We have plans for projects and other craft workshops like painting and stitching and making stuff!! And some of the classes will have accompanying kits.

I am still offering the LIVE workshops and our standard more detailed Instant Workshops  in conjunction with our new Shorts Workshops. Lots of choices. Lots to see. Lots to do! Lots more fun!!

I have FOUR new workshops to check out.

My Support Girls have again been busy and have created samples for each class.

One of the classes I want to especially make mention of is the Celebrating Childhood Shorts Workshop. It was designed especially for the Crop For Kids ladies to help them raise money for the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. I was approached late last year about being involved with these guys and I was more than happy to offer an online workshop to help them with their appeal.

All proceeds from this Celebrating Childhood Shorts Workshop, up until February 29 will go to the Crop For Kids fundraiser.

So head on over to the @Home site and I hope you find something that catches your eye.

Oh and I have an @Home newsletter (finally!!) coming out today. Stay tuned.

Catching up..

Hi everyone..

Ok, I so wanted my new classes to have opened up this morning but I have had a few unexpected things needing my attention so my day hasn't gone quite to plan! I really want to launch all FOUR WORKSHOPS together but one of them is not quite finished! I need to do the downloadable handout and a couple of other things and then it's all systems go!

Thanks for your patience. I know theres lots of you waiting for these classes to kick off. I am aiming to open for bookings tomorrow morning..so stay tuned...

And our new puppy has a name..

I loved reading all your suggestions and also some emails I got from people with some ideas...in the end, Capri was out voted and our new family member is called

...wait for it...

are you ready..

MOJO!!

(Thanks Jaimie for the suggestion!)

SO I can now stop calling him The Little Dog!

Another week flies by...

This little fella STILL doesn't have a name. Which is getting ridiculous.

I think he just looks like a little Max..Capri has been calling him Max anyway. But the boys are adamant they don't want him called Max as it's too 'common'!!!. I am amused that they are so vocal on this and so opinionated over it...One of Brandt's friends even gave him 4 pages of possible dog names to sift through.....So I'll keep you posted on the name...

Other news..

The week has flown by in a flurry of school stuff. I tell you what - it's taking us all a while to settle back into the swing of having THREE schools to juggle. Three lots of school rules, three different ways things are done, three different sport days, three different uniforms and three kids all needing different things at different times and needing to be in three different locations at the same time... It's been hard to keep on top of everything but we are starting to fall into a routine. And I'm glad it's the weekend tomorrow so we can all have a much needed sleep in!

I have also been working really hard on lots of exciting new ideas for the site which will be revealed over the weekend..AND WE CAN FINALLY MAKE IT ALL PUBLIC....I would like to officially announce our brand new team member Helen Karanfilovski...Helen was our Miss September winner and fitted into the team so well I have asked her to stay on as one of our permanent  @Home Support Team girls. It's been great to work with Helen and I am sure you will enjoy seeing her creations in the workshops alongside the other girls work..Welcome aboard Helen...

You can read all about Helen here....

our new family member..

So today we bought a puppy.

We have been looking for months for a friend for Roxy..actually we have been looking for over 12 months and every time we went near a shopping centre we would always go via the pet shop.  And this week Helen shared a photo of her gorgeous new little family member Coco..who is such a cutie (Coco that is!!!). The Support Team girls and I have been oohing and aahing the last few days about Coco and we have been swapping dog stories!

And then today Ken, very co-incidently, found a couple of ads in the Saturday paper for little Maltesee puppies..and next thing I know I am checking out a whole family of puppies!!! It was so hard to choose. We had it narrowed to two little guys..and we ended up with this little fella.

He doesn't have a name yet. It's causing much family debate. The front runners are Basil or Max.  But other names thrown into the mix include Baz and Harry. So for now we're just trying out those few names to see how they sound!

He's fitted into the family very well. The kids love him! And he has a very cute little personality already!!

And Roxy seems a little out of sorts but she's such a placid dog that I know (fingers crossed), eventually, that our new puppy will get along with our old, much loved one!