Win some, lose some

Junior club champs just finished yesterday at our club and Colin participated quite well. First game was on Friday night which he lost and meant he moved into the plate for his draw. This was followed up with a win on Saturday morning and meant he made it to the Plate final at 2pm that afternoon. Turned out he had to play his class mate Aaron from school, unfortunately Colin got beaten but he did so with a smile on his face and wasn't worried about the result. He certainly has improved over these last 3 weeks as him and I have had at least a couple practices a week after school, he now has fewer faulty serves and the aim now is to work on his backhand next and stop him from over running his shots. Something we will work on over spring and summer to give him a head start next year as the junior season has now come to an end. CJ didn't get a price but got a Subway voucher for his smile and attitude on court! All 3 Jamiegees did very well, finishing all 1st in their draw, well done guys! Will post some squash photos later when I get some more time.

Here is another LO I completed this morning and was working on at the club yesterday.
credits: SgD Template 7, SgD Club PS 3 at http://www.scrapbooksgonedigital.com, Stierney Preppyboy addon paper,
Little Dreamer Design VintageDreams Retro

Good excuse for a Mulled Wine weekend

Well, we didn't get as much skiing done as we had hoped this last weekend. All started with having to wake up at 3.30am on Friday morning as we wanted to be on the road by 4.30 as we had a 5hr drive to Taupo first to drop off one of Brian's work vans, now surplus to requirements. As you can imagine, not the easiest of drives with only about 4hrs of sleep and me driving our fully loaded family car following Brian in the van in darkness for about 3 hours until sunrise! We made it to Taupo, dropped the van off and turned around for a drive back to Ohakune to our cosy accommodation for the weekend and made it in time for some afternoon skiing at Turoa ski field. Visability was prety much non existent, but we were just happy to have gotten in some skiing at least. Couldn't take any pics as we skiied in the rain, never mind. Saturday morning wasn't any better, still no visability and we were so keen to try our upper mountain ski passes. We did our 1st run in white out conditions while looking for a particular trail down I wasn't able to find. After making it to the bottom we decided that the conditions were just too crap, so decided on a refund on our all day pass and head back to Ohakune to join the rest of the Win family for lunch in town. As you guessed it, Murphy's Law, the mountain decided to clear and we missed out on the best skiing we could have had, apparently it was warm and clear blue skies - oh well lunch was very nice and we still had mulled wine left over from the previous evening, yum yum. Sunday was total blizard conditions, no chairlifts were going, so Morgan & Colin hired out a toboggan each. The fun didn't last very long in those conditions & to top it all Morgan got hurt sliding over the bank and hurting his lower leg on a water hydrant and needed some medical attention when his leg swelled up with a nasty looking bruise, which turned out to be a broken leg - poor Morgan! So that left just a half days skiing on Monday afternoon after we all packed up in the morning. We did our best skiing on our last day with visability of about 1km. With plenty of runs down we all improved some what & Colin now out skiis us both, the little speed demon - haha.
Well, we must have done ok as I can feel plenty of sore muscles today...

Just a quick post

The weather is settling down into fantastic skiing weather, with Friday so far shaping up quite nicely for a half day skiing. We can't wait.
Just posting a quick lo I finished over the weekend of a get together with friends bowling now a few months back. Hopefully this will load quickly, so I am not late for training again - hehe. Well Murphy's Law, blogger got stuck on me so am uploading it now 3 hours later and was late for training again!
Just did a big shop, isn't it funny how you always manage to spend more then you set out especially when you shop for goodies to take away for our ski weekend. We won't be starving, that's for sure...

credits: Digitreats RUN paper, Twoboyz00 paper (recoloured), Flerg's A Mother's Love Stitched flowers,
Vicky's AWP BabyBoy alpha, Stitched arrow Monique Gascon

Boyz & their toyz

What a busy Saturday we just had. Brian inherited an old farm/dirt bike from his brother, so once we got it back home, it didn't take long before all 3 boys got riding it. Corey is so into wanting to be into all the people action, so being on a dirt bike wasn't a worry to him. BB took him for lots of rides then Colin was next. He has been wanting a bike for a while, only natural when both his older brother and Dad ride too. CJ can't touch the ground yet, but in 1st gear he looks very much in control, doesn't he? Well, the smiles just said it all.
Then BB & I were of in the evening to our friend Geordie's 50th, great party catching up with good friends and didn't see our bed for the evening until 4am.
Sunday was spend recovering ;) but we did manage to pick up some new ski pants for the boys, BB's seemed to have shrunk - not! Also got measured up for some skis & boot hire, hopefully we get some good skiing in - there is over a 3m base at present but weather has not settled down as yet. Lets keep fingers crossed.

In training

Last time Colin went to junior squash night he wondered if he could put his name down for our junior club champs at the end of the month. I said of course he could as it was open to all junior members and he remembered how much fun he had last year, plus the goodies he got for just participating. So I suggested that perhaps he would like some extra practice during the week after school. CJ now catches the train to the club where I meet him from my work and we practice twice a week. It is paying off as his serves and game has already improved somewhat in the short space of time.

Finished scrapping my birthday blooms from last month, gorgeous aren't they!

credits: Hoosfunky papers by Amy Sumrall, Datebits date by Misty Cato, Quote by Anna Aspen, frame by Kristin Skjæringrud, overlay created from UrbanJungle flower by Coralee Evans.

OMG, Bethany created my Dog Tired WA request

Well, did I get a pleasant surprise this morning when I just happend to checkout http://elegantwordart2.blogspot.com/, low & behold there it was her latest post titled "Dog Tired". I started reading and came to the 2nd paragraph and I let out a squeel of excitement as I read "This WordArt request is from Maureen." I had left a little comment on her blog that I was looking for a Dog Tired WA and ended up altering one of her old ones, see my previous post.

So here is the revised version with a special thanks to Bethany for her wonderful word art. Such a talent!

Be on the look out for my next GIMP tutorial, I'll be covering creating manual/perspective shadow as applied to WA and I have used a little bit of gradient on the corners to make it look it has a slight curl.

Credits: dog WordArt - Elegant WA by Bethany, papers Pawprints - LorieM Design, paper cluster - DaniellaYoung Designs, frame - Tout_simplement by ImagineByFran