OOpsy.

I have been a bad girl. I tried to 'edit' something here on my blog, and clicked the wrong thingy.
Now I have lost ALL of my links to other people's blogs. All of my favourite places to visit. :o(
I have slapped my own wrist, and hope I have learned from the experience. (Tell self not to play around with things that self doesn't know about)....
If your blog name used to be here, would you please...pretty pretty please...send me the link to it, and I will try to put them all back.
I appreciate it muchly. Thanks,

The weather outside is frightful.............. Ü

I know that subject line would normally make you think of snow, but it is far from it here I can tell you. Today, like the past few days, has been not too bad temperature-wise, but we are being warned of another horrendous day on Tuesday.
As most of you are aware, Victoria Australia is enduring it's worst Summer ever. We are in our 13th year of drought in my home state.
We lost over 200 lives, and well over a thousand homes in what has been called "Black Saturday"...February 7th 2009.
In my own town, which has a population of 100,000 people, we lost over 60 houses, hundreds and hundreds of outbuildings and fences, but thankfully only one life. And that man's story is too sad to relate here. What was so extraordinary, is that this started right on the edge of my suburb...something you never expect to hear. We are constantly aware of BUSH fires, but not in the city like this. There are still half a dozen fires burning across the state, in various forests and town outskirts. We are being warned that Tuesday will be as bad or worse, because of the expected high winds. We have not been having temps in the hundreds for the past week or so, which is a relief, but the winds are what is worrying the firefighters.
I thank you all for your lovely emails and messages, asking after us, and I hope that I have responded to you all. It is a scary time, but even so....life goes on, and we all still have jobs to do and people to help.
Hubby has been helping our 12y.o.grandson with a school project. He had to make a musical instrument, from things around the house.... luckily he has a Pa with an 'awesome' (his words) shed full of 'awesome stuff' (his words again, lol) and lots of tools...
his older sisters both asked Pa's help when they had to do it, and they made a Zither and a Thongaphone... Dan is making a guitar. I will try to remember to post a picture when he is done.
Other than that it has been yardwork, housework, a little painting, (trying to get enthused about a show coming up next weekend), and all of the normal, usual, day to day stuff to deal with.
We have a couple of very busy weekends coming up before Easter, and then a very full Easter break. (We get a 4 days break here over Easter... how 'bout you?).
I have been experimenting with some old vintage pictures that I found, and have made myself a new sigtag for some message boards that I participate on. Isn't this one adorable? I think it is vintage 1930's.
Thanks for stopping by...... and again, thanks for all your messages of support during our horrendous couple of weeks here.

...If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun....Ü

It's HOT!

I know a lot of you are enduring freezing conditions overseas, with no end in sight to your snow and rain. But believe me, we have the exact opposite here in Australia. It is so hot here it is unbelievable. We are in the middle of some of our hottest long spells on record. We have had days of up to 45° Celsius in my town, (the equivalent is 113° F. ) It is hot! And it dfoesn't cool down much of a night time. Some towns further north have been a lot hotter, too. With no end in sight to the drought, we are very very low on water, and some crazies have decided it is a good time to deliberately light bushfires. Will we ever understand their need to do this insane thing? Forty homes destroyed in one bushfire.... power lines affected, so no electricity for a lot of towns, and forty people have so far died, with the heat being attributed to their deaths.
This weather is insane.
Okay, enough grumbling about that. Whilst it is too hot to achieve anything much, at least I am able to sit at the computer (while we have power, lol) and clean out some old files etc.
I have received an email asking about a couple of older sets that I had available at one time, so I will try to post them here.
The same deal applies for buying them. They are $3 per set for the moment, and once you pay for them through paypal they will send me notification, and I can email the zipped file to you.
I hope wherever you are, you are coping with the weather okay, and that we can look forward to some improvement soon. Cheers, Sandie

...I am not a perfectionist; but my parents were...°Ü°....................

I have been issued a challenge from Lisa, with these rules:-Go to where you store your photos on your computer. Go to the SIXTH folder and pick the SIXTH photo. Post that photo on your blog along with a SHORT story about it.Tag SIX people and leave a comment on their blog or email them letting them know you chose them.
Well firstly, I don't have six folders of photos on my computer. I clean them out regularly and delete non essential ones. So I just chose the sixth photo that I had in the one folder.
This is it..............





It's a long story about this family, so I won't go into it.
The baby is my father, the boy beside him is his older brother, the little girl with the big bow is his sister, and the others are all half siblings.
When my grandmother left her husband, my father and his sister (with the bow) left with her. They were reared by the man we called our 'Grandpa'. He legally adopted my father a few days before my parents married, so that he would have a son to carry on his name.
My brothers and sisters (8 of us) didn't know any of those half-siblings of my father's . All but one of them died before full adulthood, and our 'biological' grandfather died before any of us were born.
When I saw this photo, I KNEW they were related. For years we had teased my father about his ears...... soon as we saw the ears on these guys we knew they had to be his brothers, rofl...
My father died before this photo was given to me by a relative, and it is the only photo we know of, of our father before he was married.
Thanks, Lisa.

I will now name the 6 people that I am challenging.
Mary aka Libmary
Sue aka GrammyGoose
Carol aka artsygranny
Andrea aka Shorty *Ü*
Shelley aka Catladyof5
Laurie aka Doodlebug
Have fun girls.
Thanks for stopping by today...... Sandie

.....May all your days be crafting days...... °Ü°

I'm still alive and kicking....

I am embarrassed to see how long it is since I last posted here. A lot has happened since then, both medically and job- wise, but I won't get into all of that, lol. Suffice to say I apologise to all who read here, or used to.
I have been contacted by several of you asking how my graphics can be purchased, and I have replied to each one by email. But I am posting now to let anybody else know. I removed the
BUY IT NOW button awhile back, but the graphics can still be purchased via paypal.
If you go to your paypal account, click on the SEND MONEY tab, type in my email addy... sanwayne@impulse.net.au and pay for the sets via paypal, (make sure to let me know there which set you want), then paypal will send me a receipt to say that you have paid for them. I can then email the set to you, direct from my computer. I hope that helps some of you.
Please remember though, that I am in Australia, so there may be a time difference to take into account before I get them emailed back to you.

ALL SETS ON MY BLOG WILL NOW BE $3 (USD) FOR A LIMITED TIME.

I had an op on my left hand last year, which curtailed my painting and crafting for some time, and it seems I am going to need one on my right hand before long. So I haven't painted any new sets for quite some time.
I have been doing a little sewing; still making some orangutan bags for the BOS Foundation, but I am slower at that as well.
I also made a couple of bags with pcCrafter graphics printed onto the fabric. They were cute.
I have pics of one to show you....I will have to take a photo of the other one soon.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to post more regularly this year.
Cheers from Australia, Sandie


*** I intend to live forever......so far so good. *Ü*

This set is a new concept for me.... Cut 'n' Create for yourself.
I have painted the bears, (some are just line drawings for you to colour yourself), you pay the $3, download the set, print them onto cardstock, cut out the pieces, reassemble them and embellish however you wish. They are then suitable to make cards, dress up gift bags, add to scrapping pages; in fact the ideas are endless.
The pattern pieces are also suitable for you to use as a pattern with mulberry paper, to make torn paper bears with.
I will add more photos of what I have used them for over the next week.
There are many combinations that you can do. For example, the bear in the picture above, on the top right hand side, comes with three different heads that you can use on it. This gives you many different looks to the one bear.
I hope you will have fun with it.
I am going to be away till Monday morning, so if there are any problems with this, please email me and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Happy crafting, and thanks for stopping by......Sandie

.....if you can't laugh at yourself, there's plenty will do it for you.....Ü