............................Woo Hoo, I've passed 5000 hits. I think it's time for a bit of candy*

Just to celebrate I think we need a challenge and a bit of
blog candy. Keep in touch over the next couple of days and
I'll see what I can come up with out of my box of goodies.
Or maybe we will make the prize a surprise! What do you think?

Lancen's boys

Here is a great shot of Lancen the trainee Assistant Manager here on Hodgson's 2 boys, isn't it great, butter wouldn't melt in their mouth.
Fiona Langsdorf took the photo one night here when a couple of the men
were giving us a mini concert. I put the photo black and white and printedit off and gave it to Lancen for his birthday.

Yes Well...!!!!!!

The Picture says it all! Thanks for the gift Tim.

Didgeridoo!!!!

Steven August and Todd playing the didg.

I think they were surprised how good Todd was!

Todd and his new son!

Todd the resemblence is uncanny!

Latest photos of Hodgson from the air.

Fiona went up in the chopper and took these photos for me in July. Here is a

front view of the house. My little patch of grass is a little bigger and greener

at the moment. We are slowly getting there.

As you can see from the shots we have a few extra things since the last lot
of photos were shown. The generator shed is off to the far right. There is
a 5 bed donga put in, and an outdoor men's kitchen with firepit. The house
and garden shed weren't in the last lot of photos. You can also see in some of
the photos the saddle shed and horse yards that John and the boys built over
the wet. We're getting there.

Hope my friends read this and next time they whinge at me about dusting,
I'll just have to tell them to get on here and have a look.
LOL! You wanna tell
me about dust!

This is how we get our meat!

No going in and buying packaged meat off the shelves for us.

We have to go out and select a beast. Which is then slaughtered
and cut up on the ground out in the paddock. They use the hide
underneath to keep the meat clean and cut the beast into
large pieces (sides). It is then bought back to the station
(usually on a bed of leaves in the back of a ute)
and hung overnight so it stops bleeding and the meat gets
easier to cut up. We just hang it like this at the moment
but will build what we call a butcher shop over the wet.
This will just be a building with stainless steel benches
and a bandsaw, mincer and sausage maker.
After we let the meat set, the next morning we cut and
slice it up into bags, eg, fillet, topside, rump, roasts etc.
It's a fairly big job, and with the amount of staff at the
moment, we usually have to do 1 sometimes 2 a week.

John and Tim sharing a joke while hanging meat.
My husband John hanging meat.

Bella Glen

I thought I would load a few more photos from the June holidays.
These are a few shots of the kids swimming again. The spot is
called Bella Glen and is really pretty. The spot is full of little
freshwater crocs, which doesn't seem to worry the kids.
Now me I'm quite content to watch! The one above is Macca in mid
air and shows you the height they were swinging from.

Here is another one of Macca in Mid Air (too cheeky)!
See the beautiful rockfaces behind.
Here is
Todd about
to take
off!

Todd
in
mid
air....

Jay ready to take take off.




Here is
my
little
balle-
rina
in
mid
air!

Darwin Aviation Museum

At Christmas

time we went for

a look at the

Aviation museum

in Darwin.

This place

is fantastic

and well

worth the

look if you

are in Darwin.

It is full of aircraft, some of them massive, and also a lot of war
memoribillia from all of the wars that Australia has been in.

I forgot to show her card!

Once again as you can see purple and butterflies!
I love these pull up surprise cards, and have made quite a few
as gifts, but keep forgetting to take photos!!!!

The outside of the card was stamped with the wheel Butterflies
and blossoms, as was the envelope, the rest of the card was
stamped with the free set for demonstrators Time Well
Spent, which is now a level 3 hostess set.

I don't mind how it turned out IRL as also has lots of glitter on it to bling it up a bit the only thing I don't like about it is I coloured the centre of the
butterfly in using the white sigmo pen and it's a little stark against the
purple for my liking.

Govies present.

Well the weather here has been really weird. Mostly cold and windy, with
big gusts of our lovely red dirt swirling through everything. But at the
moment their is a lot of dark cloud around and it ranges from windy
and cold, to warm and muggy, you find yourself putting jumpers on and
off all day. Some rain would be great to settle the dust and put some
water in the holes, the only drawback is we have around 7 different contractors
here on graders and dozers and fencing, so if it rains they all come to a
stop, so it's a bit of a catch 22.

We went to Katherine on Friday to pick Jay up off the bus. He had been
at a fitness camp all week in Batchelor for School of the Air, he had a ball,
especially as his mother and the govie didn't accompany him! John and I
had doctor's check ups and the usual running all over town picking things
up for the station, that you spend the whole day flat. The town is still
teeming with tourists and by the time we were finished we were just
dying to get out of there.
I've been meaning to post a picture of this
for quite sometime, even though the shots aren't that great
you will get the general idea. It is a writing set
that I made for our governess for her birthday in May.
I go the original idea from the blog of Michelle Wooderson
http://michellewooderson.blogspot.com/
Michelle does beautiful work and has quite a lot of writing
sets throughout her examples on her blog.

My governess loves writing letters and usually sends out
6 to 10 a week on the mail plane. So I thought what a great
gift for her. The box above was an old teabag box that
I covered then I made the notes and envelopes to fit inside.

Now if you haven't gathered yet, Lyn loves butterflies and the colour purple,
so of course I had to incorporate both! The DP is K and Company that I have
had for many years. The writing was done on the computer and the L was
stamped with the SU Wild West Alphabet. The envelope was stamped
with images from the SU Garden Whimsey set. I did 10 up to put inside.
Needless to say she loved it, but she said the only problem with it is
she is finding it very hard to use as she thinks it's to pretty!

And this is what I have been up to lately!

Well over a period of a couple of weeks, sneaking a minute in here and there!

To send along with the new mini catalogue I have made some card fronts
with either some of the stamps they have purchased from me or some of
the stamps from the new catalogue.

This is a card that I cased from my upline Kim Gavarra, Kim sent this
card to me when I first started and I loved the simplicity of the card.
I thought it would be a great one to send to my customers as most of
them are beginner stampers. This card is made using the crosshatch
background stamp and the Simple somethings stamp set, I've coloured
it with the pastels and used the crimper.

This one is a replica of the last one, just using different colours and
the different stamp.

This one I have made before and I loved it. It is quite simple to make.
I love this froggy set, it is so cute. The green card I embossed first. I coloured
it using my Tombow pens, (yeah I finally got my Stampin'Up ones the other
day, it is great to have pens that match and most of my Tombows have just
about run out!), I used some of the 1/2 inch grossgrain ribbon and the punch
called Spring flower bouquet. Stamp Set used was Unfrogettable.

Here is a close up of the folded up
version.
This fits perfectly into an envelope.

This is a card I cased from Marelle Taylor. I am not really happy with it as the wording stamped crooked and Marelle used River Rock ink on
the background swirl. Which I didn't have, so used I think from Memory Certainly Celery with Olive in front and Purely Pomegranate on the card and flowers.Stamp set used was Baroque Motifs.

This card was made with the Simply Said set which I really like, and was one of the first sets I bought when I first signed up with SU. But I have never used it until now!!!!
A friend bought it off me as one of her first sets so I thought I would whip up
a couple of demo cards out of it. I really love the simplicity in how this one turned
out and it really appeals to me. I reallllly love Groovy Guava. One funny thing with
this card is I used a SU pop up glue dot and it keeps melting, which means the heart
keeps slipping down. LOL so don't put your pop dots near a window!

This one was made using the same set but using up scraps. I used a strip of DP
paper Petals and Paisleys. The background was used with a flower stamp
from the set and some flowers punched out using the Spring Bouquet
punch. I used a little piece of scrap ribbon down the bottom. Next
time the writing needs to be in a darker colur.
This little card is a fold out card using the DP Summer Picnic and the Stamp
Set Tart and Tangy from the Spring Mini Cattie. You know I nearly didn't
order this set as I first thought you would be limited in your use of it. But
after seeing it on a few blogs and SCS, I started getting a few ideas,
especialliy for christmas presents.
I stamped the apple
and strawberry using
my SU pens in Real Red,
Glorious Green and
Close to Cocoa. As you
can see they were then stuck
onto circles from the circle
punches (not very well by
the look of this photo) and
then onto the Scallop Circle
which I love!
The one with the strawberry
was raised for a bit of dimension.
The fruit was then covered in
crystal effects to make it stand out.


This is the card folded out. The wording on the card is using the Sweet
Serendipity set from the new spring mini cattie.

And last but not least is this one using the Tart and Tangy set and the DP
Summer Picnic. Is it just me but does anyone else hate that the paper is double sided. I find it hard to use my DP as it is as it's all so beautiful but then >have to cut through and hide the stuff on the back, is so hard. Why can't
it all be put on one sided? One more quick bitch, this set all cuts out p
perfectly with the 1 1/4 inch circle punch, except the cherries. What 'a shame, they just do not quite make it. I love this card IRL as it is bright and cheery, just didn't photograph real well on that day as was dark'and windy.
'Whew! That was quite a big blog session for me, hope you all enjoy
the new cards.

More Card Courses for the School of the Air

At In-School for School of the Air in June, I was asked to do
some card making classes with the mothers and home tutors
during the weeks conference. So again I tried to come up with
fairly simple cards that would utilise a few different stamps.
This first card was using the Scribble this set along with the pouch.
The card was made using the crayon resist technique which always has such a wow factor on everyone, and the pouch was very quick, I printed off the pouch
pattern onto the colured card and everyone cut it out waiting for their turn
with the stampset. They look very pretty in real life.
Blogger is not letting me upload anymore photos at the moment so I will come
back tommorrow and finish this.
This card and pouch speak for themselves, both done using the bugs and kisses set.

This card has photographed very bright, the pink is not that bright IRL! I made this
card with the girls to showcase the wild about you set, but also to show them how to use the stamp-a-ma-jig.
We made this one to use the faux leather technique, everyone was so impressed
that something that looks so good is so simple. A lot of the ladies were off stations so having a card like this on hand to do usually pulls them into wanting to do the course. The stamps used are from the Bareback set.

Card Classes for School of The Air

We had school camp a couple of months ago and I've been meaning to take
photos and post them of the cards I made with the other mothers. I wanted
the cards to be fairly easy, so we could get through them in a couple of hours
and to give the ladies an idea of the versatility you can have with the stamps.
I apologise for the colour of the photo's some have come out bright and
for some reason some are very dull and gray, but I didn't have time to take
more and they give the general idea!
This first card was cased from the catalogue, except I added the ladybeetle.
This card was made using the garden whimsy set.
This card was made using the Boatloads of love set. The background card
was put through the cuttlegug with the swirl design.

This card was made using the Bronc buster set, which is
one of my favourites along with the bronco wheel. I wanted to demo
how quick and easy these wheels are and how you don't really need a
cartridge for a one off card, that you can just run it across a stamp pad.
This card was so quick and easy but made a big impression IRL.

This was a little gift box using the Wild Rose set. This set is a bit
time consuming for a demo, but everyone loves the effect it gives
when done, that it is worth taking the time, especially on these
pouches.