Today I completed an 'open album'. It's a Kaiser Craft MDF wall hanging set of 5 plaques. I thoroughly enjoyed getting it done, I like painting and I managed to use some paper from my stash that's been there since the day dot. I'd always loved the paper and but could never find a use for it in my scrapping.

It's hanging in Stephanie's room.

Today we made Fifi's Jam Tarts. Stephanie did nearly all of it. She enjoyed rubbing the butter with the flour. We used Australian Mango Jam as we didn't have any strawberry jam. They came out ok, and it was a lot of fun making them.

I had to do another bin so that Stephanie could keep Mr Potato Head in it. Once I'd put her shoes in the first bin, she didn't like it any more so I did another one. She shopped for the lime green flowers and helped paint the inside in purple and pink. It's covered in MMM Fabric, Stephanie wanted the pink poodles on it so I had to try and match it to other stuff I had, which wasn't too difficult.

Stamping and Scrapbooking Fair

I spent the entire day at the Stamping and Scrapbooking Fair on Sunday. Had a great time. I wandered all the stalls, which took me to lunch time then I did a class with Michelle Perry which was to make a mini-album. The inside pages are all made of envelopes and tags. I'm halfway through embellishing and decorating but it's got many tags so it will take a while. A good way to use lots of photo's too.

I see that Kaisercraft have flooded the scrapping market with their Off the Page products. I bought an 'open' album, which is 5 MDF plaques that can be strung together with ribbons and hung on the wall. I'm looking forward to getting started on that. But I bought an MDF bin knowing it wasn't big enough for my scrap scraps I decided to make it for Stephanie to put her shoes in. I did it last night and she said it looked lovely this morning, so I put her shoes in it. Then she took all her shoes out and put Mr Potato Head in there instead. When I told her Mr Potato Head already had a home and put him back in his home and put the shoes back in the bin, she decided she didn't like the bin anymore......guess that wasn't a very good strategic move on my part. But I have come to a solution - I'll make another bin for Mr Potato Head. She said she'd be very happy with that and would like both bins if I did that.

Went to her speech therapy today and Stephanie refused to do any of the picture card games. In fact she showed her objection by sticking her fingers in her ears when the therapist was talking. There's nothing you can do, so our next session isn't for some time, at the end of October after her 4th birthday. It's a shame really, because some of her sentence structure is quite far behind. There's some areas that she either doesn't have or just has got the grasp of and the benchmark is for the average to have accomplished it at 2 - 2.5 years. I think there was another area that would normally be perfected by the age of 3 and she's only just starting. For instance, she'll be 4 soon but does not use the words "why?" "who?" instead if she's asking a question she'll say, "Dis be?" Or say, "You be busy?" Instead of "Are you busy?"

Today was Lilly's 4th birthday party. We had a great time. The sack racing was fun and here is a picture of the 'malteser on the spoon' race. It was easier than an egg and spoon race and much more fun.

You can see that Stephanie worked out if you put your hand over the malteser while running it didn't fall off the spoon, therefore you could win.

Many a malteser was eaten after being on the ground, but nobody cared.

A great day, thanks to Yvette, Matthew, Lilly and Natalie.

Stephanie started early entry pre-entry for pre-school last Friday. I think she really enjoyed herself. It's only 1.5 hours on a Friday but they treat it like real school with waiting to be called, designated snack area and knowing where their bag is kept etc., She seemed really happy about going.

It was time for our haircuts today, only to find out that Stephanie has lice. Ewwwww, but I guess it's not that uncommon. I think she may have picked them up from her Monday daycare. But we made a game of putting oily gunk in our hair. So instead of having an afternoon 'off', I spent the day doing multi washing loads and hair treatments.

The Fifi Magnetic World game is still a hit and I've attached some Fifi character flowers done recently.

Oh, and I actually got into my scrap stash last night and put together a card for Lilly's birthday party on Saturday. I got the components together and had Stephanie help me with gluing it together, writing inside and putting some ink on the flower. She's really excited about going to Lilly's party.