We are water-logged where I am.  I am so so so sick of rain.  Every time I think it might actually dry up a bit, more rain.  Supposedly next week it’s going to start drying up.  Supposedly.

But then, there is always a silver lining.  At least it’s not dust.  I think I would hate that more.

On the East Coast of Australia just had a massive red dust storm.  The biggest in 70 years!!  Many cities along the coast are covered in dust.  On Facebook, we have family in Sydney and the Sunshine Coast complaining about dust.

Florida Girl in Sydney blogged about it and below is a photo of the Sydney Opera House.  You can barely see it there is so much dust!

And to think that most Australians would have gone to bed with their windows open, only to wake up with a fine layer of red dust all over everything!  How annoying would that be!

This photo is on www.news.com.au, along with others.

Yes, I’m already thinking about Christmas.  Actually, most of you probably are too I’m guessing.  If you are like me, you feel like the Fall season flies by.  School starts, then you have birthday parties and football games.  Then, before you know it it’s Halloween, with Thanksgiving right on it’s tail, and then there is it.  Christmas.  It’s here before you have time to get all your shopping done early, like you say you are going to do every year.

Oh wait, is that just me?  Well, anyway.  I HAVE to get my shopping done early this year.  We are traveling to Australia for Christmas and I have to PACK all of the gifts.  And still have room to bring them back, plus others.  It’s going to be interesting.

So, first of all…saving MONEY. My family and my husband’s family all decided a few years ago to draw names for the adults.  With my family, for example, it’s me, my husband, my sister and her husband, one of my Aunts, one of my cousins, and my parents.  These are the people I would usually buy for before we did the name drawing, with the exception of my cousin, but she wanted to participate in the draw names, so she’s in!

We all agreed on a dollar amount.  We chose $50.  This way everyone can get one good gift, opposed to a bunch of little things worth ten bucks that you don’t really want anyway.

We use Elfster.  You enter all who are participating and you can also exclude certain people, like husband’s/wives from getting each other, which is cool.  Then, it randomly generates your pick and emails it to you, secretly.  We always keep it a secret who we have.  Though, I always know who my hubby has since I do all the shopping.   It’s also got a place where you can put your wish list for your Santa to see what you want.

We only do Elfster for the adults since everyone wants to buy for all the kids.  So, we save money with our niece and nephews in Australia by buying things here and taking (or mailing) it to Australia.  Good stuff is way cheap here in comparison.  I’m talking WAY less.  Plus, I can get summer stuff on sale, since they are going into summer in a few months.

For our boys, I just keep reminding myself that it’s not HOW MUCH we spend.  Our youngest, doesn’t even know about Christmas, for starters.  And our oldest is happy with even a few things.  If it’s something he can pretend play with, he will be busy for hours.  Honestly, he would probably just be happy with candy, since he rarely gets any.  I just have to remember this and not get caught up in the Christmas buying frenzy.  Luckily, my husband’s family is further along the less is more end of the spectrum than my family.  I’m really looking forward to that this year, actually.

Now, for saving SPACE! Since we have to pack all (or at least most) of our gifts for the kids this year, we have to think SMALL.

So, I’ve been trolling Amazon looking for ideas for small, packable gifts that will still make an impact and be fun for our older son, who is four.  Our youngest (currently 13 months) won’t really care since he still won’t really know what’s going on and will really only want what his brother has anyway.  That’s how he rolls.

Here are some of what I’ve come up with so far:

• LED head lamp – like for camping.  He would LOVE this.
• Wikki stix – are these fun?
• stomp rocket
• Wishing Chair Again by Enid Blyton – I’ve been looking forever for the over sized version of this and finally got one off ebay for a steal!  So siked.  He asks me all the time if I’ve found it yet.  He loves the first one, Adventures of the Wishing Chair.
• Brain Quest -  these are great for planes too
• My Very Own Name book – we already got him this too as he wanted one after seeing the one we got our youngest for his birthday
• Gift voucher for something like a jumping castle place (you know those places that have about 10 jumpy houses).  We have one near our house and he’s always asking to go after going to a birthday party there.
• I want to crochet both my boys stockings before we go, but I am unsure if I can manage it.  I don’t know how to crochet, but my Mom is going to try to teach me this week.

Hmmm, I actually thought I had more ideas than this.  And frankly, I have no clue about what to get our youngest, who will be 15 months by then.

Any ideas ??

You can find more tips of all sorts at Works for Me Wednesday.

If you read this and are Australian, Hamish and Andy are probably not a surprise to you.  However, if you are outside of Oz, and haven’t heard of them, they are hilarious.

They are often on Rove McManus’ show, Rove Live, in Australia…who is also pretty funny in my opinion.  They have recently however been on Jay Leno.  My Mom asked me if I’d seen them.  Admittedly, it’s been a while.  Then, my sister-in-law told me about this particular skit of theirs and so I had to find it.

It’s one of my faves.  This might be bad karma actually posting this…I fear my own boys doing this to me one day.

My sister-in-law is visiting from Australia, hence the hiatus in postings.  She’s been spending lots of time with our boys and we’ve spent hours, after they go to bed, drinking and laughing and telling stories and just general, catching up with her.

It really nice when family from Australia comes to visit us in between our own visits over there.  It really makes it so much more bearable and is also so nice for them to see where and how we live and meet our friends and visit again with my family.

Since our oldest son was born four years ago, we have been over to Australia three times.  My in-laws have came over to the U.S. twice and now my sister-in-law.  That is more than some kids see their grandparents that live in a different state, much less a different country!

We feel very fortunate that we are able to do this.  Granted, we probably won’t be able to keep up this same rate, but our traveling will also get that much easier as our boys get older…so, you never know.  We knew when we got married we wanted to make it a priority for our family to do that one day, so that is what we are trying hard to do.

Next week my posting will get back to normal, I think…whatever that is.   I am planning a revamp of my blog too, so stay tuned!

Now, back to fun with my sis-in-law!

A few months ago, we bought a new camera.  A Canon EOS XSi.  We LOVE it.

However, as my husband stated a few weeks ago.  It’s like we have a Ferrari and we really only know how to drive an Altima.

So…I had stumbled upon Jessica Sprague’s website a couple of months ago.  She offers all sorts of scrap booking, as well as photography, tips and classes and forums, on her site.  The classes are very reasonably priced and she often offers FREE stuff as well, not to mention all the free tips you can glean from her and others through the posts and forums.

I signed up for Candice Stringham’s Oh Shoot photography class.  Super bargain, if you ask me.  $126 for six weeks of class assignments, tips, feedback, and more.  I’m in my 2nd week and have already learned lots of new things about our new camera and how to use it to take better photos.

So, if you are looking to up the ante on either your scrapbooking or photography skills, definitely check out this site.