Bookmarks and forts

Still down in Alex, and in between babysitting the nephews I’ve been getting creative with all of mum’s wonderful scrapbooking supplies, making bookmarks:

(The green one with a ribbon is one mum made when the temptation to join me in her crafting room got too great :-))

She’s got so many cool stamps and punches that I keep getting inspired with more ideas, so I’m sure I’ll add a few more bookmarks to the collection before I go home. The plan is to take them to DC in April, for distribution as the organising team see fit (at an hour or so’s work per bookmark, I’m not even going to attempt to make enough for everyone to get one!!!)

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my nephews (not so much with my niece, who screams loudly every time she sees me (I’d take it personally if it wasn’t for the fact she reacts the same way to everyone – she’s at that stage of extreme attachment to her parents, and nobody else is an acceptable substitute)), looking after them while SIL helps my brother out in the shop. We’ve been having lots of fun having water-fights, building an elaborate lego city (complete with a military base – they are definitely my brother’s sons!), and having adventures in The Pines (a small pine plantation/shelter belt on the edge of the town, which is just big enough and overgrown enough to be a kids’ paradise). We built a “really huge” (i.e. just big enough for all three of us to squeeze inside) fort out of fallen pine branches, around which my nephews constructed an elaborate game involving robots with super-powers – I had no idea what was going on, but they had lots of fun 🙂

New Year’s Eve tonight, but I doubt we’ll be doing anything special. When my grandparents were alive New Year’s was a big family event, but now I normally don’t even bother to stay up until midnight. I definitely don’t feel like going down into town to join in the drunken revelry – not my scene at all. I feel a good book beckoning… 🙂