A day that has been both good and bad.  A day that has had celebrations and failures and a day that is going to ring in my ears for a week!

For the most part, it has been a typical day.  Get up, feed bub, have wake up computer time, do something domestic, lunch, more domestic things and computer time and then Ayla and Willow are home.

That’s when it stopped being a usual day.  It became the ‘this isn’t my life day’ with 1 very big first.

Ayla is in year 1, and while this is her second year at school, it is the first official year of education.  That means, report cards.  Yes, my oldest baby brought home her first report card.  And, I have to say, she has done very well.  Mostly A’s and B’s with a couple of C’s, but on the whole, a very pleasing and positive report. 

There are some things we have to work on, like Ayla finishing a task within the given time, but we’ll get there.  Some of her co-ordination skills need improving too, but that’s easy – a ball and a back yard are all we will need for that!  I’m so proud of Ayla, and sad at the same time- my baby is growing up way too fast!!!!!

Thursday is late night shopping here, so I thought why not.  It has been over a week since I left the house and I made the choice.  Yeah.  Good idea, bad timing.  They have a talent quest on at Centro Shopping Centre at the moment, and my ears can’t really take that sort of torture (you know, those voices that don’t fit the key for a song, but the singer is insistent any way).  No offence, but if you can’t sing, then don’t sing into a microphone that is attached to loud speakers set to be heard in WA.  I will admit, there were some fantastic singers, and I did enjoy their performances a lot.

Shopping.  I paid some off my BnT layby ( I am aware this is going to family friendly sites) – another fortnight, and I’ll have it home.  Then off to Big W.  That’s always fun, with Les racing off so that i can’t actually do any shopping.  I usually have the pram, and he tries to wrangle the older 3 (sorry Les, you don’t exactly have enough eyes on your head for that, either that, or Laurel can become invisible!).  Those dramas aside, we made it to the garden section and selected some more roses for our garden.  This time, we got 2 standards to contrast with the bush roses we already planted, and 1 more bush rose.  Our front garden is going to be very rosey to say the least!

Fed up with the noise and misbehaving kids, I decided it was time to go home (it was also time to feed them).  Off we headed to get fish and chips on the way home.  A good idea in theory, but not the best when it is late, there are 5 hungry monkeys in the car and I have a ripping headache from the shopping expedition. 

At least we made it home alive and the girls are now in bed.  Phew!  Time to relax and get computing!

Right now, I am soooo ashamed of myself!  I a madder than mad!  I am disappointed in myself even.

Why?  Because I joined FaceBook.  ‘Big deal’ you are saying, ‘Everyone is on Facebook these days’.  True, there are millions of people with Facebook accounts, so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that I have one now too.

So why the fuss?  Because I am not the kind of person to join upto something because it is the trendy thing to do.  Oh no, I am not hip, trendy or with the times.  I am boring, over commited online and not the kind of person who hops on the band wagon.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to become obsessive or anything.  I need a way to keep in touch with my sisters when they head overseas, and seeing as they appear to be deeply embedded in the Facebook world, I figured why not.

There is another reason for my joining.  And you are going to get a laugh out of this.  A friend commented on one of my earlier posts about my computer games addiction.  Her comment mentioned a particular game on Facebook that she is obsessed with.  Well, my dear friend, guess what?  You provided the final arm twist! Oh, and I’ve found that game and having fun with it already!  At least it is a bit of a set and forget game, which means I can still do other things while it is playing away without me.

Well, internet world, happy now!  You got me!  Again! Ah well, I am a computer addict, and I need as much sanity saving devices in my life as I can possibly get.

Graphics available from Webfetti.com

Well, not much any way. Ok, so I might spend a lot of time with my computer games, but they are for creativity purposes.  Honest they are!

My fave games are Diablo and Diablo II, Heroes of Might and Magic III, IV and V, and the Sims2 (including all expansions).  There are a few others thrown into the mix, but I’m not as obsessive with them as the ones mentioned.

I love the Sims2!  Can’t get enough of it!  It is the one game that I can just leave sitting while I try to do something domestic, and when I come back to it, I have fun trying to fix the lives of the sims that have gone wrong in my absence.  That is if they didn’t die!

I love building houses.  The tools are really good, and you can really design good houses.  Houses are a passion of mine.  Architecture has always fascinated me, so being able to create my own is fantastic!

Recently, I add the expansion ‘Free Time’, which gives your sims hobbies, including gardening.  It just made the game a whole lot better!  I’ve been helping my sims to grow their own food, which isn’t easy but eases the budget somewhat!  Oh, and the weather changes that come with it!  Wow!  It can snow, hail, rain etc, and there are storms that send lightening bolts to strike objects and sims.  Amazing!

I have one more expansion pack to get and a few stuff packs to get, but get them I will.  I have to, I’m obsessed!

I knew ages ago that I wanted my site to be more than just a blog.  The only problem was, who to make it more than just a blog.  Solution is pages, hundreds, no thousands, of them if I so wish.

Pages, like blog posts, are easy once you get used to making them.  I spent a lot of time working and editing to get the pages right, but was never happy with them, nor had I found a way to link them into my blog.

Well, I found that writing a page was very much like writing a blog, so once realised, the writing of a page became easy.  And, I just use the same tools and knowledge, which makes sense if you think about it.  Blog posts and pages are just the same after all, it is just how they stack together that is different.

So, comfortable with putting pages together, I began working on making them ‘visible’.  Yeah, like that’s been easy.  After much huffing and puffing and hair pulling, the only way I could get my Inner Sanctum ‘visible’ was to add the link down the right hand side of my site.  Not exactly what I had in mind, but it at least works.

So far, I’ve been working on a graphics library. The idea came when several friends said they didn’t know which codes to use with some graphics.  Not easy to know such things, so I thought I would help out.

I have included sites I get my graphics from, the graphics I use (starting from the ones I’ve used after starting my library) and the codes needed.  The idea being that not only are the uploader codes given, but it can be better seen where those codes have come from – from within the full html code.

All the time, I am adding to the growing library, with many categories now covered (and more yet to come).  I’m also open to people sending me the page of a graphic and asking me to simplify the code for them, or just add it to my growing library.

There are more things that will be added to my Inner Sanctum, but they are taking more time than I thought.  I’m thinking a photo gallery of my world (not including family photos) showing off my (pathetic) gardening skills and my cross stitch as well as whatever else I manage to snap.

Reviews of websites, shops and products are on the cards too, though that is still going to take some time as well.  It could be said, I’m having way too much fun with the graphics!

So, feel free to take a peek.  The link is in this post several times, and can also be found down the right hand side of my blog (only if you come through to my site) along with the rest of my fave links.