He's Home and a TOOT!

That's right Chris made it home safe and sound yesterday, very tired after all but no sleep since Thursday night our time. Guess who slept for 12 hours straight?

The girls of course are stoked to have him home. And you should see the gorgeous little flamenco dresses he bought for them in Spain! Going to set up a wee shoot to get some photos of the girls in them, they look just too stinkin cute!

And naturally I am as thrilled to have him home as they are! You don't realise just how much you will miss someone till they are away for a while.


And now for some fantastic news!

Now at last I can share, I may have mentioned a while back that I got a email asking to pick up a page for publication, well this is it! My first ever digi page picked up for publication. Up2Scrap came out the other day so now I can share it with you here!

I am so proud of this! I set up a shoot to get the girls photos for our Christmas cards way back in October of last year, got some amazing shots and got some scrapping done with them, this is one of them and this baby is PUBLISHED! And yes I know I was shouting but wouldn't you? It's something to shout out about I think!



Paper – Sharon Kenealy, (amble kit) http://www.artisticmusings.typepad.com/ , Cheryl Peacock
Stitching – Lisa Whitney (A Beautiful Mess kit)
Heart – Karen Hunt (DIY doodle heart) www.karenahunt.wordpress.com
Overlay – Nancie Rowe Janitz (Simple Pleasures kit)
Sketch Template – Rachael Giallongo at www.thedigichick.com
Font – CK Maternal
Photographs – Cheryl Peacock
Program – Photoshop 7


Now I only just heard the other day that the amazingly talented Sharon K is now designing over at www.pickleberrypop.com she has been so amazingly generous with all her freebies and now comes the next step, being paid to create amazing kits for us to work with.
See in the credits above for the page I got published, some of Sharons amazing papers! So what are you waiting for go and check her kits out.

Oh and Sharon if you are now on the hunt for a CT can I put my hand up to try out please?


And while I am on the subject of amazingly talented and generous designers, Rachael Giallongo who designed the template I used for the page above, was as happy as I was when I was able to share the page at long last. And she so very generously shared with me some more of her amazing templates so watch out world! There's much more scrapping on my horizon!

He's on his way home!

Thats right Chris is on his way home, he currently on a plane heading into Singapore and his flight from Singapore to here lands at noon and we can't wait to see him!

Talked to him last night and he was really looking forward to coming home! Can't wait to see some of the photos and videos he and Eric have got while they have been away. Chris has shared a few with us but there are untold more just waiting for us to see.

Okay got some house work to do, but condsidering its just been me doing it, its fairly tidy! Which has got to be a bonus, as you all know I am not that keen on housework. Got the groceries done today so thats one less drag, and its so good to have a full freezer again. And I need to go pick up the girl from school soon. Okay I am outta here for a bit.

Chris is in Bremen

so that means he's only a couple of sleeps away from being home! He and we are all looking forward to him being home.

Though as I said at the moment he is in Bremen, where by all accounts its cold, dark and wet! But on the ride to the hotel last night he happened to mention to the guy who picked them up that he is a fan of Goliath's and Bremen is where they were made. The chap did say that even there they are rare to see, but he would see what he could do. What that means is anyones guess, but if it means Chris will see a Goliath while he is there I no doubt will hear the whoop of pure joy from here!

Anya's back at school and loving it, she was so excited about going to school today cause they were going to be doing maths today. She must take after her father there, since her Mama is not mathematically inclined, and I really can't see any reason to get all excited about it!

Dannielle had kindy today and Sue one of the teachers there asked her how many more sleeps till Daddy got home, well she hopped up and down wildly while yelling at the top of her voice two, two more sleeps Zoo! Poor Sue, both my kids have called her Zoo, and her ear drums may never be the same again after Dannielles squeal! I think mine have mostly gotten used to the excited, high pitched, I can hold it till I go blue in the face squeals but they still come as rather an unpleasant surprise to most!

Counting down now till we take a family weekend up to Glenrock Station. Ohh I just can't wait to get back there, to the peace and tranquility. There is one bonus this time too! I won' t have to drive the metal road, cause Chris will be here to do it! Its kinda stressful when you see lots of rocks that have obviously come hurtling down the cliff face to the road and think okay don't need to stop, don't need to stop I don't want rocks to hit us! And some of them well quite simply put are not small by any stretch of the imagination! But the peace and quiet you are treated to when you get there is just so very much worth it. You can put up with a little stress to get there!

I had it confirmed the other day, I have at least one class to teach next month and after talking to a few more possible students lately, it looks highly possible that I will be teaching a second also.

But for now I am going to have to leave this here, another tiredness headache is looming so off to bed I go, hopefully to avoid it!

First day back at school for 2007

I love this photo of Anya. We went out and got some photos at about 8 am this morning in the shade of our hedge. LOVE it!



She was so keen to get going to school again this morning. And her best friend Kayla is in the same class with her again, they are even sharing the same desk. Fantastic news for her.


And while we were out she spotted one of those fairy heads, you know the ones you blow on and send the seeds fluttering away everywhere!

Mini World Picnic

Today as I mentioned earlier is Waitangi day here in New Zealand, a national holiday and also the last day of the school holidays.

The kindy Dannielle goes to organised a picnic at MiniWorld, lots of small farm animals, and I thought it would be an awesome treat for the girls on the last official day of the School Holidays.

I have a few photos to share with you. Nothing spectacular but I don't mind. I did get a couple early this morning that just make me smile! But that was a whole nother story to tell!

Big D and Nana checking out one of the miniature horses and her foal. I love the girls hand slipped into Nana's hand, knowing all to well that Nana wouldn't let anything happen to her.



Dannielle loved the scrumbly chickens! And no the wind wasn't blowing and ruffling their feathers they look like this all the time apparently!



Anya quite confidently feed the donkeys carrots from the flat of her hand, then went on to stuff them completely solid with willow branches!



Glaringly over exposed, it was such a scarily bright sunny day, and I had tried to compensate for it, just obviously not enough!
But none the less its still a fun photo, Dannielle loved it that she was allowed to ride by herself with only the handler, normally there would be one of us trotting along beside her!



And lastly but by no means least Anya holding onto "Ted" for his owner, Mama was a bad Mama and got distracted and didn't take a photo of her riding! She did love it though.

I am so proud of myself

With only a couple of false starts I have been able to add in a link so you can email me directly. It's over there in the side bar under links.

100 posts later

Well I have to admit to being quite surprised with myself, I have never been all that wonderful at keeping any sort of diary so the fact that I have reached 100 posts here is kinda saying something! Maybe it's got to do with the fact that its a computer based thing rather than having to try and hunt down a dratted diary.

Okay so I apologise to any dentists reading this but I could sure throw a tanty at the dentist that told me there was nothing at all wrong with my teeth (that he decided should be left in when I had most of my teeth out!) One of the ones that has a wrap thingie on it for my bottom plate broke in half at the end of January, and no I haven't done anything about it but I am sure I am going to have to cause its still degrading and now its kinda on the painful side! Okay let me say I have issues with dentists anyway! So I probably don't go as often as I should, but since they charge like wounded bulls I usually do the bare minimum!

So for me to go and get a whole heap of teeth out, and needed sedation to do it kinda says something so the thought of having to go back and get this newly broken tooth out is kinda not my idea of fun! Especially without sedation!!!!! And even if it does break off all by itself I still need to go and get another tooth put into my plate!
Why couldn't he have just done as I asked and taken the whole lot out? Okay so its harder with a full bottom plate as well but its got to be better than this craziness.

Maybe its got something to do with the wild nor easter that has blown in! Its sure enough to drive you nuts, and since we live on the edge of the village there isn't anything that gets in the way of it for us, so we get blasted with it!

Have plenty to be doing though, got to find school things and get the girls lunch ready. Dinner, bath night, dishes, hopefully a call from Chris before the girls go to bed, and hopefully Dannielle actually stays in bed again tonight.
So I guess I should get my butt into gear and get it done so I can sit down and chill out later.

Waitangi Day

has dawned hot and bright! A beautifully sunny, clear day for the last day of the school holidays here!

It seems strange somewhat that school starts again on a Wednesday, but there is one plus side to this, with all this hot weather we are experiencing here now, summer has arrived at last, late but still better late than never!
But as I was saying the plus side is that the kids will have three days back and then have a wee break, and somehow I think they might be needing it. Some of the classrooms get rather hot and stuffy to say the least and after such a long holiday when they have been able to do pretty much as they please its gonna take some time for them to get back into it.

Oooh and I can share some pages with you now, I entered them in a competition running at ScrapArtist to win a Princess Purse. Well no luck with winning but I did manage to get some pages done, and they are 8 x 10 inches so with some jiggery and pokery I will be able to reduce them and pop them in frames, never too early so start thinking about presents for not only Christmas but birthdays as well!

And talking about pressies have you seen the T's I created for sale? NO? Well what are you waiting for scroll down to the next post and check them out!
Make brilliant pressies, my girls both love them! They got a couple each for Christmas and what with all the comments I have had about them I thought I would give a few a whirl to sell.

Front


Back


Everything by Lisa Whitney (A Beautiful Mess kit)

Front

Back


Supply list
Paper – Michelle Coleman (Chelseys Dream kit) (recontrasted)
Flowers, Stickpin & Beads – Michelle Coleman (Chelseys Dream kit)
Cardboard overlay edges – Linda Gil Billdal
Family wordart – Cheryl Peacock (using Texas Hero & Angelina fonts)

Oh brother, I have just had to load those last two for the third time and then some nutso cats went and had a huge cat fight right under my feet! NO not inside but under the house and of course the silly critters had to find the one spot that was sure to give me heart failure!

So what that means is that I am going to leave this here for now and come back later and load some more images.

Designer T's up for grabs

All handcrafted one off originals! No two will be exactly the same.

And I have them for sale.

NZ$20 plus actual postage.

Which if you are in New Zealand will be an amazingly low $1.20 standard (prepaid envelope) post, though if you are wanting these beauties quickly or just want the added security I will courier them for you.
Will I post overseas? The answer is a resounding yes!

Can I get other colours/size options? Ask and I will see what I can do. (There maybe approx. 10 day delay to ship custom orders.




Size 3 (child size suits about age 3)





Size 4 (child size about 4 years old)






Size 5 (child size about 5 years old)





Size 6 (child size about 6 years old)






Interested?
Leave me a comment with the size you are interested in and a contact email address using this format to save icky machines picking up your email address and using it for no good!

yourname at ispname dot co dot nz/net dot nz/com I am sure you get the idea, I will get back to you as soon as I can to confirm.

Have you ever wished

that you had got up and done the little job that though would be a pain at the time would in truth make life so much easier for you?

My little job last night would have been to get up and find Anya's dratted drink bottle that will have fallen between her bed and her drawers but that she couldn't find at some riduculous time of night! But that would have meant crawling out of bed and after being up three times the night before to help her back into her sleeping bag I was kinda over it!
So instead she ended up crawling in with me. I must be nuts! Why do I never remember that my kids are active sleepers? Tossing, doing half flips, starfishing and just to top it off snoring!

So getting all but pushed out of your own bed is not so much fun. There are bonuses I guess, at least I know I have the rubbish out now and aren't going to miss it being collected! I have the first load of washing in, will be doing the little girls kindy lunch soon and will have had a chance to have an uninterrupted shower before they get up if I am lucky!

News

Well first up we got back this afternoon from our overnight stay at Glenrock Station. I only wish we could have had longer there, talk about peace and quiet! And I am so proud of myself! Normally when we have to go over less than ideal metal (shingle) roads I get Chris to drive. Well obviously that was so not going to be happening this time.

24 kms of semi formed metal road, 5 fords to cross and not the concreted kind either, think big boulders with smaller shingle, well the bigger rocks looked huge to me anyway. 4 of them had water flowing over them, and while not horrendously deep still deep enough that you could flood your engine if you went a bull at a gate at them. Nothing went wrong, and I did it all by myself, mind I only saw one other car on the road and that was right at the very beginning of the metal road, today it was like a two lane major expressway!
What with dratted sheep, a heavy tow, tow truck! at least half a dozen if not a dozen other cars and I got pictures to! Okay so I obviously stopped and got them, you sure as heck would not have got me doing anything other than sitting still while that massive tow truck went past!

Photos :-



Okay so to let you all know I took these next few on the way back today.
This first one is the road with water filled ford, there is a reasonably high bank down to the left of the photo that leads to the Rakaia river, not something you want to get to close to the edge of!


Okay I could have coped with the kiwi traffic jam, its just that rather large bright orange truck following the dang silly critters and taking up the majority of the road. The car in front is our friend Jules with his wife Ces and their family in! Can you tell he was a little braver than me and gave the truck a little more clearance! Me I figured if he couldn't get round me then he didn't deserve his truck licence! It was probably the nicest of all possible places to have met this truck, (there was at least a little breathing room here) since the rest of the road is rather narrow!

Now when we arrived there yesterday Jules came back up from the river to meet us, the girls had a blast, paddling in a very muddy little puddle at the edge of the very swiftly flowing river. Now Jules is a bit of a keen fisherman, so him armed with a new rod and salmon fishing licence he decided he was going to try his hand, well my two and his youngest daughter decided that they wanted in on this also. Here is my youngest for all the world trying to copy every single thing Jules did with the fishing rod!





Glenrock Station Cottage



And the view from the patio taken at sparrows this morning!



And in other news, we heard from Chris this afternoon, about 5pm here, and yes Spain is 12 hours behind and yes he was up at 5 am, he got woken by a street cleaner or rubbish truck or the like going past his hotel room window and figured he better ring then before he fell asleep again and didn't wake up till late.

He said they had good flights but that they are buggered, mind it could have something to do with walking around a good part of Barcelona soon after arriving there after a very long flight from NZ! And they are hoping to get out to go on the cable car today. He sent a photo through to me, keep in mind its supposedly winter there at the moment right! Here he is with a tshirt under a long sleeved tshirt and all the other people (presumably locals) are all rugged up in big jackets or coats! 16 degrees! We would be so blessedly happy to get 16 degrees during winter days here.

What are we up to?

Well today it seems both girls needed a sleep in. Anya has just this minute wandered out (7.30 am) still looking rather asleep, and the D girl is still snoozing.

But we are off on an adventure today, we got a call from Jules yesterday and he wanted to know what we were all up to. See he and Ces are taking their little family away for the weekend to a high country station and wanted to know if we would like to join them. So the girls and I are off to join them for the night. Will have to take the camera and other assorted camera stuff with me and see if I can get some photos. Hey maybe I can even get some of their wee family.

Chris will be on yet another plane at the moment, this time heading to Milan from Singapore. He arrives in Barcelona at about 8.30 this evening and where will we be? Probably out of cellphone coverage thats what! And apparently there aren't phones other than at the main house. So we will have to wait till Sunday when we finally get home or come into cell coverage again, to find out how the flights were, what the weather is like etc etc.

What did I manage to get done last night? Well I finally finished my book! The Boleyn Inheritance, had read the Other Boleyn Girl prior to it and loved them both, and last night started another Phillipa Gregory book of which the name currently escapes me, the Virgin something.
I also finished up some stitching on a piece of needlework I am doing, have some cutting to do now and then and only then will I share it with you.

I got some plain white T-shirts in kiddie sizes (3,4,5,6NZ sizing) so that I can make them look absolutely fabulous darling and then put them up to sell on TradeMe. I made some for the girls for Christmas. A purple and a pink one each and have had some fantastic feedback from friends and perfect strangers so I thought why not see if I can make them to sell.
When I get an example made I will share it here and you can see what I am up to. Yeah I could probably show you one of the girls ones but that doesn't seem fair when I can't sell that one now can I? Oh and I will take orders too, these babies are all one offs, no two will be exactly the same! They might have similar colours etc but no two will be the same.

And thats it for me for a little bit. Will be back tommorrow hopefully with some fantastic photos to share.

He's off

on a whirlwind tour of Europe via Singapore.

Thats right Chris left this afternoon for 2 weeks, he heads through Singapore to Milan (very short transit stop there only! dang it!) then on to Barcelona. He's there for a few days then is on to Lisbon, a few more days there then onto Paris then Munich (transit) to Bremen in Northern Germany where the temps have reached whopping highs of 0 degrees! then back through Frankfurt for another transit stop before hopping a plane home once again via Singapore.

The girls did really well, could have been the sweeties Daddy slipped them, the fact that the boxes had penguins from Happy Feet on didn't hurt either. Maybe he should have slipped me a few sweeties too, since I was feeling far from capable!

It's funny actually my darling mother in law called me a capable woman, one who just copes with what ever happens. Well I have to admit that I was feeling far from capable but managed to make it home with no hiccups.
So what was I to do? I figured I had two options - sit there and feel all sorry for myself! OR go and do something only a capable woman would do!
I took the latter and went and swung a spade tossing more of our immense pile of grass into the wheelie bin for collection on Monday. I tell you its good to do mundane brainless jobs like that, if nothing else it gives you time to think and to figure out how daft you are being.

Now I have to go, Mum (MIL) has just arrived, we are going to have some dinner together. And wouldn't you know it the darling lady has bought me the most beautiful red Gerbera Daisy.
Talk about make my day.