Pasta Making

A yuck picture but I'm trying not to be vain even though I'm bald, and here, have some nice but irrelevant music to play at the same time to distract you so you don't notice how dull this post is.

P3's arms got tired. L6 had a ball, even managing solo.

Still had to nag them to eat though. Why do my children not get hungry??

Gah!

I'm sick of no good photos and the busted good camera. Have many things I could put up here, but not a single decent pic.

So when in doubt, go back in time.

2005:

Today:

How can one boy change so dramatically in four years? What will he be like in 2013??

Why did he make me spend the morning helping him sew little bits of elastic together to make a watch-with-laser-attachment-gadget?

How long till he looks like this?

Oh yeah, that's Blokey Husband celebrating knocking out that nasty little last aloe-from-hell. Garden is filling up thanks to a sale that looks scarily like going out of business for the new local garden centre.

I'm so buying my husband a camera for Christmas.

And painting my house ASAP.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Well, that is until the next time your wifey comes up with a crazy scheme requiring the muscles she is sadly lacking.

Blokey Husband beats the aloe roots.

It's perma-shade there so we went with hydrangeas and fuchsias mostly, with one loud impatiens in there because doesn't impatiens grow anywhere? Shade-lovers seem decidedly pricey (except the fuchsias, which were a delightful $2.99, hence their sudden popularity around here) so it's a bit bare at the moment until we work out what else we can snaffle from cuttings to fill it up. Hoping to pinch some honesty seeds from Aunty Iz sometime when her pods dry out and look ready.

Only we accidentally lost a tree (rotten) that made a visual barrier and now the far aloe that we didn't have the energy to remove is taunting us. . .

(Edited to add - ha, now he is making me homemade pasta. Hee hee, he rocks when he feels guilty. See Thursday's post.)

No Pictures

I spent the day hanging out with some lovely friends. Sunshine, green, kiddies. No time for cameras.

So a guest picture that I happened to find on the camera (no prizes for guessing who took it)

and an interesting video to make up for not taking any pictures.

Rumpelstiltskin

Not quite straw into gold, but I did spin silk:



Meanwhile I've been liking the theory that the reason women have always patiently crafted is that all those repetitive things that we do all day, the cleaning and dressing and cleaning and tidying and cleaning and cooking and cleaning, all get undone and need doing again the next day, but the things you knit or create may be laborious but they do at least stay done. That is, unless your husband takes the ballet wrap you painstakingly knit in horribly pricey Sublime kid mohair and bungs it in the washing machine, thereby rendering it only fit for a 6 foot wide midget.


And don't even think of giving me that line about at least he was washing since it was covered in vomit and I wasn't home for 4 days, so he totally had no choice. I'm not gonna air the dirty laundry (ha!) about the rest of that scenario, suffice to say he knows now if he destroys stuff it is always, always, always better to fess up.

A change from baby programming

back to garden programming. I need to do some new stuff really, but until then. . .

Let's not forget this area used to look like this:


and because we all love a makeover it now it looks like this:


and it is always really noticeable when you have been away how fast things grow at this time of year. Going a bit mental already out the back:


so I decided to try to help the ugly front of the house, and while the aloe is still getting the better of me, I reclaimed this from weedmat-and-stone-hell:

which doesn't look like much but at least soon it will be green. And because I am the best wifey in the world, and my husband tidied up before I came home so he was in the good books, and even though I knew an axe would be a better weapon, Blokey Husband really yearned for a machete to attack the remnants of the aloe that is still evading annihilation, so I scored us one.

Then of course I had to have a turn before I gave it to him, because while good wife, mother, domestic goddess, garden guru and yarn queen are all well and good titles, it is quite fun to add machete-wielding-madman to one's resume just for the afternoon.

It didn't work.

Ah, Cute Wee Boy Dribble. . .

I almost didn't put a piccie in today because I thought I'd just tell you about the big BIG smile S-zero gave me at the airport on my way home. But I can't explain well enough. That boy does some special faces, but there is no doubt that this one was a focus and a smile. What a special widemouth frog smile he has too. Enough to melt an old aunty to public tears.


But then I looked at the pics, and hell, who can resist? Me and my only nephew, 2 weeks old:

Midwife only has good news and praise for Aunty Iz (AKA Mummy or photo doesn't really make sense):

Long daytime sleeps mean knitting in the garden time. P3 on a photo spree:

Cousin-love (from a distance since P3 managed to puke in the driveway unexpectedly the day before):

And that good sleeping boy:

A huuuge thank you to Aunty Iz and Uncle L for having us. And biggest hugs to M14, the bestest big sister around. I could so do with one of you at my house Miss M. Oh, and by the way Miss M, P3 is totally set on coming to live with you when she is grown up, so I hope you are okay with that?

Perfectly Sweet Things

I didn't post yesterday becasue I totally forgot with all the perfect things in the day.

Perfectly sweet house:


Perfectly sweet flowers:



Perfectly sweet explore with ladybird:



Perfectly sweet visit to Cruella's (avert your eyes Blokey Husband!):



Perfectly sweet baby:




That good little Sebby had the bestest sleep ever last night, which goes to show what a perfectly sweet job his mummy is doing. No wait, does that mean when things go to custard that we have to say that is a custard parenting job? Can we happily accept the glory for the good bits and decline responsibility for the bad bits? OF COURSE we can, we're girls! Hurrah!


Perfectly sweet.

Me And My Girl

went on a plane,

caught up with M14 and met her new baby bro, S-zero. Ahhhh....

Meanwhile the boys went on a roughing it camping trip. Strangely enough I even have a photo of that, from the bush, via the South Island. They have found a secret track to the sea, as boys do.

Technology rules.

I'm Off To See A Baby

who is smaller than a piece of asparagus.

Presents

Our present was Mutti and Bunce coming home from their holiday.

They brought other prezzies too.

And they helped us herd chickens through hoops. That's pretty special.

Then the garden chucked us a couple of summer presents on top of that. Hooray for harvest time.

Stickydampsoggygreyday.

What choice do you have but to splurge a little? Bought my annual Christmas dress today. Naughty, since I've not even started on the prezzies. Totally failed to get Blokey Husband to take a reasonable picture of it, not least because it is humid and soggy and a month or so down the track my hair is growing into nightmare territory, where it will hang out for the next two years or so. Sigh. The only thing that could be worse than this is waxy dreads. Heh. I'm comforting myself that all of Auckland had a bad hair today, and at least I have a nice 1950s dress to prove I'm a girl.

The lavender print makes me think of my friend Sarah Bean who is having a rough month. If nobody minds, we are all gonna ban Novembers okay?

As for the little ones, it was sheltered workshop afternoon again.

Concentration. Concentration has begun. Keep the rhythm. Keep the rhythm on the run.

The Problem With Girls

For years I picked L6 (boy) up from kindy, and all he came home with was a bunch of sandy soggy washing.

But P3 (girl)?



Every kindy day.

Imaginative. Delightful. Creative.

Loads of it. Sometimes it is just the slightly crushed box, without the painty, cupcake charm even.

What am I supposed to do with it?

Promise In The Shape Of A Jelly Roll

I started yesterday, making the dough for currant buns. They are yum.

But did I begrudge my eeny weeny oven? Why yes I did.

We spent the afternoon having a play with some FIMO. I'm in love.

Gonna buy me a cheap pasta maker to create proper millefiori. Here's our first attempts-

By L6 (spot Baboo):

By P3:

By me:

I don't know how mine ended up all yellow. I hate yellow. I think I was saving the yummy colours.

So can you all please use the forgetiness powder now you know that you're getting buttons galore for Christmas.

A Perfect Damp Day For

a visit out west to Karekare. If you haven't ever visited a west coast beach here in NZ, well then you should. They are too special for me to describe, but if I had to in one word, it'd be raw.

At home it was kinda sunny in parts, but at Karekare it was foggy and bleak and utterly deserted. All those footsteps were ours.




L6 found art in the sliding sand and shrieked because he realised how special it was. A picture fails to capture it as it was the motion that was beautiful.

Two black (L6 insists that parts of it were blue it was so inky) sand angels if you look carefully.

Oh, I'm doing sand pics again. Well, that time of year.