For Helen

I organised through Helen in England to get me some "Thomas and Friends" pc games for Aaron. Well at the same time she bought him a book... belated Christmas present I think she said. Anyway here's Aaron reading "Horton hatches an egg" all by himself!

I haven't been able to keep Aaron off the pc all week... he LOVES his Thomas games.

Photos to show you

Well after a week of promising and saying "I must do it", I eventually did...hehehe... so here are the photos from Kelly's party last Saturday:

The kids trying to wack the pinata... eventually did manage to get it broken (with a bit of human intervention from Glen... Kelly's Dad)

These are the creatures that we got to see.... Owl, Snake, Meerkat, Hedgehog, Bullfrog, Bushbaby, Rabbit, Crocidle and Lemur

The guy walked up and down amongst the kids so that they could pat the animals. They got up close and personal to a few... the meerkat even inspected their teeth!

Kelly and Aaron are good friends... going back to day care days! She has come out of her shell quite a lot and is a sweet little girl... here's the birthday girl blowing out her candles.

In the afternoon I went to scrap with some good friends... and it felt almost like Christmas for me... okay actually belated 40th birthday... both Judi & Gayle passed on to me their birthday presents which the hadn't been able to give me last year. Gayle gave me a new scrap album... sooooooooooo needed a new one, and Judi made me a puzzle box.... LOVE IT. Once home Aaron attempted to put the puzzles together:

It wasn't that easy and I spent most of the evening doing them... six sided cubes each one different.... hope I solved them correctly Judi!

When we arrived at school this morning, the new jungle gyms were up and available... ALL the kids wanted a turn... here's my little monkey on the monkey bars and climbing net.

So good to get these up now... feel slightly more up to date!

I just LOVE blogging

I found this on Celine's blog... such a cute idea. Now leave me a comment as to why you love to blog and you can also help yourself (as I did) to this cute logo.

Why I love to blog:

1. It's a place to air my views on issues (not that I do that too much)

2. I can share my layouts with my friends and family

3. I use it as a journal so that I remember what happened when when I need to scrap my layouts

4. It's tons of fun!

5. I love reading about all my cyber-friends and what they are up to

6. Blogging helps me pass the time at work when I have nothing to do - it's better than Facebook for me!

7. My blog is somewhere where my friends and family can come and find out what we are up to without me having to email them all the time... don't think it's working yet as the family haven't left me any comments (hint hint!)

8. oh and there are lots more reasons but I can't think of them just yet.

Enjoy and please comment.

Busy birth-day

Wow I know of a few people having birthdays today...

Nicole - little girl from church & school

Phumzile - at work

Iris - Aaron's nursery school teacher

So girls.... have a great day and celebrate to your heart's content!

Baking

These are the cookies I baked last night... yes officially put them in the oven and baked them... started making the dough on Saturday morning, the filling and rolling on Sunday and baked last night.

They are called Cinnamon-Swirl Cookies and I got the recipe from Martha Stewart's Cookie a Day newsletter. You can get it here

My obeservations:

- get the correct conversions for the quantities.... ie:

a stick of butter is 125gm... so this recipe needs 250grams (no problem there for me) BUT the 8 ounces of butter works out to 225gm.... so having used the 250gm worked out above, I ended up with a very sticky mess of "dough" and had to add more flour... about another cup. Think if I do make these again I would use the lower butter quanity.

- Don't try to substitute filling after the first batch has run out.... yip I made the delish filling as per the recipe but didn't have enough nuts to make more when I ran out with dough left over, so used cake mix fruit instead... didn't mix the butter and sugar properly (too much in a hurry as usual) and it all melted out when baked... not good!

Did manage to get 60+ cinnamon swirls so only the 28 fruit ones were a bit of a disaster. Yip I got 80 cookies out of this batch... now that is worthwhile!

The cookies do taste yummy, so if you don't mind the delay in baking (making?) they are worth the little bit of effort.

I feel like...

I'm back in the scrap world... yip I got to scrap this weekend... managed to do FIVE layouts... and boy do I feel good about it.... not that I'm "on target" for my "layout a day" by any means, but I definately feel good that I managed to do more than one layout since the last time I scrapped! So here's what I did....





Other news from the weekend.... I took Aaron to a birthday party on Saturday.... will post pics a bit later once I've done the collages.... took WAY toooo many pics like usual! I spent most of Sunday doing load after load of washing and scrapped in between. Also started baking (or at least making) some cookies... sort of ones that need to keep being put back in the fridge for an hour or more between each stage... actually is a pain! Hope to actually BAKE them this afternoon and if they work out well, I'll share the recipe with you.

Off now to go fetch my little guy from school and go to swimming, before heading home to do homework and then the pile of ironing!

TGIF

Photos and the stories behind them....

Right here are some pics from the past month (?!)... firstly the MESS in my scraproom...

and then I spent a weekend and a bit longer tidying up, sorting out and organising my goodies in boxes to go on my new shelves that my Dad made me....

All my albums fit on the bottom shelf... nicely labelled so that I know which year is which. The square boxes I got as a birthday present last year... three are filled... still trying to decide what to put in the fourth! All my mini albums are also on the shelf.... only about 5 are actually complete... I put them out as a sort of motivator for me to actually scrap them!


This is the other half of the shelf. The black and pink boxes were from ISE two years ago... I've filed my stickers, rubons and metal emblishments in them. One box is also full of alphabets! The square boxes on the bottom are also from collections at various scrapdays... sorted my patterned paper scraps, cardstock scraps and chipboard stuff into three of those and then tools and adhesives into another few. The top shelf has lots of little plastic bottles (courtesy of ISE kit packing days!) into which I've colour-coded my buttons and then also put extra goodies like words, circles and the odd leftover letters. My bucket has all my decorative scissors in it, and my paints are in the basket. My toolbox contains all my punches.

I must say that being a bit more organised like this sure makes for easy scrapping.... now I must just remember where I put what and once I've used it, to put it back!

Right, on to other photos. Last week Tuesday was the start of Bible study again... Aaron was most excited that we were going again! Well it was also one of those days when we had a HUGE storm. When we got home at 6pm, I found this plant by the front door covered in hail. So it's safe to say, we had a HUGE storm at home too!

Remember me telling you about Aaron's trophy he got the first week of school? Well on Monday he got sent to the Principal's office..... not for anything bad mind you.... he had to go show him his beautiful work! And for that he got to pick a reward, and these glasses were what he choose:

Now he feels sooooooooooooo special... a "main man"! Well done my boy, Mommy & Daddy are VERY proud of you.

And then just to show you what our afternoons/evenings are like the past few days, here's another collage of pics... Aaron playing "baseball" in the garden.... good camera practice for me!

Okay, so now I feel a bit better after having put this post together. We've had a few more hiccups at work.... IT guys came and installed a server last week and changed settings a few times over (3 times in one day alone!)... but things seemed to be working now.... EXCEPT.... hehhehe... yip it was toooooooooo good to be true!.... I arrived at work today to find that the phones were out AGAIN!!!!... they went off yesterday just after I left.... hehhehe. Never a dull moment I guess.

Oh and most days I sit at work and browse the net as I don't have much to do... hence blogging! but this week, it's flooding work..... got data capturing to do, drawings to draw and others to plot... and then to crown it, my plotter ran out of ink and I didn't have spare cartridges (hadn't ordered because of the move last year!). So I'm busy busy at work and having to blog at night now, so things might slow down for a bit. Also scrapping is sort of on hold as well.... I'm in the middle of making new banners for our church.

Okay, this turned into a really long post... thanks for sticking it out to the end.... chat again soon soon...

In Proximity....

I was given this very nice award by Helen....

And as per usual the 'rules' are :
'This blog invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes for self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers!'

This blog award should be sent to your favorite eight bloggers and they, in turn should forward to eight of their favorites. You should include the text for Proximidade (above) in your announcement blog.

And now my answer to this is.... I don't have time to go around visiting my favourite favourities and informing them all (again!) of this award.... so quite frankly, for now I'm skipping that part. If you read my blog... please assume that you are welcome to this award too... we're in PROXIMITY!

apologies

I have had to put word verification on to my comments as I've been getting lots of spam comments and am getting rather irritated with them.... I LOVE comments and don't want to discourage anyone from leaving them, but I always feel that they should be something appropriate and not just a bunch of advertising links or garbage. So my apologies to all my blog friends for making you do an extra step now when commenting... but it might just be safer this way.

The saga continues

Our work IT issues that is.... yesterday the IT guys arrives and changed, changed and changed again the settings... everything was working by the time I left but they said they would have to come back to change it again! Sooooooooo this morning, they were there again... and yip all changed again! But I can print, scan, email and browse the net (s-l-o-w-l-y mind you!)... so for now we are back in connection.... sure hope it lasts this time!

Well on a more positive note, I scrapped again yesterday... decided to give my 2008 pages a bit of a break and tackled one from 2007.... just pulled one out of the pile and did it....

So tonight it is back to Line Dancing... looking forward to doing that... so hopefully the weekend will see me scrap up a storm again and have lots to post next week.

Another thing that is keeping me busy, is that I've started a blog for my son's school.... everyone is soooooooooooooooo excited about it and we hope that it will give the pupils and parents a bit more up to the minute (ok day!) info. You can check it out at here.

I managed to scrap

The wheels fell off my target of "a page a day" and I haven't scrapped for a while... I did sort out my new shelves for my scraproom (guess I best show you those pics too!)... but this weekend I managed to scrap again...yippee....

Did these two pages on Friday night:

On Saturday my friend (and scrap buddy) came over and I did another page, but unfortunately it's still not finished... got tons of journaling to do for it first. So last night instead of doing that journaling, I tackled this double page:

I'm chuffed that I managed to get some more done... now just to get back on track with a page a day and I will feel MUCH better.

I can definately relate....

Something new

I took on a new adventure yesterday.... I signed up to do a class of Line Dancing... yip I was so taken with the barndancing last year and having heard that there are classes, I decided what the heck and signed up. So now instead of joining a gym (which I would NEVER EVER EVER do) I can dance and have fun while sweating (ew!) away the excess kilos and getting fit.

Let's hope it lasts!

So last night was my first class.... thoroughly enjoyed it but definately felt like I had two left feet for half the night. I know I'll get better with time so no problem there... just need to figure out how to practice it at home too... no music, no steps and can't remember what we did! hehehe.

Please support

My friend Helen in England is having a sale on her Misi shop.... please if you can, support her... she makes lots of different beaded stuff... including braclets on cards which are great birthday present... I should know as she sent me one for my birthday... see here!

I'm back

YIPPEE... we now have internet connection at work again... see me doing the little dance... I'm sooooooooooooooo happy to be reconnected... now I feel like I'm part of the world again! And the problem was..... the little surge box between the modem and the wall got hit by lightning... just took Telkom over a week to come and replace it!!! Sort of thing we should have spares of and replace ourselves. Would save a ton of heartache.

Re the network problems in the office... those are scheduled to be sorted this morning, but who knows.

Other news.... I watched The Apprentice last night... and was quite happy with Mr Trump's decision to vote both girls off... they really didn't seem to shine to me... will be an interesting finale next week (or 2).

Besides Aaron having a snotty nose this week (swimming lessons postponed), we're all carrying on with life in general... sitting in traffic in the mornings, homework each afternoon and just general catching up on things.

One other highlight that I sooooooooo wanted to blog about last week and never did, was Aaron lost his other top tooth.... at all places at a birthday party! And we can't find the tooth either... I think he swallowed it while eating. He was so brave through the whole thing... bleeding in front of all his friends... but within minutes the kids were all laughing and it was just another topic of conversation. The new tooth is making it's appearance fast and furious now too. And to crown it all, about two days later the filling in his one back tooth also came out... so I had him back at the dentist on Monday and the brave little guy didn't utter a single sound while they cleaned it out and refilled it. Now he proudly states that he has a "silver star" in his mouth (heard the dentist asking for that!)... just a silver filling. I think he really would like a GOLD one... like his Aunty Judi... but I've said "you've got to pay LOTS of money for gold, so not happening!"

Okay, off to do some work now... yip even that is happening this week!

and so....

the saga continues. Another week at work with no connection! Hopefully (holding thumbs) it will be fixed within this week. I didn't even have connection at home yesterday as my pc had to sleep at work for them to connect me to the network and printer.... and guess what.... yip it WASN'T done!!! Now that is definately the last time I'm leaving my pc for them. Such a bind. But the good news (sort of) is that for now I'm temporarily connected to the printer so at least I can print again.

Right enough about all that... reckon you want to know what I've actually been up to hey?! Well last week I built another puzzle... and found ONE piece missing... bummer. Am now trying to get hold of Smile to see if I can get it replaced.

Spent the weekend just reading and not doing too much. Did scrap two pages on Sunday though and another one last night... see below.

Last week while passing time at work I also scrappped my first digi page... okay cheating a bit ... I used a QuickPage, added my photo and some text.... I did get brave and try and do a pop-out... not too successful but it is my first so, not tooo shabby Nige!

And that in a nutshell is me.... till next time.

ps... Helen, I hope you're not toooooooooooooo snowed in in England!