Watercolouring!

I have been playing the last couple of nights with my new watercolour paper, and tonight J asked me to show him how I did it so he could have a go - here are the results...

Not bad for a first try, and not bad for someone who's only FIVE!!! He wanted left on his own after I had stamped the images of his choice, so he could colour them in. Then he wrote his name on them - spot the daycare boy, ha ha ha!

Speaking of that, today was the last daycare day - the end of an era after three and a bit years. I thought I was going to be staunch, but I have to confess to having to swallow back a few lumps in the ol throat as we watched him hug all his teachers as he was leaving, and promise them that he would be good at school. Ahhhh, I must have a mushy centre after all (like all good chocolates, ha ha ha).

Right, I am off to hang a load of washing on the clothes airer, then try to get to sleep nice and early (unusual for me I might add, am normally more of an eleven-o'clocker), as we are leaving at FIVE THIRTY AM to travel to Gore and back (or should I say Gorrrrrrrre like I used to when I was 9?! ha ha ha) for a Caithness family reunion. While I am there I plan to put some flowers on Mandy and tidy up her headstone etc, and take pics of the two houses I remember growing up in when we lived down there. Kill two birds with one stone :) Not looking forward to the long day much, but haven't been down that way for a while, so I guess that'll be nice. Hope I dont get carsick. Seriously. I am NOT kidding.

Right washing here I come. Have a nice weekend peeps, and catch up with you all when we get back. Toodles, B x

Aloha!

Tomorrow is our wee man's last day at daycare... after three years going to NorthHaven and being looked after by all the lovely ladies that work there, this is it.  The End.  Strange.  Weird, even.  I made an 'Aloha' card for the teachers from us - Aloha is Hawaiian for both hello and goodbye.  This is another one of my Pink Cat Studio stamps - too totally cute.

Righto, am orf to bed.  Night night!  B x

Oh Yeah!

Guess who's got her mojo back?! That's right baby, it's me! My new set of Pink Cat Studio stamps arrived in the mail on Monday, and I have been HANGING OUT to play.... here's what I managed late last night...

Righto, best be off to work. Will catch y'all later!

Toodles, B x

Daz's Clock Creation...

Hi there, Daz back again for a another post that may even interest Rachel!! Some time ago now I replaced the front disc on my KDX and just as I was about to throw it out I thought "this would make a really cool clock for J" and like most things I start they take some time to complete, but completed it is.

For a start I had to get Beck to talk nicely to Rachel so I could cut some numbers out of chipboard on her click and cut, I got two of every number cut so that there was some depth to them, step two was to glue the numbers together, step three paint them black and to make them look really cool I added some dimensional magic (this was way cool)!!

To get the clock mechanism I thought the best thing was to buy a cheap clock, when I got the clock home I thought that it would be really cool if I could slot the disc into the clock housing and because it was only 1mm too small I took the disc to work and got it turned down by 1mm so it would fit. So now I have silver disc, black shiny numbers and a silver clock body, man am I good at making things match or what??

Because the disc is quite thick with all the mountings I had to cut holes in the back of the clock to allow the disc to sit nice and flush with the clock body, next problem was getting the hands to pass the numbers and fixings so I had to do a little bending on the arms, with this done we were all good. To make this special I wanted a picture of Jake either on his motorbike or in his bike gear for the background, and as luck would have it his gear is black and white which I think looks pretty bloody cool! I then got Beck to download all the different brands of bikes to put in the holes around the inside of the disc, Yamaha, Suzuki, KTM, Honda and I had to add the monster logo as Jake really loves it.

Beck was nice enough to cut out all the holes in the backing paper and also around the logos, (I couldn't be arsed playing with scissors)

Once that was all done it was only a matter of assembling the clock and robbing one of the remote batteries to get it going.

Here's the finished product:

And that's all until the next time. Daz

Christmas Camping...

Becks, camping?  Yes I can hear you non-believers out there!  

Well, it wasn't CAMPING camping - we were in D's mum and dad's lovely caravan, and only 20 mins drive from Timmers to collect fresh ice, food supplies, and shower!  Yes, now THAT'S what I call camping!  Ha ha ha :)  

We totally gate-crashed on my friend Gina's camping holiday, camped out on private property alongside the Little Pareora River.  The water beside the campsite was very shallow, and great for the kids to play in while us parents relaxed, and there was a deeper waterhole just a few minutes walk downstream for when we wanted to get wetter.  Fantastic!  I took quite a few pics (as you do), so here's the pictorial run-down on our camping expedition....

Men cooking 'oh-oh-ooohhh' 

(said in the style of Tim the Toolman Taylor)

Can you SEE the size of that barbie?  Crikey it's a good'un!

If you look from photo above through next three photos, you get a sweeping view of our campsite from the river....

That's our caravan off in the distance

J pretty much spent 99% of his time riding a bike - if not his wee 12", then it was Cam's larger 16" bike that he spent all day on.  He had a blast.  It was great that the water wasn't too deep at the site too - he even got confident enough to get right in and lie down in the shallows.  Although the temps getting up around 30 degrees sure helped that.  It got to around 35 degrees on day - WAY TOO HOT for this kiwi.  Seriously.  Way.  Too.  Hot.

Here's Cam with J - he's Gina's boy, and such a sweetie.  J followed him around most of the time, but he didn't seem to mind too much.  They found as well as a love of bikes, they had an obsession with lego in common.  Lots to talk about!

And when it got really hot, we went down to the waterhole.  Several people (myself excluded!) jumped in off the ramp into the waterholw producing fantastic photo ops - see for yourself....

Shawn

Paige

Isabella

Paige again!

Curiously there was this kind of 'rock-shelf' on the edge of the waterhole that you could also dive in from.  Almost looked like they were walking on water!  Shawn did a magnificent dive off the rocks...

Al

And of course, once I get the camera out there's always that point in time when my son acts up for the paparazzi.  Only a mother could love this face, and even then sometimes it's a struggle!  What a performer!!!

My man (awwww)

Aleisha

A pile of dirty dusty rocks?  Sure I'd love to climb all over those with wet clothes on Mum!

He found a 'cellphone' shaped rock....Hello?  Hello? !!!

The rock shelf stars again - check out the facial expressions on the divers!

Aleisha in action...

Lovely form...

That's a big splash for a little girl!

Jake and his new best bud, Cam

My two troublemakers (just kidding boys!)

The beginning of The Great Noodle WaterFight (don't ask!)

So all in all we had a fab time, thank you so much to Gina, Shawn, Aleisha, Cam, Al, Lee, Paige and Isabella for letting us gatecrash your holiday.  We ended up staying 5 nights in total, and could've stayed longer but home was calling as the return to work was not far away.  Bugger.

On our last night (New Year's Eve), they had a wearable arts night, where we had to make costumes from rubbish bags, which we had to wear from tea time until bedtime.  Plastic is HOT to wear for that length of time I can tell you!  We took out a bunch of glo-sticks for us to wear, and there was even singstar hooked up to a generator!  Talk about all the mod cons!

Here's J and I in our creations...

And here's all of us, looking GORGEOUS!!!

Well kiddies, I'm off to bed to get my nose stuck in a book for a bit, then it's back to the office again tomorrow.  Man today dragged... must be Monday-itis me thinks!  Anyone else suffer from that?

Toodles, B x