SENZ, Shopping and Scrapping...

Yup, SENZ is done and dusted for another year. This one sure had it's highs and lows...

Highs?

1. Meeting bloggy friends IRL... here's me with Mandy and Heidi. We managed a fleeting coffee together inbetween classes and shopping. Was great to meet you guys, even only for a few minutes :)

2. Going to SENZ with Mum in the first place! She booked us a night with her FlyBuys points at the Hotel Ibis, on Hereford Street:

We stayed in a room on the 8th floor, with a view out to the Port Hills. SO pretty lit up at night. And we had a fab feed at Coyote (on The Strip). Very reasonable price too.

3. Watching Mum's enthusiasm grow with each class she took. I just KNEW she'd enjoy it, and her layouts were just awesome! I made her email photos of them to me so that I could show you. Check these out:

She MADE those flowers on the 'Grow' layout. Very cool. We also took a class together - a Bazzill Board Book, but neither of us have finished it yet, so I'll post photos of that after the weekend (we're hoping to get it finished on Saturday morning).

4. Meeting Jill Geraghty-Groves in person. We had chatted via email when I was organising Crop for a Cause, and she was one of the 'famous' peeps who signed the fabric squares for the autographed tote that I raffled off.

5. Buying my own cute little plushy - lots of polarfleece and felty goodness, and just TOO cute to leave behind! The stall owner asked as I handed him over 'so, where's my little man moving to?' !!! Ha ha ha. I haven't got a name for him yet - any suggestions?

6. Buying J his own Cuttlekids machine - they are being discontinued, so they were half price! He was SO excited about that once I got home. Much like his extremely patient mother, he had to try out EVERY cuttlekids die the minute they were out of their packets! Ha ha ha.

7. Finding this bread-cookie-cutter at Stevens in the Riccarton Mall. J has had Dinosaur toast for brekkie each morning since I came home, and he took dinosaur sammies to school in his lunchbox. For once, the sammies didn't come home again - he ate the lot! Gotta love that ;)

8. Getting to browse in Spotlight FOR AS LONG AS I WANTED, without two particular boys asking 'can we go now?' !!! I didn't really buy much at all (just a little bit of fabric), but it was nice to have a good, looong look around!

Lows?

1. Not as much shopping as there was last time in Chch, and certainly not a patch on the amount of shopping at the Auckland SENZ last year. TBH there wasn't much there that we can't already get from Rach.

2. Pretty ordinary food and drink available at the cafe. Again, not a patch on what they had to offer in Auckland. Can't help but think that there must be some shop or caterer out there that would love to handle the contract for feeding a shiteload of ladies, rather than us being given the option of sandwiches and cakes like you get at the gas station, made a few days earlier, that looked kind of cardboardy. Bummer.

3. Unfortunately my Mini Village Class with Jill was a bit of a low - I was looking forward to making cuties like these (the sneek peek shots)

But sadly our paper options for decorating the chipboard houses were pretty different to these examples. We didn't get a 'kit' as such, just the pack of chipboard houses to assemble, and a choice of paper, glitters, german scrap etc all plonked on one table for us to use/share with others. Kind of a 'first in, best dressed' scenario. And I wasn't first. I wanted little cuties like hers. But tbh that wasn't an option with the papers we had to choose from. Value for money wise, this class was a bit lacking. Maybe I was expecting a bit much? By the end of the class I had assembled and decorated one house, and partially assembled another. Out of a set of five. I think I'll re-paper the ones I have already done, and make the set look more like what I was after in the first place with my own papers etc. Love the mini houses, love the idea of decorating them, but would have loved to have an actual 'kit' of paper and embellishments to play with.

And that, ladies, is that. SENZ in a nutshell. It was nice to go up for Friday/Saturday, so that we still got to have Sunday at home, mooching around. I had a lovely doze in my chair, with my feet up, in front of the fire on Sunday afternoon :)

Then I made two bacon and egg pies and two chocolate cakes. It was D's birthday back on the 11th, and he was at home with J for the school holidays at the time. I made one pie and one cake for him to take to work on Monday as a morning tea shout for his workmates for his birthday. The other pie was for the freezer for D's lunches, and the other cake was SUPPOSED to make it to later this week when I shout for MY workmates, but I don't think it's gonna last that long :) J has taken to helping himself (after asking permission first of course). So, this is what I found in the cake tin after he'd been at it, cutting himself some for his lunchbox, and some for a snack...

Fuuunny! Just random cuttings, any old where. And the bottom of one piece never even made it out of the tin! Teehee. He's so funny!

Well, that's it from me for today. I have just sat through the finale of Grey's Anatomy...phew! Talk about exciting. And traumatic. GOOD program. Bummer it'll be off air for another 6 months again now...

I might see some of you on Saturday I guess... Sadly, Rach had to cancel her Crop due to low numbers. Bummer. Seeing as I had finally convinced Ma to come along to a Crop, I was having none of that... so I decided that the few who were keen could still have a crop day and split the hire between them, so that's what we're going to do. Well, what's a girl to do? Lucky that there are ways and means around these things :)

Toodles peeps,