Eight: Growth

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Eight: Potential

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Round-up~ September

What books and/or magazines did I read this month?

Creating Keepsakes, NOT where is it postie??? HUH huh???, Healthy Food Guide, and a little more of Next than usual.

What movies and/or tv shows did I watch this month?

The obvious...All Saints, Outrageous Fortune. And the not so...The netball- Go New Zealand! Summer Heights High- Saturday nights on TV1 it's like a school based version of Kath and Kim made in Australia can be VERY funny!

What special days did I celebrate?

Father's Day and My sister Finn's 10th birthday.

What gifts did I give and/or receive?

Father's Day Pressies for Les. A Sam Hunt Poetry Anthology for my Dad. And $20 for Finn... kid sisters are hard to buy for. A water pistol and a bag of lollies for Logan.H's birthday. Mini albums to all the coaches and team managers. And a lunch order Moosie for the kids on the last day of school.

What illnesses or health concerns did I have?

My brain... I'm so tired

What fun things did I do with my friends and/or family?

Gardening with the kids. Watching Kieran's last Hockey game with my Dad, Kieley, Les, Will and Merenia.

What new foods, recipes or restaurants did I try this month?

Healthy Food Guide Butterscotch pudding, which I think will be on www.healthyfood.co.nz when the new issue comes out. Mars Bar Rocks YUM!!!!

What special or unusual purchases did I make?

Craft Robo- I know I said that last month but this month it actually turned up. We got the Odyssey at the start of the month and a new multifunction printer. And we got a DVD-rom drive for the 'kids' computer so we can get 'Mr Rugby 08' off the lounge computer!

What were this month's disappointments?

Not getting as much done as I would have liked. The ongoing and building frustration of not being able to get the house to what I call 'maintainence point' and then have a balance of cleaning, scrapping, playing and relaxing literally has me in tears some days and is slowly driving me nuts! Not getting to play enough with the craft robo

What were my accomplishments this month?

Getting the kids garden's planted and some flowers planted around the roses. Planting Will's Rose and doing some scrapbooking stuff towards Christmas. Getting up to date in sorting my photos (I was months behind) and getting them all uploaded and printed while digitalmax was having a special! Let's not talk about how much that cost or when I am ever going to find time to scrapbook these photos.

Anything else noteworthy to record?

Will Crawling, clapping and waving, Yay!

300 and Eight things: Surprises

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I missed my 100th post and I missed my 200th post but this is a great day for the 300th!

This is the first of a set of 8... I was going offer explanations for the photos and why I'm feeling the stuff that I am but;

• it all seemed a bit poxy
• it's the school holidays so I'm busy
• I really wanna go scrap
• the kids want the computer
• the baby needs me
• I'm hungry
  
• etc
  

So here's the thing I've been wandering around the yard lately and taking a whole bunch of photos whilst also thinking about stuff that makes me happy, like....













Note I like small surprises... like unexpected flowers in my garden, early flowering wisteria, beauty where you don't expect it, and airplanes you don't notice till you look at the photos. Surprises that just happen and aren't for me as such. I'm not big on surprises for me. I don't like direct spoiling where I am face to face with the person or persons giving the surprise... quite simply because I don't feel good enough to deserve it... but then I think a lot of people feel self-conscious like that.

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My Signature Dish

A little departure from my usual simply because I took these photos... I will scrapbook them eventually (though not in this lifetime the way things are going lately!) but for now just thought I'd share my signature dish....

Sweet Chilli Philli Pizza

I use Romano's Crispy Pizza bases which are pre tomato and herbed. I give them a generous slathering of crushed garlic. Then I fry up some decent sized chunks of skinnless chicken breasts- they just need to be browned off but there's nothing wrong with giving them some crispy bits.

Slice up a bunch of Vegies; red onion, tomato, mushroom, and red, yellow and green capsicum. You could add your own fave pizza vegies if you wanted to but this is what I like. Odd the fastest cooking vegeies to the bottom building up to the slowest on top.

Chuck the chicken on top of all these vegies. And then add great big dollops of Phillidelphia Cream cheese... I use the spreadable 'lite' as it reduces the guilt a little and only Philli will do! D

Slather in Sweet Chilli Sauce and I mean pour it on baby!

Top with piles of cheese. (We use edam) and cook...

Then consume... (yeah, I forgot to take a photo before we started consuming, too good to wait!)

Marathons, Olympics and Rugby

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Ole Espanol!
(Sorry about any spelling issues there... I have no idea what I am saying!)

Being the last week of term there was a bunch of stuff that needed to be done not the least of which was the mini sports albums. We did these the year that Les coached Kieran's soccer team. I did one for each boy. Since then I do one for the kids and one as a thanks for coaches and team managers. That meant two for Hockey, three for Rugby, and I did 5 for netball as there's a couple of other girls on the team who are pretty special to me.

Each album has a picture of each team member (in action) and the coach/manager, a small selection of general 'action shots' and if possible a team photo. I normally include the years results and the 'Players of the Day'.

So I made 10 albums each page and each photo has rounded corners... 1200+ corners all up and each photo has 4 photo splits... over 800 in total that needed to be stuck down and then the tabs pulled off. Hmmmmm I think i have RSI.


The Olympicathon was on Tuesday last week, the kids were both in Spain, which was very handy for me as I had to make a run to get album supplies in the morning and I had an RNZAF 'feedback' session to be at at 1pm, and our old DP, Judy, was visiting school that day so I was keen to see her as well. As the kids were both in red you'd think they'd be easy to spot but no, because over half of the countries chosen for the Olympathon teams had red as one of their country colours.

Feather Races

The teachers did a super good job in the set-up for the day... you could tell because they didn't all look exhausted and over worked (like on a normal school day) ... the senior kids actually did the running of the events. I spoke to a couple of my old students they said they were "over it!"








Thursday was Kieran's last Rugby tournament day of the year. Due to the third day being rained off and points difference Whenuapai made it to finals day for the first time in forever. The two winning teams at this final got to play the curtain raiser for the 'battle of the bridge' game on Saturday... we're talking dream come true for Kieran here. Let's not spend to much time talking about the results... the five games looked a lot like this....

That's Whenuapai in blue chasing the opposition scoring AGAIN.


There was at least a chance to win a ball autographed by the North Harbour team...

... but despite looking like a demented bridesmaid at the bouquet toss Kieran unfortunately missed it.

He did at least manage to score some autographs and a poster.

I was going to join in with Ali Edwards documenting a week in my life but this week is going to be a little intense. We have Kieran's friend Jake here for 3 days out of the next 5 and I'm sure we will have some added girls too. Sylvia arrives for the night before Scrap camp on Wednesday and there's other stuff in the mix as well. So I'll leave documenting a week in my life for when school's back on. I am hoping to make Merenia a skirt though, like these (I want one myself) and get started on my Christmas creating for my teacher gifts... we'll just see how all that goes though. I also have a slight yearning to make my hair go like this... but I"m dithering... or maybe I just can't concentrate long enough to go get the dye.. I'm not sure. As an aside.. that art, is by Emily from the black apple, she makes VERY cool stuff and if I was to have a girlfriend she is my dream girl.

The end of September is upon us, Christmas is looming, enjoy your week!

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ATC's

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ATC stands for 'artist trading card' it's a little piece of Art 2.5 x3.5 inches and on one of the scrapbooking lists I am on we have been having some ATC swaps. The first was 'Circle of Friends' and we had to have our photo on it....



The second was Olympic themed I decided to make mine look what I thought looked Chinese and each has a word that I associate with the Olympics in Chinese on the card; Sport, Spirit, Unity and Peace.

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