Strange Love

L8 didn't want to go into the pet shop, even when we weren't buying a kitten. So this is a big surprise. Love.

Love is unpredictable.
(The kitten is called Vanilla Bean this week. Just for the record.)

Two Bad Ideas

Bad Idea One: Knitters owning kittens

Bad Idea Two: L8 discovering the blow wave

Better Than An Ipad ;)

A trip to the Sculpture Gardens. 

 This one, gorgeous from a distance, was made from rubbish bags!

 Riding a moa:

 This one is called a Dragon Tree:

 A plant, not a sculpture, although really it qualifies as both:

 These flowers smelt like hot chocolate:

 Sitting with the Bird Lady - somebody has bought this one; I wish it was me, but I didn't have $15000 on me today:

 Nikau palms with trunks made from water:

Learning experiences: L8 grabbed a thorny bush (won't be doing that again in a hurry) P6 stood on a pointy leaf that made her heel bleed (ditto) and the kid next to us at the duck pond leaned too far and fell in (LOL - it was a little bit funny, if not for him).

Sixty-Five!

Happy Birthday lovely Mutti!

(Looks fine, tasted baaaaaad! Eeep. Sorry Mutti. At least it was a memorable cake.)

Bit like P6's memorable dressing. Go the bandana.

We love ya Mutti.
xx

Not Quite Right Day

This is why I don't have to bother improving my sewing skills. This morning I asked P6 to get dressed and she happily disappeared for a while, before appearing like this. She created the outfit from two bits  of scrap fabric, tied cunningly. Certainly dance-worthy. Who needs stitches, when you have knots?

 And this is us going down to the beach for a lovely family summer evening. That's all I'll say about that as it was certainly not the lovely evening envisaged. Everyone under 5 foot tall was horrid. Must be the end of the holidays. Enough spontaneity. Let's get back to work. 

No! We've still got almost two weeks to go!!

Chemistry

with glitter.

Chocolate Snow Bombs

Tried a yummy new recipe as I had three kids in the house and not much in the way of a snack. It was a goodie.

Chocolate Snow Bombs

1 and a 1/2 cups of flour  

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

75 grams butter

2 eggs (I used three as ours are small and it wasn't binding)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup icing sugar

Sift the dry stuff. Add the butter and whiz in the food processor. Add the eggs and vanilla and stir. Roll into balls and toss in icing sugar (don't dust off as the better coated they are, the more spectacular). 

Bake at 180 for 15 mins. 

Mmmmmmmmm. . . eat and get porkier. 

The picture:

 The reality:

 And the cute animal pic at the end to make you go awwww:

(Actually she was a poo today - the girl, not the kitten - so this is to remind me that I quite like her really.)

Hugo

I'm not good at kids' movies, but kids' movies that are adults movies too, and severely beautiful, that's what we need.  Aunt Iz lent L8 the book (The inventions of Hugo Cabret) on holiday, and he devoured it, so that was enough of a reason to go.

The 3D was amazing but does make me slightly ill. Still, absolutely worth the vague nausea.

I Won't

I won't. . .

I won't. . . 

I won't. . .

Oh hell, maybe just for today.

Why fight it?

That's a bit like Neil Armstrong's step right there.

A Day In Which P6 And I Were Extremely Wicked

This morning we had a visitor. We'd seen her a few days ago, and I'd christened her Stinkypoo, while P6 preferred Kissy. Today she came and thoroughly checked out our house, and we had a good play.

P6 loved her, but sadly we realised she is most definitely someone's else's loved cat. It did seem rather advantageous to have a cat that you didn't have to feed. But it's just not the same.

Oh yes we did. So bad. We hijacked poor cat-phobic L8 and Geeky husband and took them down to the pet shop, whereby they both fell in love.

She's called Jinx.

And this moment alone made it totally justifiable.

Stuff I Could Share

Oh there's so much I could show you today. . . you could have a lovely wee moment here:

Bookshelfporn

or a Wiggle giggle here:

Wiggleslookmean

My kids are too old for us to know the 'new' and now ousted Wiggle, but hell, forget how mean Anthony came across, look how old the um, old, Greg looks! And as for Jeff! It's not 'Wake Up Jeff!', more 'Resurrect Jeff from the dead!', which doesn't actually have the recognizable Wiggles riff, but is technically more correct.

Or I could tell you about our dinner conversation:

L8 - "We were still around when dinosaurs were around."

Horrified parents - "Eh? No, there never were people and dinosaurs. . . "

L8 - "Yes, they are just in a different form of matter."

Okay, oil I give you. Actually no - according to Google:

"Oil formed from the remains of marine plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, even before the dinosaurs."

So possibly you are still wrong! I dunno. Let's eat.

Or I could tell you about Geeky Husband's sweet nothings just now:

"You do whatever you want honey. . ."

"Whatever I want?"

"Yeah, without spending money. . . "

Or I could just show you pics of my kids and our ginger friend frolicking in the sea today. Yeah, that's more like me.

 And this is them practicing for when they "wake up" Jeff. . .

And this is to prove to women all around the world, that the camera does make your bum look big. Because I can solemnly swear upon anything, that P6's bum isn't really big, but look - I ginormoused it by pointing the camera:

Who would have thunk? Oh actually, all of us knew it. 

Time For A Garden Post

More a confession. My garden is going wild. There's loads on tomatoes in there, even some self-seeded that seemed to pop up really early in the season. Unfortunately the one with the most fruit on, doesn't actually taste very good. It's kind of floury, clearly bred for abundance rather than culinary appeal.

There's also strawberries and basil if you dig around enough, dill, silverbeet, parsley and the huge swan plant that's just starting it's seasonal magic. We got into butterfly catching, but we always let them go after we've had a quick look at their beauty in a glass-lidded colander.

We also seem to have the beginnings of a pumpkin. Exciting! We're going to try to make it huge enough to enter in the A&P show. We're doing this purely through hoping and thinking it large, rather than adding fertilizer.

I have to blog about pedestrian things like spinning and gardens, because at dinner I cope with questions like L8's tonight:
"If you put a cup of tea out and leave it to get cooler, the universe gets just a really tiny bit warmer doesn't it?"

Spinning Again

Maybe a little too much.

I heart. . .

Been playing with my new baby:

M&B found her at an A and P Show, and rescued her for me for Christmas. Someone has used an old sewing machine motor and created an electric spinning wheel. Today I spun a beautifully soft, wholesome-looking alpaca yarn:

I love her little heart and am enjoying learning her eccentricities. She just needs a good name?

Summerish

We've not done too badly considering the soggy summer our little isle is undergoing. We missed the worst of it locally in our hop down South, also narrowly missing the worst of it down there, and now we are back it was sunny enough to go explore rockpools. L&P clambered over the rocks getting rather daring and looking super picturesque.

 Unfortunately their ditzy mother left the camera in the car. But I did snap these as we hopped back in to go home, just to prove that we did actually make some beach time this summer.

By then the little ones were warming up in the car, and not photo-worthy at all, but the water was clear and rather lovely, if a tad nippy.

 I did try to get in the mood by wearing jandals.

They are really uncomfortable. I think to do jandals you have to be able to walk languidly. I'm more of a scurrier myself. Still, it felt like summer, which was good.

Our Old Peeps Playing Party Games

AKA Many Pictures Of My Carport.

P6 had the family part of her birthday today, since the grandparents are all back from holidays now. She had really wanted a pinata for her party but it kinda of got put aside (okay, okay, I was too cheap to buy one - I'm sure I whinged about the price of commercial ones on the blog in the past) so I had promised her we'd make a homemade one for the grandparent birthday dinner. We coined it the 'world's weirdest pinata' because we filled it with an odd assortment from the cupboard, and it was dramatically less than aesthetically pleasing. Still, it's always a joy to thump something with a stick.

  And on the plus side, all the oldies were good sports and all had a go at giving it a good whack, and man, did it work well. 

We are totally gonna be pinata designers when we grow up.