wordful wednesday: my daughter's a frikkin' genius

...s'all i'm sayin...

well, of course that's not all i'm sayin', coz i'm NEVER short of a word or three, and it IS wordFUL wednesday

this is miss 18's stop motion project for her rapid visualisation class at uni (college)

it's over 400 photos and hours and hours of work

ISN'T SHE CLEVER???!!!

for more wordful wednesday, visit angie over @ seven clown circus

EDITED: she got an A for this!!!

bad blogger: again

what can i say?

i blame facebook.  again.

i've just realised i'm only updating on wednesdays and fridays, so thought i'd thrown in a monday update just to keep you (my 19 readers) on your toes.

i'm in my third week of unemployment (not that i'm counting) and am enjoying ZUMBA classes.

for women 'of a certain age', they are the most freeing thing

that's the only way i can describe them

i've sent packages of bloggy love to some long-time blog friends

do let me know when they arrive!

i've loaded anything that isn't nailed down onto trade me (ebay) and i'm doing a lot of laundry (ok, that's not new)

i've applied for SEVERAL jobs, but most of them are through recruitment agencies and well, i've not found that avenue, PARTICULARLY helpful.  at all.

i'm off to my first hen's night in ...  years (she has 3 kids now, so it's been a while!)

and a 25th birthday on saturday

after mum and dad's 50th last saturday and an engagement party in the weekend, i feel i have all the bases of milestone celebrations covered for now.

i've posted this video before, but it makes me smile every time i watch it, so i'm going to share it again

we were on our way home from a fathers' day breakfast (2 years ago).

take 2 minutes out of your day to enjoy my 4 girls singing sara bareilles' "love song".

the quality is a little fuzzy due to compression, but enjoyable nonetheless

happy monday!

look - it's our prime minister on letterman!

i'm totally doing this next time i get married...

KIDDING!!!

this is so cool, especially the first two bridesmaids...

our weekend: the abridged version

i actually wanted to put the cute mosaic badge thingee (right side bar) in HERE, but blogger wouldn't let me, so vanilla slideshow it is! photo descriptions also don't show up on slideshow which is a design fault if you ask me!

hearing is believing

Welcome to Chick Chat!!!

Have you heard about Chick Chat? it's a way for you to learn that little bit more about your fellow bloggers.
As well as reading about them, you can see and hear them too!
Chick Chat is held semi-monthly and features 5 bloggers.

today it's MY turn!
i'll be talking about...well - just hit play and you'll see!
be sure to go visit laura over at under the sheets (her video's great - i just watched it!); rebecca at the misplaced americans; and Typ0 at wandering the world.




apologies for the bug eyes, the nose rubbing and the 'hemming and hawing', and for rambling on so damn long - i sure had fun making this though!

PS: i had big plans to take lots of little videos around my neighbourhood (suburb), but did not get my act together in time, so here's some stills instead!

one of the first things you notice about our landscape...
we drive on the LEFT!!!
wellington, as well as being the capital, is a harbour city
- built on a fault line (just like san fran)

this is a view of the city from mt kau kau.
only minutes from our homes, tara and i walk up here all the time
there are COUNTLESS ways to walk up to mt kau kau!
this is our house, as seen from another side of mt kau kau
this is tara and her dog jed (catching a stick in mid-air!) atop mt kau kau
even though we've climbed to the top countless times over the years; some days we still take a moment to appreciate our city and surrounds
this is the view from the main road of our suburb - ngaio (named for a native nz tree), and that's mt kau kau's TV tower (atop the mountain!)
we can easily walk BETWEEN the suburbs, and at christmas time we did just that when we made candy cane cookies for local businesses. the hill in front is the same hill i live on
and these are my 4 girls!
thanks for stopping by!

and another one

my BF saw this and thought of me.
it's called 'woman goes back to work after 20 years'
it's only 3 seconds long, but totally worth it

something to brighten your day

plenty to look at

and now for something completely different (or not)...........

MORE LAYOUTS!!!

this is for sketchbook's fortnightly sketch challenge
- i did 3 layouts in one sitting!!!

and sketchbook's friday night challenge (TBC by sunday nights) - i never seem to get this one done - until this weekend! rainy days help i guess :)and this one for inspired blueprints. the last layout i did for them was colourful too!

this one's for my sketch world. i got the 'then and now' idea from my friend margot (via BPS i think) i really think i have a sketch addiction problem! still, if it's good for the scrapping mojo, who am i to complain?
this is for creative scrappers. one of their weekly sketch challenges.
those fall colours were just amazing

has anyone noticed how random my blog posts have become since i started my new job?

today's blog post is brought to you by the number 50...

my spring fling winner was jaime over at handful of blessings. she ALSO hosted a giveaway that coincided with her 50th blog post. she wondered what the chances were of the random number generator picking number 50.

well you just know it did.

and you just know who number 50 belonged to...


..a few closing thoughts:

• please take a moment to remember natasha richardson, who died last week.

• my parents are coming to stay next wednesday!

• we're all going to a travel quiz together and i think our team name will be 'roman holiday'

• 190 sleeps til italy

• yesterday was the last game of softball

• today's the last day of netball trials. a long winter of freezing saturday mornings on the netball court sideline awaits us...

• 4 sleeps til my birthday

• bands that have colours in their names:

white stripes
green day
yellow card
red jumpsuit apparatus
blue
black sabbath
pink floyd

feel free to enlighten me regarding orange, grey, brown and everything else inbetween.

happy sunday

weekend random

just in case you're bored and want to customise your very own superhero

(maybe it's a slow blogging day...)

go here.

i have been winning again. i won the draw over at #8 wired for my 'stepping out' layout. the challenge was to scrap 'new beginnings', which played right into my 'returning to work' situation!

i really should buy a lottery ticket.

here's a layout i did for scrapbox. my take on their march sketch.

and here's one i did for no reason at all! (it didn't photograph very well)

this is for sketchbook's fortnightly sketch challenge
if you can't read the journalling, basically it says that i bought these blades 6 years ago for $300 thinking (and i use the term loosely) i would get my money's worth. pfft. anyway - they got to see daylight last october and even though i suck, it was a tonne of fun
and now for some random thoughts:

• i'm feeling left out because i don't have one of them fancy blog buttons

• anyone wanna make me one for my birthday?

• which is in 11 sleeps btw

• my birthday falls on a thursday for the next TWO years in a row! how sucky is that. everyone knows that thursday is the suckiest day of the week to have a birthday

• i wish i was doing project 365 again - i miss taking a photo every day

• i signed up for the cupcake making classes. apparently cupcakes are recession-proof. i know this is true, because i bought some yesterday at the farmers market on the way home from miss 11's softball game.

• i scored 60 followers through the SITS spring fling. i love how women support each other

• i got paid again! (it's still a novelty). clearly.

• STILL loving my job.

• if i ever get off the computer, we're all going down to the girls' (old) primary school gala. it's the first time we're going as an ex-family and can simply enjoy the day without being rostered on the sausage sizzle (or something similar)

• the sun is shining and there's no wind

• miss 19 and i are going to the mall later on
  

i don't know how many SNL fans there are out there, or how many of you have seen this, but it's FREAKIN' HILARIOUS. i've watched it 3 times already
it totally made my day when i saw it.
found it on my girlie colleen's blog.

not sure if i'll get the chance to do the post i want today, so have made this little video instead. i hope it doesn't make my north american friends feel too cold!

at tara's place last night

we spent most of the day making pioneer woman's candy cane cookies, then spread some christmas cheer by delivering them to local businesses. at the end of the day we had a BBQ.

even though our cookies look NOTHING like hers, we had a tonne of fun and i can't wait to share the pics.

photostory friday - there are no words.....

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

tree's up!

so this is the weather at our place today. jealous much melinda? (and anyone else dealing with freezing temps right now!) hehe. me teaseth too much

we couldn't resist being outside and had a game of softball

lookin' cool

trying to look cool...

the game ended abruptly when this pitch connected with miss 10's face!

what date is christmas again?

smile dad!

i get to drape all the pearls around the tree each year

this pic is for all the dad's out there who've ever been frustrated trying to find the source of that one dead bulb

SUCH a poser...

sisterly love

"oh the humanity"

everytime we drag out the box and start decorating the tree, i get quite nostalgic over the history of our mish-mash collection of decorations. when we lived in the states, our tree was almost completely white.

in the years since (15 of them), the tree has slowly become more and more colourful. partly because some have been gifted, but mostly because of the cute decorations that the girls have made at school.

(from l to r: i cross-sitched one each for the girls; beaded angels - we made a tonne of these one year; atlanta dec gifted by a friend from our time there; macaroni decoration from kindy; baked decoration from school; stars and stripes - another gift from friends in atlanta; jandals - so kiwi!; decoration made by miss 19 in kindergarten. it says: "i wish for christmas, no more wars". pretty insightful for a 5 year old).

music to decorate the tree by


merry december to you!

partridge family move over

as christmas approaches, a flurry of end-of-year concerts descends and proud parents everywhere get to sit in accoustically-challenged turn-of-the-century school and town halls and take bad video of their kids, while wiping tears from their eyes.

so who am i to break with tradition, eh?

apologies in advance for the poor quality. it was recorded on my little point and shoot. i have asked santa for a new camcorder.

here's miss 12 at her singing debut. she was so nervous i thought she would pass out.

here she's employing the 'stare-at-the-roof-and-get-through-it' technique

but by her second song, she was a little more relaxed. this pic was taken on the canon with the big flash. what a difference!

this is her 2nd song, so she'd warmed up a bit.

anyone with a pre-teen who hasn't been living under a rock will recognise this song.




here's my show pony 17 year old with her school of rock band, 'cross-eyed mary'. this was their 'triumphant return' gig (the first one as a 4-piece). they dropped a guitarist (not on her head), but a long story nonetheless.

she's playing my favourite of their songs "just for you".



then there's this one; once i realised you had to zoom BEFORE you hit the record button. DOH!!!


then there's miss 10 at her keyboard concert. short and sweet. it was all over before i even had a chance to hit the record button.

here's the 'supper' table. note the complete absence of anything home-made. we had planned to take care of that...but left them on the counter at home. miss 12's fresh chocolate chunk cookies

and some random photos to finish. i'm just loving these long summer nights. my favourite part of summer. dinner's over, there are no after-school (or dinner) activities, and the sun is STILL out. apparently we're in for a 'scorcher' - YEEHAH!!!ever noticed how cats always look slightly perturbed at the affection that's being shown towards them?

fathers' day brunch in the morning, fly out to san francisco in the afternoon

so DH comes home from work on friday and announces that he's going to san francisco. on sunday. ie - won't be here for miss 11's birthday. he says 'maybe we could do something, just her and i - like tomorrow afternoon?' i say 'that's wonderful hunny. will that be before or after her 6 hour birthday party?' they try so hard.

in the end, after the obligatory cup of tea in bed and home-made card, our fathers' day/family birthday dinner became brunch on a beautifully sunny sunday, that included a walk along the inlet and an impromptu photo shoot.

me thinks somebody needs bi-focals...

the girls' fathers' day card included (among others), this insightful verse :

dear dad
happy fathers' day!
sorry my writing's messy
this pen sucks!
lots of love

the branches of our family tree contain a lot of nuts...

i shot a whole series of these then downloaded a gif animator to roll them altogether ala pioneer woman. i'll post it sometime

i thought i did pretty good job with my jump, but of course i got absolutely no credit for it from some of the girls. DH didn't want to attempt 'such foolishness'. i suspect he wants his almost 50 year old body to be in complete working order for his wonderful child-free week in san fran. [god i wish i was going]. oh wait, i am (just not soon enough!)

what a terrible mother. how could i say such things about my daughters. look how happy they are to be with each other. yeah yeah yeah. five minutes before that i had walked out of the cafe because i couldn't stand the arguing! it was over something terribly important like feet placement under the table...

here the girls attempt to spell out our surname. note: upper AND lower case was used

and in this one, our potty-mouthed children spell out another word. kids and shadows. priceless fun. i should point out that such language is not ever tolerated in our house. they were simply in the moment.

miss 19 took this one

then miss 16 took an impromptu yoga lesson

...just going with the moment...

then on the way home they sung along to this...

the quality isn't fantastic, because i crunched it down from 172MB to 31MB.
still very cute to watch. take 2 minutes out of your day and enjoy it.

happy fathers' day to all the kiwi dads out there!