Well the time finally came for the girls to leave their preschool.  The school has been part of our lives about a week after Gorgeous Jerry and the kids arrived in New Zealand.  This has therefore been the close of quite a special chapter.

With all of our kids having spent time at Browns Bay Preschool we wanted to make them something special to say thanks for everything.  To be honest I was saying thanks for putting up with all of us and not pointing us in another direction in search of preschool needs.  For those of you who know us we can be pretty full on most of the time.  Anyway Lara and Emily wanted to be part of the whole gift making process and so here are the pics.

Their classroom is called the Whales Room so we thought the little added bit to the front was quite cool .. oh and check out my sewing! BY HAND!

Avery Labels has some great fabric labels that I used to personalise the toy box which I stitched on to the back.  Very cool I thought.

Once again I need to give credit to Jerry for a very sturdy wooden box (made out of left overs in the garage) and then upholstering was done by the three girlies.

Wine:  Yes this was definitely needed to get this over the line.  Remember that it was birthday cake making time as well as trying to get this all done.  To be honest the whole week was a bit of a blur and I can’t be absolutely sure what wine I was drinking …. I think it was white .. well 50% chance of getting that right if you exclude Rose which I’m sure we all agree isn’t a real wine.  I’m still convinced that it’s made by mixing red and white (just kidding I’m not such a philistine – rhymes with wine ****cracking up******)

Music: Bit cliche I know but the fact that we knocked this thing up in an evening, baked 2 cakes, packed 30 party packs I think We are the Champions is pretty apt.

Pssssst: If you’re planning on giving this a go stay away from that fur on the lid … fricken nightmare to vacuum even with my soooper dooooper cordless Dyson.

Adios muchachos.

Monday tomorrow so strength for the week ahead to you all.

xx

I know it’s been a while since my last post but I’ve been rather uninspired of late.  Fret not, fortunately that has passed, now I’m just fighting for time.

I saw a ‘Grab One’ deal come up and thought it was quite cool.  In hindsight I probably would have bought the white instead of the black but hey there you go.  I am one that generally pushes the button too soon if you remember the story of me accidentally buying a violin a few posts back.

Anyhoooo the inspiration for this one came from listening to myself repeating the same stuff over and over again.  For those of you born before 1980 will understand the association of sounding like a stuck record!  When I saw the advert I thought hey 90% of that stuff is what I spend most of my time saying to the kids.

Okay here is how it’s done:

If I knew that there would be a certain degree of skill required I might have done a trial on something slightly smaller.  Due to my lack of experience it probably took me twice as long as a pro and some pretty colourful language could have been avoided.  But, hey, you win some and your lose some.  Here are the pics and one of my little helper – Adam was also the photographer.  He’s doing a bit of ” ‘Sup dude”.

The trick to this is doing it in sections.  You’ll see that I was doing about 2 lines at a time. Firstly you stick the contact (plastic with one  sticky side) onto the words.  Stick the piece (paper and contact) to the wall with selotape (probably better off using masking tape but I couldn’t be asked to look for it).

Peel the contact off the white backing.  In a perfect world the letters should stick to the contact – yeah right!! anyway with a bit of encouragement they will.  Let the white backing fall away and then gently stick the contact with the letters to the wall.  Once you’ve smoothed it all down (a credit card works and fortunately doesn’t require any available credit), remove the contact carefully and again in a perfect world, the letters will be left on the wall.

It probably took me about 90 minutes to get this all done.

A few things to remember!

Clean the wall before you start and make sure its dry

Make sure you’re putting the words on straight.

Music: Norah Jones was playing – chosen by Gorgeous Jerry

Wine:  As I was doing this at about 10 in the morning and also bearing the steady hand required in mind I steered clear of the wine and was having a fine cup of coffee.  It was most delish and looking back was very sensible indeed!  I must finally be growing up.  Jed’s comes in different strengths.  Mild, Medium, Strong and something that could possibly be used to remove these letters when I finally get sick of them.

Psssst: there might have been a wee dash of something in that coffee!

Have a fab weekend.

Cheers m’dears

xx

So if any of you subscribers have multiples (twins etc if you have no idea what I’m talking about) have a read at www.allabouttwins.com.  It is my new website about raising twins!

Let me know what you think.

Ciao ciao

xx

As I’m fairly new to the blogging world I was VERY honored to be nominated for the Liebster award by one of my blogging buddies Riding the Crazy Train.

The idea is to acknowledge 11 of your favorite blogs by linking to them on your blog (they must have less than 200 followers) and by doing this we can all spread some bloggin’ lovin’, let them know that you’ve  mentioned them and sort of ‘pay it forward’.  You also need to ask 11 questions that your nominated bloggers need to answer to enable us all to get to know each other better.

My 11 fav blogs are:

Riding the Crazy Train

2days woman

ReDesigning Sarah

Better After

Watch me Rock

Clive Jones

Love and Lollipops

My Froley

Inner Visions

Pepper

Trendy Mom Reviews

Questions that I needed to answer:

1. What is in your “secret stash” that you hide from your kids or spouse? (I hide dark chocolate, for example.) – there is always a spare bottle of wine that only I know about  
2. What are your feelings on the “5-Second Rule”? - mine is a 60 second rule .. what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger
3. What is the best compliment you have ever received from one of your blog followers? - that I’m funny and that I write well … especially since my English teacher at school was tempted to put in me in the English second language class  
4. What pushes your crazy-psycho button? jealousy and people who are unkind
5. Who inspires you the most on your life journey? Ken Robinson – he has written some fabulous books and a very interesting guy to watch on youtube.
6. What gets you through the day most often: coffee, wine, or your sense of humor? – sense of humor mostly .. when that fails I move on to wine  
7. What’s your number one travelling tip? - send your kids as unaccompanied minors and you go the next day
8. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing today career-wise, what other life/career path would you be on? I’d be coaching people on making career choices that make them happy rather than doing things that is aligned to their IQ and/or abilities
9. What are your goals for blogging? hopefully this will lead me to something career wise that excites me – I’m putting it out there to the universe to help me!
10. Anything on your bucket list you’d like to share? Holidaying in Tuscany with Gorgeous Jerry (no kids) and staying in an old stone building of some sort …. tasting lots of yummy wine.
11. What is the craziest thing you have ever done that you are willing to admit to doing? Being launched down the side of a 110m ship in a rubber duck in 12 metre seas in my Oil Exploration days…. but with 3 small kids I’m sure that there are crazier things that I’ll still take on.

Enjoy and remember to ‘pay it forward’

Adios

xxx

…………. and change we have!  I’ve cracked open the first bottle of red this winter!  Okay it was a screw top.

Mae West once said that she likes two kinds of men: Foreign and Domestic.  Well I like two kinds of wine: Red and White! yip I think that sums it up!

For those few observant readers you will note that all the wine suggestions, from the beginning of this blog’s life (all 2 months of it), have been white.  Why?? well because I like it … A LOT!  To be honest I over did it on red a while back and I couldn’t even look at a bottle of red never mind smell it.  My sister will also tell you a story about when I was in my late teens about red wine and leaving me in the driveway .. in SOUTH AFRICA for a few hours! shocking!

Anyway I thought I’d tell you why I enjoy the whole culture of wine (or lack thereof on occasion).  This is the picture of wine drinking that sits in my mind.

We all have fabulous stories to tell about wine drinking times but to me it always makes me think of those precious snippets of time that we’ve shared .. mostly with wonderful people.  I’m fortunate enough not to have had too many vile wines (plenty of whines with my brood) but it is funny how you can take a pretty average bottle of wine, pour it in some long stemmed wine glasses, add some wonderful friends and suddenly the wine goes from a 6/10 to a 9/10.  I can’t say I’ve ever experienced it the other way around.  Even if the company is lousy and the wine is great, I kind of zone out from the company and viola …. the wine is still fab!  Not that I ever hang about if the company is dodgy .. but hey there you go!

Wine: I’m currently drinking an Italian wine … Volupta Montepulciano d’Ambruzzo – simply quite soooooper!

Music: Red red wine by UB40 I think?

Pssst: don’t you think I’d look great in this?  

and a leaving thought … Money may not buy happiness but it will buy wine!

xx

On Thursday night I was fortunate enough to head out for an adult evening.  Gorgeous Jerry was travelling for work (bring on Friday night) so I was solely left in charge of our 3 little critters ones.  Fortunately we had the Scotsman staying with us so after I got the pinkies in bed off I went.  (Scotsman was left to do the year 2 reading with Adam).

Now the lady I was having dinner with is a client from a previous job and we met up again through linkedin (gotta love social media) .. she had a look at my blog liked what she saw but wow was I impressed about what she does for the creativity bit in her life.  Bit of a dark horse that one.  Yes the below pics are CAKES!

Anyway if you want to see her stuff check out her facebook page here.

So anyway not only did we have a night of kiddieless wonder we also ate the most stunning authentic Italian food – place is called Gusto Italiano (I now see that they also have an opera night coming up on Wednesday).  Can you just imagine 3 kids under 7 sitting through that!!!  Some things in life are NOT to be shared with our little people.

Anyway I digress so there we are chatting and after having 2 glasses of some fab vino (I had some Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio Italy, the “cake lady” settled for something red) we both had the most stunning pastas and then finished off with sharing a Tiramisu and a cheese platter.  We spoke about our travels, our lives BC (before children), partners, work and lots of bit and pieces in between.  We both agreed that ‘The Big Blue’ is one of the most fab movies of all time (not sure if that is because of the underwater theme of the movie or the fact that Jean-Marc Bar stars in it) anyway if you haven’t seen it I suggest that you try to get your hands on it.

The night went by far too quickly but as they said in Casablanca “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Wine … Anything Italian

Music .. the soundrack from the Big Blue

Psssst …. headboard is coming!  Suffering from sense of humor failure at the moment with this one but as I am sometimes unrealistically optimistic it will see the light of day.

Fab week ahead everyone!

xx