Happy Grandparents' Day

This week, Grandparents' Day is being celebrated. I never heard of Grandparents' Day till last year, when the kids asked me to go along to their school. Yesterday, it was for the beautiful Holly and they celebrated with a liturgy, some games and lunch.

I was really touched with the service because each child had to nominate something that they thought was good about having grandparents and the whole morning was devoted to the value of older people; their wisdom, their experience and their value to the younger generation. The kids were encouraged to ask their grandparents about their personal stories and about their lives when the grandparents were the age of these kids. The kids had to bring along their favourite toys but they also had to give a presentation on the history of the toy. Holly chose Lego and there was some quite interesting history that she dug up!

There were two classes of Grade 2 involved and one group brought the savoury portion of lunch and the other group brought the dessert section. We played some games, using Apple laptops (!!!) out in the playground and the kids had to choose a game that they thought their grandparents would have played. Holly chose a billy cart and built a virtual billy-cart on the Apple, loaded me into it and proceeded to push me down the hill. My character was a hen so I'm not sure if there was any hidden message there! Needless to say, I spent a lot of time being emptied out of the billy-cart. How times have changed.

This flower was made with cutouts of their hands and feet and had little messages written on them. Just lovely. On the previous Friday, Holly's brother Jack, was sick and came over to my place for the day. He recovered quite dramatically after a few ice blocks while watching Star Wars! In the afternoon, I asked him to strike a 'sick' pose so I could take his photo. How good an actor is he?? He looks like he's on death's door! All my grandbabies are SUCH drama queens. I have no idea where they get it from.

Hannes was so excited to find his favourite cousin had come along to pick him up from kindy!

It has certainly been a full granny week for me. Hannes had his gymnastics presentation on Sunday and was totally chuffed with his trophy.

What a wonderful grandma week I've had! It's very heartening to see schools encourage participation by grandparents and to encourage kids to find out what older people can offer them. Stay safe, my beautiful grandbabies and have a wonderful life. Grandma loves you all very much.

Farewell, me lovely

After a lot of looking around and test driving and screaming and yelling discussion, we have finally bought a new car, so farewell to my trusty steed, the Commodore. I have loved this car and it was been wonderful. It has not cost us a bean and apart from some cosmetic touches (ie I ran into a carpark, Bill the Builder backed into a fence), it is almost as good as the day we bought it. Someone is going to get a bargain with this one. Thank you for keeping me and my babies safe and for always getting us to where we were going.

The new beast is a Subaru Outback and we picked it up with much flourish.

It has quite a few bells and whistles and is quite comfortable to drive. Still getting the hang of it. Hannes is delighted with it and we went for a spin with the sunroof open before we went to kindy on Friday.

Welcome home! Hope you fit in the carport!

A jammy kind of day

Spent most of yesterday making jam and relish. I made five bottles of apricot jam

and eight bottles of green tomato relish.

Mum gave me a heap of cherry tomatoes so I picked out the ripe ones and used all the others to make this relish. I hope it tastes OK. I haven't tried this recipe before.  I also made a banana cake for the freezer and topped up the jam drop supply and have now hidden those in the spare room too.

Bill the Builder is home on holidays and is goofing off tidying up the shed so he says. We are picking up a new car that looks like a Mongolian Racing Duck in the next few days and I am really hoping for a road trip down south to see Lynda. I'm not used to having Bill the Builder home and it's a real challenge quite nice, although there are lots of cups of tea and snacky cake. We'll both be fats as fools somewhat heavier if this keeps up!

How gorgeous are these roses from SIL's garden? They are actually a lot darker red than they look here and the perfume is just exquisite. What a beautiful day it is here today.

Here's looking at you, mister!

Pick a spot….any spot

Generally, I am fairly neat and tidy. I usually put things away when I’m finished and I mostly work in a logical, orderly manner. And then the other times, I just lose the plot completely and the place looks like a bomb went off! Wherever you look, mess and chaos!  Just seems to go from 'not too bad’ to ‘whoa! What happened here?'

Hmmmm…maybe should have ditched the wine glass before I took the photo!

Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to take too long to get everything back in order. Very easy to mess up but very easy to put to rights again.

Remains of the jam drops I made, after leaving them to cool while Bill the Builder was home. I also made a lovely orange cake (hidden in the spare bedroom), a loaf of bread, a zuchinni slice, some pea and ham soup (found a meaty hock languishing in the bottom of the freezer) and put the fruit on to soak for the Christmas cake.

How good do I look in this apron from the M & M shop in New York?? Oh. OK. Not good at all. Rats!

 How beautiful is this rose? This poor bush doesn’t get much attention and doesn’t give many flowers (probably for obvious reasons!) but  when it blooms, they are just lovely.

Good bargains at the junk shop! Shiny purple diary for next year and three bottles for Christmas jam. Bargain! Apricot jam on the boil as we speak.

Today, Barney No Friends has to go to the doctor (again) but this time, only for his annual shots. How would you fancy having to load this into a cage?? Not one of my favourite past times, let me tell you. He weighs a tonne and also has an aversion to being stuffed into a cage and having the lid slammed shut, but then, don’t we all?

What a week!

Last week, Bill the Builder organized new carpet for the bedrooms and major electrical renovations. I didn't have a good time, although I'm very thankful now that it's been done. Some days, I had no phone and no electricity but I put the time to good use.

This is Bride's Bouquet and is totally hand done. It is as wobbly as it looks in the photo but it's as done as it's going to be. It was made with templates. Wish I'd used stronger colours though.

Blazing Star, also hand pieced with templates

Boy's Nonsense, foundation pieced

Bear's Paw, foundation pieced

Cats and Mice, foundation pieced but not too keen on the colours. Might swap it out into Farmer's Wife Sampler

Bow Tie, template pieced

One good thing about getting the carpets replaced was that everything had to be yanked out of the wardrobes so there was some major sorting out done. Not everything made it back in. I nearly went insane having all the furniture piled up in bathrooms, in the lounge and the laundry but wanted to give everything a good clean before stuff went back. It was the week from hell.

Rounded the weekend off nicely though, with a trip to the circus.

How sweet is this little guy? It was his first circus and hopefully his last, or at least, my last but he asked a few times if we could go yet, so I'm thinking he was bored spitless slightly underwhelmed.

I grew a potato!!

After waking up feeling like a bear with a sore head less than happy this morning, I wandered out into the backyard and peered at my orange tree to see whether my lone remaining orange had been blown off the tree yet, when I spied...................a potato!! Not on the orange tree. Under it.

OK. So it's not such a big potato (it's the one at the front. The one at the back is a medium sized mango) but nevertheless, it is still a potato! I'm so happy! I might be a farmer after all!

Last birthday for the year on Saturday with the party on Sunday. We all trooped up to Maleny to have birthday lunch at the Maleny Hotel to celebrate DIL's birthday. Loaded Mum, DD and gorgeous grandson into the car and Bill the Builder drove like a man possessed us all up.

What more do you need, apart from a trashy novel, a box of chocolates and a little bottle of champagne?? I know! A giant bookmark! DIL was a bit taken aback by the size of the bookmark but I liked the design and didn't know what else to do with it. Told her it was a page marker that was difficult to lose!

Some embroidered towels and a massage voucher completed the booty haul from us.

I think Bill the Builder was having a good time.

After the party, we drove up around Nambour and also called into the Ginger Factory at Yandina. Left after a brief visit there, clutching some beautiful ginger sauce, some rocky road and a bottle of lime and ginger marmalade. Yum! Arrived home absolutely shattered a bit tired but a good time was had by all.

Happy birthday, beautiful girl!

Been to Table Runner School!

Spent a wonderful day recently at a Christmas table runner class. What a terrific way to spend a morning and I'm just so chuffed with the end result.

Even better, it's made entirely from my stash! How thrifty am I?? It's quite long and is actually brighter than it looks here. I am going to make another one for my dining room table and replace the centre star with an embroidery.

Done two more SBS blocks. This is Swamp Patch, traditionally pieced,

and this is Bachelor's Puzzle. It is made with templates with a lot of mucking around and spitting and cussing which I found a tad challenging.

It is said there is no such thing as a free lunch. Well, around these parts, if you want afternoon tea after kindy, you have to cook your own!

Hannes loves a good cook up and always makes our dinner on Wednesday nights too. Spag bol. Every Wednesday night. Without fail. I made that apron for him (and both the other grandbabies) for last Christmas and put a wooden spoon, a biscuit cutter and a pair of tongs in the embroidered pocket. He loves it!

I am always amazed when this poor plant bursts into flower each year! Mum bought it for me years ago and apart from a water from time to time, the poor thing is totally neglected. Yet each year, I get this beautiful display. Note to self: look after plant under mango tree a bit better.

Beautiful gerbras from Mum's garden. She really is the gerbra queen. What a lovely day it is here today! Perfect for embroidering towels for gorgeous DIL's birthday party tomorrow.