Before and after - rocking chair

2 special people

I just realised how few pics I have of hubby on this blog, so here he is with my dear grandma. These two get along quite well actually, her house is one of his favourite places to visit, and their conversations are interesting. Vahid breaks out into 'fluent' farsi, and she tries to pop in a few words of English, and thus they communicate quite effectively.

best friends

rosy picnic

A new discovery

Behold, she has just discovered.....the endless possibilities of hot glue gun!!! So super easy to use and the gems really stick. Now for the hard part of getting little miss independent to wear them....
The idea of napkin rings inspired by Sarih and Soulemama. I made these with ribbon wrapped round a piece of toilet roll ring. Decorated with glass pebbles i had from an earlier project with magazine cutout glued underneath. The aim is to have each family member have their own napkin and ring and reduce tissue usage...doing my teeny bit to be green.

The harvest

After years of wishing and dreaming about growing my very own corn, this year we finally did it! and ate it! I grew up surrounded by corn fields in Cameroon where corn was a main source of food, which was then dried and used as corn meal. Corn season meant roasted corn from street vendors, juicy fresh ears of corn  from the backyard, and i mean HUGE maize, not the sweet corn have here. I must say they were not very easy to grow, actually nothing is easy to grow in Adelaide's weird climate and poor soil, compared to the rich volcanic stuff and mild tropical weather of Cameroon.... can you tell i'm a bit homesick!

Friends

Friends with whom we've had a lovely year of learning and sharing together on spiritual matters as well as having a baby explosion!

School art work

For anyone with kids at school or kindy, you would be familiar with the PILES of artwork that come home with them every week. Last year i left a container in the corner of the kids room for all school artwork to be put in. On a lazy holiday morning, I brought out the container and got Danny to pick out the things he thought were 'keepers'. These are mainly things that wont fit neatly into a folder, 3D items. Then we stuck all the 'keepers' on a wall, took a photo, and now he's happy to let go of them, as long as he gets a printout of the picture.
As an aside on most of these pieces, i feel very little creativity was required of kids, as the teacher made a template and everyone copied the model or she helped them make it, so the whole class basically had the same art work at the end of the day. I guess that's okay when exploring a new medium or style, but really, a bit more freedom of expression would be better. Below is some arwork he did entirely on his own, although he copied the halloween collage from a book.

Miss A

Little Miss A is growing up fast, in every way, and she'll be off to school in a matter of months. Meantime i've been enjoying time alone with her while Danny's at school. This is us having a 'rosy tea party', with watered down cherry cordial as 'tea' which she serves for both of us - quite refreshing actually. She takes such pleasure in being of service and doing the whole hospitality thing. Visitors often hold their breath while she balances a hot cup of tea on a saucer for them, which she insists on doing herself . I'm the lucky recipient of daily bouquets of all sorts of flowering plants and weeds, which thankfully she forgets or ignores what i do with afterwards... a similar fate befalls the hoards of paintings and crafty boxes that come home from Kindy every day. I feel a bit guilty, but then seriously what does one do with all the stuff?! Good times...

a special event

Event organised by Danny and Amy. A 19 Day feast. Complete with handwritten readings (prayers), audience chairs (comprising of yours truly and miss A) amd a stand where readers must stand to read their prayers. I was confined to bedrooms while all this was being prepared, with Amy on mommy lookout duty.
It was just so beautiful how seriously they took it, and how much detail they remembered from observing adults. Amy was so excited about the whole thing she made us do a few rounds of readings. And put on her own show the next day.
I was later informed that some technical challenges were experienced by the organisers during preparations, the glass top coffee table had initially been lifted to stand on its side (?), the large n heavy glass top had fallen out, and 'mommy it was so hard but I put it back again by myself' .... (!!!!)