Zali's Christmas To-Do List

Friday, 24 December 2010

Zali has been very busy lately - her to do list must look something like this:

1. Wrap Presents

2. Write Christmas Cards

3. Tidy Room

4. Give little brother a late-night haircut (ensuring to hide evidence under bed)

This isn't the first time it has happened either.  This time though, we couldn't live with the results so Jonno had to take to Jett's lovely stripey strawberry blonde hair with clippers...I couldn't bear to watch. It's ok now.. sort of. I can't bring myself to post an 'after' photo quite yet though.

Happy Hikers

Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Married happy hikers would be more correct today. I delivered this cake yesterday to a venue 30 minutes south and up a long long very steep and bumpy gravel road.  Happily there were no mishaps and the hikers got their cake in tact. 

Creepy

Monday, 13 December 2010

Nope this isn't the arachnid display at the museum, these are the invitations to Zali's Spooky party, lined up ready to be delivered. The magnets(hot glued) onto the spiders were handy so we could arrange them on the fridge in the same order as her school photo to make sure we hadn't missed anyone.   The tags were made out of old manilla folders, printed with the details. Then I put the holes in them with those rivet thingies which we had on hand from some other project.  Then some ye-olde-style string and presto - creepy invites I'm sure you'll agree. 

Do not leave this person unattended.

Sunday, 5 December 2010

This is what I saw when I returned  from an overnight trip to Devonport with mum. And that's only part of the new Christmas decorations which have suddenly appeared all over the place.

Two Colour Success!

Saturday, 27 November 2010

Regular readers will know that I've been dabbling in screen printing lately (heaven knows I really need a new creative outlet). Anyway, up until now I've had mixed success with two colour printing, in fact not even mixed success, I've had no success. I have trouble registering the stencils and the shirt resulting in the 2nd colour being about 1 inch away from where I had planned.  I've washed away the results (also with mixed success) so I can't show you any examples.  However in the last few days I've managed to get a system that works - at least when I'm only trying to print one shirt at a time - i.e. if I was printing a run of 10 the 2nd colour would still be so far off I'm sure it would end up next to the letterbox.

So here are my recent prints -the space invaders for Jon, and a jet t-shirt for Jett. 

Skating

Thursday, 25 November 2010

It's pretty close to 20 year ago since I last went ice skating. It was during my Lillehammer au pair days and I was lucky enough to get a fantastic winter working on my ski-ing and skating skills.  I even joined the Lillehammer Womens Icehockey team and progressed from the person going hand-over-hand around the side-rails at training, to being on the 2nd (of 4) string lineup (just) which meant I would get about 1/3 of a game each week. Anyway - it's all so long ago it feels like a dream. An idyllic dream. One of the really fun things was taking 5 year old Bjorn up to the local ice hall (and at a 10 minute walk away it was very local) to skate around on beautiful freshly laid ice in a huge hall. I think it cost about $1 for a session like that.   At the start of winter, our skills were pretty similar! By the end of winter, as I would skate 3 or 4 times a week, I'd manage to kick on a bit skill-wise.

So anyway today, roughly 20 years since last time, I took Jett for a skate. To tell the truth I didn't think he'd even dare to go on the ice but in a turn-up similar to Zali's sudden little-athletics urge, Jett was keen to have a go and wasn't bad at all - easily equivalent to where I was 20 years ago.  It was fun. The ice was um.. not quite the same standard as the olympics primed venue I'd been at, it cost $26 for both of us and it was about 1/4 of the size - but still it was fun. In fact it was probably good 20 years had passed since I was such an ice-snob when I got back from Norway I probably wouldn't have deigned to set skate on such conditions.

We love Sheffield

Monday, 15 November 2010

..and we love Silver Ridge Retreat. It's not about the cabins themselves (although they are cosy with wood heaters), it's more about the location - at the foot of Mt Roland and on land with horses, ducks, a pond with lilypads, an old silver-mine, walks, a swimming pool etc etc. Also the owners are really nice - last time we stayed (almost 2 years ago)  we left Zali's mattress protector on the bed and about 4 days after I rang them to ask if they could send it down, it turned up hand delivered on our door step. This is in stark contrast to the place we stayed at near cradle mountain who refused to give let us use a dvd player despite our desperate pleas and they also had a big mean sign up saying 'WE WILL ON NOT SEND ANY LEFT ITEMS'..  blurk.

Anyway - Sheffield is in the north west of tassie. Close enough to cradle mountain to do some long day trips, and also close to tonnes of other activities and walks and runs and rides and caves and things. We spent the drive home thinking of ways that we could come back and stay for longer.   We were there for just one night because Jon was doing the Mt Roland race which I did a few years ago.  He did well despite constant rain and a 10 minute detour up the wrong track. 

before & after #20

Friday, 12 November 2010

 The bit of cake decorating that I like the most is the 2nd last bit, where all the bits come together to make the final product. It normally takes way less time than the rest of the process and the result is generally really satisfying. The very last bit is delivery and normally that is just a pain!

Anyway - this is my 2nd cake destined for the Huon Show. It's called 'Kiss Me'.