Sunny moments and fluffy cat tales.

All growd up

2009-10-24T19:29:00.001+02:00

Sinead went to a party this evening. This is the dress she originally chose:

She did feel a little over-dressed, and got changed before we left, but she looked so ~~pretty~~ elegant and beautiful that I wanted to share.

The storm

2009-10-23T19:31:00.001+02:00

We had a little storm today, with some minor hail, as you can see from the pictures below:

The veggie garden almost made it through:

Sinead and Quentin, of course, absolutely loved it, and played as if it was snow:

They even built some towers:

Outside, things didn’t look much better:

I really hope the garden survives this, and that the plants will return even stronger.

The Dude: The Movie

2009-10-17T10:07:00.001+02:00

The Dude makes his small-screen debut in this, his first short film, simply called The Dude.

Sinead

2009-10-09T22:17:00.001+02:00

Sinead hula-hooping

Garden update

2009-09-26T09:04:00.001+02:00

We recently had our first rains for the season, and I can see the difference it has made to the garden.

Last year, in my first attempt at a veggie garden, I planted a whole bunch of spinach, none of which sprouted. It turned out the seeds washed into the lawn, and we suddenly had spinach growing in between the grass. We carefully transplanted a couple of the plants to the ‘leafy’ bed (where I planted the other spinach seedlings, lettuce and morogo) and they are absolutely flourishing.

We also rescued some lights from my mother’s (now ex) garden recently. They are really great. They switch on slowly as the light starts to fade and casts a nice, gentle light on the garden all night long.

This week-end I will be planting out the last of the seedlings, other than the herbs, and then I start all over again.

Building a ship

2009-09-26T08:55:00.001+02:00

Sinead recently needed to build a ship for a school project.

We used the diagram from this site as our guideline, scaled it down a little, and helped her with the templates.

She then cut the bits out of cardboard, glued them all together and painted.

And this was the finished product:

She scored full marks for this project :)

Ch-ch-changes

2009-09-05T10:29:00.001+02:00

"You know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change, but pretty soon...everything's different."
— Bill Watterson

We have some exciting changes coming our way.

Quentin has recently accepted a job offer at a very large IT company – the same one I happen to work for – which brings all sorts of exciting opportunities.

Obviously, the new position brings with it more money, which means we will have some money to throw into those pesky little household projects we’ve been threatening to do for ages but just haven’t been able to afford. We also have some other plans, which we are busy hashing out and will start working on – watch this space.

It also means that Q can focus on a career in a company that offers a LOT of career opportunities, which is absolutely fantastic for him.

We are proud of him :)

Needless to say, we will no longer be leaving the country, or moving to the coast in the near future.

Seedlings update #3

2009-08-29T13:30:00.000+02:00

Today, I am happy to report that all the seeds planted to date, other than the squash, have sprouted. This includes the tomato seeds, which every one told me would fail.

I planted out the sweetcorn, lettuce (first batch), morogo, pansies and cornflowers this morning.

I hope they grow well, and that we have our first harvest soon.

I have re-used the containers of the seedlings I planted out for the same seeds, as I think it is important to keep the cycle going. I have also added planters for some Foxglove, rosemary and other flowers.

Seedlings update

2009-08-23T22:04:00.000+02:00

Since my last post, the following have sprouted:

Echinacea
Onion
Sweet corn
Carrots
Watermelon

I am surprised, I thought the tomato would be next to sprout, but it looks like it may be the squash, actually.

Proof that Spring is returning

2009-08-15T15:48:00.001+02:00

This little guy just popped out out of the blue recently.

I remember planting daffodils some time ago, but they died and I thought that was the end of that. Apparently not.

Seedlings

2009-08-15T15:42:00.000+02:00

Just about a month ago, I posted about the cheap planters. At that time, we had created 6 of these planters, and planted the following seeds:

Lettuce
Chamomile
Pansies
Cornflower
Catnip
Echinacea

Of these, only the Echinacea hasn’t sprouted. I planted some more of these seeds last week-end, so here is hoping it will work this time round. The lettuce is now ready to be transplanted – which I should be doing tomorrow.

Last week-end, we created another 10 planters, didn’t even decorate them, and I planted the following seeds:

Lettuce (yes, more. We have a pet that likes lettuce.)
Spinach
Tomato
Onion
Sweet corn
Beans
Morogo
Carrots
Watermelon
Squash

Of these, the lettuce, spinach and morogo have already sprouted, and I at least the tomato and carrots to sprout in the next couple of days.

I think next up I am going to try some gerberas and some more herbs.

More Frankness

2009-08-08T09:00:00.001+02:00

A couple of pictures of Frank, our very own LOLCat

Ouma Lilly

2009-07-18T11:59:00.001+02:00

Aletta Johanna ‘Lilly’ du Plessis

29-06-1922 to 16-07-2009

Grandmother to Quentin, Great-grandmother to Sinead

You will always be in our thoughts.

Cheap planters

2009-07-18T10:23:00.000+02:00

If garden space is at a premium and you have a window sill that receives a fair amount of sun, these cheap planters are a great way to grow your own herbs or vegetables. We got this idea from a recent NG Kids magazine, and thought we would try it ourselves.

Requirements:

Plastic 2l soda bottles
Potting soil
Decorations: Paint, fabric, glitter, etc
Seeds

How:

Cut the soda bottles in half.
Drill several holes into the lid and fasten again
Turn the top part of the bottle up side down, and slide into the bottom part. It should fit snugly (you may need to use a little bit of force)
Fill the top part of the bottle with potting soil and plant the seeds.

Should you overwater, the water will collect in the bottom container, and slowly be sucked up into the soil again. And, if you decorate it, it brightens up the window sill nicely.

It has been a week (and a cold one at that) and we already have some sprouts:

Frank

2009-06-07T21:17:00.001+02:00

Having his afternoon nap on the shoes on the step outside our back door.

The dude

2009-06-07T20:58:00.001+02:00

Say hello to our newest family member:

Some call him The Dude, some call him Tortoise, I call him Sheldon.

Frank and Cleo have been very amused, but so far, have not been able to get too close to him, luckily.

Albertinia

2009-04-29T07:25:00.000+02:00

View Larger Map

Back to school

2009-04-15T10:55:00.001+02:00

Sinead went back to school today. I cannot believe I allowed the entire holiday to go by without even mentioning that she received a Top 10 badge at the end of last term for being one of the top 10 academic achievers in her grade.

As always, we are so proud of her.

Mid term report – 1st term

2009-02-26T20:04:00.001+02:00

We got Sinead’s mid-term report card for the first term this year last week, and it is absolutely heart-warming, as you can see below:

We are very, very proud of her.

For record keeping purposes

2009-02-14T12:32:00.001+02:00

This morning, I woke up and checked the time. It was just after 7:15. I pulled the curtains closed to block out the sun, moved my mouse to check email and discovered that we were offline. I tried to ping our home server, and, when it did not respond, I got up and walked into the lounge. It took a second or two to register that it was considerably emptier than it should be. And then, I screamed.

I’m a girl. It comes natural.

My screaming woke Quentin and Mike up, who rushed in to see what was wrong.

I noticed the front gate was standing open, but the door was closed. Opened the door to see that the lock on the gate had been broken.

Luckily Sinead was sleeping over at a friend’s house. Because, checking through the house, we realised the following was taken:

From the lounge:

2x PCs
1x 26” Samsung monitor

From Sinead’s room:

HP Pavillion laptop

From Mike’s room:

HP Pavillion laptop

Nothing else was taken. Not Sinead's wallet containing her birthday money. Not the Xbox. Not the sound system.

Mike was sleeping in his room, and his laptop was on the little table next to his bed, less than a metre away.

One of our neighbours happened to be in her bathroom early this morning just after 6:30am, and she had a clear view of the road. She saw a blue Toyota Tazz in good condition pull up outside our house and a well dressed man got out. Then she saw a man sitting on top of the roof over the front gate, who passed items down to the well dressed man, who, in turn, placed the items in the boot of his car. The other man then jumped down and got in the car. They drove off. Unfortunately, she was not able to see the number plate.

Mike got up just after 6am this morning to switch off the porch light.

Luckily none of us were harmed. But, someone was in our house. We feel violated.

12

2009-02-08T11:38:00.001+02:00

Today is Sinead’s 12th birthday.

I wrote this poem for Sinead when she was a baby, and it still holds true today:

Fragile fae queen
fairy tale and mother goose
you could be quite contrary
little princess, butter fae
I wish, I wish . . .
all the wishes in the world for you

Outing: Wedding in Bloemfontein

2009-02-08T10:00:00.000+02:00

We attended my cousin’s wedding in Bloemfontein yesterday. The ceremony was beautiful and even I got a lump in my throat and a tear in the corner of my eye on several occasions. It was also lovely to see the family again, and meet the new addition to our family.

Sinead bought herself a new dress for the occasion, and looked like a little lady:

The happy couple

Group photo:

Some other pictures:

Sinead’s Birthday Party 2009

2009-02-02T10:58:00.001+02:00

This past weekend was Sinead’s 12th Birthday party and here are some photo’s of the event.

2008 – a year in pictures

2009-01-24T08:40:00.001+02:00

This is quite overdue actually. I have been working on this post for weeks, and finally got access to the rest of our photos so I could complete this. I like remembering the highlights like this.

January

Blackouts, load-shedding and the chicken run was on every one’s lips and minds. I could not find a single picture from January indicating that we did anything other than try and survive load shedding.

February

Sinead turned 11 and attended the Valentine’s ball at her school. She had attended dances before, but this was her first dance unaccompanied by us.

March

We had our first roll-your-own-sushi evening. It was tremendous fun.

April

Quentin and I went away for our first holiday alone together and Sinead dressed up like Alice (her of Wonderland fame) for Literacy day at school.

May

We helped a friend out with a uni project by pretending to be dead. The result was a deliciously dark photoshoot, with a lot of really scary images of all of us.

June

Sinead got her glasses.

July

We helped out at the 702 Walk the Talk by wearing pink t-shirts and trying to convince people to donate money for breast cancer research.

August

Quentin and I went to Tech-ed together. This was an incredible experience for both of us. Later in the month, in an attempt to become more self-sufficient, we started our own vegetable garden.

September

Sinead was awarded full Academic colours.

October

Summer returned in full force, and so did the butterflies.

November

We planted our first vegetable garden, and the plants started growing, amazingly.

December

Sinead received Gold awards for English, Afrikaans and Math, and we gave our dining room a brand new face.

RIP

2009-01-03T18:58:00.001+02:00

Loki

25 September 2000 – 2 January 2009.

You will be missed.