Summer Bucket List 2011

Last year I put together a Summer Bucket List and when I went back to see how well I'd done in ticking off the list I was pleasantly surprised that most of them provided some wonderful moments of enjoyment over the summer. Sure, I still haven't made a bead necklace at a bead shop, and I'm not sure whether we managed to go to many 'new to us' spots in Wellington but we did pretty well on all the rest. So without further ado, here's my Summer Bucket List 2011:

1. Play mini golf

We are mini golf fans from WAY BACK. We love this game. Or should that be we love BEATING each other at this game. Plus we now have at least one cheeky chappy who has the ability to smash a plastic golf ball using a tiny plastic golf club from one end of the house to the other, so we're pretty sure it'll be a fun family outing that will get a thumbs up from the boys. A must do this year.


2. Go blueberry picking

When both my parents worked on a blueberry farm for many years, I didn't stop once to appreciate the amazing quantities of free blueberries we could devour without a second thought. I know we didn't make the most of it the opportunity, and now that we have to pay, shucks have you seen how much a tiny punnet of blueberries go for in the supermarket? And we were getting them by the icecream container for free? Booo hooooo!

Righty-o moving on...We have one boy who has always been particularly partial to anything remotely BERRY-ish so I think we will definitely be finding a field to raid do some PYO this summer!


3. Family bike expeditions

I am so looking forward to riding up and down Nana and Poppa's deserted country road with my big boy who can now ride on just 2 wheels. And if we borrow Nana and Poppa's bikes, we'll all be able to ride together...although we're still working on how we can also get the littlest involved in the fun!

We've also recently put an extra hole in the seat of Noah's old Mocka running bike so it goes down lower, and Mylo can just about reach the ground on his tiptoes. With any luck, we're hoping that with all the flat land around, we might just be able to convice Mylo to give it a good go over the holiday.


4. Play swingball

As a kid, for me summer holidays weren't complete without a few backyard activities like swingball, badminton, frisbee, kiteflying or backyard cricket. This year we've got Noah a swingball set for Christmas and with all that space to swing several cats at Nana and Poppa's, it'll be the perfect place to get some good rallies going.

5. A visit to The Big Smoke

This year we're taking a big detour on the usual Hamilton-New Plymouth leg of the holiday to spend a couple of nights in Auckland. It will be lovely to be able to stay and catch up with Andrea and her family, as well as hopefully take the kids to the Auckland Zoo and Kelly Tarltons Underwater World.

Noah is beside himself with excitement at the prospect of seeing an elephant!

6. Get a spray tan

A bit of a random one I know but I've never done it, and I'd kinda like to avoid looking like a complete lily-white never-seen-the-sun gal when we head off to Melbourne in March. Any recommendations for companies to use or avoid for that matter?!



7. Enjoy the dress

Ah yes. That dress. Lovely that it is, recent investigations of the bathroom scales have determined that I was a good 2kg lighter when I bought the dress for my brother Nic's wedding in Melbourne and it fitted perfectly, albeit snugly at the time....eek! Too much snacking and wine drinking in the lead up to Christmas me thinks! So unfortunately I will have a few Weight Watcher weeks ahead of me in the New Year if I'm even going to be able to do the darn thing up. Oh well, we've done the hard yards before and Mark reckons he will join me on my quest which is exactly what I need...some healthy competition! If there's one thing we're good at, it's competing with each other!


8. Recreate a Ruth Pretty dish over Christmas

Now that our dinner chef duties are shared a bit more evenly, my confidence in my kitchen abilities is returning. And I am already salivating imagining being able to serve one or both of these up to the family over Christmas!




9. The Time Traveler's Wife and The Shack

A few lovelies like Simone and Renee have put The Time Traveler's Wife in their top reading list for the summer. I watched and enjoyed the movie so I'm hoping the book is even better.



I have already read and loved The Shack. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, some people (even Christians) find it hard to contemplate thinking of God in anything other than as a traditional father figure, but for me it blew my mind (in a good way!). This time I plan to make really good notes of the parts of the book that really resonated with me, and I may even share them here.


10. Make mulled wine

OK so I cheated, and I'm already tcking this one off the list right now! Between starting this post a couple of days ago and finishing it now, I've consumed nearly a whole batch of my very own homemade mulled wine. Yes I had a bit of company in the form of our annual life group Christmas party, but I still consumed a fair amount all by myself. And given it was 2 whole bottles of red wine that went into it, that's pretty impressive wouldn't you say?!

When I mentioned mulled wine in a recent post, Penny over at Little Feet, Big Shoes suggested trying Jamie Olivers recipe, and I have to say, once I'd sourced all the ingredients, it was plain sailing from there on in. This flows over the tongue and down the throat like the smoothest silk. And I have enough ingredients to make another batch for Christmas Day - RESULT! You better believe, I'll be sharing the recipe real soon!

So, what's on your bucket list this summer? And if it's not summer where you are right now, do you have a Winter Bucket List?!

Things I'm Loving 9.12.11

My name in print
It's a small achievement, but it still means the world to me. On request by the owner of The Country Providore who'd seen me snapping merrily away while in the shop, I sent her a link to my Spring You Are Full of Surprises post back in September. You might remember or recognise some of the pictures? The citrus fruit one is probably doing its rounds on my blog header as we speak.

The owner then asked if I would mind them using some of these pictures in a write-up on their store that was going to be featured in UNO magazine. I said of course not, as long as I could get the credit for the photos.

And finally this week (after much searching and following up) I managed to get hold of a copy of the magazine, and there they were, my very own pictures printed with my name on them in a real-life honest-to-goodness magazine. Tiny bit stoked. Tiny bit.

Christmas fun with kids 
What with working full-time and all, it's not often I can get away during the day to help out at school. But this week I made a special event to volunteer an hour with Noah's class to make Christmas crafts. I'd ummed and ahhed about choosing activities that weren't going to be too difficult for the kids. Beforehand, I'd even roadtested putting together some of those lovely paper ball ornaments with Jackie and Heidi but after making one each, they said they thought they might be a bit challenging for the kids, especially if all five of them needed my help to complete them at once. So in the end I played it safe and made two different Christmas cards.

I got the idea for these lovely snowmen cards from Ange over at Tall, Short and Tiny and tweaked it a little to give it my own unique flavour. I still have a zillion buttons lying around, and despite already gifting some to Miriam and Leonie, I think I shall be finding things to do with buttons for many a day to come. So many a person has been and will be receiving one of these from me in real life too this year, they are so easy and fun to make!

I also thought the kids would enjoy unravelling paper snowflakes after cutting them out before adorning them with all manner of glitter and sequins on a card. And adorn they sure did!

We had a lovely time, although there wasn't an ounce of glitter left at the end it had been thrown so vigorously around the table in an effort to make their cards simply the best. Funnily enough, as I type I can even see a skerrick of glitter glinting somewhere on my nose out the corner of my eye, but do ya think I can find it!!!!!!

Funny faces
As much as I think my children are indeed beautiful creations from God, I'll always be the first one to laugh at their less-than-attractive poses caught in the act.

Bring on summer!
With the warm weather finally arriving just in time for the first weekend of summer, last weekend we gave the free paddling pool we got with the trampoline its first outing, as well as putting the sprinkler under the trampoline for some slippery, sliding fun. Here's to many more weekends where that came from.

The most memorable part of the afternoon was when I decided I'd just better check Mylo's shorts after seeing some interesting facials (we were letting him go 'free willy' at this point inside his swim shorts). To my relief, there was just a botty in there but when i turned around to go back inside, a giant rock poo awaited me on the concrete. How I didn't step in it on my way out to the pool I'll never know! And so that marked the end of pool play for that day...not only because of the poo but the little culprit had lips the colour of the paddling pool and was shivering like a good un!

Who are you?
Stare at the picture below and the first four words that pop out at you are meant to describe you well.

Me? Apparently, I'm Charismatic Elegant Genuine and Patient. If that's really even a bit true, well I think I can live with that! What four words did you see first, and do you think they describe you well?

Hope that you are all loving this kinda full-on yet fantastically fun time of the year as much as I am!

Head on over here for plenty more loving!

And the necklace goes to....

The lovely Miriam from Make it Give It who was comment number 15.

Congrats Miriam! I'll email you to double check which design you'd like and then it will be winging its way to you hopefully just in time for Christmas :-)

Thanks everyone for all the very lovely comments on having reached 500 posts too.

And if you'd like a necklace for yourself or a loved one this Christmas, you can still get in touch with Sally directly here.

The Secret Recipe: How to Make it Snow in the Summer

Uh excuse me, what is that you've found?!

Oh so that's how you wanna play it....right that's it!

You two are gonna get it! 

How could I turn down the opportunity for a spontaneous indoor snowball fight?

By turning a blind eye to the absolute mess all the cotton was leaving on the carpet for a start!

Which, in case you were wondering required about ten minutes of fairly vigorous vacuuming afterward to remove the evidence (but that's a minor insignificant detail in the grand scheme of all the fun that was had!)

So choosing instead to focus on the extreme fun we were having.

And when the fight was over, an impromptu foot massage ensued.

Before we all came out for Round 2 snowball fight..ding ding!

Which lasted until some little people had the bright idea 

that they might just be able to pass for Mr Clause himself.

And, in case you were wondering, there was a reason I had the cotton wool out in the first place before a certain little two-year old got his grubby but cute little mitts on it and created merry havoc......

which was to create my very own picture postcard scene, so I could look out my window and imagine myself surrounded by soft flakes floating silently to the ground. All credit to this original idea on Pinterest.

Oooo *rubbing hands in glee* I do love Christmas! Somehow all those creative genes that seem to be mostly dormant during the year seem to suddenly go on heat at this time of the year....hee hee!

p.s. If you haven't entered, you still have one more day to enter the Gorgeous Necklace Giveaway here which will be drawn tomorrow night...I'm already excited about seeing which lovely person will get to design and receive the necklace of their choice!

Wordless Sunday - Brown Eyed Boys

Things I'm Loving 2.12.11

Going to Town
I forget from year to year how our Kirkcaldies department store in Wellington holds nothing back when it comes to celebrating Christmas. From the four animated windows outside with different moving scenes and themes, to the beautiful and tasteful decoration throughout the store, they really do make a spectacle worth the visit.

And that's before you even get to the Christmas Shop itself on the 2nd floor, where floor to ceiling is covered in everything you could possible want to decorate your Christmas and more (ludicrous prices of course but when you're not planning to buy anything, it's more fun anyway I reckon!).

I was a little surprised though that we had to hunt high and low for Santa who for some strange reason was not with the Christmas shop but was down on the 1st floor with all the kids toys.

Noah (pinch me, is he the same child from two years ago!) sat himself right down and had a grand old deep and meaningful with the Man in Red about all sorts of things (it sure helps visiting on a weekday at 4pm as there was no-one else round!). Apart from coming away with a pocket full of lollies, Santa managed to prise out of Noah that he might quite like some water balloons for Christmas. And wouldn't you know that Daddy just happens to have a bag of 100 in the cupboard from one of those 'Bag of Crap' sale days on 1-Day ages ago. Yep, you're easily pleased, my boy, and I think we'll keep it that way!

You might notice there is no little dude in the picture with Santa. Yeah, so that was because he took one look at Santa and ran off screaming in the other direction. I had to chase him down somewhere amongst the dress-up costumes, where he had his hands over his eyes and was shaking in fright. I must admit I did laugh at the reaction, mean mother that I am. With him safely in my arms, we walked slowly back over to where Noah was (under duress) so I could at least keep an ear on the conversation, whilst he spent the entire time with his face buried deep in my shoulder.

But, contrary boy that he can be, he'd suddenly recovered enough to want to wave to Santa as we left, and all the way home I got 'I scared Santa' followed by 'I love Santa', 'Scared Santa me' 'I love Santa'. I'm still not entirely sure which one it actually is!

Mission Impossible 4
Corny they may be. And full of mostly unbelievable stunts and action. But I do love the Mission Impossible movies. Number 2 was my absolute favourite. I loved the slow-motion fight scenes that Director John Woo did (filmed in and around Sydney, Australia). And I love the theme tune. Doo-doo-doo Doo-doo-doo Doo-doo-doo DO DO! I can't wait for Number 4 to come out later this month. I WILL be watching it. That is all.

The Storyteller
Loving the journey of writing from Noah's first day of school, 2nd August:

to this in just 3 months:

The fox was peeking out of the forest. I said to the fox can you come home with me? 

Yes said the fox. 

But my favourite slice of life story so far would have to be this one:

Once when I was a two year old I was just like my brother. 

My brother is annoying.

Ha ha, tell it like it is Noah!

Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar
Christmas has come a little early to one person in our house this year. Our lovely James, Ann-Marie and Jack sent over a very cool lego advent calendar from the UK for Noah's Christmas present, and he was awfully excited to be able to have an early present and make his first creation on the morning of December 1st.

True love is....
When hubby knows me well enough to know that I, of all people, would actually totally appreciate a free-from-the-hotel shower cap being brought back after his 1-night work trip to Christchurch last week. I know it makes me sound like a total nana, but I don't care. When I go through the effort of straightening my hair, the last thing I want is it to go all frizzy in between washes while in the bath or shower, so yep I'm a shower cap kinda girl and I love that he thought of me enough to bring me a freebie back.

Letting it go
It took some discipline to stand back when we were decorating the tree, and not begin to immediately re-arrange things when this happened.

It screamed at my symmetrical, orderly loving nature to instantly fix it. But I didn't. I just watched and enjoyed their enjoyment of it all.

And of course, rearranged it all later when they weren't looking *grins*

And below is my favourite pic of the tree this year. As you can see I'm having all KINDS of fun with the new 35mm lens!

40 public winks
Loving that my guy will still hug Mama in public. Be still my beating heart.

Giving it away
And if you haven't already, don't forget to check out the gorgeous necklace giveaway I'm hosting that closes on Wednesday 7th December. Leave a comment letting me know which design you'd choose if you were the lucky winner, and one could be winging it's way to you very soon!

Oh and a happy weekend to you, and you, and YOU!

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