Goofy Girls and Puppy Dogs

I looked up from the kitchen workbench last night and was greeted by this scene at the back door - DD and her friend were clearly bored of playing with the dogs - luckily my camera was close at hand :)



We are dog-sitting a friend's dog while she is away - Rabbit (yes, that's his name) is the brown/black dog on the left. He's a bit of a show-off :)

House Guest!

Meet Rabbit!



No, we haven't taken on another dog :) We are just looking after him this week while his owner (a lovely lady by the name of Trudy) is overseas for work. He'll be going home after the weekend - I think Tikki will miss him - they get along really well together. Still, she'll see him at Christmas when he and Truds come to house-sit while we are on holidays :)

Happy Halloween!

The kids all dressed up and ready to go out and scare up some treats! Liam actually made the little boy from across the road cry when he answered the door to them. I gave him an extra treat and he was soon happy again :)



Tikki got in on the act as well! Ken put my lit-up pumpkin headband on her - I'm not sure that she was all that impressed actually - lol! I think if Caitlin and her friend, Nadia, weren't there she would have bolted!!

I have been quiet!!

Received a reminder from Nicole* today that I hadn't blogged in a while - she wondered if I was still stuck behind the ironing board - lol! No, ironing is pretty much up to date (thanks to our maid who caught it up for me while watching the kids one night a couple of weeks back). I've been a bit restless and just haven't been in the blogging frame of mind. Anyway, thanks for the push, Nic, I seem to be getting into the groove of things again now :)

Okay, so what have I been up to since I last posted? Well, let's see I've continued to read a lot. I discovered The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan, the Heather Wells mysteries by Meg Cabot and the first of JA Konrath's Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels mysteries, Whiskey Sour, all of which I've enjoyed. I've also started Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer, from DS's bookshelf, which is also looking to be a good read :)

I have also been stitching. There was a New Start SAL on the HAED BB at the beginning of the month which is all the encouragement I needed really :) I chose Ching Chou Kuik's Dream of Purple.

My progress ...

I also participated in September's edition of the Yearly Challenge SAL with Verdure and managed to complete the first page plus a little of the second page :)



This past weekend was the Background SAL on the HAED BB and I chose to work on Molly Harrison's Fairy of the Sea. I had moved over to the top right of the chart and started on the background there a little while ago.

Before:

After:

I'm way behind on my PhotoHunt entries, so much so that I think I will stop participating in it for now. Maybe I'll just do my own random pic of the month type of thing or as and when I take a memorable or amusing pic.

Like this one ...



DS was home sick a couple of days this week with pharyngitis. On Monday, his first day off school, he'd come downstairs to talk to me but I was outside hanging out a load of washing. This is what I came back inside to :) Tikki decided she needed her rest too - lol. Oh, and DS is fine now :)

Right, time to take DD to her tennis lesson!

~o00o~

*If you haven't done so before go and check out Nicole's awesome progress on her St Nick in his Study WIP. The detail is just amazing!

A long overdue update!

Good grief I didn't realise it had been so long since I'd posted! I have been a bit preoccupied lately, mostly with health issues of close family members back in Australia, secondly with the new Sims2 expansion pack and most recently with the purchase of our home here!

Anyway, I have been stitching and have even managed to catch up with Lisa a couple of times. Every time we get together we say we will stitch but to date that hasn't happened - lol! Too busy chatting - maybe next time, Lisa?!

Okay, some pics ...

First, is my current progress on Verdure - I kept working on her after the March HAED Challenge SAL weekend as I wasn't happy with the lack of progress I made during that SAL.



Second is my current progress on Long Dog Samplers "St Georges". This is my car/travel project but I have been working on it the past few evenings as well. It doesn't require too much concentration and there are no colour changes so it is a pretty easy stitch.



I'm currently being harassed by the dog (she has her head on my thigh and is staring at me with her big brown eyes!) as she hasn't been for her morning walk yet so I will sign off for now :)

Not a happy little Vegemite!

Australian readers will understand my angst ... we ran out of Vegemite two days ago and, unusually, none of the usual places here I can get it from have it in stock!! As Captain Jack Sparrow would say - not good! After trying to sell me Promite (shudder!!) the other day, and being told very quickly that it does NOT taste the same, the head honcho at my local store has promised me he will have more Vegemite in stock "very soon, madam" :) He also probably thinks all of us Vegemite loving Australians are quite mad - lol!

I think I might get mum to send over a couple of tubes for emergencies, and DH can bring back a one kilo jar with him since he'll be in Oz next week :)

I've been stitching away on Sea of Roses as part of the HAED BB's Valentine's SAL and will try and upload a pic of my progress over the next day or two. It doesn't look like much at the moment though.

Okay, the dog is resting her head on my thigh and staring at me with those incredibly huge brown eyes of hers and I can ignore her no longer - it's walk time :)

Sleeping Dingo :)

I was browsing Vicky's blog the other day and came across her post about her recent visit to Dreamworld, a theme park on the Gold Coast, Queensland.

Check out her photo of sleeping dingoes (third photo) and then compare it to the photo of our muttley, Tikki, that DH managed to capture the other night (she's very camera shy). How freaky is that?!

Bits and pieces :)

It was QS Wednesday on the HAED BB yesterday so I just continued on with Girly Gothic :) I have the outline of her right eye done, filled in some more background and started on her other ponytail. I will try to remember to take an updated pic later today.

Tomorrow is the first day of the HAED UFO SAL which goes through to midnight Monday. I don't really have any HAED UFOs as such but I do have WIPs that haven't been worked on for quite some time so I have decided to participate in the SAL. At the moment it's a toss-up between Shimmer and Small Things - both have been calling to me lately. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I could do two days on Shimmer and the other two on Small Things ... depending upon how much actual stitching time I get over the next four days, that might work out well.

I think I'm in the running for the bad parent of the year award ... again! At DD's "Hopes & Dreams" conference the other week her teacher asked if I would be interested in being the class parent. I said no (which is a big thing for me!). I am happy to help out with field trips and activities in the class room that need parental involvement but I don't think I'm suited to the role of class parent. I did it for DD's class last year (I have a hard time saying "no") but didn't overly enjoy the experience. I'm not really an outgoing social organisey type of person - I was incredibly shy as a child and still can be. Big social events scare the hell out of me particularly if they are corporate functions and you need to be on your best behaviour! I'm not good at small talk, schmoozing or mingling! Anyway, DD bought home a flyer from the Parent's Association yesterday saying that her class still didn't have a class parent so now I'm feeling bad for my child and wavering *sigh*.

It appears that I can now leave comments on non beta blogs - yay! I shall have to spend some time catching up :)

Every now and then we treat the dog to a proper spruce up and have the mobile dog grooming van pay us a visit. She gets a good pampering and at the end of each visit the Shampooch lady loosely ties a cute little bandana around the dog's neck. Because Tikki is so camera shy this is not a very good shot as I had to stand at the other end of the house and zoom in on her, but you can see the bandana :) Very cute!


Woo hoo! Blogger photos worked this time!! Obviously the trick is to add your photos first before typing anything!

She's not very happy with me at the moment because I'm heating up some left over spaghetti bolognaise for my lunch which means she misses out :) Any left overs still in the fridge at the end of the week get served up to Tikki - she hasn't done too well this week - lol!

Right, well by the time I have lunch it will be time to collect the kids from school so I'd better get on with it. I need to work out what we are going to have for dinner as well. Caitlin has a birthday party to go to this evening and DH has Arabic so it is just me and Liam tonight. Something quick and simple I think :)