Embroidery Guild

This morning we went off to Embroidery Guild, Andrew, Petra, Eva and I.  It's the first time Andrew or Petra have come to learn and they had a great time.

The kids did needlebooks, from the top Eva's, Petra's then Andrew's.

I finally finished my nametag

I just need to put a brooch back on it and it will be done.  Now I need a new project to work on while the kids are at music lessons...

Pumpkins etc

 We harvested our pumpkins this week.  There are also a few in the garden, and we've eaten some, so altogether a decent number.  I love growing pumpkins, more than the family loves to eat them so we always end up giving half of them away, which is all good.  This year we put in Thelma Saunders, Marina di Chioggia, Musquee de Provence, Wee be Little, Australian Butter and Amish Pie (not sure whether any of those last actually grew), as well as some big greys that came up from food scraps.

 The nerines have been lovely - nice to discover what bulbs are around the place - and the banana passionfruit has bounced back from being decimated last year.

We went for a trip to the Kaikorai Lagoon out by Waldronville (10 mins out of town) and explored the estuary environment.  It was, quite frankly, pretty yucky.  Apart from the smell of mud, which is not that bad, there was rubbish everywhere and the kids found a dead pig skeleton which was still pretty stinky.  Andrew learned not to run out into mud and escaped losing his gumboots by the skin of his teeth.  There was plenty of wildlife but it didn't come anywhere near us, so we didn't get to see the cygnets we've seen from the van - they seem to be shyer of people walking than vehicles driving past.

Daniel was busy for a while making lego ships which turned out pretty well.

Beach visit

Bryony, Renee and Hannah went to stay with Grandma and Grandad for a few days and went for a walk to see the seals, which are breeding.  There were some cute wee guys who had a favourite hiding place under a big rock ledge.

They also did a whole lot of baking for Grandma's birthday, including yummy shortbread

Happy Birthday Grandma!

We've had a few birthdays this week, as this is birthday season for us.  Between the 23rd of March and the 2nd of April, there are 2 birthdays in our immediate family and 3 in the extended family.  This year the most important was Grandma Anderson, who turned 80.  Because it's the only time she'll have an 80th birthday I made her a quilt.  It's the first quilt I've made for anyone and it wouldn't win any prizes but I thought it turned out ok.

I put silhouettes of all the grandchildren on the front and a bargello pattern on the back, which is actually centered although the perspective in the photo makes it look off-centre.

I did a lot of free-motion quilting to hold it together, thanks to David buying me a decent machine for my birthday, as my old cheap plastic one couldn't handle anything like that.

Rainbows

We had a couple of the most beautiful rainbows last week, big and bright.  Unfortunately there is a speck of dust in our camera (on the sensor, and unremoveable, according to Malcolm, who knows about these things).  But anyway, we took some photos...

The lights in the sky are the reflection of our dining room light, by the way

March

So... it looks like we skipped February...
We have been busy with all sorts of things in the last month or 2.
We went fruit-picking in Central Otago.  Apricots, nectarines, peaches, and plums - the kids had such fun!  Then we had to cook it all up - into apricot jam, apricot sauce (for pizza), plum jam, dried apricots, plum cake, and everything else got bottled.

Free plums from the side of the road

We've started Saturday Morning Music Classes.  Bryony's learning singing, Hannah violin, Daniel guitar and Andrew recorder.  Jean has also joined the Recorder Ensemble, to save sitting around for 3 hours doing nothing every Saturday morning.  It's been nice to refresh recorder skills which have been shelved for about 25 years.

Daniel has moved up from cubs to Sea Scouts, he couldn't wait to learn to sail so when they offered a place he jumped at it. 

The 3 older girls have been doing art lessons - a 4-week course - which they have enjoyed.

We've made several trips out to the coast to look for rocky shore creatures.  The last trip was the most successful, we found starfish, crabs and fish, and got some good movies on the underwater camera.
 

We only just noticed there's a fish in this photo, and a crab too

 The girls sold 12 baby rabbits after Christmas

We're still mulching, and the kids have been helping by carrying bucketloads of mulch from the pile to bare patches of garden.  It's our only hope to keep down the weeds, seeing as we don't want to spray.  I'm going for a cottage-type flower garden, the first patch is looking nice.

The next move for the house is to install a wood-burner - bought but not put in yet.  Hopefully it'll be in and finished by mid-April.
Oh, and Petra and Eva cut their hair, again.  It was pretty bad this time, Petra gave herself a mullet.  Eva cut the back short as well as the front.  Even a month later it still gets odd looks from people if we go out.  They told their Sunday-school teachers that I did it...

Before

After

Never mind, it'll grow.

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year!  For the first time in about 12 years, our whole family was together.  But this time, there were 3 new spouses and 13 new children, 7 of whom were preschoolers.  Also a dog.  So there was a fair bit of happy chaos. 
The weather was lovely. We organised a treasure hunt for the kids, which kept them busy for about half an hour. We put up our tent in the backyard for them to play in, and had a big lunch with plenty of leftovers.  But the best bit was getting to catch up with everyone; we hadn't seen some people for years, or in the case of the smallest nieces and nephews, ever. 

Hopefully we'll do it all again in a couple of years :)

Photo: Don Rutherford