Simple silhouettes...

I am quite pleased and rather proud of myself. I don't really DO much in the way of drawing or sewing and craft projects generally bring me out in a rash so my sense of pride may well outweigh the result. 

This little project happened largely by accident one sunny Sunday afternoon while the boys were playing outside on the deck and I was inside playing with the camera. Our white duvet cover drying on a rack was the accidental backdrop for a silhouette shot... 

I snapped these (and about 45 more) without getting up from the couch.  Trying to capture a two year old whizzing by on a scooter was challenging... they got a bit sulky but like any good mother I ignored that.

Eventually I  nailed the two pictures I needed...

 ...played around a little with the very basic photoshop functions on iPhoto and popped them in frames. Christmas gifts for the grandparents and a set for us too.

There are a lot of very crafty people out there with advice for making silhouettes the traditional way but the mere mention of black paper, scissors and tracing paper makes me start itching and I don't mean itching to get started.

My way all you need is a camera, sun, white washing and a little luck.

Flowers for a Friday...

Walking with the family in Wellington last week (actually running, my boys never walk anywhere) we came upon this little grove of hydrangeas in a shady corner of the Botanical Gardens. Gorgeous.

Okay so the dusty pink is a little bit grandma. But who cares? Grandmas are the new black, just ask my mum.

Summer in the Sounds...

My thoughts today are with Queensland. For the families who have already lost so much and the city folk preparing for a pretty tough couple of days. It puts my whining about our wet Queensland holiday well and truly in perspective. Australia is a pretty tough old place to live sometimes.

I thought I'd press on and show you a little patch of Kiwi paradise...

We've just spent a lovely week away.. most of it in the Marlborough Sounds on the tip of New Zealand's South Island. We've returned feeling refreshed and relaxed and as though we've been away for weeks. I think you only ever feel like that when water is involved.

We stayed in Queen Charlotte Sound with friends who have a family bach you can only reach by boat - a privilege for us to be invited to stay. They built their holiday home themselves twenty years ago, digging out the site mostly by hand and then bringing in all the building materials by barge and lugging every piece up a steep winding path. Incredible. Even the sofas we sat on would have been a job and half to haul up there. This is the view from the deck...

Much of the Sounds is inaccessible by road and of course that's what makes it such an incredibly beautiful spot.  Lush thick native bush sweeps down steep mountains straight to the water. Much of the more accessible bays were farmland fifty years ago, now the bush has taken over and in between are baches and boathouses.

We went to visit friends staying a little further out. It's hard to believe that some of this was ever farmland. Their bach is one of only four in the bay and has no power - just gas and solar panels for the lights. A simple delicious lunch, stone skimming, swimming, kayaks and cricket on the shingle beach. A day to remember.

Actually, all in all, a week to remember. 

Oh and it may look warm and inviting but the water is pretty refreshing (as in pretty damn cold) - if it wasn't the place would be overrun.

Now we are six...

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

AA Milne, Now We Are Six, 1927

Our boy is six. In his words a 'big six year old boy'. 

His proudest achievement is that he can now skim a rock and make it bounce three, four or even five times if he chooses the right one. He nailed it on Friday and dashed back down to the shore the next morning, the last of our holiday, to check he hadn't lost the knack while asleep.

We also discovered that he can kayak by himself, jetty jump and swim a lap freestyle and breathing properly (that averages out at about a two hundred dollars a stroke if you add up all the swim school fees - well worth it of course). 

He may be all grown up but all my new six year old wanted for dinner was cheesy pasta. That's plain old pasta, white sauce, grated cheese and peas. And he insisted on a tickle pat at bedtime, so I'm pleased to say he's still our boy for a little while yet.

We've been holidaying in a marvellously untouched part of this end of the world this week. But that's a story for another day, tomorrow perhaps.

Summer reading...

This is where my mind has been for the last few days... well and truly on holiday. 

After a very socially exhausting Christmas celebration (ate too much, drank too much, stayed up too late, ate some more, drank some more, the usual...) we have done almost nothing. A lot of sleeping, reading, pottering and playing with the boys... the most time we have ever spent at home on holiday. 

Luckily I have the ability that only the truly slothful and slovenly have of letting the house slide into a total shambles and not really worry about it.  I finally cooked a meal last night after we started looking a little like Captain Cook's scurvy-ridden crew.

I've been pondering my New Year's Resolutions and expect to publish them in full as usual in April. I may have to repeat a couple of last year's but not the reading better project. 

That gets a big fat tick.  Like this... TICK.

This is my bedside reading... 

It's doubled in height since I took this pic a week ago... a smattering of classics, some comfort reads from this list and a couple of great girly page turners recommended by Jane at My Pear Tree House. I'm still about three years behind and have just started THE book of book clubs in 2008... The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Most of my current books are from the Auckland library... their online order service is fabulous particularly if you have a want-to-read list at hand. So that is my summer task... compiling my own list from all the wonderful lists that journalists just love to fill their blogs and columns with at this time of year.

The Australian TV journo Leigh Sales styles herself (when blogging) as the well readhead and she is both auburn haired and well read. Her list is here.

Also from the ABC in Australia is this list of Christmas gift recommendations compiled with the help of a couple of Sydney's best known book sellers.

The contributors to The Big Apple's finest, the New Yorker's are here - quite a mixed bag as you'd expect.

I also quite liked this list from Stephen Romei in The Australian - he looks back at 2010 and forward to 2011 with a nice little blurb about each book.

And if you like a Top 50 list then the Booktopia blog is publishing the 50 must-read Australian novels... I am never sure about these lists - mostly they just start arguments.

So Happy New Year to you... thank you for all your comments, emails and conversations in 2010. I have loved it. My New Year's gift to you (and myself) will be a reading list for 2011... it'll be on the blog, um soon... sometime early in 2011. Just have to drag my mind off that hammock.

Happy, happy...

It's been an uneventful and pretty unstressed sort of week for us. No packing or planes this year - we're staying put in Auckland for Christmas.

We're having a lovely but very relaxed lunch at a friend's new house... a pool, prawns, oysters, ham and salads and a gaggle of satisfied boys spinning their Bey Blades. Phew. We shipped one in via the grandparents in Queensland and another hand delivered from China. Yes, seriously, China. Well it wasn't just a Bey Blade buying mission but a friend on a business trip whose own boys are equally obsessed. Christmas is saved.

I have had a few little hiccups in my relaxed approach to the festive season, the first is losing a couple of the gifts I bought way too early. There are two Roal Dahl books that will turn up in June.

Next year I will not buy four rolls of sticky tape and a bunch of Christmas cards and then stash them somewhere while quickly tidying up before friends drop in. Will no doubt find them both on Boxing Day. What would Flylady say?

I have also discovered that there is such a thing as non-sticky sticky tape. I found an old obviously cheap roll and have been trying to wrap presents with it and now have five new grey hairs and another frown line.  I had a tantrum, threw it out and am doing origami type folds and trying to hold the mess together with ribbon. Sorry Martha my dear.

Inspired by all the beautiful images I've seen I bought a new glass vase (above) to display the glass baubles that a mother of two boys should never have bought. They are sitting next to our French doors and so far the balls, paper planes and even airborne children have sailed past without incident... just added another grey hair or two...

Merry Christmas to one and all. Particularly my dear family and all the old friends we won't see this festive season.   I'll be back when the mood strikes!

For the grandparents...

Our sleeping stuntman has been at it again. Almost every night when we pop in to check on him he's assumed some ludicrous new position. He is actually sound asleep here and seconds after I'd moved him he was back like this.

I'm so very glad we bought him a trundle bed which (almost always) provides the perfect crash pad when the stunt sleeping misfires...

After a very busy day he's lying here dreaming of parks, balls, chockut cake and the 'birthday' Father Christmas is bringing.  The festive concept is a bit mixed up but I think that means he's well and truly got a handle on the present thing this year. Bring it on Santa.