Remembering Tree Day

Since my niece and three nephews were very small we have held Tree Day at the beginning of December each year.  On this day I gift the children with their first Christmas present - a new decoration for the tree, then we decorate. As I had hoped it is something that the children have come to love dearly and to look forward to. Even though the two oldest are in their teens they still LOVE it.

I began Tree Day when there were only two little cousins who decorated the tree only as high as they could reach and we pretty much left it like that.  Each year the tree has been decorated higher and higher.

There are four cousins now and two tower over me they've grown so much and I'm happy to say that the tree is decorated right to the top these days. Our red head gets his license this year and is such a beautiful calm soul.  Miss R turns 15 this year and is such a sweet heart.  Both she and her brother are on the Autism Spectrum as well as having other difficulties so both are in the special education unit at school. Her brother starts at high school with her this year but only for an hour a day at first as they ease him into the new environment. My wonderful sister is homeschooling him for the other hours.  The two littlies, not even present at our first tree day both go to high school this year and are the funniest pair as well as being the best of friends which is lovely. Their fathers, my brother and brother-in-law have been best friends since childhood too.

Because of her hypersensitivity getting Miss R to wash her hair is a monumental issue.  I managed to take her with me to the hairdressers under the guise of special girl time and she had her hair washed, cut and dried. I'm sure Susan could have wept with relief and R so loved the whole experience.  I can't believe how grown up she is.  She is the little blondie in the first picture of Tree Day.

Of course Sophie was in the thick of things and once the children were finished she collapsed exhausted on the ground and snored soundly. Sweet darling girl. It's what she does most of the time these days.

A Quiet Weekend at Home

We've had a pottery, sleepy weekend.  Jeff has been working monster hours in the city for a couple of weeks so he caught up on some sleep this weekend.  On Saturday, our niece Miss R, came over to make a Mother's Day gift for her mum (my sister).  One gift grew to two......R began by making  bath salts for her mum.  To scent the salts, lavender, ylang ylang or bergamot (can't recall which) and a tiny bit of Australian Sandalwood was used.  Miss R even very seriously and diligently decorated the bottle with flowers and a dragonfly from my stash. She was very proud of the end result.  So cute.

Bath salts done, I was informed that some caramel fudge would be a good present so we looked up a recipe and checked to see that we had the ingredients.  We did so the cooking began.

After 10 minutes or so Miss R lost interest so I was left to stand and do the stirring and stirring and stirring that is involved. :)  I hope Susan enjoyed her gifts as her girl was very proud.

I had planned to show you some of the progress we have made in the garden but I've run out of energy.  So I'll leave you with a picture of our African Tulip towering in full bloom over our roof.  The sun was catching it as we arrived home and I thought it looked lovely - a break from all the green.

I'll share our garden progress with you tomorrow.

Garden Adventures Part 2

After games of  'Swiss Family Robinson', Robinson Crusoe etc in the wilds the kids decided to join in with the adults and become a 'garden army'.  Here I am supervising the selection of the 'weapons'.  If you look beyond us, the area we are working on is the heavily planted area past the fort.

Some more of the garden army.....two lovely husbands.  My sister and I are lucky girls.

 Uncle Jeff supervising mister M using a tomahawk for the first time to chop down a sappling.

After a very short time hacking and chopping the garden army transformed once again into the Swiss Family Robinson again and set off exploring their island.  Yes there are children in there.

The two youngest made a foray upon the house to get supplies.

And partook of said supplies in copious amounts....they were very sneaky.

Garden Adventures Part 1

A fun, impromptu family day in our garden that started when Jeff, my brother and my nephews cut down two palms near the house in preparation for the replacement of our back deck and green house.

Some serious cubby house building took place with the downed palm trees.

Hearing about all the action and not to be left out, my 'favourite' brother-in-law turned up prepared for action.

He brought my other nephew and my niece who joined their cousins for some wonderful, wild, gardeny adventures. For the first time they were allowed through the fence and down the 'far back' of our yard (we have 1/4 acre of wild bush and dam full of wildlife). 

 Lots of fun was had exploring the dry dam bed. 

A week later some nice rain filled this to almost 2/3 full. 

The girls had to stay on the other side of the fence.  They had tick collars on but we were making sure they were as safe as can be. As it was at the end of the day there were a few ticks pulled off the humans. I had 5 with four of them being paralysis ticks. Luckily they don't affect humans like dogs.

An Unfinished Year

I've been looking at the many year end reviews on blogs that I follow and reflecting on my own 2013.  Really for me it feels like an unfinished year.  With our difficult family situation requiring so much attention everything that I was doing in my own life seems to have fallen by the wayside.  I've been in the studio cleaning up, doing a monumental declutter and rearranging things.  As I've done so I have come to realize that I have 10 unfinished paintings waiting to be completed.  I have wool and fabric purchased for projects that were abandoned before even starting them.  I have a project book where I write up all the things I'd like to do and barely anything has a wee tick against it. In 2013 I had also wanted to study with Mark Waller and that became impossible too.  Sigh.  With our family situation spilling, unresolved into 2014 I won't pressure myself to get in and finish all of these canvases and projects but I will gently and quietly get started on just one and hopefully make progress from there.  I have decided to continue to study painting with Don Milner and start back with the brushes this week. 

So far our 2014 has been startlingly busy and I am somewhat bemused to find myself writing January 14th in my journal.  Just HOW did it get to be January 14th already?  We've hosted more sleepovers, this time with our two youngest nephews. They were just so good. It was a joy to spend time with them and watch them enjoy time together (they are cousins).   The sun tent cubby house with fairy lights once again proved to be a huge hit.  You may note the sunshine coming in the window to the top right.  It took much work to convince these little ones that they didn't really have to go to bed 'right now', it would still be here later when it was dark and indeed bedtime!  Funny things.

The next morning Uncle Jeff and the boys went for a hike up a local lookout for some boy time.  Kids loved it and were very chuffed to have walked up the lookout.

They returned full of beans and dove into building a sheet cubby house. 

Over a period of 3 days we also celebrated two special birthdays.

Captain Jack Sparrow turned a very exciting six years old and I earned 'much loved Aunty' points for providing the gift of a spectacular wig and accompanying pirate items.  So funny.

Shortly after my own sweet boy celebrated his 40th with chocolate cake (of course - if you know Jeff you know this is a MUST). 

You are NEVER too old to like the cake mix out of the bowl (notice the chocolate on his shirt).....

or the icing out of it's mixing bowl. 

Wishing that your 40th year is your best year ever.

love Sandy. xxxx

The Days Around Christmas 2014

We've been dressing up.  The two pirates were shy and were not to be photographed as that would show people where the treasure was. If you look carefully you can see one pirate in the background of the bottom photo.

Jigsaw puzzles and the building of Bilbo Baggins Bag End in lego.  The children flitted in and out of these activities. Running, chasing, swimming, hide and seek with Aunty Sandy were more to their taste on the day.

Poppy and the boys.

Some quiet time amid the chaos and fun.  Uncle Poh (from Kung Fu Panda) is hiding in the back of his ute in the front yard to scratch his scratchies.  Peace....

The kids made their own orange juice slushies with gifts from my sister.  Pretty awesome little inventions. You freeze the cups then add juice, softdrink, flavoured milk - whatever takes your fancy.  Then squeeze the cup repeatedly and a slushy appears in the middle.  Voila!

Chalk love letters to family.  So very sweet.

Glow sticks in the pool for Mr J and Miss S on their Boxing day sleepover.  SO... MUCH....FUN...

Camping out in in the playroom and watching a movie on the big screen.  Kids thrilled and the old peoples home they put Jeff and I in has just improved in quality!!  ha ha.

To cap it all off a HUGE branch came down on the neighbours driveway and over the road.  The top photo is after extensive chainsawing, pushing and pulling to get the bottom half of the branch off the driveway. Yes this is only half of the branch.  The whole thing was probably 20m long perhaps more and came off the tree you see on the right edge of the driveway in the bottom photograph.  It's the second big branch to drop from this tree in 3 weeks. The bloke in the red ute who narrowly missed having the branch fall on him as he drove past got his Christmas miracle.

I hope you are all having a safe and happy holiday period and that work is being kind to you if you are back on the job.

Tree Day

For the past 8 or so years since I first became an aunty I have hosted Tree Day here at my house.  Being married to the Grinch I wanted to share the joy of decorating for Christmas with my niece and nephews while giving them a tradition to share with their cousins.  Each year I give them a new decoration to hang on the tree and it's always fun to choose the decorations each year.  As I was so involved in the day - supervising tinsel, dogs, children etc I didn't take photos. My sister Susan stepped into the gap though and even wrote a lovely blog post about it (I feel very teary).  Head on over and read about our Tree Day at Daydream in Colour.  Hope you enjoy it.

On my camera.

I've been very busy of late. Very, very busy and this week I've spent much of my time in bed having long afternoon naps.  I had not been able to upload images to blogger for awhile so have a backlog.  It's a bit of a hodgepodge and I'll go into more detail in later posts.  Are you ready for a peak?  Some of the things that have been filling up my days and nights of late......

Monopoly

 An unexpected visitor on the back door. 

The best waterslide EVER.  Happy birthday to Lily and Kayden!

 Happy birthday Miss R. We love you!

Helping the neighbour harvest her jaboticaba fruit.

 Starting to study portraiture.

 Participating in my first 'professional' art exhibition. 

Second portraiture lesson.

I'll elaborate more on all of the art including our art exhibition in subsequent posts.  Mma Tembo is still in progress as are three more canvases of intuitive paintings for my Flora Bowley e-course.  Now that I seem to be back in business with blog access I'll be able to fill you all in.  

Hope you are all well and happy!

love Sandy xx