Category Archives: Life

Stories about every-day life.

Favourites

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I’m playing along with Mandy, and you can find her list here.

Favourite online store –Ezibuy

Favourite chocolate – Dark (60%); especially the chocolate handmade by Annette of Esque, and by the team at Schoc

Favourite cookie – chocolate and hazelnut

Favourite cuisine – Indian

Favourite meal that I make – I am learning a whole new repertoire of vegetarian recipes; my favourite so far is baked risotto with roasted vegetables

Favourite flower – peonies

Favourite colour to wear – green

Favourite shoes – my new black Hush Puppies – they are SO comfortable!

Favourite item of clothing – yoga pants (can you believe I have only recently discovered these?)

Favourite magazine – Mollie Makes

Favourite drink – fruit juice 30% + diet tonic 70%

Favourite cocktail – Virgin Seabreeze (a mix of grapefruit and cranberry juices – so refreshing)

Favourite wine – alas, I am not able to drink alcohol

Favourite board game – Scrabble

Favourite card game – Five Crowns

Favourite season – Summer

Favourite camera lens – the one in my little point and shoot; works for me!

Favourite place to walk the cat– all over Fantail Grove

Favourite place to take the kid – now he’s 21 he takes himself, but I like going to the movies and out to dinner with him

Favourite hot drink – decaf trim milk latte

Favourite pizza place – Goodness of Food in Carterton

Favourite place to take photos – around home at Fantail Grove; there’s such a lot of variety

Favourite holiday destination – Hawaii (not sure if I’ll ever get there again, but it would be SO nice!)

Favourite yoghurt – Fresh & Fruity’s Rhubarb & Custard

Favourite man – my DH Richard (of course!)

Favourite Phone app – Crossword solver

Favourite movie (at the moment) – Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Favourite TV show – Dr Who

Favourite musical – Grease

Favourite hair product – conditioner

Favourite colour – yellow

Favourite sport to watch – show jumping

Favourite author – Terry Pratchett

Favourite snack – roasted hazelnuts (home grown, no less!)

Favourite item purchased in the last month – black and white print skirt; in Farmers’ sale

Well that was fun …let me know if you play along and do one too!

Not only Ninja but also…

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Scruff.

Yes, we have two cats. Scruff adopted us seven years ago, as a scrawny kitten (probably dumped from a car, unfortunately not an unheard of event around here). For a while he was the youngest of three cats, but now he has reached top place in the pecking order, and bosses Ninja around.

He is an extremely photogenic cat, but on this particular day was not in a posing mood:

However this was all an act (perhaps he’s a Diva in disguise?). Two minutes later he lay down and posed for the camera:

Isn’t his tabby camouflage perfect for the under-tree setting? I am not quite sure how to categorise his expression though – is that resignation, condescension, or pure ‘look at me, am I not gorgeous’?

Around here

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Thinking… I should get dinner on

Listening… to birdsong outside

Feeling… the sun warm on my back as it streams through the window

Enjoying… the extra daylight since the clocks went forward

Adjusting… to the time change (feel a bit jet-lagged)

Planning… how to manage a busy few weeks coming up

Working… on making more infused oil (and maybe trying a couple of new flavours – basil and tangelo sound OK to you?)

Hoping… to be productive at the quilting retreat I’m going to in a couple of weeks

Drinking… a lukewarm cuppa. Time to make a new one!

Ninja goes walkies again

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It’s been a while since I did a Ninja-centric post, and as her fans may be wondering how she is getting on it is high time for an update.

I am sorry to tell you that she weighed in at 5.2kg recently, and the vet declared she needed to lose weight – at least a kilogram. Oh dear! Since that visit we have been gradually changing her food over to a higher protein/lower carbohydrate formula and undertaking an exercise campaign. Fortunately she still loves to accompany me when I walk around the grove, and the call of “Ninja, walkies!” brings her outside and ready for an expedition.

I wanted to visit the hazelnut orchard to see how these trees were leafing up in the warmer spring weather, and to take some photographs for the Fantail Grove website.

Someone got into the act though:

So of course I ended up taking a whole lot more photos of Ninja than of hazelnuts!

She spotted a bit of damage from the most recent of the equinoxal gales (a lovely phrase to describe the windy conditions we experience in spring):

We’ll have to go back with the pruning saw and paste to tidy this up, and be ready for more damage like this, as we are sure to have another gale or two during October and November.

Ninja loved the hay bales, as from the top she had a good vantage point and could survey her surroundings:

On the way back to the house I opened a gate but she didn’t want to come through it when I did. Perhaps she wanted to prove that she wasn’t too fat to slip underneath it, as I am sure there is a smug expression on her wee face here:

This next photo is probably my favourite of the day – and it also gives you a real sense of how rampant the grass is around here in springtime:

When we got back inside, the first thing Ninja did was rest:

This rug is immediately inside the door!

My signature

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It’s no secret that I love to create and place a high priority on carving out creative time in my schedule.

My sewing machine is often used to create colourful quilts. While I enjoy the process of making them, the process of giving them to the recipient is actually more fun:

I made a quilt for my niece, using lots of different cat fabrics. This was so she could have cats on her bed even in the university hostel!

The first quilt that was entirely of my own design was a play-quilt (again featuring cats), made for my great-niece. Seeing her move the cats around their various homes on the quilt was such a thrill.

I have also enjoyed making albums for non-scrapbooking friends to easily show off their baby photographs (this one is based on a template shared by Angie Lucas in the Nove/Dec 2007 issue of Simple Scrapbooks):

As well as making gifts, my enthusiasm for hand-made items has led to work with children to create colourful art and crafts. There is something almost magical in children’s enthusiasm for learning and enjoyment in their finished product:

After a holiday craft session at the library, the children happily posed with their decorative kites – look at the wide smiles (but mine was probably wider!).

Through this reflection I have learned that I am happy to have ‘handmade’ as a signature trait. I have also learned that I am grateful for the photo organisation system DH has imposed on the photo files in the computer – I can find what I am looking for!

What is the pattern?

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I’ve been thinking about the pattern of my days through the week, and trying to discern if there is one. Because I work every other week day, and every alternate Saturday, it takes longer than a week for any sequence to repeat (and then my job-share partner and I will probably alter it by swapping days around anyway).

Many years ago my days did follow a predictable pattern, but having a child and then getting sick changed all that.

But I don’t mind that there’s no discernible pattern to my days – I quite like the seeming randomness, and that only I know what’s coming next (as long as I look at the notes in my diary!).

 

Vocabulary extension

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I love words. I love lots of words. I love words that roll around in your mouth when you say them (squirrel, squish, lisianthus, isthmus, apocalypse). I love words that trigger specific memories (punch-cards, jazz, Christmas, Grandad). I have always had a good vocabulary and I think being an only child for so many of my formative years (I was six when my sister arrived) was a key contributor to that, as most of my interactions were with adults. Of course learning to read, and loving reading, means I am continually extending my vocabulary, and I try to look up the meaning of words I don’t know. [As an aside, this is one of the benefits of an e-reader; it makes it so easy to determine the meaning of an unfamiliar word with a click providing the definition. I never thought I’d ever be saying that there was anything better than a real book, but for learning new words… I have to admit that e-readers have this slight advantage.]

Apart from discoveries through reading, in my daily life I don’t often come across chances to learn a new word, so it was with delight that I realised the sign above Martin Bosley‘s table at the City Market yesterday contained a word I didn’t know.

Martin was persuaded to pose and highlight the word for my photograph. The word is tracklements (ha – the WordPress dictionary doesn’t think it is a word!). Martin told me it has a similar meaning to condiments, but covers a broader range. Here’s a link to the dictionary definition on wiktionary, and another on World Wide Words which provides more information on the origin of the word.

Here are just two of Martin’s tracklements:

I’m so pleased to have learned a new word today!

 

 

Tulips from Wellington

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Aren’t they gorgeous?!

I stopped to enjoy the tulips and other spring flowers at the Botanical Gardens this morning and took loads of photos too. The thing that strikes me the most as I look at them? The consistent colour in all of them is green! The gardeners had fun creating a vivid green border for another flower bed – can you see what it is?

Today I learned that parsley makes a great edging!

Stopped clocks

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Although it has now been repaired, for years the heirloom clock (given to DH’s grandfather after 40 years in the railway workshops) sat atop our piano, but didn’t go. For some reason the hands were usually set to read five past seven, and when asked the time, someone in the family (no prizes for guessing who….) would almost always point to the clock and say “It’s five past seven, isn’t it always?”.

Today I went to a lovely dinner with library colleagues, to celebrate a significant birthday for one of our number. Imagine my delight to realise the clock on the restaurant’s mantelpiece didn’t go, and the hands were set to …..

(Sorry it’s such a blurry photo – but I hope you can see the time reads five past seven!)