Monday, 8 March 2010

Raining

It has been raining a lot here lately, which is weird, as we're officially still in drought, but the last couple of weeks have seen some excellent precipitation. Erik now says "rainy" which means both "rainy" and "raining" which is quite a lot of fun.

A couple of times lately they've opened up the spillway on the dam, and today we went to check it out.

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I've also been thinking about black&white photography a bit lately, having signed up for a photo challenge with some friends. I've received a roll of film and a shot list. I take the pics and send the film back to the woman organising it. She'll develop it and post the resulting photos online. This isn't one of them (obviously) but I'm starting to think in terms of what makes a good b&w shot, so that's a good thing I think...

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Lots more pics from the dam on Flickr if you want to see them.

Friday, 26 February 2010

Imaginations

Erik made a dog out of some toast he was eating at lunch time...sorry it's a bit long, and ends with a tantrum (it was bed time) but he's chatting away about all kinds of things here, for those that are interested. I'm hoping Anne shows this to the Joyces...

Saturday, 13 February 2010

Because I am a bad mother,

I called D'Arcy on his posturing and bravado. We were having laksa for dinner, which he usually declines to eat in favour of spring rolls. Last night he said he'd like some laksa, which I provided, and he was tucking into it happily (it's not really very hot) and somehow the dinner table conversation turned to some Mexican Hot Sauce that the beloved had brought back from the US last trip.

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I mentioned that the one on the left is so hot as to be almost inedible (and even the beloved sweats mightily when he eats it, which makes me laugh) and its primary ingredient (as you'd hope) is habaneros. D'Arcy's response to this was "let me try some, I can handle it. Bring it on!" I tried to dissuade him from this, but he was all keen by then. I put a tiny smear on a tiny coffee spoon and said "don't put it all in your mouth at once" but of course he didn't listen, and shoved the spoon in his gob. Now, those of you who are familiar with the habanero pepper will remember that the first moment you put it in your mouth, you think "hey this isn't so bad. Huh, hottest chillis known, bite me!" and then it does. Quite hard in fact. D'Arcy didn't eat anywhere near as much as the kid in this link, so his response wasn't quite so graphic, but still he was unhappy. Half a glass of milk (which he never drinks) fixed it pretty well, but he didn't finish his laksa. The beloved points out that it was very hard not to laugh at him, but we managed with only a bit of "I told you so".

Mr Cool

This is towards the end of the holidays, playing in the tent inside seemed to be the fun thing to do one week. D's hair was really long here. He's been desperate to grow it long, so one of the things he got for Christmas was some bandannas to keep it out of his eyes. His dad and stepmum have been keen for him to get it cut "neatly" (despite the ironic fact that his dad had long hair when I first met him) and dragged him to the hairdresser. Fortunately the hairdresser is on his side, and gave him the barest trim. It was great.

Emerging

More tent action. Sometimes Kovu was in there too.

dopey grin

One of the T-shirts we dyed, this was an ABA one that was a fundraiser for one of the local groups, but of course the shirt was white. Silly colour for a baby, but we fixed that.

School has begun. D's new teacher is lovely, which makes a change from last year, where he and his teacher didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things really. He still doesn't like school though, and says frequently that "it's boring". I've tried pointing out to him that "boring" is a mindset, but he's not receptive to that idea at all.

His knee has finally healed up, with a nice scar to show for it, that he won't let me take a pic of, sadly. He's also very much opposed to wearing shorts, as he thinks people (especially kindies) stare at his knee. I'm not sure if he actually thinks that, or he's just saying it...

Friday, 15 January 2010

Holiday activities.

D'Arcy got a tie-dye kit for his birthday some years ago which he's been keen to use. I finally managed to get some plain shirts for him to dye...




Here are the results. It's not the immersion type, rather that you fill bottles with dye and squirt it on after you've tied. We weren't quite careful enough to get all the folded bits coloured, so might have another go at the very sparse white one. Just need to get more soda ash from the craft shop. There's dye left over and they claim it'll last two weeks. The kit was made by Jacquard and came with everything you need, except shirts. It's pretty good really and I'd recommend it as a birthday gift for someone in that 7-13 age range. Boys or girls.
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Thursday, 14 January 2010

Liveblogging the pesto X

Happy.









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Liveblogging the pesto IX




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Liveblogging the pesto VIII

Mission accomplished. A lot of pesto.


I'll probably freeze most of this in little portions. It goes OK on pasta when thawed, better for pizzas or in other sauce-based things that can use a basil/garlic/tomato hit. I like my pesto reasonably chunky.

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