P365 - Day 120 little shoes

Last night Juniordwarf as packing up before bedtime and he decided to put his shoes by the back door. Slabs told him to put them on the shoe rack.

I didn’t realise until much later what he’d actually done. 

It looked so sweet, I had to take a photo this morning before he went to put them on.

P365 - Day 119 sticker day (29/04/2011)

It was my turn to have a day off work to look after Juniordwarf during school holidays.

He discovered some sticker booklets in the kitchen drawers (left overs from party bags) and announced 'Friday is sticker day'. He then proceeded to award himself stickers (from various teachers at his school and occasionally from his teddies).

He also awarded me some stickers, including 'for having a good night's sleep (for which he was 'so proud' of me) and 'for good cooking dinner'.

By the end of the day, three of his t-shirts were covered with stickers, my shirt was covered in stickers and the kitchen floor was a mess of sticker backing paper and the sticky paper surrounds from the sticker sheets, which I now have the unenviable task of removing.

P.S. If you were wondering where I got my wonderful (sticker-covered) shirt from, it's a design by my Twitter friend Rory (aka Samedog), who designs very cool shirts (among other things), and you can get one (or one of Rory's other fabulous designs) from redbubble.com.

P365 - Day 118 boat

I took this photo out of the car window on the way in to work this morning. It's at Elwick Bay, where they're building a boardwalk linking up parts of the Rosetta Foreshore.

I thought it looked really cool with the sun shining through the fog and the boat on the water. Shame about all the fencing and construction work in the way though. It would have been great to have been able to stop and take a few proper photos.

The sun actually looked eerily like a full moon through the fog, but that image is very hard to capture out of the window of a moving vehicle on an iPhone camera.

I couldn't decide which Camera+ effect I liked best, so I'm putting up three versions. The first one is closest to what it actually looked like.

P365 - Day 117 empty house

Last time I took Sleepydog to the vet for her checkup, I mentioned that she'd been hobbling a bit for a day or two and then she'd be fine. It never seemed serious, wasn't causing her any discomfort and only ever lasted a couple of days, so I didn't think it needed immediate attention.

It didn't. The vet said it was most likely that her cruciate ligament was tearing a bit, starting to heal and then tearing a bit more. He said Sleepydog would be fine, until the day it tore completely, which was inevitable once the damage had started.

So it was just a waiting game.

It finally happened over the weekend. Yesterday Sleepydog could no longer walk on her injured leg and was hopping round on three legs. It was quite a distressing sight.

Slabs took her to the vet yesterday afternoon and she went in for surgery this morning. We'll pick her up tomorrow, but tonight it's weird having no dog at home.

P365 - Day 116 have a day

I spent a lot of time today continuing my clearing out of the study/spare room/library and fixing up my new scrapbooking space. (Oh, did I mention I have a new scrapbooking space? Who'd have thought?)

Slabs did some decluttering today too, and found something in one of his boxes of stuff that actually belonged to me.

It's one of those little button/badges that I got years ago. I can't even remember when. A nice response to cheerful morning people ;)

P365 - Day 115 lest we forget

P365 - Day 114 it's not perfect, but it's mine

(Today's title brought to you by Tim Minchin)

Today I did something I decided on Friday to do. 

There's something I’ve been complaining about ever since my scrapbooking hobby became bigger than the dining table and started to spread across two rooms.

I don’t have a scrapbooking space. 

I can use the coffee table, but it’s very uncomfortable to work at that level. And I have to pack everything up to keep it out of Juniordwarf’s way. I can use the dining table, but ever since Juniordwarf has started eating his meals on there instead of his little kids table, it’s become less than desirable as a venue for papercrafting. And again I can’t leave anything out.

So today, I did some reorganising of the furniture in the study, got Slabs to help me move my desk back into the house from my shed (where I have used it precisely zero times) and started to set up a scrapping area.

Originally I was going to use these bedside cabinets
as 'legs' for a sheet of chipboard . . .

. . . then I remembered I already had a perfectly
good desk (and yes it is the same desk I had
at high school).

I managed to do this without getting rid of a single item of clutter in the spare room, and still enabling some kind of (restricted) access to the room, which I think is testament to my ability to hoard.

It’s still a work in progress. It’s not a huge area, and at the moment it means that my scrapping stuff is actually spread across THREE rooms. That might continue to be the case, because I don’t think there’s going to be enough room for everything to be consolidated. But it does get a lot of stuff out of the lounge room and, more importantly, it’s my own space.

I’m so excited!

Now to work on that clutter . . .

P365 - Day 113 memories

Juniordwarf's room is also home to some of Slabs' and my stuff that hasn't really had a home anywhere else in the house. I remember the top cupboard of the wardrobe in my room as a child served a similar purpose.

Today we spent the whole day going through all that stuff and trying to make the room a bit more functional for a 4 year old. This included the construction of some new shelves.

One of the hidden treasures that Slabs found was a scrapbook of his family history, which is now stored with the rest of the family albums. When we moved here (before I started scrapbooking and creating many many albums) we didn't really have an album storage space, so this sort of thing got stored a bit haphazardly around the house.

Slabs was very excited to show Juniordwarf some photos of his ancestors, and of himself and his sisters as young children.

Someone recently commented that Juniordwarf looked a lot like Slabs at the same age, so here are a couple of photos - what do you think?

Slabs age 5

Juniordwarf age 4

P365 Day 112 - singing in the rain

Today’s post is a bit of a follow-on from yesterday’s.

We invited some friends over for a BBQ today. Because our house isn’t exactly set up for entertaining, we spent the afternoon outside.

The weather wasn’t exactly BBQ weather. Actually it was one of those classic ‘four seasons in one day’ days.

The funny thing about that was that whenever the weather changed, Juniordwarf raced inside to change the weather icon on his calendar. So it went from 'cloudy' to 'raining' to 'sunny' to 'raining' to 'cloudy' . . . and sometimes all three at once. I think he even threw 'foggy' in there a couple of times as well.

He was thrilled that it rained because he finally got to use his umbrella.

Also, my beer got an insect in it. I hope the lemon tree likes beer.

P365 - Day 111 the 21th of april (21/04/2011)

A few weeks ago I bought a wall calendar for Juniordwarf. It has space for the day, date, month, year, season and weather.

Just recently, Juniordwarf has really gotten into putting up each day’s details. He knows the days of the week and he can recognise (or read?) each day’s name. He’s learning the months, and he knows which month his birthday is in (and, more importantly, which month my birthday is in!!) and can pick it out from the rest of the months.

We’ve been talking about the days and he understands how the number seven means that it’s the seventh, and so on. And usually on our way home each night he asks what the next day will be and works out which numbers he’ll need to put up on the calendar.

So yesterday was the twentieth. That was pretty easy for him. 

Today he thought it was the ‘twenty-oneth’.

I was very impressed with his logic.

P365 Day 110 - the eyes have it

My eye has been very sore the last couple of days. I called the optometrist and they were able to get me an appointment tomorrow. It's quite timely really, because I'm almost due for a review of my prescription.

Anyway they suggested I didn't wear my contact lenses until they've worked out what's causing the pain. So I'm wearing my glasses at the moment. It feels weird, because I usually only wear them at night.

My poor contacts are now sitting in the bathroom.

I thought since this isn't a particularly interesting picture, I could go a bit silly in processing it. I wish our bathroom vanity really did look like this!

P365 Day 109 - washing up and other helpful jobs

Continuing on with the theme of Juniordwarf helping out, on Saturday night I was stunned when he said he wanted to help me wash up after I’d been cooking dinner.

He hadn’t shown any interest in helping me cook which, if he wants to help with anything, is what he normally wants to help with. He’d spent most of the time I was cooking playing with the messiest and hardest to clean up craft activities he had, which, I’ll admit, was a little annoying when I was trying to cook something that was fairly time-consuming.

To his credit though, he then came over, got the cloth, wet it and attempted to clean up the mess without me asking him to. This was a first time he’d ever taken upon himself to clean up his own mess. Win!

Anyway, once I started washing up, Juniordwarf got out his stepladder, set it up in front of the sink and said he wanted to help. I was completely amazed! He refused all offers of help, which meant there was a little re-washing to do, and he stuck with it right to the end.

If that wasn’t unexpected enough, last night after dinner he announced that he had to tidy up in the lounge room before he went to bed.

Slabs and I just stood and looked at each other, speechless. 

Getting Juniordwarf to pack up at night has been one of the most frustrating parts of the day for years, and has been subject to many ‘consequences’, none of which have worked. This initiative was completely out of the blue – and very, very welcome.

After dinner tonight, he decided he wanted to do the washing up again.

Who was I to stop him?

P365 Day 108 - too early

Under normal circumstances, Slabs has Mondays off. Usually I catch the bus in to work on those days, and it's usually the 6.30 am bus that I like to get.

To catch this bus I have to get up at 5.20 (yes, it takes me that long to get myself out of bed and get ready, and yes, doing this involves coffee). Today was especially hard because I woke up at 3.25 and found it very difficult to get back to sleep, so when the alarm went off, I felt like I'd only just got to sleep.

Today was the first time I'd caught the bus since daylight saving ended, and I was lucky enough to be leaving the house just as the most glorious sunrise was happening. It was truly stunning, and if I'd been five minutes later I would have missed it.

Sunrise from our front door

Sunrise from the bus stop a couple of minutes later

When I was editing these photos I tried not to over-process them, just enhance them a bit. Not sure I succeeded entirely - I think the first one is more accurate than the second one -  but this is about the journey, not the destination isn't it, so I'm learning all the time.

P365 Day 107 - hot chocolate

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago how Juniordwarf has started to do a lot of things now that he wasn’t doing before.

He’s been helping me cook his Sunday night cheesy noodles for quite a while now, and he’s getting really good at pouring the milk into the pot to make the cheese sauce a little bit at a time. We also cook ANZACs every Tuesday for him to have at recess at school. He pretty much knows the recipe off by heart now and knows what goes in where and when. His version of rolling the dough into balls is (1) eating as much as he can get away with and (2) mushing handfuls of it together and throwing it down onto the biscuit tray.

Fairly typical four-year-old cooking, I think.

A few weeks ago he wanted hot chocolate for afternoon tea. I’m not sure why. I can’t remember if it’s because I was going to have some, or because he’d had some at the coffee shop and wanted more, or if he’d seen the tin and wanted to know what it was.

Whatever the reason, he wanted it and it’s now become one of his favourite drinks. And of course, he has to help make it

The first couple of times we made it the only hot chocolate we had was a tiny of extremely delightful chilli hot chocolate that my sister-in-law first introduced me to and which I get as a very occasional treat for myself. (Don’t knock it until you try it, it has this divine chocolate taste, followed by a slight chilli aftertaste.)

I was worried that it might be too hot for Juniordwarf, but he seemed to like it (damn!). I didn’t buy any more, so we were without hot chocolate the next Tuesday. The local supermarket doesn’t stock anything like it, so I had to buy a plain one. Juniordwarf was very concerned that it wasn’t the hot one, but I told him I’d get some more (on a day to be determined), which hasn’t happened yet).

So every time he wants hot chocolate he observes that we still don’t have the other one, but he’s more than happy to have this one, and to help make it. For him, this involves getting the milk out of the fridge, taking the lid off the hot chocolate, dipping his finger in and eating the chocolate powder. Oh, and stirring the milk as it heats on the stove and tipping (most of) the chocolate in the spoon into the pot. (The rest goes all over the stove top . . . )

As I said, typical four-year-old cooking!

These are his cheesy grin photos. It was one of those days where he had to ham it up for every photo.

sunday selections - autumn colours (more photos added)

Juniordwarf and I went for a walk yesterday afternoon. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon, after the normal early morning fog. Once that cleared, it was a glorious day, perfect for getting out of the house and taking photos.

These photos are edited in my favourite iPhone app at the moment, Camera+. I think I probably need to take a break from it for a while as there are so many other apps on my phone that I haven't used very much and I need to add some more effects to my photo albums.

So these are this week's photos for Frogpondsrock's Sunday Selections project.  If you get a chance, go over to Kim's blog and check out some of the other bloggers who are playing along.

View looking down the River Derwent from the bridge

View across the river from the base of the bridge

Underneath the bridge

Juniordwarf walking along the river bank

Seagulls near the river

Juniordwarf posing for a photo

My take on the 'sun through autumn leaves' idea

Autumn leaves - not many now, but in a couple of weeks
the ground will be covered

I love the red leaves

Update
Here are some more photos on a similar theme from today's adventures

This is from a spot near the river bank a few km out of town

And this is the view of the river from the same spot

A common sight in Tassie in the autumn months, smoke from
the Forestry burn-offs further up the valley

P365 Day 106 clouds

I was cooking dinner tonight and looked out the window to see these clouds.

We get some great clouds, and I love the light in that period just before the sun sets. It takes a bit of cropping and darkening to hide the neighbours' houses whenever I take cloud shots from our backyard though.

I wasn't sure how the photos were going to turn out through the glass, but I think they look OK. They're both edited in Camera+.

P365 Day 105 - scrapbooking (15/04/2011)

As I've posted previously, Friday night is scrapbooking night for me at our local scrapbooking shop.

Here's a picture of my bag. How handy that it has a pocket especially sized for a bottle of wine!

P365 Day 104 - an umbrella party

And on the third day there was . . .  more rain.

It's not real rain. At least where I've been it's not. I won't speak for the areas of the state that are in flood at the moment.

But what I mean is it's not pelting down and making being outside unbearable to the extent that I feel like I don't want to go out. It's that very fine, (not quite but almost) misty rain. It's not enough for me to feel like I need an umbrella, but if I'm out in it long enough, I get quite soaked. So a rain coat with a hood is doing the trick. Then when I walk into a patch of rain that's a bit heavier - there seem to be these random heavier rain spots - out comes the brolly.

I like this rain. It feels refreshing. It's not particularly cold and it's not been overly windy (except in patches) so it's not unpleasant to be out in. If anything, it makes me want to go outside more.

At home, and on the way to work, I like looking up at the hills and seeing them shrouded in cloud. It looks the way I think a mythical world would look. I want to take photos, but there hasn't been the opportunity and I really don't think my camera could capture the essence of what I'm seeing, even if I did get the chance to take any pictures.

Sometimes it's eerie, I suppose even otherworldly. It's such a contrast to the heat of summer, which I hate and which saps me of my energy (not that we really had a summer this year, and even if we did have, Tassie isn't one of the world's hot spots).

It's also made me wish I'd dug up my potatoes before now . . .

Today's picture is what I called our 'umbrella party' at work.

I bought Juniordwarf an umbrella yesterday since he'd insisted on pinching mine every time we went out in the rain. He was incredibly excited to get it and has been practising putting it up and taking it down ever since.

Every time we come to a gateway or a doorway, he says 'the gate/door is too white' (he means 'wide', of course, but hasn't quite learned the word), and dutifully puts his umbrella down. I find the whole process very sweet.

Juniordwarf had his umbrella with him when we went to school, and I took it with me to work so he wouldn't get distracted by it at school or end up losing it. I needed mine in a couple of spots on the way to work too, so they were both a bit wet. When I got to work I couldn't resist adding our umbrellas to what seems to have become the designated umbrella drying area.

People walking past found the scene very amusing, especially the 'little baby umbrella'.