<— feeling a little bit jaded this morning - for some reason we seem to believe partying over long weekends is a fun thing to do…our motto “sleep when you’re dead”. Contemplating enducing a cardiac arrest just to get a bit of shut eye. Nah, it wasn’t that bad - and hey, this coming weekend is a long one too - whoohoo… party on!

I went to the scrapbook convention on Saturday, been eagerly anticipating it for months (literally) - they had organised two international people to come out and teach us, Tim Holtz and Jayme Shepherd. If I’m brutally honest and compare it to last year’s….it wasn’t quite as good, but was still a helluva lot of fun. Mind you, the woman that won the A3 photo printer, plus a die-cut machine - probably figured it was the best event ever. They had a lot of give aways, some really awesome stuff, sadly I didn’t get anything, not even the tiniest thing. Probably bad karma or something. ‘Course I’m not bitter about it, *bloodypeoplethatgetnotoneprizebuttwo!*

Tim Holtz is a lot of fun and everyone at my table thoroughly enjoyed his class - we ended up elbow deep in ink, glue and his amazing product called grunge board. Came home with this little beauty for my efforts.

Jayme’s classes proved to be a little stressful for a lot of people (present company excluded - naturally) - she kept having to convert inches to cm’s and there was quite a bit of cutting and putting of pages together. A shame really because the products she provided us with we really very pretty.

Even though I didn’t manage to win anything *stillbittteraboutthat* I came away with a lot of stash to add to the ever growing pile. I was so inspired by all that I’d seen and made that I decided to create these…I think they’re terribly cute. Wouter’s response… they’re cute but what are they for? Men!

For those of you who think like him - they’re a way for me to display my ribbons. This way I actually use them instead of them skulking away in a dark corner for years.

Bagheera had a fun weekend too, we came home Sunday afternoon to a lounge full of feathers, and a very proud looking kitty lurking near her kill. I did ask her very nicely to please keep the next one outside. She has also agreed to stay in her dedicated spot in my room when I’m busy creating…..

Although the ribbon did prove too much for her and she tried to start a ribbon collection of her own.

All in all - a lovely weekend

I went to vote prepared - cup of hot chocolate in one hand, book in the other and my purse tucked under my arm. Was quite pleasant really - reading, sipping, listening to the conversations around me whilst the queue moved at a reasonable pace. Took me an hour and twenty minutes from start to finish, not too bad - ‘course Wouter spent 3 and a half minutes in his queue, which is a tad annoying really. When we got to the voting station a very pleasant lady was checking ID books, got to me saw I didn’t have a voters registration sticker so went off to get me one… the gentleman behind me asks if I’d registered, I said no. The gentleman behind him looks at me with one of those my crumbs you stupid woman and says sanctimoniously ‘all you had to do was sms to register’. Nice lady looks at his ID book and asks if he registered and then takes his book off to make sure. I say quite clearly ‘guess it wasn’t just me then’ and continued reading. Silly git. The whole process was painless and even with the wait a pleasant experience.

There was one thing though that kind of took my breath away for a moment… whilst waiting in line I saw a sign on the church ‘Baby safe’ - I figured it was perhaps a place where voters could leave their kids whilst voting - you know someone would look after them. Well turns out that wasn’t a very bright thought, it’s a cubicle in the wall - where one can deposit a baby, the baby’s vital signs are taken, a picture of the mother (or whoever) is taken as they put the baby in and sms’s are sent out to a number of people within close proximity who come and fetch the baby. Amazing really, on the one hand it is wonderful that there is this type of facility, on the other - you’re left with a gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach. Sad, very sad.

We have been incredibly fortunate to have ‘inherited’ quite a bit of my folk’s furniture with their moving to Knysna. We enlisted the help of Frank (our trusty Malawian handyman) and a few of his mates to help shift what we didn’t want to my folk’s place and take what they’d left for us. Ostensibly we needed their help to move the piano which now stands proudly in Tamsyn’s room. She’s our budding Victor Borge We also scored a lounge suite and a Welsh dresser. Having decided somewhat belatedly we wanted the Welsh dresser, we had to collect it ourselves this morning and take across the rest of our unwanted stuff. Flip some of the stuff was damned heavy… I’m completely pooped now. ‘Twas worth it

I’m now on the hunt for a coffee table - figure something fairly low, in dark wood with a glass centre.

As we keep saying, we’re getting there little by little.

Decided to avoid being stuck at home yesterday because of the Two Oceans Marathon, so we stayed over at Bellville and spent the morning/afternoon at the Bloemendal Oyster and Champagne festival. I bravely ate an oyster, never again. Don’t care how much of an aphrodisiac they’re meant to be - you can keep them!

We’ve been on holiday for the past week and a bit and it has been quite a hectic time really. First off Wouter and I spent a couple of days in Garies with friends. Where I might add it was PHENOMENALLY HOT, we’re talking climb into the freezer with the ruddy great big hunk of beef hot. Wouter had a wonderful time shooting with Dries, whilst I spent a large part of the time wallowing in cold baths.

The both had fun shooting the last one. I on the other hand had fun taking a few ‘arty’ type shots.

Have to confess, this last one was manipulated a bit with photoshop - still awesome though

After Garies it was on to Oudshoorn for the KKNK we didn’t have a lot of time so had only booked two shows. As it happened we spotted a poster for a Valiant Swart show, and being ardent supporters (’k so Wouter’s the ardent fan, I’m merely a hanger on) we rushed off to get tickets. Turned out we needn’t have worried, it was a dismal turnout - the show was great - and the handful or so of us in the audience really enjoyed it. Having been to a few KKNK’s now - I was amazed at how quiet this one was - reckon the financial situation is hitting many pockets. Our other two shows had a better turnout - Ddisselblom was lekker as always and Koos Kombuis was a delight. In fact some members of the audience enjoyed him so much they had to be taken away in a police van. We’re in two minds as to whether this was a publicity stunt or not, but my money is on not. After all there always has to be one or two idiots in an audience - or so it seems.

We took the Swartberg Pass to get to Oudshoorn and then the Seweweekspoort pass out. Awesome scenery.

We’d passed through a thunder storm on the way to the Swartberg Pass and it was still raining when we went over it - not that we had any problems navigating the pass.

Seweweekspoort Pass

We were back in time to spend a few days with the kids before they went off to their Dad’s. I’d told them they could decide what they’d like to do, so they said they wanted to visit Tygerberg Zoo.

Pretty sure there weren’t bears there last time we visited (then again that was several years ago) was a lot of fun and I’d recommend a visit.