Horseshoe Lake Reserve after the earthquake.

The reserve is about 700m from our house. The bridge is leaning to the left and the path and parking lot have loads of large cracks. This is the worst hit area in our immediate vicinity. Further down Lake Terrace Road towards New Brighton Road people's sewage systems were damaged......ooops...just felt a rather large aftershock. House is still standing. Wow, still sends me flying every time there's a big one.

Spring is in the air

With Spring finally here, I have decided to go for a very old but comfortable summer favourite of mine - dress/romper. My mum made me one when I was a student and I practically lived in it. These rompers are great as it gives the illusion of a dress with the assurance of no fly aways on those breezy days. I have been hunting for this specific type of pattern for months and months on end and stumbled upon my find in Canada about two weeks ago. I do love Google! The company is called Northbreeze - a small family owned business. They sell out of print patterns and loads of other goodies. I received my pattern within 5 days of ordering. The best thing of course is the fact that it is still uncut - so in my mind it is brand new and I quite like that thought. I've been browsing through the newest McCalls, Vogue, Simplicity and Butterick books and they don't have anything like this on the market.
Can't wait for the new spring fabrics to arrive!

Daffodils, liver patties and an earthquake

So many things have happened in the last few weeks. We celebrated mum's birthday, the first day of Spring, an earthquake and lots of sleepless nights.
We woke up on Saturday morning at 4:35am with a violent "shake, rattle and roll." It felt like an eternity before the shaking stopped. Kinda felt like a bad dream or more like a scene from a sci-fi movie. Very surreal!!! I never thought I would experience an earthquake.
Luckily we didn't suffer any real damage, apart from shot nerves and sleepless nights. A holiday away from all the drama would be a real treat, but who are we kidding? The children won't be going back to school for the rest of the week.  We've been doing lots of cooking, baking and eating to calm the nerves and it also gives us a sense of normality. Our hearts are going out to those who have lost their houses and suffered significant damage.

Our first daffodil flowered over the weekend and mum made liver patties today. Michelle's first impression was "Yuk! Do you want me to eat this?"And guess what? She finished them all.

Michelle's netball team

Gaye (the coach) was so kind to take a photo of the Year 4 netball team. Next week will be their final game and most mums are mouthing a silent "hooray" as it is freezing on the courts. It has been a wonderful season and the girls have improved so much. Some of the mums still think that the girls are way to polite and think boot camp might toughen them up! GO WINDSOR!!

Half Chocolate cake competition

Yesterday Mum had a chocolate cake competition at work. There were 10 cakes on the judging table. There were all sorts of  choc cakes - one with Rolo's on top, one with delicious berries on top, one with mint leaves and a few odd looking ones too! And yes, you've guessed right....Mum's cake made the top three (second place to be precise). Thanks to Nigella Mum made a delicious chocolate fudge cake. We had some the night before and it was really good. Mum was only allowed to enter half a cake. The organizer (aka Andrew Miller) thought it won't be fair if family members missed out on cake! And here's hoping Mum will be able to post a photo soon....

P.S. here is the link to Nigella's old fashioned chocolate cake http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_detail.aspx?rid=191

ENJOY!

Mum's one is number 7 in the middle of the back row. Number 13 got third place- very impressive looking cake. We were told that Matt used 750g of chocolate!!

 The winning cake was number 2 - what were they thinking?? (Correction - number 2 on the right which turned into number 24)

Poor judges....we don't think they'll ever eat another chocolate cake!

Lucky fish

We FINALLY got new beds in the holiday. Ouma Landa bought us new duvet covers and inners to go with the beds. Michelle likes the frog the best and I love the cow. Keren wouldn't let go of Michelle's frog; now she has one on her bed too!
Thank you Ouma, you are soooo good to us!
Nicolene and Michelle
xxx

Having some fun...

We are officially on school holidays now. Hopefully we'll get to do some fun things.
On the agenda is the new Shrek movie, a theater play called Beauty and the Beast and lots of visits to the library. We are also hoping for great weather so we can go out on our bikes and walk all the neighbor's dogs.
Mum made us waffles with chocolate sauce for breakfast this morning - I think it is a really good start to the holidays. Hope mum has some more treats up her sleeve. I gave mum a little make over and did her nails. And now we are off to the library. Mum is about to finish Fishing for Stars (Bryce Courtenay) and wants to get another book. I would never be able to read a big book like that! Maybe one day....