November scavenger hunt...

Hello folks :) It's that time of the month when we join Hawthorn and friends over at I live, I love, I craft, I am me... for the monthly scavenger hunt. I hope you enjoy my offerings.

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Blue

The evening before the full moon this month my GKB 

snapped this. A lovely royal blue sky don't you think?

Me

Aged about three. This is me sitting on a little wooden rocking chair. Every December one of the department stores in town ordered in dozens of these little chairs and just before Christmas my grandfather would go down and get enough for the small grandchildren and paint them a lovely shiny red. We loved them. 

 

Starts with a ...W 

A warning -  sign seen at Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch when we visited last month. I found it rather amusing as the animals mentioned include big cats.

Rainbow

A large group of people with flags in Aotea square, Auckland.

The flags were very bright and colourful, a rainbow of colours.

Arch

On the outskirts of Alexandra in Central Otago, the arches

 from the original bridge crossing the Clutha River. 

Part of the modern arch of the new bridge is to the right. 

Toy

Do you see the fishing rod in here. To my GKB it is the ultimate toy. In fact he loves this one so much that he has more in the garage cluttering the place up waiting in case he fancies a change. Why he would need more than one is beyond me as he can only use one at a time or take the risk of having everything confiscated (including the very expensive license) if he is caught with more than one in use. This was after a day at the river.

Swirl

Brought out to celebrate their 80th birthday. 

Tip Top Ice Cream's new flavour - Birthday Cake Swirl.

Very nice too, but not my favourite :)

Brush

I hope you can see this brush. It is very pale pink and sitting on the white background it has tended to fade away. I was going through the stuff in my old glory box (hope chest) when I found this little china pram with the brush sitting in it. The brush was a baby gift on the birth of my eldest daughter, who is about to turn 50 in a few days, and the pram was part of a flower arrangement sent into the nursing home while we were in there.

Nail

 The same daughter's wedding nails 
nearly forty years later. Very elegant.

My choice

I like this neon sign. It used to be on the top of a butchery in the city, which has been demolished. The pig is now housed in Toitu Settlers Museum. He's rather colourful and I tossed up between him and the flags for the rainbow prompt.

If you want to see how others handled the prompts 

head over to I live, I love, I craft, I am me... and take a look :)

Diana

Extremely loosely connected stuff...

Life has been very quiet of late and there I was last night

 lying in bed thinking that as soon as I get to the end 

of this chapter I'd turn the light off.

Then in the distance I heard a rumble then a bang and an earthquake hit. 

By the time I slammed my book shut and commented  that

'this is an earthquake' and my GKB replied

'I think you're right " it was all over.

No time to leap (it's amazing how fast you can move when you have to) out of bed

and go into earthquake mode because it was all over in about 10 seconds. 

So we lay there for a few minutes waiting to see if  there were going to be any more.

There weren't, but eldest daughter rang to check in and have a chat.

She was home alone with 2 teenagers and just wanted a bit of reassurance. 

It was centred only about 10 miles away as the crow flies and quite shallow

so it was quite a jolt and gave a lot of people a fright. 

Youngest daughter's youngsters slept through it 

but the teenager was on the phone to her boyfriend at the time.

She hung with her mother and father for a wee while after that.

What have feijoas got to do with an earthquake you may ask.

Not a lot but the tree next door that hangs over our fence 

is absolutely laden this year and so when I went out this morning

 there were quite a few windfalls lying about.

But I rather think they were 'quake falls this time. 

Never mind, I still harvested them and have a nice little bowl full.

Now for something completely different.

I just bought this painting of the butterfly about a week ago.

I had been eyeing up another painting for several weeks which was much more

abstract but had all the same bright colours. 

They go well in our lounge.

But when I showed my first pick to my GKB he wasn't terribly impressed. 

He pointed out a butterfly painting that he quite liked

 but it wasn't anything like what I was wanting.

 Then a couple of weeks later we came across this colourful butterfly, 

the colours I wanted with the not quite so abstract picture he wanted. 

A nice compromise.

And ... it was a fraction of the price of the original one.

And talking about butterflies, youngest grand daughter 

is going to her school formal in a couple of weeks.

Her mother arrived over today with her dress which is now hanging in a wardrobe here.

They have 4 cats at the moment and she didn't want to take the risk of them

(2 are kittens) using the dress for climbing practise.

It's rather lovely on her and later I hope I can show 

you a photo of her all dollied up ready to go out with her beau.

And this is just another random picture I took 

in an ice cream shop while we were up at the caravan a while ago.

The walls on the left of the house are all lined

 with small cubby holes filled with jars of lollies. 

It's quite a delightful little gingerbread house.

joining in with:

roses of inspiration

Keep well 'til next week

Diana

Days of our lives...

As I said last week it is autumn in the south.

Today you'd be forgiven for thinking that winter had arrived.

The temps have dropped and the wind and rain have been howling through.

As usual for Tuesday I went to little mother's group 

and then took her out to do her weekly shopping.

I thought she might decide to stay home by her fire, but no, out we trotted.

Being so cold and miserable when I got home I decided it was time to get out

 one of the jigsaws I kept at home and started doing that.

It's only 500 piece so shouldn't take too long - I hope.

Buuut there's a lot of water all looking much the same, oh well.

When it's finished I'll put it in the library at church with the others.

Of course it was Mother's Day at the weekend 

and my girls and some of their kids arrived out for a visit.

I was given lots of sweet stuff, yum, 

and some smelly candles, yum again.

And my son skyped from Japan just before they arrived 

so everyone had a good catch-up.

I had taken my little mother to church in the morning 

and she had already gone home, so she missed them all. 

She always likes to go home early on Mother's Day 

to be there in time for my brother and his partner arriving.

Our middle grand daughter is turning 18 this week

so we are going out with her next weekend for an evening meal.

We gave her an early birthday present.

You may think this is a funny gift to give an 18 year old 

but she was really thrilled as she is going away this week for the course

 she is doing and was hoping to borrow some of our luggage.

And when she graduates she hopes to be travelling some more.

So what else would we give her? And blue is her favourite colour.

What else have I been doing? 

Well I was given these...

...quinces, apples and pears fresh off the trees.

So I have been peeling, stewing and freezing a lot of it.

Some of the apples and pears I kept to eat, lovely and sweet 

even if they had to be washed or peeled to get the bird poop off. 

I have to admit that I gave most of the quinces away, not all of them though.

Because they are such an old fashioned fruit 

and not seen much I think they are probably an acquired taste,

 especially for younger people.

I gave them to some older ladies I know 

who were really quite thrilled as they hadn't had them for years.

One was going to make jelly and the other was going to stew them whole.

Everyone has different ideas about what to do with them and how long to cook them.

I just stewed the ones I kept and froze them with the other fruit.

My little mother gave me a teaset a week or two ago. 

She had already given me one she knew I liked, or what was left of it...

she used to have tea parties with some of her great grandchildren 

and I rather think they were broken then. 

So I am on the lookout for replacement pieces for it.

Anyway  here is the newest one. A Yamato fine china.

It's black, white and silver and I think it is rather elegant and unusual.

 

Unfortunately I'm not too good at taking photo's at night

(something I'll have to try and remedy) 

and the trim looks gold here rather than silver.

Oh, an update on Mack, eldest grand daughters wee dog.

He is standing on all fours again to everyone's relief

 but still has to be confined to his cage for a few weeks yet.

So no drastic decisions have to be made :)

joining with:

roses of inspiration

Martha's favorites

 Well I think that's it for tonight,

 so until next week I will say goodnight.

Diana