Proud mom, nervous mom & excited mom....

Yes I am so proud! My little eleven year-old girl, Shannon, won the regional round of the Dros Kidz Super Stars competition! (For anyone who doesn't know- the Dros is a family restaurant chain) She did the best performance she has ever done! As I watched her, I could not believe it was the same child her started singing 3 years ago. The shyness had completely vanished and she took to the stage like a natural! Even if she doesn't get further than this round, I will still be so happy for her- her eyes literally sparkled with joy when she won!

And oh boy am I nervous & excited now too! She will compete tomorrow night (19 March) at the Dros in Midrand in the semi-finals (provincial round). They select 6-7 kids (as far as I know) to go through to the finals on 1st of April at the Silver Lakes Dros. I am beyond excited coz if she does go through, that happens to be the date of my 40th birthday! My niece says it's fate- and has already decided that Shannon will be in the finals. Well we're all rooting for her of course and praying that she is selected.

Shannon of course is really excited about the competition- especially due to the fact that the winner receives R100 000 in prizes! This includes a recording contract - she dreams everyday of recording her own CD!

So that's our exciting news at the moment!

I have almost finished my "Blue Dancers" painting - I'll glaze it next week and then also start my monochromatic paintings - I want to do two small square portraits in sepia tones of each of the kids. I'm really looking forward to that!

Last week we visited the gorgeous village of Franschhoek for 4 days. Our friends, Neal & Rika, invited us to join them from Wednesday till Saturday at the Franschhoek Country House. We stayed in one of the villa suites. What an absolute treat! It really is probably the most amazing place I have ever stayed in! It beats staying at the Palace of the Lost city by far!
Our friend, Mandy who manages a large liquor store, arranged private tours at two wine estates. What fun! We first visited Haute Cabriere, with its infamous Pierre Jourdan sparkling wine - made in the French Méthode Cap Classique. We ended up having a fabulous lunch in the restaurant there afterwards. Needless to say it was quite an inebriating day! Enough said!

The next day we visited L'Ormorins - owned by the Rupert family. Wow- what an estate! After a vineyard tour, we went on a cellar tour. They were harvesting so it was really interesting. The grapes were being moved in small crates from the vineyard (to avoid being pressed too much) into refrigerators while waiting to be hand sorted (the green stems and over-ripe berries are removed). After that, the conveyor belt moves them through a machine which lightly crushes the grapes as these particular ones had very strong skins and needed help bursting during the fermentation process. Fermentation takes place in new French oak barrels which cost around R9000 each. So the slightly crushed berries are poured straight into the barrels. They also add dry ice which helps to keep any oxygen out the barrel so the grapes cannot oxidise.

The natural yeast on the berries (grey powdery residue on skins) is the only yeast they use at L'Ormorins to ferment the berries. They believe in keeping everything as natural as possible. From not adding minerals etc to the soil and only using the minimum amount of pesticides. In fact they rely on birds to help with insects and feel that even if the birds also eat the berries, it doesn't matter as they prefer quality grapes over quantity. So interesting!

After going through the cellar, we tasted some wine - and bought some- and then ended off with a tour of the Franschhoek Motor Museum where we saw some 300 cars housed in 3 large barn-style rooms. As much as I have really not much interest in cars, I found the museum really interesting. The cars ranged from some of the first cars ever made right up to the 2002 Enzo Ferrari (I think there were only 3 made if my memory serves me correctly). The cost of each car and the entire collection is simply not up for topic there. We were told that the one particular Mercedes (forget the model now), was bought on auction for R17 million rand on auction (around $1.7 million)- and that's just ONE car!

Reece is sick at home today with a cold-so he is here nagging me, so I'd better go. Will post photos later of Franschhoek and of Shannon singing.

Painting; a leaking pipe & the need (not desire) to sort out my Driver's License.....

I have to blog more! I was so good in the beginning, but lately, since the PC went on the blink, I seem to be trying to catch up with so much scrapping that I have neglected my little blog life here.

Today I continued my painting of Edgar Degas' Blue Dancers. I loved this painting last week, this week - well lets just say I am going through a bit of a "love-hate" relationship with it. I am tired of all the blue and flesh colours and really need to get it finished so I can at least move on to a fresh new colour palette - and a different subject matter. Ultimately I think I'll end up loving the painting, but once you have blended 2 blues with black, white and 2 browns- you can expect to tire of these colours!

Here's a peek at the original :

I absolutely love Degas' paintings. I have done one of his 'bathers' before and so enjoyed it.

This one we tried using a more monochromatic colour scheme, but ended up adding more colours than one would traditionally use for monochrome paintings. At the moment it still has much less colours than this one (the original), but I think I will still add the burnt orange touches afterward as I love the warmth it brings to the painting. I will post a pic of mine here once complete.

I saw a lot of Degas' paintings in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris 2 years ago. They are actually quite a bit smaller than I imagined them to be. Also, most either were done entirely in pastel, or a combination of other mediums like gouache, or oil with pastels.

As a result, the paintings are now kept behind glass in an extremely dark room to preserve them by protectiong them from bright light. So my plans to take photos of them went flying out the (non-existent) windows in the museum! No flashes are (understandably) allowed and the room really was extremely dark.

Off the subject of art, but not entirely off painting- this time painting the house! Which is what we're going to have to do very soon as we now have discovered what we think is a leaking pipe on the jacuzzi balcony off our bathroom. The resultant wet walls in the laundry and kitchen are what alerted us to this fact! So tomorrow Leon will call the insurance company - coz hey, we simply cannot keep forking more money out on maintenance for the house! It's now time to call in the cavalry, so to speak.

Tomorrow I also have the unfortunate hassle of having to sort out my driver's license. Yes- not renew- but rather sort out! As it was renewed a year ago and I still don't have a copy of my new license! (Okay, I do leave things until I really just can't anymore!! ) I have been wanting to go eversince we realised that my license was not arriving in the post. Leon & I went together in February last year - stood in the HEAT in a VERY LONG queue!!! FOR FOUR (4!!!) hours!!! Only to have his sent to him, and mine has never arrived!!!

I have prepared myself that I may just have to go through the whole episode again - eyetests and all as I'm sure my application simply landed on someone's desk who threw it into 'file 13' (aka the dustbin!) Okay, I am not going to be pessimistic- let's hope it is filed under H for Hurly instead and I simply can collect it with only a few minutes of time wasted tomorrow! (Yeah, sure - and it might snow tomorrow here too!) Added to all of this, our local driver's license offices are useless and always way too busy, so I'll be driving about 40min out of town to Rayton to collect mine.

So that's my morning. The afternoon will be a case of fetching and carrying kids at different times from school again - I pick Shannon up at 13h30 (no compulsory school sport tomorrow due to a gala), then take her home. Reece must be collected an hour later at 14h30. Then I must take him home. Give them both lunch and get homework going. Shannon needs to be back at school again at 16h00 for a tennis lesson. I'll have to drop her off, and my mom will have to collect her again at 16h30 as Reece has to be at swimming 15 min drive away from the school by 16h30 for his lesson. Have I ever mentioned that I dislike the car intensely?

[Hopefully by the afternoon of loads of driving, I'll at least have some sort of driver's license!]

In between all this, I'm hoping to get Week 8 finished of my Life 365 photo a day challenge. I even missed out on the incentive this week as I simply ran out of time to finish Week 8 in time. I am determined to complete weeks 9 and 10 in time for the next incentive - even though I should already be busy with Week 9 already.

Here's my Week 7 : 12-18 February. (I work Thursday to Wednesday each week as the 1st of January was a Thursday this year).

Gosh, I just noticed that I put 12-19 on here instead of 12-18 February! Luckily I can fix that as I saved the .psd file as well as the .jpeg! (Note to self- don't forget to do this!)

Well that's me all up to date now- except foe the fact that I've skipped a couple of weeks in between LOL! Oh well- one can't do everything!

Just some catching up....

It's been ages since I was here! What's been going on in my life lately... Mmmm



Shannon entered the Dros Kidz Super Star competition through her school. She competed in the first round against 10 other kids from Woodhill on Monday 23 Feb. She was one of the 6 chosen to go through to the next round where they will compete against another school for 1 place in the Gauteng Regionals. So it's off to the Dros in Menlyn again on Monday 9 Feb. {Holding thumbs and praying she gets thru to the regionals- it'll be so fantastic!!} The regionals will be on 16 March at Dros Midrand and then the National Finals are on 1 April at the Silverlakes Dros. Maybe it's a good sign that the finals are actually on my 40th birthday! There is so much talent out there that it's going to be tough, but just the experience of entering a big competition is great for her anyway.



I just wish she studied to pass Grade 6 as well as she sailed through learning her next set of lyrics! Grrrrr - I feel lately as though I need to pass Grade 6 {and Grade 2 for that matter} all over again. I have summarised, asked questions and find myself repeating the HSS or Natural Science to myself as I'm falling asleep! But Shannon- I bet the little diva is dreaming of her next performance as she drifts off!



Reece luckily hasn't got to the stage where he needs help with serious studying. He has weekly spelling words which are tested each Friday. {And that's enough!!} I'm hoping that by the time he needs help in Grade 4 with his tests that Shannon is well into High School & no longer needs help! I'm really tired of studying - but I guess you've gathered that by now!



I hosted Bookclub at home this morning. Can't say I was in the mood, but in the end it was fun seeing everyone and chatting about everything & nothing. At least this month it wasn't just Rozanne, Belinda & I - there were actually 8 of us! I have been reading The Venetian (something or other- I forget the name) by Steve Berry. Quite interesting with loads of historical references to Alexander The Great - pretty much akin to The DaVinci Code - with a fairly complicated storyline that has many twists and turns. I have kept out 2 other books which are a lot lighter & should hold up to the many interruptions by kids, husband etc that I seem to be subjected to every time I pick up a book to read.



Still toying with the idea of my 40th Birthday this year. Do I let it slip by quietly or do I have a nice big bash with great 80's music & pretty decor, great food and my close friends? The second option really sounds more fun than ignoring the event completely....we'll have to decide soon as time is ticking by. {tick....tick....tick....}



Ooh- I recently won a $10 gift certificate from Weeds & Wildflowers for the Blog weekly challenge {every Monday} for last week- I did a Valentine's themed layout for it- take a peek by looking at my Scrapbook slideshow- it's called "Always my Valentine" - I had fun doing this one {especially since I can go shopping now for more digi stuff!}



Oh -$*^%$(&^)&^ - 'scuse the &^%(&^%&, but my mouse won't work!!!! If it's not one thing, it's another.... Salt chlorinator in the pool; internet connection; whole computer bombed; central vacuum system won't suck in any air; irrigation system need the valves repaired; oh, and before all that, the electric gate wouldn't work for a couple of days until we discovered that Leon had switched it off when he switched the pool off when the chlorinator stopped working!

So now that I need to use my arrow keys to navigate here, I think I'm simply going to call it a night and rather go read my book before going to sleep! G'night...



Okay - I'll go now once I figure out how to get down to the 'Publish' button without a mouse!

Hey- I'm back!! At last!!!

It has now officially been close to 2 weeks without my computer!! I missed being able to do my Project 365 layouts and I desperately needed to download some lyrics for Shannon so she can practise her singing, but other than that (besides blogging), I managed to do without this little machine.
I have to admit I was a little stressed (okay, a lot!) over my 25GB-odd of photos which were in my harddrive which crashed shortly after my internet connection was repaired. Fortunately my photos were all OK and I have learned my lesson- I start the arduous task of backing up everything, and I mean EVERYTHING tomorrow!
Thanks to a friend of mine, Dylan, he managed to salvage my computer and all it's precious cargo and this ship is sailing once more! Well off to go ask Shannon questions on her Geography for the test tomorrow - will catch up soon on news of the past 2 weeks......

Yay! Internet is back and running again!! Leon thinks it's wonderful when I can't go online, but I really rely on the net for so many things. Simple things like looking up something for Shannon's homework, or paying for our holiday accommodation; everyday things which are made so much more convenient with the internet. Of course I also use the internet to feed my {addiction} to digital scrapbooking {and blogging!}.

Here's my latest Life 365 layout-

I'm really loving this project (did I mention that before?). Well it's true, I feel as though I have got something accomplished. Each week as I finish my layout, I am thrilled to see I am actually keeping up! (Which is something I rarely do!). How many times I have actually started off with something and never completed it - I have lost count. Well this time, I'm going to keep at it - and so long as there aren't too many interferences along the way, I'll be finishing off my weekly layout on time!

Speaking of interferences, the new Weekly Blog challenge at Weeds & Wildflowers is to scrap something which has interfered with taking your daily photo. Something beyond your control which has thrown you a curve ball and disrupted your life, even if to a small extent. I love this challenge as life is not always perfect, does not always go according to plan, and this only helps one to deal with those everyday hurdles.