Jobee's Journal

E is presenting a project on a Famous Australian on Thursday. We decided she could use the Governor General as her Famous Australian. It makes it easier for all of us being someone she has met. And the fact that she thinks Ms Bryce is wonderful helps (she still calls her the nice lady who asked about my dress) E is supposed to dress up & act like the person she has researched. The dress up bit is easy - she has already requested make up. She's been practising reading out her powerpoint - after each slide we have to 'make it big' so she can present it! I finished off the scrapbook pages I had done about the visit so she can display them on the day. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License .

My parents & brother came up over the long weekend which was very nice! We decided while shopping in Narrabri to head to Sawn Rocks & have lunch up there. Seems quite a few others had the same idea!! After we'd eaten, the kids, my brother & I headed along the track to see the rocks. Even though we've been a number of times, the kids still enjoy it. The track is easy - tarred all the way except for where there are metal bridges. They like to explore in the creek bed though which means a trip down some stairs. There were a few ponds left over from rain, so they checked them out & the natural 'stair's that form when the rocks fall.  Suprisingly we didn't have one complaint from E! That was despite her sitting down in every shop we'd been in earlier. I think she had decided she was going to be first back so that kept her going. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License .

Flowers on our rogue cotton plants reminded me I hadn't posted a page I did last year showing how the flower turns into a boll. Firstly I guess I'd better say why we have rogue cotton plants in our garden!! A couple of years ago I asked a friend to get us some cotton so I could get some of the bolls. It got left on the verandah too long & kinda self sowed in the garden. We have a mini crop down the side of the house + one lone plant near our driveway.  We've just left it there for now & it's flowering for the 2nd year. Some has already flowered & developed cotton bolls. The one near the driveway seems to do it later than the others.  When it flowered last year I took a series of photos to show how a cotton boll develops. It was around the time there were news reports that lots of students didn't know that cotton grew on plants. So I decided to make a scrapbook page. When cotton is grown commercially it is defoliated before the cotton pickers stri

Les Miserable is a classic - well in my opinion anyway! I've loved the music basically since I heard it - sometime during school in the late 1980's, around the time it was in the theatre in Sydney. But I didn't see it until much later in a smaller performance in Newcastle. I had studied musicals in my HSC music course so I guess it had come up there & I loved the music. So when I heard it was coming out as a movie, I knew I had to go & see it!! And I wasn't disappointed. It was absolutely brilliant. The whole thing is sung, like the musical, and it was great. I guess there would be lots of things for people to pick apart about the singing since the main stars are big Hollywood names, but I thought that it was pretty spot on. And I guess lots of people don't realise or don't know that Hugh Jackman was in musicals before he went to Hollywood! Anne Hathaway has a really nice singing voice too. I reckon most of the other characters that weren't pla

I went shopping by myself this evening. Not something i usually do as I`m not a big fan of shopping. But E's birthday is on Saturday & I needed a few more gifts. I ended up choosing Mexican for dinner - soft tacos with chicken. It was really yummy, but the mango soft drink was even better! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License .

Have decided my fresh start this year is to be more creative, to make an effort to do things I enjoy that are creative, rather than wait until I have time. I read a blog post at  iHanna's Blog  today talking about being creative each day. I always struggle with that kind of project, but another way she put it was doing 7 creative things a week. I think I can do that. Mostly I want to do my digital scrapbooking, & bookmaking (when I get a proper area set up), but some other things I've tried are below. SJ loves to paint. But often it ends up being random & in the bin. So I've made a rule that she has to paint something I say first, then she can do whatever she likes. I'm no artist, so I use the Art Projects for Kids  site for inspiration. It's a great site! We did the above one yesterday & it was harder than I thought. SJ did her own version! E did a pretty good copy actually. I'd love to be better at drawing, but am not great on the rea

My first two photos of 2013. I took my brother to the airport this morning at 6am so it was an early start for me! I had thought about getting up early to take photos of the sunrise before I said I'd take him, so I was glad to get 1 photo, even if it was on my phone, out the window of the car (I wasn't driving at the time..) I'm not used to driving to the airport so ended up in the wrong lane on the way back. As I'm driving through the very quiet streets, I noticed a cafe opening up, so I went back. I was a bit early, so sat in the car for 10 minutes. It was in Alexandria & called  Grandma's Little Bakery  I had the above for breakkie, not exactly sure what it's called, but it was spinach, eggs, fetta & capsicum. It was really yummy. The bread was warm & fresh (no butter, but it was so fresh I didn't mind.. much), The little dish at the top I thought was pesto - but it was really hot & tasted like it had coriander in it, it