Its Whoo Hoot Wednesday time, you know the drill, leave a comment and let me know what your Whoo Hoot is or the link to your blog so I can check out your Whoo Hoots.
My whoo hoots this week are:
My morning Coffee
Having mum and dad stay with us (despite the accident).
My very cool handmade aprons bought off trade me by this lovely lady in Invercargill who made them from a pattern that was her mums.
Now this very cool gem iron that I have bought off trade me ( I plan to make savoury gems from the Aunt Daisy recipe book, as well as some ginger gems).
The smell of fresh baked bread from the bread-maker. Mike and I bought home his mums bread-maker home last weekend ( it was sitting in their garage). On Sunday I made my first loaf of bread. Today I am making raisin bread. This loaf was a cheese bread.
Dad telling me that he enjoyed the meals I cooked at our house and that I am a good cook.
Watching the ABS game indoors on Saturday night by the fire.
I was around seven years old and my parents were going out for the evening. My mums younger sister Janice was staying with us for the week and was left in charge of us. From memory she was about seventeen. I remember Aunty Janice telling me that I could stay up late with her. She made toffee with myself and my younger brother Steven, then we put on a show in our lounge. She put on this record here and grabbed us some hairbrushes and we pretended to be Frida and Agnetha.
We worked our way through this album, and sang some classics from it like:
Waterloo
Ring Ring
Honey Honey
Mamma Mia
People Need Love
Nina, Pretty Ballerina
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
SOS
Dance (While The Music Still Goes On)
Bang-A-Boomerang
Hasta Manana
So Long
For me this album will always have special memories because I will always associate this moment in time with this album. It will also remain a favourite of mine because this was the first ABBA album I had ever heard. BTW another ABBA memory I have is from my childhood, I had ABBA posters on my wall, one day when I was at school and my parents were preparing to move houses my mother had a big declutter session and lo and behold she threw my ABBA posters out. This has always been a bone of contention for me lol, in fact we laughed about it over the weekend as we were talking about this movie and I reminded mum how she threw out my posters.
This opens 10 July and I intend to go see this, I just know I will be singing and humming and tapping my feet through the movie. So come on, tell me are you an ABBA fan?
Since my parents arrived I decided to take some time out from online forums, blogs etc. Mike and I said goodbye to my folks about four hours ago at the airport. Mum and Dad loved their welcome pack and laughed at the Chateau Nu’lan bottled water, notepad and choccies. I am pleased to report that they ate the choccies, drank the water and mum took the notepad home after using it to write some recipes down. The loved the other little touches that we did to the room for them. I can honestly say they got first class service during their stay.
Now about the game on Saturday night, rest assured we hardly got wet and were snug as a bug, because we watched the game indoors and at home. Why??? Because as we were leaving to head off to the game, all wrapped up warm and even wearing our wet weather gear bought for the game, my mum slipped on our steps outside getting to the car. So we decided to stay home and watch the game as mum could not put any weight on her ankle. as soon as we got indoors we got her on the couch and elevated the ankle and iced it several times that night. Yesterday we took her to the after hours medical centre, x-rays were taken, no break but they were cool and strapped it for her. Air NZ were very helpful today when we checked in and we got a wheelchair to take her to the gate (Which was just as well as they left from gate 9, which at welly airport is a hike) and they arranged another one to be there when she got off the plane at Rotorua airport.
Now although we could have gone to the game, dad wouldn’t have enjoyed himself for worrying about mum. Mum felt awful that we didn’t go, but hey it was pretty cool watching the game at home, by the fire and in good company. Even better the All Blacks won. Other than that my parents had a relaxing time and had thier every whim catered for.
So I have tried to play catch up with blogs, I think I have caught up on them. However I have this habit that when I have lots of blogs to read I open up about five blogs at a time and read them, somewhere along the way I lost a few when I did that so I can’t remember whose blog I didn’t leave a comment on, so I apologize now if yours got missed.
My parents arrive this afternoon from Tokoroa, they are flying down. In preparation for thier visit Mike and I decided to make them a little welcome basket. Mike and I like to take the mickey out of ourselves and the other night we came up for a name for our house. Chateau Nu’lan. It sounds so sophisticated (not). It is of course a play on the word Newlands. So I found some clip art, added the words and ran the paper through the xyron 510 and presto was able to re-brand the bottled water, the Guylian chocolates. I also made a little notepad with our brand. I recycled the notepad by reprinting on the other side of paper I had previously printed on. I then used a non scrapping adhesive to glue the paper to together so it looks a notepad where you rip the paper off. Looks very cool.
In other news, a belated Happy Birthday to Laura. Apologies for missing your special day. Glad you had a great day though. BTW Laura and I became friends when we ended up sleeping next to each other on the marae and every time we meet up on campus we would sleep to each other. I missed catching up with her this time round just as much as she missed me.
Now I seem to have gathered a reputation as an enabler, and of late I have been pretty quiet in that area. However I want to enable you for a good cause. Now this bit of enabling wont cost you a cent and in fact wont take too much of your time. Can you please check this site out, register and cast a vote for the Children’s Autism Foundation. It is for a good cause and wont take much of your time. Can you also please spread the word and tell at least five people. This organisation is in the running for a $15′000.00 donation, please cast a vote for them. Thanks Andrea for bringing this to my attention.
Whoo Hoot it is Wednesday again, so here is my list of Whoo Hoots.
1. My morning coffee, and thanks to Dianna this week I have been having the most amazing Almond and chocolate biscotti.
2. My new (but recycled copy of Aunt Daisy) Mum gave me her copy on Sunday. I have been wanting a copy for the handy hints, quite excited about this.
3. FInding my chalk grafitti on the garage wall after all these years.
4. Finishing the Constant Princess in the weekend, ( I want to find out more about the history of the Tudors now ).
5. Online Shopping during winter. (they deliver my groceries to the kitchen bench).
6. Knowing that my parents are coming down to Wellington for 5 days to stay with us.
7. Going to the ABs vs South Africa test on Saturday (please don’t rain).
You know the drill, if you Whoo Hoot on your blog let me know so I can visit. Don’t have time to Whoo Hoot, then leave a comment on my blog with your Whoo Hoots.
Taken from Mels Blog: The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see. 1)Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them.
01. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
02. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 03. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
04. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
05. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 06. The Bible - More so as a child and teenager 07. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
08. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
09. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot 21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen 36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwel 42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker 73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet- William Shakespeare 99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
34 for me. So okay I have read more than six books on this list but heck there are still a lot of books on that list I haven’t read. So what about you?
In response to my dads cards, to be honest I never knew he had kept them until he pulled them out to show us a particular card in relation to a conversation we were having. As for the chalk grafitti, I had forgotten all about it until I was taking photos of dads garage, funny what hits you when your taking photos.
So we popped into mum and dads for about two hours yesterday (this was so Mike could do an upgrade on their PC and set it up so next time he can remote in from home the next time they have problems. So on this quick trip home I took some photos for some potential layouts of childhood memories. These photos while they show a china cabinet full of stuff to you is a cabinet full of memories to me.
Firstly the cabinet is something mum and dad had when they were married, I think from memory it may have had legs, will check that for sure when mum and dad arrive on on Thursday. The dinner set on the second shelf, my dad bought while in Malaysia when he was serving in the army. He bought it for my Nana. When he gave it to her she was hesitant to use it because it was so nice, when mum and dad were married she gave it back to them. So it has sat in this cabinet for well over 40 years. It has been taken out from time to time and washed but it has never been used. The objects sitting on top of the saucers were actually two of the horseshoes from my mum and dads wedding. There are other things in this cabinet that have significance to me but they will be recorded on a layout.
Now this was a blast from the past, I had written a message to one of my younger brothers many years ago. Looking at this chalk message it was when a friend and I must have been bored. I had a wee giggle reading the AG 4 CL. This was when my younger brother was going out with his first proper girlfriend. Now I found this on the garage wall when I was taking photos of dads garage.
Now my parents do not read my blog but I talk on the phone once a week to them and had been telling them about the decluttering. Anyway I told them about the big biff and file of cards going back twenty years. Low and behold my dad gets out his black folder and shows me cards that he has saved from us children and mum over the years. This is one card he pulled out. From the looks of this card it could be circa 1979 or 1980.
On the way home from our quick road trip up north we had some fine patches, a touch of snow from Ohakune through to Waiouru and then rain (some of it quite heavy at times) from Bulls all the way home to Wellington. Despite the weather and the detour we made it home at a good hour. So there was no way I was getting out of the car when the outside temp was 4 degrees, so these photos were taken in the car as it was moving, pretty bad shots but still not something I see everyday.
You have to check this article out, its a beautiful story. Imagine still holding hands after 75 years of marriage. Some of us could take a leaf out of this couples book. What touched me was the husbands love for his wife when he would hitchhike to go see her each day while she was recovering from an illness in a rest home a few years ago.
Thanks for your comments in the last post. Now some of you maybe wondering why I have been a woman possessed about this decluttering. Some people including my mother seem to think I don’t have much clutter to declutter. However lets just say I was good at putting stuff in places just so they were not visible. When that failed a lot of things were dumped in the lounge and the study. Now by nature I am a place for everything kind of person and I would put things away after I had used them. During the last year and a half while studying I became lazy and would say to myself I will put that away later. But then I found excuses to not do it and then I told myself I would wait until semester break. By the time semester break came round all I wanted to do was relax and catch up with friends. So then began a cycle of closing my eyes to my clutter.
Part of the decluttering has also been part of me saying clearing space for the next part of my life over the next six months, and as well as that going back to good habits such as putting things away after using them. Because whether I decide to go back to study or not I want to avoid the build up of clutter in future. Hence implementing new habits to help with this.
Now Mike impressed his friend M last night with a home made card and even more with the two Iron Maiden cds he bought him. But what cracked me up is Mike came out of the scrap room last night and proudly professess” I burgled some of your flowers and glue dots for M’s envelope” And he had, gosh it looked mighty fine. (drats at not taking a photo of the card or the envelope). M was touched by the handmade card (Mike had printed out a photo of the birthday boy from 18 years ago, he had hair then too) and the flowers on the envelope.
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Posted by angelgurl
