guinea pigs are cute

and funny and incredibly dumb. They forget who you are the second the celery or carrot drops from your hand. And do they not have the most comical bottom lip you've ever seen on an animal?

2007!

Some years i design a family christmas card, like this one, to give to all and sundry and lazer print them out in bulk. But other years i'm just too idle.

This year i hadn't done anything but decided we needed a few cards to give out to the grandmas and distant aunts. Earlier this year my daughter was given a flower pressing gizmo for her birthday and i've been gleefully flattening anything that bloomed in the garden. I love unusual plants and flowers so here are my cards featuring strange and exotic hybrids that i would love to see growing in my back yard.





I'm going to enter these in Whiplash in the decoration category (or should they be gifts? - dunno) but i'm having trouble with the whiplash badge which is not appearing. Aah well, never mind, happy new year to yerall.



Ah there it is - but i had to cut and paste from one of my old posts. Hmm another of life's mysyeries.

bullshirt

In the last few months i haven't been up to much making but lately i've had a minor productive flurry. I made a new toy for stuffaduck which should appeal to anyone who's been looking for a surfin' hammerhead bear...



...and designed a bunch of promotional christmas stubby holders for Mark's company who are ocean environment specialists, because it's impossible to separate beer and the environment...



























and finally i added a fluffy bull's head to one of my old bond's t shirts (why not? - i'm in a bovine mood)

isla de encanta

On Friday we went to magical Penguin Island for a christmas party. It surely must be the enchanting island that the pixies sang about. Bird life nesting under your nose, foot-long king's skinks trying to nick your turkey and of all things ... penguins!

garden update

such beautiful things are unfolding in the garden at the moment. Even though we are in the throes of a 'thousand year drought' and only allowed to water every three days the succulents, natives and bromeliads are laughing.

And that's your blooming lot.

cow neck

I've been thinking over the last few days about something to post for this month's Whiplash comp. The 'alt craft' theme is tricky because really what qualifies as alternative these days when you can buy 'Ugly Dolls' in K Mart and fab eyeball marbles in a gift shop in Snape in the uk and then you pop over to Walberswick for some hag stones...(sorry, can't stop going on about my holiday).

So yeh, the boundaries are pretty blurred and for me the word 'alternative' was forever tainted in the early eighties when a bloke i shared a house with liked to refer to his trendy New Wave mates as 'my alternative friends'. I used to imagine they were his spare set in case the original ones couldn't come out to play.

But i have decided to post something and as this is the only thing i've made this month, this is it.


Thanks to the girls for letting me plunder their toy boxes and now the question is not whether it's alternative but whether it's craft. And as there's no 'Silly Idea' category and no skill involved this is entered in the design section.

high heel hell

Having your chillun both at full-time school is a bit like being back at school yourself. All those hundreds of other parents to negotiate means there are the same gossips and bullies and cool crowd that you're never quite part of as there were at high school. Sometimes it freaks me out to be honest, although one on one, they're all good folk so on Friday night we fronted up for the School Dance.

The theme 'Op Shop Glam' was great. Normally i don't like theme parties but this one was made for me - well, apart from the glam bit. I already had plenty of op shop frocks to choose from though and bought a pair of platform boots from St Vinnies for a buck. I hadn't worn this dress since before i had kids.



















It was a lot of fun, the band was great and the sea of froufy taffeta frocks was a sight to behold.

My feet took four days to recover - now i know why the boots were in St Vinnies.

recuerdos

Great Yarmouth is one of the Great Bastions of Tack in the uk. A seaside town with a bingo hall on the pier, a never ending mall of tacky souvenir shops down the middle and dozens of money-sucking games parlours all along the sea front. We were agog at the wonder of it.




























So now we have this Great Box of 'funny teeth' to remind us of all the fantastic things we saw and did in England.


In the north of Spain, though, it was different, i couldn't find any of the great kitch junk that fills the souvenir shops of Madrid. Eventually i realised why there were no 3D flamenco postcards or fans or fake castanets - the Basque don't consider themselves to be Spanish.














Unfortunately the basque souvenirs were a bit ordinary but these chocolate sardines cheered me up. And finally, at the airport duty free as we left, i found this fab bum-pouring bull bottle which - even better - is full of sangria.

back

oh it's hard to be back in the real world even after a mere month of floating free. We've stayed in seven different towns, visited another nine and seen 40 odd family and friends including 19 kids. Here are just some of the place names we passed driving around England.

















In England we ran the gamut of the class system and were shocked by wealthy boarding schools and the young age kids are shipped off to them, CHAVS (council house and violent), people smoking in restaurants, speeding drivers, gangs of L plate motorbike riders racing each other in traffic and nettles!
And we were awed and thrilled by thatched cottages, 1000 year old castles and accidentally spotting stonehenge in the middle of a paddock as we hacked along the M5.




























In Spain we were shocked to discover that even an international company like Europcar shuts from 1 to 4 in the afternoon for siesta and if you want to drop off a car at 1.15 you just can't. You have to park illegally and hang out in bars and cafes for 3 hours until they open.
Also we found that the Guggenheim is great and the playground outside it is even better.

anxious

It's only a week until we put our lives in the hands of the pilot of flight QF 71 to London. I never used to think about flying like that but there you go, becoming a mum has made me fearful and irrational.
A few of my other fears (some with very solid foundation) are:

a) that we're leaving the house flea ridden for our house-sitter. We treated the cat recently so the fleas have taken up residency in every part of the house that isn't the cat

b) that when we arrive in the uk it'll be 5am but 1pm for us. For their usual bedtime of 8pm the kids will have to go to bed around 12 noon. I can't see it happening

c) that we've all got worms

d) that we'll get stuffed nicked (never travelled with so many gadgets before) and

e) that we'll forget something vital we already own and have to buy another one (don't like unneccessary consumption).

And as proof (as if i need it) of how set in my ways i've become i'm taking a packet of my favourite coffee in my luggage - organic fairtrade decaf ( i know i'm a wanker but it's the only stuff i can handle these days).

So, off we go - see yers when we get back.

In the meantime here are some shots through our windows.

flat blooms

One of the presents Bon got for her birthday was a microwave flower pressing contraption which i've been having a ball with. This is her composition of a bunch of flowers we flattened. Ain't it pretty.