67/365 – GSIM with a woodburner

Hey look it’s another new category!! GROOVY STUFF I’VE MADE. Gosh anyone would think I’m having trouble getting stuck for blog ideas. Hahaha the answer to that is yes! No doubt about it, I am getting tireder every day and my brain just doesn’t seem to function properly at the moment, so every now and then I may cop out and do a GSIM. This is the only time I wont be ‘taking’ a photo on the day of my blog, but I figure that’s ok, because it’s way more important that I just keep up my 365, and I’m sure this will be interesting for my kids to look back on someday. maybe… lol.

So today – GSIM with a woodburner. My sister is a pretty keen Potter enthusiast. She lives with her husband and son and 2 dogs and a cat in this cute little rural style cottage/farmhouse that they nicknamed “The Burrow”. They are quite keen to get a big woodcarving for their front gate, so for Christmas 2011 I bought a little woodburner and had a go at a mini version for the wall of their house.

Note to self – mini woodburners are not easy to ‘carve’ with.
Second note to self – MDF is really hard and it sucks to burn. Wear a face mask.
Third note to self – Don’t attempt to do all the letters in one hit unless you want to lose feeling in your hand for 24 hours.

Other than it being time consuming, I love the way it turned out.
I purchased the Mdf wooden shape (approx 40cm long) and then sketched the lettering on freehand with a pencil, tracing over it with the woodburner and burning out the centres. It’s always so cool when you start on a project which looks like it could be heading for disaster and then suddenly you are able to salvage the pieces and it works out better than expected!!

I’m keen to have a go at a bigger version for their front gate, although I think a letter a day might be all my hands can handle 😉

66/365 – H is for Hydration

Sometimes I wonder if I might be a little too blonde. This week I learned that our “fire hydrants” are underground and on every street!! How did I not know this!??
I always thought that these symbols were weird looking M’s and that they were some special main road Dept marking. And I had no idea why they had the little blue reflectors next to them. Suddenly everything makes so much sense!!
*shakes head in amazement* oh so blonde 😦

Kind of fitting that I should learn this on a week that we are trying to rehydrate our child. If only it was as easy to plug a little human being into the mains water line 😉

65/365 – the morning after…

So very proud of the Emergency Dept in our childrens hospital, PMH. It may be because it was our first visit to an ED, but we thought it was an extremely well oiled operation. No mean feat when you have a screaming child in your arms 😉
All of the staff were kind, cheery and considerate.. I only saw one look the tiniest bit grumpy and figured she must have been on the end of her shift. One out of 30 odd ain’t bad.
We had travelled up to PMH on the recommendation of our GP after we spent 4 hrs in the afternoon trying to get a pee sample from our 20 month old. Seriously… Ever tried chasing a toddler around with a little cup before watching his every move? And what’s more, no water going in means no pee coming out. Concerned he was on his way to being dehydrated into the hospital we went. They tried to get us to feed him water with a syringe which was a bit of a disaster as he really didn’t want it and kept choking it back up. So after another 3 hrs sitting in the ED trying to catch pee with a pie dish and still no liquid going in they decided to give him a rapid fluid rehydration via nasal drip.
Well that was not a fun experience 😦 Xander had his hands wrapped up in bandages like boxing gloves so he couldn’t pull at his nose, and then they fed the tube down through his nose down into his stomach while we held him down. Poor little guy! Very unpleasant.
Thankfully then we got moved to the overnight section of the ED where it was peaceful and quiet and Xander and mummy got to ‘sleep’ in a hospital bed while they did the rehydration over 4 hrs. Daddy wasn’t supposed to stay overnight but he was so quiet sitting in the chair that the nurse pretended to not notice he was there 🙂
Morning finally came and Xander woke up quiet but alert wondering where he was and what was going on.

The morning nurse thought that because he was quiet she would take off one of his boxing gloves and that might make him happier, but we had to be careful he didn’t pull out the tube. HA! We got him down onto the floor playing with some of the toys and bam, up goes the hand to pull out the tube. Mummy caught him just in time, but as the nurse came over to re-tape his nose she wasn’t watching him so closely and bam, up goes the hand again. Thankfully she was pretty quick and while Xander had pulled it half the way out she quickly yanked it the rest of the way! Urkkk. Much quicker coming out than going in that’s for sure. Of course he seemed a bit happier after that, as you would be!! We were finally able to get a pee sample which has initially come back with the all clear but sent off for tests just in case. The docs are placing their bets on it just being a nasty virus wreaking havoc on his system, and hopefully this full rehydration will kickstart his immune system again.

Back at home his appetite is slowly starting to come back and thankfully he is happily drinking again 🙂 mummy and daddy are absolutely exhausted though!!

Praying that this is the end of the unwell saga and we never have to take him to the ED for anything worse in the future!!

Didn’t get a chance to post this last night as I was too busy doing this…. Hehe 😉

64/365 – hospital…

Quick entry tonight from phone as we are at Princess Margaret Hospital with Xander 😦
He is currently on a nasal drip Thingy being rehydrated so they can run tests. My poor little chicken. Makes my heart break.

63/365 – Huzzah for High Tea

This afternoon I was lucky to have my husband look after our poor sick little boy as I escaped for a few hours and took part in a “Mother/Daughter Hand Pampering & High Tea” Party that my sister organised.

She surprised us with a cute handmade invitation a couple of weeks ago and went all out today making delicious goodies and setting the scene with a mini nail salon.

(I took my camera along to take a few shots, but ended up frustrated that I couldn’t get more macro shots with my lens. Shall have to look into that  bit further.)

It was a bit like the blind leading the blind as none of us had any idea what we were doing (except for Holly, who really is too trendy for her own good 😉 )
The manicure begins and we figure out which way to stick on the little stickers…

Our hostess with the mostess pops a bottle of bubbly.

Champagne Cocktails… Yummy!!! Shame mine only had fruit juice in it 😦

Success! A finished French Manicure on my mum ❤

And now it’s high tea time!

My sister made an AMAZING array of delicious treats for us to eat – a pregnant woman’s heaven 🙂

Topped off with a super yummy chocolate mousse. Woooh Sugar Overload!!!

A really lovely afternoon spent with some of my favourite ladies ❤

62/365 – CSIO from Medieval England… sorta…

COOL STUFF I OWN – One Small Replica Excalibur Sword!! Purchased for our Medieval Wedding Reception as part of our cake design – “The Sword in the Stone”.
I am quite the fan of Arthurian Legends so Excalibur seemed to be the natural choice 🙂

Here are some pics from our wedding reception in 2006.
The ‘stone’ cake ended up looking NOTHING like we imagined, (sorta like a 3 tier cake covered in a bright orange blanket!!!) but it was all good fun 🙂

Instead of cutting the cake we opted to pull the Sword out of the Stone instead! It was no easy task… It was imbedded in three layers of mudcake… a bit like pulling a sword out of a stone for real!!

And then we tried to cut the cake with the sword… LOL also not an easy task! But great for a laugh and good memories!! 🙂

61/365 – sleeep…

Uh-oh!! The tiredness is kicking in. My husband just woke me from the couch. Must’ve fallen asleep about 7.30pm because the last thing I remember was love shack on glee :p
Guess I’m going to have to be a bit more pro- active with my blog when I get home from work if I want to be able to keep up this 365!!
But for now…. Sleep calls!! Kirst – over and out. 😉

60/365 – Shining stars of my week

Today is International Women’s Day and I was lucky enough to spend a portion of my evening with a group of lovely ladies who take part in the musical theatre class I teach.

I love them all so much. Each woman is totally unique and all are from such different walks of life, yet they share this one common interest which automatically bonds them like family.

They are total goofballs and we just have the MOST fun every Thursday night. No matter what kind of week or day I’ve had, they always put a smile on my dial!!

I’m a bit sad because we were missing five pretty important ladies tonight. But we were thinking of them 🙂

And the boys are hanging out for International Men’s Day when they get to have their own photoshoot 😉

59/365 – Relief

Phew… Nearly out of the ‘proverbial’ woods. On reflection it has been a pretty intense couple of weeks. (Actually, make that an intense couple of months!!) But at least with all the drama of a sick child over the past week and a half I’ve had plenty of other important things to stay focused on, rather than spend all my time stressing over what may or may not be with little jedi baby bean.

So needless to say, when this morning finally rolled around and it was time to leave for the ultrasound, suddenly I was filled with nervousness. After all of the ‘not so good’ test results my doc thought it wise to put us out of our misery by doing a checkup scan at 10 weeks instead of waiting until the 12 week mark.

The relief I felt when we could see the heartbeat on the screen was immeasurable.

The joy I felt when we saw our little 10 week old jedi bean start to wriggle around was uncontainable. 🙂

Doc was happy too, and especially happy to tell us that it is now looking like a ‘very healthy pregnancy’. Huzzah!!!! Only 2 more weeks until we’re really out of the woods – if one can ever truly be out of the woods that is 😉

From humble beginnings come great things.

58/365 – I’m Batman.

Ladies and Gentleman, THIS could be my husband. Literally. As in it ‘could’ be him in the photo. Confused? Yeah me too. Want to hear a funny story? Read ahead….

DH hops in the car this evening off the train and almost the first thing he says to me is “I know this is really weird but I think I saw a photo of me today on the internet.”
HUH!?? First I think he’s going mad. What is he talking about? There are photo’s of us every day on the internet. Secondly my brain is ticking over going “yes dear, what crazy doppelganger picture have you managed to find this time….” Then he shows me the above picture on his phone.

I stare at the picture. Then I raise one eyebrow at my husband.

“I swear THAT is ME!” he says. “I don’t know how, but that is a picture of me when I was little dressed as batman. Look, it’s the costume my mom handmade for me. I remember because it was a grey tshirt over a white long sleeved tshirt and she made a cape and these little arm things. I don’t remember how she did the logo… And look, it’s my hair and chubby cheeks and little chin from when I was little. And the photo looks exactly like the other photo I have from that time. It has to be me. I just don’t understand how it got on the internet. My mom doesn’t even know how to use a scanner!”

Umm…. hahahahahahaa!!! Where do I begin!?? Time to do some Kirstiana Jones Investigating methinks! What do we know:

1) Chris’s mom DID make him a batman costume when he was little. Was it as described?? Who knows… 30 years does a lot to screw with one’s memory. I think we need more photographic proof on this one.
2) As a little boy Chris DID have blond hair and slightly chubby cheeks. I’ve seen another picture of him dressed as a clown with almost the exactly same hairstyle. But is this actually him? He’s sure it is, but let’s be realistic. Batman wore that hood for a reason. To conceal his secret identity. So if you could tell someone’s identity by looking at their chin and cheeks do we not think this might slightly negate the purpose?
3) The photo sure looks like it is taken circa 1981, but then again so does any photo taken by instagram circa 2012.
4) How did the photo get online? My only thoughts on this are that someone saw a cute looking batman one day, snapped a happy snap, and 30 years later while digitizing old photos thought, Aha… that would be a funny caption for this kid I don’t know. Hello internet. Huzahh Viral. Yeah… it’s a long shot.
5) My husband actually does wish he was Batman. I guess that counts… for something.

There’s only one way to get to the bottom of this. Send the photo to mom in Massachusetts and ask “Is this your son?”.

Who wants to place bets? Once we’ve found out the answer I will update the post 😉

In the meantime… Always Be Batman.