New Camera

Well I have finaally bitten the bullet and brought myself a new camera. I have been researching and looking into it for ages now, even went as far as checking out the consumer report to see what they recommened. Then came the price, I decided I was going to get the best price ever! So many different websites were looked at, even over on ebay in the states to see if it was worth bringing it in.

So I brought a Panasonic DMC-FZ8, a nice little camera, well not so little, it is not a small compact, but not an SLR, I brought what is called a compact ultra zoom, personally i would not have called it compact at all, but it is what I wanted. Lots of zoom in, all the auto settings, but enough that you can play with some of the manual settings to try and get some better shots, so that will be interesting.

So where is it!!!! My camera has not arrived, I am stalking the letter box each day, waiting not so patiently for it to arrive.

Better arrive on Monday or else I might be crying!

2 Weeks

It has been two weeks since I have blogged - how naughty am I. i was trying to be good and do it at least every week!!

Below is a picture of a white headed heron that was visiting our place about a month ago, he hung around for a couple of weeks, flying in and sitting in the paddocks, or sitting on the fence posts. One of the reasons we love living where we do, wildlife you would not expect visiting.

Ralf brought home a rather large box with some of the new clothes he needed to take with him to Timor, Jade decided she should be in the box, but her head did not fit!!!
Today Jade and I went to town to do some shopping, one of the places we "had" to visit was No 1 Shoe Warehouse, buy two pairs get one pair free. These are the free ones, Jade is very stoked to finally have two dogs to look after. Oscar was not to impressed with them, they gave her a hell of a fright!!

Ralf and I went to Rock2Wellington in the weekend, fantastic! We went to the first night to see Alice Cooper, Lordi and of course KISS. What a great night, finally got to sleep around 2am, thank good Jade did not wake us till 8am. Not that it stopped me having a Nana in the afternoon, I was just to tired to stay awake and watch Shrek 3 with Jade, she did tell me that I did not snore so that was a blessing for her.

Soccer Season is starting again soon, meet and great this weekend, so it will be all on in a couple of weeks.

More from the weekend

Finished up the journalling on the following 2 layouts. The first one is from work. We decided to have dress up day for leap year, don't ask why but it became a uniform day, any uniform, no restrictions at all.
This next one needs no description - yuck.

Coolest Weekend Ever

Wow I have just had the best weekend in the world!!! Martinborough, well amend that Featherston was just fantastic.

Jo and I left Palmerston North 9am straight after dropping the kids at school. We drove down to Greytown where we stopped and shopped and had morning tea at a wonderful little cafe. Fantastic, so many cool little shops, I should change the wording in shopping, it was more window shopping, brought a couple of wee things at this art shop we found, but other than that I must admit we were so restrained! Our husbands would be pleased and relieved and proud all at the same time!!!

Then we drove down to Featherston where we had a rented out this cute little cottage for the weekend. Jo and I were greeted by this french chef who worked there, he gave us a few funny looks, Jo and I decided he must have thought we were away for a dirty weekend - ha ha, that gave us many laughs over the weekend!!

Kris and Lou arrived from Wellington to join us about an hour later. We scrapped, talked and laughed so much! Dinner was back in Greytown at a fantastic cafe where we had the hugest pizza ever!! Of course many more hours of scrapping happened that night.

We were woken the next day at 6.30am by a suicide bird, who had flown down the chimney and was scratching its nails on the inside of the chimney trying to get out!! The lack of sleep did nothing for me!!! We wentt to Martinborough for another shop and of course lunch at another wonderful cafe. For tea Kris had made a fantastic Lasagne, wonderful, went well with my Pina Colda!!

We all drove home on Sunday, very tired, but what a great weekend with such fantastic company, we are definately going to do this one again next year. Our challenge is to have done a layout about our weekend before we meet again at the end of April - This is Kris's layout!!! Yes she did it last night and sent it through, what a guilt trip!!! Very cool layout!

Now onto what we did, I do not want to hear any comments back of "is that all", just remember works of art take time (and talking). This first one, I should have scanned with a black colour behind it!! It is on white cardstock, with scalloped edges.

We had a challenge to do for the weekend, Jo brought a sketch, which we all had to do our version of it, and this is mine. I love it! Water slide fun from this school holidays, at my Mum's house in Dunedin, Jade with her cousins Bob and Quinn.

The next one is the first ever year that Jade has sat on Santa's knee for the photo, not sure why she did, but it happened, man she looks tall in this photo.

I took Jade and Nyah to Splash Planet over in Hastings for a day, I think it might have even been the last weekend of the school holidays. I cannot believe we have not been there before, it is only 2 hours away, so a bit slack on our part, will have to try and do it again next year, fantastic day in the sun.

I had also did another 3 layouts, one is of Ralf, but it is a work related one, which is not allowed to go on the net, so will just have to be in his album, the other 2 I had to finish the journalling which I have done tonight, will scan tomorrow and put up tomorrow.

19 hours to go!!

Wow only 19 hours until I am on the road to Palmerston North to pick up Jo to scrapping in Martinbourgh!!! how cool. I have just finished maaking Mac Cheese for one of our meals, packing clothes tonight, then the truck and i am all ready!!!

Jade had swimming sports today, so Ralf and I went to watch, our girl came first in the freestyle overall for her group, and then first in the breaststroke for the girls in her group, 2nd in the group for the meedly, so she was a very happy girl.

Must go, I am sure there is something to do with tomorrow I need to be thinking about!