Project Life: Endings, Beginnings and Week 28

Hi there :)

I haven’t done a post for a little while now but I’ve had quite a lot going on lately which I’ll share with you in the next week or so.  In the meantime I’ve come to the end of my first album for the year and I’m ready to start my new one.

This is my third year of doing Project Life (I skipped 2014) and each year I’ve filled two albums and this year is no exception.  This time around I decided to do something different with my end and start pages… nothing dramatic… just different.

For the end of my first album I looked around the internet for pictures of ‘relaxation’… spa treatments, aromatherapy… candles and white towels.  I’m sure I can smell lavender too!  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

For the start of my new album (which hasn’t actually arrived yet) I’ve chosen one large image… added some text… and then broken down the photo into the various sizes to fit the pockets.  I’ve had all the photos printed at my friendly photo lab today and I’m really liking the finished effect:

So that’s the end of album #1 and the start of album #2 which brings me up to Week 28 which was July 6th to July 12th.  This was the week that Mike’s daughter Roxanne spent with us.  Here’s an overview of the week:

Mike took a couple of days off work to spend some quality time with Roxanne and we definitely enjoyed just hanging out together.  Toby loved having a new big sister to love him and Roxanne was especially good at rubbing Toby’s ears and talking sweetly to him so he was in seventh heaven!

On Tuesday night we went over to Tauranga to visit Mum and then we all went to the Flying Burrito Brothers for dinner.  Mum and I have been there before so we knew that a ‘Plato Gordo’ would be a good idea.  We got two of them and Mike and Roxanne agreed that it was awesome!  There’s lots of delicious Mexican treats to try :)  I even managed to get a photo of Mike and Roxanne together.

Here’s a close up of the start of the week:

Mike got up into the roof to check out the insulation.  He was quite intrigued with our ‘attic space’ complete with a heat lamp.  We decided to remove the ‘walls’ so that we could get an expert in to have a look and advise us on the insulation.

On Wednesday Mike had to go back to work so I took Roxanne and Krystal for a girls day out.  We went over to Bayfair and did a little shopping… including buying some new creative goodies!  After all the shopping we started looking for somewhere to have lunch but nothing really appealed to us.  In the end we headed towards home and as we drove through Te Puke we came across Molly O’Connor’s.  If you live anywhere near Te Puke we highly recommend it!  We didn’t actually sit outside because it was a bit cold on the day we went there but their open sandwiches and burgers were super delicious.

In other shopping news… I bought a new printer.  I haven’t had a printer at home for a long time and I haven’t really missed it but right now I’m working on a special project that requires the use of a scanner so it became a high priority.  The new printer is fabulous!  It prints wirelessly and most importantly it scans photos extremely well.

Roxanne and I also taste tested the new Jaffa chocolate and decided that we quite liked it.  Poor Mike didn’t get home in time so he completely missed out!

Roxanne was quite taken with the large frames I’ve got with photos of my girls in them and she was asking me about when they’d had their photos taken.  I told her that I’d done the photo shoots with the girls and she was super keen to have a photo shoot of her own so she did her hair and make up and off we went.  We actually did the photo shoot twice… Once on Friday which neither of us were happy with so we went to another park on Saturday and the photos turned out great!

Here’s my favourite photo which we’ve got framed in our family room:

Is anyone else seeing the resemblance Roxanne has to Mikayla??  When I first saw Roxanne’s photo my first thought was that she and Mikayla could pass for sisters… check this out:

These are the girls photos from Facebook and I was struck by how similar they looked… in fact they have more than just their looks in common.  They’re only three months apart in age too.  It will be super cool when they finally get to meet each other! 

Before I get myself too side-tracked here’s a close up of the second half of the week:

Roxanne and I really enjoyed doing a few things together which was just as well because her plans changed when the buses were cancelled due to the snow.  Instead of leaving on Friday night Roxanne ended up staying for the entire weekend and leaving for Wellington on Monday morning.  It was nice to have the extra time with her and we spent a bit of time in the kitchen.

I made us a tagine for dinner and Roxanne was really impressed.  I used some of the new pomegranate sauce I’d bought on one of our trips and it was excellent… absolutely packed with flavour!

On the Sunday Mike got busy changing the doors over on the fridge and it turned into quite a mission but it’s all working great now… and so much better having it open the opposite way.  He also made us a delicious lunch of toasted ciabatta bread, cheese and chorizo sausage!

I think he might have been trying to impress his daughter because on Sunday night he made his ‘world famous’ nachos for dinner and Roxanne loved them.  We even washed them down with home made margaritas.  It was a great end to our weekend.

So that was our week 28… lots of family time!  I hope you’re all having a great weekend xx