Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

Today is the last Friday for 2013!  I’ve got the music to ‘All is Calm, All is Bright’ stuck in my head so I went looking for pictures of ‘calm’ and kept coming back to one of my favourite blogs so this week all the images are from Honeycomb Creative.

The blog is by Courtney and here’s how she describes her blog:  This blog is mostly about my adventures in decorating, a passion of mine since I was a little girl. I'd describe my style as farmhouse industrial with a touch of vintage minimalism. I try to achieve this look on a budget and hope to share some of my tips and tricks for thrifty finds with you. I love things that are light and airy and strive to use neutrals in most of my decor.

I really like her home décor ideas, her use of neutrals and her budget conscious ideas.  I picked several of my favourite images from her blog for this weeks Feel Good Friday:

I don’t know about you, but these images whisper ‘calm’ to me.  My album is almost full… there’s just the back page to do and I’ve got an idea in mind for that which I’m hoping to share with you before 2014 begins.

For those of you missing the ‘Dougal updates’ aka December Daily, I’m planning on doing a big update on the last few days later on today.

Happy Friday everyone xx

Feel Good Friday

Yes I’m back again with another post!

I’m having to keep a careful eye on the calendar so that I don’t lose track of the days!

I’m seriously hoping to get my Christmas tree up and decorated today.  I’ve still got a few things to do to make room for the tree but fingers crossed there will be some serious decorating going on here later!

As I’ve been looking around the internet… and especially Pinterest I’ve discovered lots of Christmas decorating ideas that you can do at home.  If you’re looking for ideas it’s a great place to look!

Here’s my page about Christmas decorating:

I made lots of scrabble letter ornaments last year so I’m looking forward to getting them out again.  I think next year I might decorate the tree at the START of December so I can enjoy it for longer!

Happy Friday xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

Today is a significant Friday because it’s the very last one I’ll ever do at Selwyn School.  The reality of leaving is really starting to hit me and it’s a bit overwhelming at times.

Last night we had our Year 6 Leaving Ceremony and it was fantastic… I even got ‘blind-sided’ but I’ll explain more about that later when I update my December Daily project.

In the meantime I’ve come up with a page for my album dedicated to Christmas baking.  I really enjoy baking and I’m looking forward to getting into the kitchen to do some creative stuff.  I’ve found a few new recipes I want to try out like ‘Cranberry and Pistachio Shortbread’! 

Here’s something to tempt you:

Wishing you all a fantastic Friday xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

I haven’t quite made it into the realm of feeling the Christmas spirit yet but I have started ‘thinking’ about it and one of the things that always springs into my head is the smell of Christmas.  There’s the Christmas trees of course but there’s also the baking that smells divine.  I haven’t made up my mind if I’ll do a Christmas gingerbread house this year but I vividly recall the smell in my kitchen last year when the pieces of the house were baking!

I always light candles around Christmas and I often use vanilla or spiced candles… the smell is fantastic!

So I did a bit of looking around the internet and found lots of photos that actually encapsulated (there’s a big word for Friday!) the smell of Christmas and here’s what I’ve come up with:

When the girls were small we made it a family tradition to put up the Christmas tree the day after school finished for the year so there’s no yummy smells around the house at the moment… but I’m starting to really look forward to doing my Christmas decorating :)

Happy Friday everyone xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

I’m a bit late posting my Feel Good Friday this week… no excuses… just busy with writing reports at the moment.

Last Friday when I was down in Gisborne with my sister and her family I had the opportunity to watch my nephews and niece perform in the Kapahaka Festival and it was wonderful.  I was super proud of my ‘babies’ as they did their waiata and haka. 

They looked fantastic in their Kapahaka outfits and their Dad had given them each a special taonga to wear.  They were so proud of them.

This week the kids from my school were in the Rotorua Kapahaka Festival and lots of them were wearing greenstone taonga from their families. 

With all the cultural events going on lately I thought it would be a good opportunity to create a page dedicated to the special treasures connected with these events and here is what I came up with:

I hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

This week has gone so fast that I actually forgot about doing my Feel Good Friday post yesterday.  I’m currently sitting in my sisters’ lounge surrounded by the happy chatter and questions of my niece and nephew.  It’s not a bad way to spend a morning.

Last Saturday I spent the day with Krystal and we went for a walk around the man-made lake in Hamilton.  It was a beautiful walk and I was incredibly pleased to have my camera with me.  Along the way we saw tons of gorgeous water lilies so I thought they’d make a great page for my album.I hope you are all having a great weekend.  I’ll be back tomorrow with two weeks worth of Project Life… yes I’m playing the ‘catch up’ game again!

Take care xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

Another Friday has rolled around!  For some reason the idea of ‘comfort food’ really appeals to me today.  It’s not so much the chocolate etc that I want when I feel a bit down… it’s more the ‘comfort food of home cooking’.

I started having a look around the net and discovered a whole new world out there… food styling!  I wonder how come I never knew about this job before??

After tripping along a few sites I discovered some great photos that combined great food styling with home cooking and here’s what I’ve come up with: 

I’ve got a busy Friday ahead… and an admin meeting to get to at 8.15am so best I get a move on!

Happy Friday everyone xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

Last night I went out with a couple of my friends and we ended up sharing a ‘breads and dips’ platter… super yummy!  The bread was lovely and warm… some toasted and some not… and the dips were fantastic!  We happily shared everything on the platter while we had a couple of drinks and chatted away… but sharing food from a platter isn’t for everyone.

I decided to use my lovely platter experience as the prompt for this weeks page:

Quite a few years ago I was dating a lovely man and we went out for dinner.  All was going well until I ‘took’ something from his plate and ate it… he was horrified!  Apparently that is ‘not the done thing to do’… he promptly informed me that his meal was for him and mine was for me… ok I thought… no drama… I can leave his food alone.

Then we got an opportunity to go somewhere and have a platter… I wanted to see what would happen when it was something we were ‘supposed’ to share.  The platter arrived filled with the most amazing selection of breads, dips and cheeses.  He promptly picked up a little side plate and took the things he wanted to eat and left the rest of the platter alone.  I was completely dumbfounded… I’ve come from a background where we used to try each others meals when we were out so that we could see what ‘everything’ tasted like and the whole ‘not sharing’ thing was completely foreign to me.

Needless to say,  I remain a ‘sharing is caring’ type of person but I do ASK people before I simply take something off their plate!  How about you… are you a sharer?

p.s. the man is still lovely but we decided that going out for meals together isn’t much fun for either of us… he worries about going home hungry and I have to keep slapping my hand not to touch his food LOL

Wishing you a great weekend xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi Everyone :)

Yet another Friday has rolled around and this week we’ve been taking our seniors to the Aquatic Centre every day for swimming lessons.  The kids are REALLY tired at the moment but today is the last day and they’re all having their assessments done so they’re looking forward to showing off what they can do.

There’s been a huge amount of progress in just a few lessons and we’ve seen even the most reluctant swimmer becoming a lot more ‘water confident’ which is great.

Since we’ve been doing so much swimming I thought it might make a good focus for this weeks Feel Good Friday and here’s what I came up with:

Mikayla has also been looking at animals swimming and she couldn’t resist showing me this one:

Somehow I think that might be what Toby would look like from underwater LOL

Wishing you all a fantastic Friday xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

To be honest I need a bit of a Feel Good Friday this week.  It’s been a challenging week with quite a lot of worry!  On Sunday night I got a very emotional phone call from Krystal… and those of you who know my daughter know that she doesn’t ‘do’ crying.

Turns out she was feeling really awful… horrible headache, fever, chills, body aches etc.  She was rushed off to the hospital just after 10pm and I went over to be with her.  She had a multitude of tests done but there was ‘nothing conclusive’.

After several (daily) visits back to the doctor along with a multitude of tests… the poor kid is feeling like a pincushion now… it turns out that she has a rather bad dose of glandular fever! 

Then yesterday I got another call from her with a new development… her spleen is currently FOUR TIMES the normal size!  She’s a very unwell young lady and thankfully she’s coming home later this afternoon for a bit of ‘Mummy attention’ for the weekend.

Meanwhile, Mikayla shared with me a photo she’d found on the internet and I absolutely fell in love with the idea…

Basically it’s an old light bulb that’s had the ‘innards’ removed and then been turned into a mini vase… pretty darn cute if you ask me!

Sometimes that’s all it takes to get my mind working so I did a bit of ‘image googling’ and found lots of other examples and here’s what I came up with for this weeks Feel Good Friday:

I’ve found quite a few tutorials online about how to actually do this project so now I’m just waiting patiently for one of my lights to blow so I can try it out!

I hope you all have a safe, happy and healthy weekend xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)
Well it’s Friday again which means it’s time for another Feel Good Friday. 
This week we did a WHOLE SCHOOL trip to Fairy Springs to help them celebrate Save the Kiwi week.  We weren’t the only school invited and it was a pretty awesome event.
Here’s a photo and a few details from the local paper:
Hundreds of school children helped celebrate Save Kiwi Week at Rainbow Springs yesterday. Photo / Stephen Parker
School children donned beaks and helped Rainbow Springs celebrate Save Kiwi Week with a special visit.
About 800 children from Horohoro School, Kaharoa School and Selwyn Primary School gathered yesterday for a celebratory photo.
The aim was to get 1250 children, one for each of the kiwi chicks that have been raised at Kiwi Encounter and released into the wild. Wild weather on Tuesday meant the visit had to be rescheduled.
Since we’ve been talking a lot about kiwi’s at school I thought it was a good idea to ‘go with the flow’ and use some beautiful kiwi images for my album and here’s the results: My album is getting quite full now and I think it’s going to make a really nice ‘coffee table’ album to browse through.
I hope you’re all having a good week xx

Belated Feel Good Friday and a quick retreat update

Hi everyone :)

My computer is playing up big time at the moment so the Feel Good Friday didn’t make it onto the blog before I headed off to the October Retreat but it’s here now.

On Monday I spent the day in Tirau with Esther and it’s amazing how one little town can have so much to look at!  As most of you know I love plain clear glass jars and on Monday I bought the most beautiful glass vase… you’ll have to wait for my Project Life pages to see it! 

So here’s my layout dedicated to glass jars:

I saw lots of clear glass while I was in Tirau and those apothecary jars and lolly jars on pedestals seemed to be quite popular with other people as well.

Now for a quick update on the October Retreat!

It really was a wonderful weekend spent with like-minded creative ladies.  We had a lot of laughs… plenty of scrapbooking and the whole weekend just seemed to flow really well.

On Saturday afternoon our host, Mark, took our group photo outside… the weather was gorgeous all weekend:

The theme for this retreat was Halloween and Loreen made this fantastic haunted house and brought it over to share with all of us… it’s made completely out of paper!

On Saturday night we had our a bit of a dress up time and Mum got this photo of some of the ladies who went all out to look as spooky as possible!

Of course we had to get another group photo as well… there’s a few ladies missing from the photo but most of us are there!

Patricia came over with this fantastic plate of goodies… fingers, spiders and bones with a dipping sauce!

And check out these chocolate crackles (love them!!) on the spooky cake stand:

Now it’s time for me to enjoy a bit of R & R before the school holidays are over and I’m heading down to Gisborne to spend some much needed ‘Auntie Time’ with my niece and nephews!

Have a great week everyone xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

It’s definitely a ‘Feel Good’ day for me as by 3pm this afternoon the school holidays will begin!  I’m looking forward to spending some time with my family, doing creative projects and of course the Scrapbook Dreams October Retreat!

Today’s post starts off with a little trip down ‘memory lane’.  During my childhood I used to write letters to Nana (my great grandmother) and she kept EVERY one of them!  Mum showed them all to me and it was like having a little documentation of my life as a kid… what I experienced, what I thought and also what my handwriting looked like growing up.

Here’s a letter that I wrote when I was quite young… notice the use of ‘b’ and ‘d’… love it!

Dear Nana,

How are you?  I am well.  In spring the blossoms are being pink and white.  The Sinton’s are having new baby lambs and Daddy is getting cows in with how bady calves.  Our hosue is nearly finished.  It is being painteb and when we went to the zoo

Love from Shelley

Clearly I rubbed out what happened when we went to the zoo… I’d love to know what I was going to say!

Spring has definitely arrived around our house and although we don’t have any ‘bady calves’ we do have blossoms that ‘are being pink and white’ so here’s my layout dedicated to spring blossoms:

I hope you all have a wonderful Friday xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

It’s Friday again!  These weeks seem to be rolling around faster and faster… although I have to admit that today I’d rather just go back to bed and read my book.  It probably doesn’t help that it’s raining again and the idea of curling up with a good book is really appealing right now.

Most of you know how much I like vintage things so it was an easy choice for this week:

The internet really is a wonderful place to find images to use in artwork!

Wishing you all a wonderful Friday xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

Well it’s the end of yet another week… and this week we’ve had RAIN!  Poor Toby is over it completely!  Yesterday he snuggled onto the bed as small as he could trying to hide… but it’s a bit difficult to hide 32kg of dog LOL  Mikayla got home before me last night and he was most thankful to be back inside a warm, dry house.

Yesterday was actually REALLY wet… the rain was pouring down… and it was also the annual photo day at school.  Lots of the senior girls turned up with their hair straightened and they’d obviously spent ages in front of the mirror but by the time they got from their classrooms to the school their hair was wet and starting to frizz… it wouldn’t be so bad except that I know as a parent those photos stay around for a LONG time!

So here’s my layout dedicated to rain… and staying dry:

Wishing you all a great Friday  xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

This weeks Feel Good Friday is inspired by what we’re doing for writing in our classroom.  Amazingly (or not so amazing if you know children these days) there are very few kids in my class that actually know the traditional fairy tales.  I can remember Mum reading all of them to us when we were little girls and Little Red Riding Hood was one of my favourites!

I’ve been talking to my kids about Little Red Riding Hood and we’ve been looking at the characters in the story to write character descriptions.  We’ve been discussing the ‘villain’ in the story aka The Big Bad Wolf and it’s really inspired my kids to write!

They love the wolf… they love that he’s ‘sneaky and clever’… they love that he’s got so many descriptions that they can elaborate on… and they love all the new vocabulary they are using like ‘evil’ and ‘stalking’ and ‘shadowy’… typical kids!

So here’s what I’ve come up with for this weeks layout:

After work yesterday, Chris and I were discussing how great books are for promoting our language programmes at school.  Her class have been reading Roald Dahl’s BFG and they’ve made gorgeous dream jars and the boys in particular are really getting into writing narratives!

As we were talking the ideas started flowing… which totally proves the theory that two heads are better than one!  We started discussing looking at the story from the ‘other side’ and after a little bit of internet searching I found a series of books that I just had to get!

I ordered all four books through Fishpond along with this one as well:

Super impressed with their prices!  All five books (including shipping) for $46.39 (NZ dollars)

They’re going to be delivered somewhere between Sept 16 – Oct 2… I’m hoping that it’s closer to the 16th so that I’ll have them before the end of the term.

I can see my boys loving the ‘villain’ ending up being the good guy… it will probably blow their minds!

Have a great Friday everyone xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

In amongst all the other goings on this week, my class has unmoulded their hypertufa pots… and they turned out GREAT!

We didn’t have a single pot break which was awesome and the kids were really impressed with the ‘almost finished’ results.  Of course they are really keen to plant into them… but they need to fully cure which takes about another three weeks. 

In class, we’ve been thinking about some of the other things you could make with hypertufa and the ideas list keeps growing and growing.  They’re really keen to give it another go so we’ll have to see if we have time for that towards the end of the term.

In the meantime, here are some hypertufa pots and items I found on the internet:

I have to admit that those ‘face planters’ have really caught my eye… would love to have a go at them!

Have a good Friday everyone xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

If you’re a regular visitor to my blog then you’ll know that this year I’ve been doing some PD (Professional Development) in writing.  In all the years I’ve been teaching I’ve had LOADS of PD in maths and reading… mostly because that’s what a lot of primary schools seem to focus on… but I’ve never, ever had the opportunity to do writing PD.

I seem to have taken to it like a ‘duck to water’ and I’m very happy to say that my kids writing has really improved this year!

I decided to do some ‘report writing’ with them because in the past I’ve really struggled to teach this style of writing and it’s generally ended up with kids copying information from books, articles and the internet… but no more!

We’ve done a piece of report writing about ‘How bees make honey’  (Sheree will be pleased) and the kids are mostly finished now.  I thought they were doing well but when the Principal came in and read some of the reports and asked them ‘where did they copy the information from’ the kids quickly informed him that they had written their reports in ‘their own words’… he was flabbergasted because even my ‘low writers’ had done a really good piece of writing!

While he was in the room he was asking them questions about honey making and they were using words like… labour-intensive and enzymes… they even told him that basically honey is like ‘bee vomit’ because ‘the bees regurgitate the nectar to get it from the worker bees to the hive bees’… was he impressed?  TOTALLY!!  Although, I think it may have put him off eating honey on his toast for a while. LOL

So in honour of my kids writing I’ve got a page for my album all about bees and honey:

I hope we haven’t put you off honey!

Have a great Friday and wonderful weekend xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

Our school family has taken a bit of a hammering this week.  One of our teachers lost her Dad on Monday which is the second staff member ‘parent’ death we’ve had in just 4 weeks… and our 4th one this year!

On Wednesday night, one of our families lost their beautiful baby daughter after not recovering from her second heart surgery.  It’s a very sad time and we’re all feeling the effects of the losses.

I was having a look around the internet and I found some beautiful statues called the ‘Angel of Grief’.  It seems that some of them are very well photographed and, personally, I found them incredibly beautiful.

Here’s my layout for the week:

It certainly made me want to reach out to my family and tell them all how much I love them.

Wishing you a safe and happy Friday xx

Feel Good Friday

Hi everyone :)

This weeks’ layout is inspired from the quote ‘When one door closes another door opens’.

Mikayla has had a huge door open for her this week which is fantastic news for her.  It’s going to lead to more career opportunities and a lot of personal development.

I’ve been doing a bit a major amount of thinking about my career options this year too.  It’s not that I want any of the doors on my career to close… quite frankly who can afford for that to happen with jobs being as tight as they are!  I just would like to see what’s ‘behind’ a couple of doors before I make any major decisions… at this point I’d like to have a crystal ball!

So here is my layout based on the quote:

Loving the colours and vintage feel of this page… so much for new doors opening LOL

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend xx