Do you need a holiday?

Well you will need to buy a raffle ticket from me NOW and then stand in line to win one... here's the bumph....

Aaron's school is holding a Passion 4 Wheels Festival on Saturday and to help this along we are having a Winter Breakaways Competition. Each ticket costs R 10.00 and all funds raised go to school facility improvements.

First correct entry drawn receives 2 Nights Accommodation for 2 people at Makalali ***** Game Lodge which includes all meals and 2 game drives per day. (R 5000.00).

Second prize is 3 Nights Accommodation for 2 people at Three Cities Zululand Safari Lodge *** (Ubizane Wildlife Game reserve) and includes breakfast.(R 3 200.00)

Bring your ticket on the day to enter the Smart Car Balloon competition to win 2 Nights for 2 people at Relais Hotels Casa do Sol Hotel & Resort **** Hazyview which includes Breakfast (value R2000).

Additional tickets can also be purchased on the day.

All Winter Breakaways by Tourvest: Live the Journey prizes are valid until 31 October 2009 and cannot be exchanged or claimed in cash.

So now, please let me know how many tickets you want and I will keep them to one side for you. If you win I will then post it here too.

Google birthday wish

Google is wishing Mary Cassatt a happy birthday today... I presume she is an artist looking at the pic.... as I have said before I love getting surprised by Google when they change their logo for the day.

Congratulations Aaron

Well done Aaron on getting 20 merits... today he got to wear civies to school and received his certificate (a gold one!) in assembly. Wow this award sure came around quickly... at the beginning of the term he only had 3 merits and in the last week he suddenly got 7! Way to go.

And today is a much better day than when he got his last certificate... no tummy aches or rainy weather!

Early morning blessing

Now this is a definate worthwhile sight at 6am in the morning...
Aaron wakes up when I go to have bath, but instead of getting out of bed and making a noise, he now reaches for his bible and will read for up to 1/2 an hour.

It really warms my heart to see my little guy reading, but even more so to see him reading God's Word. Keep it up Aaron for many years to come.

Photoshoot

Two weeks ago we went to Jacki's shop for a photoshoot by her friend Amelia... what a fun fun day... here are just some of my photos of that day...

Outside Jacki's shop there was a vintage ride on car... Aaron loved playing in and around it

The photographers in action....

Just a few of my snaps of us having our pics taken... can't wait to see what actually came out

And so we wait.... will show you a smattering of the pics when I get them.

Ascension Day

Today commemorates the day that Jesus rose up to heaven (see Acts 1) ... and for the first time in many years I plan to go to church tonight.... our church hasn't had a service for as long as I've been a member, but our new minister, Brian, has instituted one for tonight.

Our minister raised a very interesting point on Sunday.... who gave us Ascension Day? God of course... before the government made it a public holiday and then subsequently took it away again.... so that doesn't mean that we CAN'T celebrate.

Will report back tomorrow (hopefully) on how it went.

God be with you today and in to the future.... I worship the risen Saviour.

been busy scrapping

I took a week or two off from scrapping... not intentionally mind you... just been busy being creative in other directions.... I'm looking at making Christmas goodies for a Christmas market type thing that my Mom's church is holding in November.... so now I'm looking at quilling, origami, prick and stitch and even searching cross stitch patterns for my mom...

But this weekend it was back to scrapping... oh it is nice to get my hands on my goodies again! Us girls met at Gayle's house for a good scrap afternoon and a major catch up chat session.... I did manage to do some good stuff:

This was one of the layouts from the "mega day" scrap that I went to on the 1st of May.. the only one that I've finished so far... I'm quiet happy how it turned out... slightly different from the original.... they used orange for the accents but I decided red was more suited to my pics. The weaving was interesting but not something I will do in a hurry again!

Then I tackled an easy layout... used Bo bunny easter stickers and hey presto... layout done!

My fav scrap shop, Scraptifity, is closing down... sniff sniff.... but also yippee as they are having a sale... 50% off EVERYTHING... so I've been stocking up a bit... I bought a great Cosmo Cricket paper pack... Get Happy... and have used it to do the following three layouts



The middle one is one I did on Saturday and then I did the other two yesterday. As the paper is all double sided and sooooooooooooooooo nice I didn't want to waste it, so I used the back of the middle ones as the backing for both the others... they all follow each other in the album.

And to add to my scrapping addiction I'm contemplating entering to get a place on the Scrap Shack's design team.... going to be doing lots of scrapping in the next two weeks to get my entries organised.... still trying to source the stuff I need to use though :(

Well to end on a happier note, here is a recipe for Mocha Brownies that I made for the scrap day on Saturday... everyone has raved about them.

Mocha Brownies
Lining the pan isn't busywork; it makes it easy to remove the brownies.
Prep: 15 minutes Total: 3 hours Makes 16
Ingredients
125gm unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus more for pan
1 cup all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
225gm semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs

Directions
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
Brush a 9-inch square baking pan with butter. Line bottom and two sides with a strip of parchment paper, leaving a 2-inch overhang on the two sides. Butter paper, and set pan aside.
In a small bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Place butter and chocolate in a large heat-proof bowl set over (not in) a saucepan of gently simmering water. Heat, stirring occasionally, until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes; remove bowl from pan. Add sugar; mix to combine. Add eggs, and mix to combine. Add flour mixture; mix just until moistened (do not overmix). Add instant espresso powder. Transfer batter to prepared pan; smooth top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, 50 to 60 minutes. Cool in pan for 30 minutes. Using paper overhang, lift brownies out of pan; transfer to a rack to cool completely (still on paper). On a cutting board, using a dampened serrated knife, cut into 16 squares. Store in an airtight container at room temperature, up to 2 days.

CATHY'S NOTES: I didn't line my pan... just used spray 'n cook and then butter and they came out okay. Secondly I baked them for the 60 minutes (didn't check them) and they came out hard... next time will cook them for shorter.

1000+ visits

Yahoo I EVENTUALLY got to the 1000 visits... opened my site meter report and this is what it showed...
Boy oh boy am I happy.... I've only had my blog like for OVER a year (or two)... so how come it's taken sooooooooooooo long just to reach 1000 visits??? Anyway, I sure hope that that number keeps climbing... which means you must please keep visiting.... oh and while here.... please leave me a comment or two (or more) so that I know you've been.

Mother's Day craft

I saw this project on Scrapscene and decided to check it out some more... so followed the link to the instructions and then got my thinking cap on.... baked some of my cappachino cookies... found an empty container, some pink flowers and some pink paper... and voila... mothers day present for my mom....

Mom loved it when I gave it to her on Saturday (we visited them a day early). Aaron was soooooooo taken with it that he just had to have one of the flowers too... once he got one he was fine and left it all alone... but he had been nagging about one since I put this together on Friday!

This was a nice and easy gift and something I would highly recommend making again... maybe even for a teacher's present or just because....

The first half of May

May is two weeks old and it's been pretty busy already... here's photos to show what we've been up to.

2nd of May I took Aaron to the Berario Recreation Centre to see the Fairlands Police Station open day... it was lots of fun... we saw a fire engine, fire dog, police horses, lots of police cars, Aaron got fingerprinted and even got to press the horns/sirens in both the fire engine and police car... little boy's delight!

After the lunchtime fun we went to the Train Staion in Roodepoort and got to ride on the model trains... I bought four tickets and Aaron used THREE of those... I only got one ride... but it was fine as he was really in his element here.

And to round off the afternoon, his last ride was just him and the train driver and Aaron got to "drive" himself.... lots of photo opportunities for Mommy

After I hung up washing on Sunday the 3rd, Aaron was up to his usual tricks... climbed in the laundry basket and pretended to be a rabbit... even had to be fed carrots... "ummm, what's up doc!"

A gorgeous sunset... it looked almost like the clouds were on fire

Three days later, the 6th, another beauty of a sunset.... the clouds were so wispy and all the different colours... God is a perfect artist

Thursday the 7th was Aaron's first piano lesson... he LOVED it and took off so well, even his teacher was amazed... now it's practice practice practice

Came home and tried it out on his keyboard too.

On Friday the 8th I took Aaron to the barber to get his hair sorted out.... Daddy had hacked it a few weeks before and it really looked weird... so off with it all and spikes here we come

And that's that for now... life carries on, the camera keeps clicking away and soon there will be more pics to show.