All done

...now who to give them to?

Happy New Years

Well, I spent the last day of 2009 making plum jam, party animal that I am. (On my way out of New World I noticed everyone packing beer into their cars... and there's me with my 4 bags of sugar... "yeah bro, SUGAR high..." .)

And now the world waits with bated breath for my New Years resolution. Well ... here it is

"Tidy as I go and put things away after me". Yup. Thats me for 2010. Life changing I reckon.

HAPPY NEW YEARS !!!

oh dear

Well, now I know what the expression "only 3 cylinders firing" means. It means when your pretty run down but can manage and you struggle on the up hill climb. It must be because I was oh so pleased with myself to have changed my own spark plugs today, wondering if my car really was acting differently or was it just in my head, I checked again and I'd only reattached 3 of the plugs!!!! Gesh!

For real ?

-2 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

I must be missing the facebook tests.

I have a story that's been going around my head the last couple of days that maybe blogging will relieve.

A few years ago I was asked to a friend's brothers house to look at a wall he wanted a mural of a waterfall painted on. While I was there the brother's girlfriend piped up:

"Our cats been missing for a week now... heaps of cats and dogs have been missing around the neighbourhood. I bet its the chinese takeaways. I can tell coz the foods been tasting really yummy lately"

WHAT THE.....??

Boxing day 2

OOps. More to say. I finished my crocheted jumper lazing around on Christmas day. Yes. That's me in my garage trying to look arty in a New York alleyway turned high fashion kinda way. Yeah. I know.

And also, I made a really yummy hummus today. I thought I'd share the recipe.

Janet's mm-mm Hummus.

1 cup of chick peas soaked over night

1 tomatoe, cored

half an onion

dash of malt vinegar

2 sage leaves

2-3 teaspoons of sugar

salt and pepper.

dash of oil

Combine in a blender untill smooth. Yum!

Boxing Day

Well, our church christmas 'experience' went well. I played with my little band for 2 evenings, and my painted figures went up... against a manky old wall! haha... but no-one really cared. Everyone had fun and enjoyed the build up to the big day.

Christmas day was us nice and quiet. Just how I l ike it, and now, on Boxing day I've spent a lazy day in the sun working on my Datsun. Sorry... that should be "working" on my Datsun. Funny how the things that don't come naturally are the things that give you the most pride. Like me and bogging. Any tiny bit of bogging I do just makes me feel so good. Like "Yes! I DID do that thankyou very much".

Janet Dick, the master craftsman. Greasemonkey Janet. Yes thats me... as good as the pro's... don't wake me yet mum.. 5 more minutes....

So much for the christmas display of flowers this year. 99% of my seed-raised seedlings bit the dust. So off to the garden centre it was and now I'm gonna have more cabbages than we can eat. Oh well. It's all mulched and its almost all under control for once. There's a push to get us all gardening at the moment but personally I don't think it saves you the money they say it does. Especially after buying the slug pellets, seeds/seedlings, deris dust and not to mention the man-hours of watering each night. After 3 months of labour your lucky to get a few weeks worth of veges, and prices being what they are you may as well just purchase them. It's purely a hobbie I say. A lifestyle choice.

I wrote the book...

"Dumb things I have done in the name of christianity" by Janet Dick. Well I've done enough dumb stuff to fill a book anyway. Like when I first started reading my bible and read "You can't please God by obeying the Law", I took that to mean New Zealand road laws and purposely drove around going through red lights. I'm not making this up... I really did.
Or what about the time when I found out in my Concordance that pride is one of the worst sins.. and for not a few YEARS would grunt angrily and anyone who DARED give me a compliment. (Please give us christians a break... we have our reasons!)
What about the time I decided I would finally "commit my life to Christ", and after years of watching the youth group at church decided this meant making as big an ass of myself as I could and proceeded to signwrite in large letters on my van windows "JESUS FREAK". I'm not kidding. I got quite a few dirty looks. Mainly from other christians.
What about getting involved with a guy who was an alchoholic and drug abuser. My only thought being..."cool! this guys going to have a great testimony". Ten years later finds me the wiser.
Speaking of testimonies I would often dramatise mine. This in front of people who'd known me my whole life and knew my real testimony was: 'I was raised in a church... and then I got saved".
When I jokingly told a friend I would write a book entitled "Dumb things I have done in the name of Christianity" she visibly cringed and said "noooooo....". I won't write the book, but sorry, I just had to get it off my chest.

Clothes don't make the man.

...Or so I believe because I have so many garbs I don for different events I'm not really authentic in any of them. Like when I go to a signwriting job I'll turn up in my "I'm as good as any man" bordering on feminist ragged jeans and paint-smeared t-shirt. Or if it's a graphic design job it's my corporite-look professional trousers, blouse, make-up and all.
If there's no work I'm in my "Mum who wears pj's all day and proud of it" look and if I'm in our garden it's my "Cinderella before the fairy godmother" look. If it's church its usually a "Christians are normal too" look, dressy casual, and if it's a folk event I'm in my "my parents were hippies and so am I" look.
To save money and wardrobe space, sometimes my clothes serve a dual purpose. Proffessional and church clothes are sometimes interchangable. As are gardening and signwriting clothes. Othertimes they are accidentally worn inappropriately like when I have a bad night and wear my 'Cinderella before the fairygodmother" clothes to church. Or like last years Folk Festival when I turned up in my Professional attire which in some ways was totally inappropriate in "wanna be corporate sell out" kind of a way. But in some ways was VERY appropriate considering after a big wardrobe clearout I actually was hippy-broke at the time with nothing much else to bring.

Cut throat bandits!

I've given myself perimissin to finish reading all the books I started but havn't yet finished over the years. They're all books off the bookshelf... books collected by my father, his father and his father before him. They were all I read in high school. Victorian novels about sea adventures, detectives, pirates and more. I didn't realise how different my world view was from my class mates was untill I saw a group of them kicking a guy on the ground. I later niavely said to one of them "but you never hit a man when he's down." "Yes you do. You go hard" was the reply.
The steady stream of Folk ballads and 19th century boys adventure books I fed on in the 90's also still affects my parenting today. For example... Catherine went to bed early in disgrace tonight for stabbing holes the arm of our living room chair with a knife. I could have sent her to bed with no supper but I realise this is not actually Victorian England. Plus its probably illegal.
One of the books I'm lapping up at the moment is called "Beau Sabre" by PC Wren. It's about a guy who served in the French Foreign Legion, learnt Arabic and served as a spy in the middle East. I'm right up to the bit where he's organising a defense against enevitable holy war after saving a woman from a gang of cut throat bandits armed to the teeth. Good stuff.

I made a scarecrow!

I get

a fright every time I see him in the corner of my eye, but he's companionable otherwise :)

Flames, how cool is this?

Here are the flames I designed. She took a photo for me to use on Trade Me. They look great... and I've always had an ambition to make flames for a car and now I've done it!

wow. 16 days without facebook. And a year without a cellphone for that matter. Did you know you can actually hear birds singing in Papatoetoe? and dogs barking too. I usually travel to my bach to get solitutude and peace... but I think it's all in my head. When my dad was around I can remember lounging in the sun feeling like the world was a safe place. Did Auckland turn into a vile hell hole in ten years? nope. It's just my perception of it now. You know I actually lay in the sun on a big bale of cut grass today and SUNBATHED... for around 20 mins.. and tried to remember the last time I did that. (Would have been pre 2001 I know that ). I think I'm gonna have to make some serious new year resolutions this year end. Mostly about trust, and enjoying life.

blog, blog, blog...

Well, Catherine had her second school visit today. She was more well behaved and managed to keep on task for the whole 2 hours. The other kids were more used to her too, didn't laugh at her and instead kept her in line a bit. Literally ("Catherine! stay in line!").
I came home with a headache and spent the day lying down, checked my email and had an enquirey as to how the flame decals were coming so decided to cut them despite my head, and ended up cutting two right hand decals... waisting 2 metres of vinyl and holding up the job even longer. That's what you get for trying to do stuff with a headache I spose. I went into the garage after that and tried to self-medicate by pigging out on the chocolate in my fridge. It worked to a point. I felt alot better. Endorphins. Don't know what they do but I think theyre sposed to make you feel good.
Facebook doesn't like me at the moment. I have to log in every 5 seconds. Don't really mind. Think I should spend more time with real people... and real "friends"!!.
I've been working on christmas gifts for Dana and Teresa. Two little crocheted leprecauns. They've taken alot longer than expected. I''m also in charge of decorating one of the themed christmas trees for our church display. My theme is "angels". I wanted to make an angel out of fabric because I couldn't find any in the shops, but I've only got till Saturday and don't think I'll have time. Now I'm thinking I may just buy some silver cardboard and paint one. Hope it won't be too tacky.
Well, that's me. Felt like blogging. bye :p

Choice gift!

Is this not the coolest gift ever? Teresa's mum, Maryanne, HAND KNITTED me a bear. Yes. I said hand knitted! With fine needles and a magnifying glass. She makes them for people on request and I feel special to have my very own!

Rocket ship van

Well this is turning out to be

challenging. Friends from church have just bought themselves a van and wanted it to look like a rocket ship. The coloured one was what I first came up with. Not quite what they were wanting. Too babyish! So I've done some drawings for them to look at. I was aiming for star wars, but as a female, I'm not that good at it. A 10 year old boy could probably come up with something cooler!! In fact, we have a few boys in sunday school. Maybe I should get them involved!!

life flow...

Excuse me while I think aloud. I'm completely self absorbed, I know. I don't care. The pursuit of purpose continues. Why am I here? I still don't know. I need to find out because I'm pretty sure my purpose isn't to spend days on end fretting over what my purpose is... I'm sposed to live it out.

Well, I did me a little diagram that helped me alot. My mind is always in a million directions, and now I know why. I'm simutaneously holding about eight big 'Life-plans" in my head at one time. (There's more I'm sure, but this will do). Seeing it on paper shows me I'm spreading myself way to thin, and I'm going to need to be ruthless and chuck a few out. But which ones?? And plus I get bored easily and start dreaming up new 'big-purpose-of my life" plans all the time. Just recently I decided that life is all about what you give away, and went ahead giving everything away. Yesterday I decided that God doesn't mind me spending time on earning a living so I went ahead and designed some new decals. Then I had a strong urge to sew bags for my etsy shop, but didn't knowing that it was a whim and would pass.

Today in word for today it was quite appropriate. Message was: you do have a purpose, just keep developing your skills on a daily basis for when you time comes. I hope so, coz that I can do!!

Flames

Well,

I had a request to designs some flames for a Mitsubishi Mirage, so this is what I came up with. Even if she doesn't like any of them, I now have some more designs for my Etsy shop :)

happy birthday to me!

Well, I turned 31 today, and this morning I took Catherine in for her first School visit. The teacher was really nice to me and kept on explaining what she was doing and why.. Catherine had fun, and also got laughed at a bit because she didn't know what was expected of her, but she starts school first thing next year so she'll probably pick things pretty quickly.

I also went on a window shop today, left Catherine with Nana and had a look at a bulk fabric store in Otara, then one in Onehunga. I had a good look round and bought a humungous roll of elastic for $3!

(I've also got around to making Catherine some more nighties using the same dress pattern I made up. I will probably try and post the pattern and instructions soon)