Nie Nie's Day - Silent Auction

As mentioned on my previous post, here is the auction lot I have to raise funds for Stephanie and Christian Nielson's Recovery Fun.

The auction includes 3 big bags of Haribo jelly sweets (Tangfastics, Starmix and Kiddie's Supermix) tube of Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles, tube of Maynards Fruit Gums, and one bar each of Cadbury Dairy Milk, Cadbury Crunchie, Cadbury Twirl, Cadbury Flake and Galaxy.

So start bidding away. Please bid in whole $ amounts. Let's raise as much as we can. I will pay for shipping of these items so your whole amount will go to the fund. I will close the auction on Sunday evening.

Nie Nie Day and silent auction

Designmom.com has declared this Thursday as Nie Nie Day. Many bloggers are holding silent auctions on their blogs to raise money for the Stephanie and Christian Nielson Rehab Fund. As you can imagine, the financial implication of months of hospital care in the US is immense. So I'm also going to take part in the silent auction. Tomorrow I will put items on my blog and then you can bid. How it works is this: if you want to bid you put it in the comments. So if you are the first and want to bid $1 put it in the comments. The next person who wants to bid puts in a higher bid amount. So check the comments to see what the current bid is before you bid. Only put bids of whole $ amounts. I'll leave it open until the weekend. Then I'll ship the items to you (at my expense). The winner will then send their money, by paypal, direct to the fund.

The Nielson Family

Like most bloggers, I also like to read other people's blogs. I have loads of them on my bloglines list that I follow. One blog I read belongs to a cute girl who is married and has 4 cute babies. She's LDS too and lives in Arizona but is a Provo, Utah girl (where I went to uni). Tragically a couple of weeks ago this girl and her husband were in a terrible plane accident and are on a very long road to recovery. Their family are taking care of their children. Stephanie Nielson's blog is called nienie dialogues. Have a look at their cute family. Stephanie's sister is putting updates on her blog cjanerun. Please remember Stephanie, Christian and their family in your prayers.

Bad Hair Tag

I've been tagged by Jen at A Thousand Words to show 5 bad hair pics. Well I don't have access to teenage pictures (didn't like having my pic taken anyway), so here are the best ones I have:

First let me explain that when I was a little girl my mum insisted that me and my twin sister, Claire, had our hair short. Of course we hated it. We thought we looked like boys rather than the little girls we were!! We wanted long hair like most of our friends. But oh no. We had to have it short! Once we had just had it cut and we were very upset. We were adamant that we looked like boys. My mum insisted that we didn't and almost had us convinced. My mum took us to a cafe straight from the hairdressers as a treat. We were ready to order our food when the waitress asked 'and what would you boys like'!!!!! We almost burst into tears on the spot! It didn't help that we were wearing jeans and sweaters at the time. And yes, I'm still emotionally scarred by the experience :)

In this picture I am on the left and Claire on the right with my Grandma Phyllis. I actually think the ugly brown 70's clothing detracts from the nasty hair :)


Again, I think the clothing far outshines the hair on the ugly stakes! I'm on the right, Claire on the left.



Again, Claire (left) and me (right). Yes, I'm dragging Claire into this embarrassment fest :) In fact, I think Claire's probably looked worse than mine because her hair was much thicker. She had a block fringe whereas mine was wispy and flyaway.


Here we are Christmas 1974. Although my dad wins the award for the ugly hair in this pic (and the moustache!)


This is me a couple of years ago. I was trying to grow my fringe out. Bad idea I guess :)



So now that I've totally embarrassed myself, consider yourself tagged if you haven't already had the pleasure of doing this one :)

Zach says the funniest things..........

I just have to write this before I forget it...........

Yesterday Zachary was talking about a local playground. They used to have a big basket-like swing there but it has now gone. We don't know what happened to it but we miss it because the kids loved it! Anyway he started to tell me that his friend's mum told him that the swing had gone because the 'ninjas' had taken it. I tried not to laugh, with images of 'ninjas' (brandishing swords etc) stealing a swing from a kid's playground. He was so serious and when I questioned him about the ninjas he just repeated the story to me. He was totally serious! It took me a while to figure out what had actually happened to the swing. It was in fact 'teenagers' that had taken it. Ninjas!! Just cute :)

Happy Postbox!

This past few days I've had 3 lots of 'happy post' coming through the mail box.

One and Two were swap packages from the shabby chic cafe forum that I belong to (doesn't it feel good to 'belong'!).

The first one was based on the theme 'Strawberries and Cream'. Pictures to follow as words won't do it justice. It was from Rosie B and was so fab! Well worth the wait - I hope Rosie feels well as she has some health issues, which makes the package even more special - that she still took the time to think of me and send her lovely items.

The second package was based on the theme 'Green' which is fab as I LOVE the colour green. Again I'll take pics later and put them on here. I'll just say it included a tea towel in the most magnificant shade of green - I love it so much I could marry it :)

The third item came through the post yesterday evening - which I found a little strange! What mail arrives on an evening?? Well I went and there it lay on the mat - in all its glory - the new IKEA catalog, lol!! I obvi
ously had to take it and immediately browse through it. Lots of delicious room settings and a few items that are on my wish list.

I'm loving this green rug:I'm definitely going to get this throw:
And look at these wall decoration stickers - I'm not sure what size they and whether they are all on one sheet, etc but I definitely need to go look at these!
and more:And what about this gorgeous red clock:

And this funky mirror:
And what about these sets of tins?
And what about these from the children's dept:



I think I'll leave it there for now - there's so many good stuff in there. I need to take a trip to the store soon too as they always have more in there. Once the kids go back to school...........

Summer Hols

Wow - where has the summer gone? I can't believe the kids only have next week at home before going back to school.......

So what have I been doing lately? Well watching lots of the olympics and hanging out with the boys!

I've been really impressed with the GB Olympic team! 16 gold medals so far! and just think - back in Atlanta we only won one gold!! Last time we won 11 so we have excelled ourselves and it's not over yet! The UK media are calling it the 'Great Haul of China'.

More Pics

The picture of my sisters looking at something in Helen's hand - she'd just plucked out a grey hair and they were inspecting it, lol!! She's only 26 so wasn't impressed :)

Family Weekend

Last weekend both my sisters were in town and we had a fun time together. Claire had brought both Nathaniel and Zachary's birthday presents with her - she had bought them both a complete outfit for church (shirt, tie, trousers, shoes). How cool is that??? So we took pictures of them posing in them at my mum and dad's house.

We took the kids to the park on the Saturday since it was a really sunny and warm day. So I took a few pics of the family! So enjoy! (you'll notice that I've not included any of me, hee hee - that was intentional!)

Baby Quilt

My younger sister is having a baby in the new year and so I thought it was a good excuse to make a baby quilt which I've thought about doing for a while. I'm not a seamstress in the least. And don't profess to be the most proficient of craftiest people around, although I LOVE being crafty (I'm just probably a jack of all trades, master of none!!). And since my sister isn't going to find out whether she's having a boy or girl I guess I need to make one of each to cover both bases!! I started making a baby girl quilt today. Now you should know that I like to make things up as I go along. Maybe because I can't figure out patterns and the like! So I'm probably doing it all wrong :) But anyway - I've cobbled together what is going to be the top. I need to find some fabric for the back and figure out how I'm going to finish it all off. But for now, here is a picture of it, work in progress! I took the pictures of it draped over the sewing machine which is why there is a light shining through!

Teacher Gifts

At the end of every school year I like to send gifts along with the kids for their teachers and teaching assistants. I always have in mind to make something nice and special, but of course I procrastinate and then panic. I could always just go buy something, but oh no, I couldn't do that - because in my head I have planned to make something and if I don't I feel like I've failed, even though the teachers don't know I'm planning on making something!! Well this year I made some decorated notebooks for them. It was fairly quick and easy and I like the results, so I hope they did too!! I figure they probably get quite a bit of chocolate, flowers, wine, etc so like to do something maybe a little different and hopefully useful. These pics are the result.

Sports Day

Here are some pictures of the boys at their school sports day, the week before they broke up for the summer hols. They are both very competitive and took it very seriously, unlike most of the kids in their classes, lol!!