Wow. So many photos to get through today. It's been a hectic few weeks, what with weddings and Season's Greetings and sitting babies. Busy, busy, busy. So let's see what I've been up to...
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| Day 229: Ready for Poppy Day tomorrow and Remembrance Day on Sunday. |
This is three year's worth of poppies. I didn't actually grab three poppies for myself this year. I keep them on my PC coz they brighten up the place. Remembrance Day is commemorated in Commonwealth countries, on or around the 11th of November. Except for New Zealand, which commemorates on 25 April or Anzac Day because of
reasons. And because New Zealand is super cool and marches to it's own drum!
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| Day 230: Linkin Park! |
My. First. Concert. I know, I know. It's wrong that a music lover like myself has never been to a concert before, but even though I love music, I'm not that fond of people. Especially large crowds of people. I avoid them if possible.
But turns out, a large crowd of people all bouncing and screaming because of their mutual love of music is FANTASTIC! I sang and shouted and wiggled and screamed and head-banged and I will definitely be doing this again. I will be selective. The music has to be worth the crowds. But this was definitely an experience to be repeated. So thanks to CheeseHaw for buying me a ticket and not giving me a choice in going ;)
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| Day 231: The day after. |
I was pretty pooped. And I maybe didn't want to take my Linkin Park t-shirt off. Ever.
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| Day 232: Clouds and filters. |
I can't remember if I've mentioned it, but this has been a pretty weird summer, weather wise. It's been uncharacteristically cold and wet. While we are a summer rain region, we normally (or at least for the last ten years or so) get most of our rain towards the end of summer, around April-May. But this summer began with rain and it's just determined to hang around. I don't really mind. I love rainy days, and especially since moving to a house that doesn't flood, I can just sit back and enjoy it. But I don't like the fact that three times already this summer, I have had to put my office heater on.
However, one upside to this weird weather is the gorgeous skies. Well, I mean, in Africa we often have gorgeous skies, but it does seem to be more of a daily occurrence right now. So there may be more photos of clouds and skies coming in future posts. I actually have to hold myself back. I keep telling myself, "No Nikki. Not another photo of the sky." So far, I've been listening to me. I'm good that way.
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| Day 233: Freshly baked beer bread. |
One of my specialities. There is nothing like freshly baked bread, hot from the oven.
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| Day 234: Mesmerising. |
This is the coolest thing! I bought it for myself at Lusitoland in April, and I love it so much I hung it over my bed. However, I think to get the full effect, it may be better to hang it outside, so the wind can make it do
this... See? Mesmerising.
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| Day 235: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, midnight premier with Sis! |
This just made it for the photo for 15 November. It was about 23:50 when I took this as Sis and I stood in the queue to get into the movie house. And see my t-shirt? No I wasn't lucky enough to go to Forks in 2011, but I was lucky enough to win this tee thanks to
Twitarded and
Twi_Kiwi. In fact this tee was my photo for Day 65! Obviously I
had to wear my Twitarded t-shirt to the final ever it's-all-over Twilight movie!
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I really did. As soon as I was back home I sent Lori a looooong review about what I thought via iMessage. I guess she enjoyed what I had to say because she posted it on her blog. So if you want to see my immediate, uncensored and spoilery thoughts on Breaking Dawn Part 2, go
here.
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| Day 236: Special pre-wedding Shabbat dinner for the Almost Weds |
My sister's bridesmaid, Megan, wanted to do something special for the happy couple the week before their wedding. So she threw them a pre-wedding Shabbat dinner! She cooked a three-course meal, and decorated the table in the wedding colours and everything! She went to so much work and it really was a lovely dinner.
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| Day 237: Mmmmmeat! |
When one lives by one's self, one doesn't often feel the need to cook meals. Cooking for one is just, well, boring is what it is. But every now and again one feels a need for a home cooked meal. This time I ended up having savoury mince-meat and beer bread. It was yummy.
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| Day 238: Working on the Wedding Playlist. |
The wedding was less than a week away and I was still working on the wedding playlists. But, you have to understand, I kept having to cut music! I detest cutting music!
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| Day 239: Decisions, decisions. |
I was trying to decide which colour to wear for the wedding. I walked around for the whole week like this. The final Facebook consensus was the middle one. Which is what I went with.
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| Day 240: Just another beautiful day in Africa! |
There is a short story behind this pic. A friend's young daughter had made a beeyootiful piece of artwork, which was in no way at all phallic to my perverted mind. There was a green hill and clouds and a tower. It bears repeating that this tower was in no way phallic. Anyway on my way home I was confronted with this site, which, except for the lack of a completely none-phallic tower, looked very similar to the above mentioned wondrous artwork. So I took this pic for my friend and her daughter who live in a currently wintery Canada, and needed some African sunshine.
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| Day 241: Pass/Fail. |
Ho hum. Marking exam papers. This year I gave extra marks for neatness, as I am so tired of trying to decipher hieroglyphs.
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| Day 242: Wedding gift. With sparkles! |
I have to thank Lori for helping me with this idea. I had no idea what to get my sister and Darren for their wedding gift. As they've been living together, they have all the household type goodies they might ever need and then some. Also, my budget has been very tight so that was an issue too. After chatting with Lori we eventually came up with very nice ideas for the Bridal Shower and Wedding gifts.
As I was in charge of the music for the wedding I thought why not make them CD's of all the music I put together for the wedding? I had made three playlists: A Pre-Reception Playlist, which would play for the guests while all the photographs were being taken; A Dinner Music Playlist, obviously to play during dinner; and the Main Playlist, with the first dances and all the wiggle your bum music. I even did some research on how best to put together a playlist for a wedding. It's just as well I made them CD's as most of the music didn't get played. The photographs were over sooner than anticipated thanks to the weather, so only half of the pre-reception music got played. The dinner music playlist got played twice, as eating took longer and the Main Playlist got shuffled so that only dancey music was played with very few slow dances.
Now, when compiling these playlists, I obviously had to take the bride and groom's taste in music into account. We do not always agree on what is good music, but they do both like rock so I stuck with that as far as possible. Anything that they had requested that wouldn't fit with the main playlist, I put on the pre-reception playlist. And for the dinner music, I decided to use instrumental versions of favourite rock songs. That way no-one would be tempted to jump up and head-bang during the main course. (One lovely lady said that the instrumental rock was terrible. I may or may not have made a voodoo doll that bears a striking resemblance to said lovely lady.)
Anyway, so that's what I gave them. Three CD's with all three of their playlists. The cover I made used a photo of their wedding invitation and of course I included the list of songs on each CD.
If anyone is interested, I put all the playlists online. Because I may be slightly OCD...
Pre-Reception Playlist:
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Pre+Reception+Playlist/80412828
Dinner Music:
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Wedding+Dinner+Music/79844251
Main Wedding Playlist:
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Main+Wedding+Music/79845148
(If I can figure out how to move the wedding blog posts to a separate blog for them, these playlists will be embedded there.)
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| Day 243: To commemorate the end - the only Twilight soundtrack I own on disc. The rest are all digital. |
I bought one for myself and one for Sis. I couldn't get myself one and not her. She also owns the Breaking Dawn Part 1 Soundtrack on disc. I really like this soundtrack. I reckon it might be my second favourite one of the series.
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| Day 244: Hey! Sexy laaaaaady!
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The Wedding. Finally. She posed so spontaneously for this photo but then when I reacted she laughed, so I made her make a duck-face again, and got the photo I wanted. This was taken before the ceremony. Obviously. I haven't done a post about the wedding yet, as I am waiting for the wedding photographs. Believe it or not, I did not actually have time to take photos of my own. The official wedding photographer was my sister's best friend. Apparently she took over 900 photos, 450 of which are good. I have her permission to use them in the Wedding Blog Post. But I have to get them and then wade through them...
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| Day 245: Left over wedding fairy cakes. |
I got to take a whole bunch home with me. And I tried to eat them all, honest I did. But turns out like, six cupcakes a day are my limit. And cupcakes do not last very long...
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| Day 246: New ducky. |
My latest duckquisition, thanks to Sis. Duck-On-A-Rope!
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| Day 247: Caught up on laundry. For 5 minutes. |
No sooner are you up to date with all your laundry, than you have to get out of the clothes you've been wearing all day and make more.
This is not a sight you'll see often in my house though. I am very seldom up to date with my laundry at all. Normally there are clothes spilling out of the basket and covering the floor around it.
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| Day 248: Sitting CheeseHaw's baby. |
Yep, I was on babysitting duty while they were on Honeymoon. Meet Ming, a little china doll of a kitty. My dogs were quite keen to spend time with her (not so much my cats) and they really did play with her nicely. She didn't seem at all bothered by them. But she did miss her family.
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| Day 249: I wish I could post the smell with the photo! |
Frangipani flowers. We have a tree at the museum and it smells marvelous!
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| Day 250: I made PIE! |
I did! I really did! And it was yummy! I've been wanting to make this pumpkin pie for a year, ever since I got the recipe from a twitter friend. And I finally got around to doing it. It really was delicious, and Mom and Sis agree. The men don't eat pumpkin... I just have to experiment with crusts. Mine was fine, but it could be better. So thanks E, for this lovely recipe!
The next day I also made nutella pochettes, another recipe I got from another twitter friend. These are
to-die-for. I will be making them again and I'm sure a photo of them will feature in the near future. So thanks M for that lovely recipe!
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| Day 251: Season's Greetings! |
Yep, the 1st of December is Season's Greetings in the Haw Houses. I stole this idea from the movie Santa Claus (the original one with Dudley Moore). In the movie, Season's Greetings is the official start of the festive season and it's also when Santa gets some sort of blessing from a really old elf (played by Mickey from Rocky). Anywhoodle, I liked this as it was a non-religious recognition of the beginning of festivities so I adopted it and now we do this every year. The Christmas trees get put up on Season's Greetings and the family gets together at one house to decorate and generally be festive.
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| Day 252: I'm a smurf. |
I can finally cross this off my bucket list. I have blue hair!
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| Day 253: A Piece of Forever. No really. That's what it's called... |
Gotta have some Breaking Dawn Part 2 merchandise. I have A Piece of Forever lipstick too.
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| Day 254: Paisley? |
New linen makes me happy. This is a paisley pattern right?
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| Day 255: Clearly, I don't know how to work an advent calendar. |
I bought this wooden advent calendar for myself last year. And I fail at adventing. I can't explain it, I mean there are chocolates there, waiting to be eaten to count off the days until Christmas, and I forget. Every. Day.
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| Day 256: Furbabies onna Christmas Tree. |
My babies are tree ornaments! I was so chuffed when I got the first two of these frames. It was two years ago and an old friend of mine from school was living in Canada at the time. She sent me the two frames on the sides, the one with Shilo and the other with the two cats. (She also sent me two David Usher CD's because she's AWESOME!) Then last year, after I had gotten Penny, another friend of mine gave me the middle frame as a Christmas present, so this year Penny also gets to be on the tree!
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| Day 257: Whaaat eeeez ziiiis? |
I bet none of y'all can guess ;)
Phew! That's a long post. But I hope you enjoyed. I don't know how I will post over the next few weeks, what with Christmas and all. I doubt I will post again before Christmas so to those of you who celebrate
this,
MERRY CHRISTMAS
To those of you who celebrate this,
HAPPY HANUKKAH
To those of you who celebrate something else, or don't,
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
And to all of you lovely people,
EVERYTHING THAT'S GOOD AND WONDERFUL FOR 2013!
