high tea

we're planning a bit of a 'tea party' while watching footage of the royals tonight. the menu currently looks like this:

cream anyone?

(there are, of course, a few

foodie bits which aren't very british,

but we have to keep the boys happy)

historically, every scone i've evah made has turned out like a brick. but in honour of all things blighty, i thought i'd give them a(nother) go:

enter the fb friends' light-and-fluffy scones recipe:

PREHEAT OVEN TO 200 C FAN BAKE.

SIFT INTO BOWL:

4 c self-raising flour

pinch salt

POUR IN:

300ml cream

300ml lemonade

STIR LIGHTLY UNTIL JUST COMBINED. TIP ONTO FLOURED BENCH, SIFT A LITTLE EXTRA FLOUR OVER. GENTLY SPREAD INTO SQUARISH SHAPE. CUT CAREFULLY AND PLACE ON LINED OVEN TRAY CLOSE TOGETHER SO THEY HELP EACH OTHER RISE (apparently true). BAKE 12 MINS UNTIL GOLDEN. COOL ON BENCH. SPLIT AND SERVE WITH RASPBERRY JAM AND SOFTLY WHIPPED CREAM.

***HOHLY MOHLY!!!!!***

these have just been pronounced

the lightest-and-fluffiest-scOHnes-in-the-universe.

oh, those *sparkly* things are $2 shop light-up tiaras...

which will be compulsory wear X

refabriK8d

the pun on all words *kate* is nothing new here, but it's new at skool. 'twouldn't be a real skool hols without a wee sewing project and i'm ecstatic to say that the Recycled Eco Bag tute is half-done: well, the sewing part's complete, i just needa do ze write-up and convert it to pdf and upload it to moodle and then teach the kiddos how to access it. the bag is actually 'square' like those reusable ones ya get at the supemarket, 'cept ours is better cos it's recycling throw-out stuffs (yep, this sucker is made from an old towel, sheet, and tshirt).

it took twice as long to design and sew the logo as it did to sew the bag, which is ohk really, cos the logo is the fun part. the kids at skool have dreamed up all sorts of puns on the reduce/reuse/recycle theme, and we're all very exciiiited about saving a few more dolphins.

there's nothing like night-time photos to make something look eerie. it's pretty sunshiney and texturey when you're up close to it. i'm hoping the exemplar and tute will help the visual/kinaesthetic/unlinear souls amongst us. yeah, i'm feeling rather swirling thoughtsy.

putting a jedi mind whammy on this eternally grey weather

by making a tutorial for a RECYCLED ECO BAG for my keeds at skool... starting with "1.Take a photo of the original fabric to be recycled, in this case an old towel" and posting it here so i also put a jedi mind whammy on something-shiny-over-there:

oh, and i finally took my holiday-braids out. go the fro.

still have the black fingernails tho.

i wish i could bottle the energy and vitality and general sunshine vibes swirling around our dining table tonight.

it's ten thirty o'clock, and we've been trawling the town in search of jazz all afternoon and now the atmosphere is buzzing with laughter and alibis and yelling and bluffing and insistence of i'm-not-the-resistance-and-he/she-is-cos-he/she-said-blah-blah-thirty-seconds-ago-and-actually-you're-looking-nervous etc.

uh huh, they're supercool twenties-year-olds but they're so happy to hang with our littlies and i'm so glad they still come over in their uni hols and bring extras and and eat up all our chippies and cake and drink up all our tea.

and now the kids are scheming who to trust on the dream team and making plans to storm the castle and break the windows and play electronic crickets to annoy everybody and spray paint the toilets with dry ice..... and the daddy and grandparents are in the lounge doing cryptic crosswords, and sting is walking on the moon.

boy with book

after years and years of asterix and tintin,

you've found the cherub series.

it makes my heart sing to find you so in love.

the horse and his boy

this horse has been frolicking around

over our back fence for a couple of weeks:

yesterday, mick wangled a ride

and a chat with the girl and her horse:

floss the boss

i met floss on the internet *shock* and she turned out to be rather a kindred spirit. last summer her family didn't axe-murder us on their road trip. this summer, floss popped north again, with girlies in tow, on their way to jump off the sky tower (twice).

floss has saved my life this year, sending me all sorts of inspiration for my turning-eleven year olds' soft materials techno class. inspiration like her textile art idea: hey kids, this is a sewing machine and here's a big bunch of fabrics. let's each make a square that tells us about you and i'll sew it all up into a window frame.

this ain't looking terribly impressive here, but it's seriously cool irl. oh, i have just been informed that irl isn't used any more, you say something else like lmaotearoa.

happy 22nd wedding anni! yep, you were 11 & i was 9. i ♥ that day. i ♥ this day. i'm wearing my party dress to skool cos it looks like a wedding cake.

ticks and crosses

it's the second to last week of the skool term and we are just. so. tired. the house is a bombsite and we're all existing from one crockpot dinner to another. thank the universe for clothes dryers which, incidentally, i feel a bit unsave-the-earth-y using so much, but it seems that save-the-sanity is tipping the balance this week.

on the way home late from skool after cinderella rehearsal last nite, my kiddos were all exciiiited about the prospect of buying candy floss at skool which is the latest fundraiser for japan, and i immediately thought of bribing them a cunning plan, baldrick, which is to offer payment for stuffs - you know - the vacuuming's worth $2 and the clean out of the cutlery drawer and the nefarious bottom drawer's worth another $2 etc. yeah, i'm such a cheapsKATE, and it didn't even work cos they're just. so. tired. maybe i'll just shout the candyfloss anyway? yeah, i probably will, cos i'm a walkover nice like that.

after dinner, sir and i wound up back at skool, where he spent two hours planning three hours' teaching cos he's on a course today and his seventeen year old stats kids are drowning in scatter plots and other such brain-glazing-over stuffs. i wound up at my desk, getting increasingly depressed over all the assessments we're doing to these beautiful children, and as i was stamping foreheads with the new tiger-elephant-giraffe stamps i bought when we all went to the zoo and filled out worksheets, i heard the shawty song - and my silly switch flipped.

i grabbed an unsuspecting icecream container and whammed it on my head and michael-jackson-ed along the hallway until i reached the skool foyer where a hundred little people were grooving the night away for a fundraiser for the senior students' fiji trip. and i danced to the chorus of 'hi, miss!!!'. it was hilarious - the only dancing teacher in the room - i was a magnet for my technogirls - and they quickly formed a circle and started copying my mooooves. which was hysterical really, cos i dance like yer daddy - waving my arms randomly in the air and twirling around in circles, with the occasional attempt at 'the twist' when shawty gets low low low low (computer keeps typing 'love' instead of 'low') but it was totally the best fifty five seconds of my day.

and when i returned to my desk and depression, my heart continued to beat loudly for the next fifty five minutes while i dreamed up positive things to say to my scientists, who've had three assessments on The Living World. we've had science for less than 20 hours. yeah, an individual presentation on an organism (careful how you say that word - i tripped up on it yesterday and we all dissolved in hoots of laughter), a group presentation after the zoo visit, and the ubiquitous end of topic test. shoot me now. cos look, kids, see those eleventy billion post-its on the wall? that's all the amazing new stuffs we've learned together and no one's measuring that.

perfect rainy saturday arvo

he in his new creamy black flower shirt and

me in my lacy bootblack doctors and

visiting the art gallery on the corner and

our diaryish gaze upon hairy maclary and

a quick dasheroony into the second hand

bookshop for an auto by bob geldof and

two espressos please with a hokey pokey biscuit and

the surprisingest biscotti this side of the retrocouch and

only one begun sentence of chatmeskool and

much spoken word poetry of elizabeth and mary and

articulating lengthy sentences without his new glasses and

anti-correcting verbs preceding adverbs and

the dropped book at the fortune chocolate counter and

the girl outside the hair boutique on the strand

watching me get drenched on the way to the car.

i never thought i'd match rainy and

perfect in the same sentence.