kate5kiwis

hi, i'm katie. i make stuff.

2011-12-17T17:44:00.005+13:00

today's making-something-

from-nothing-moment:

wedge-heeled shoes,

(nine bucks in crazy sale)

gokked up with vintage

clip-on earrings

for tonight's sixties party x

veggie tales

2011-11-22T19:31:00.005+13:00

it's been ages since i made this. the last week's been a bit of a whirlwind and my head is already full of next year's plans and dreams and i really just needed a wee sunshine moment.

enter delish roasty veggieness: parsnips, red onions, carrots, pumpkin, courgettes, red + yellow capsicum, mushrooms, chick peas, cooked couscous, toasted sunflower + cumin seeds, gently layered and swished all over with lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, tsp curry powder, freshly ground salt + black pepper all snuggled up on a bed of mesclun leaves. everyone loved it. then we shared lemonydrizzled slices of woozie's delish banana cake. sunshine. all. around.

rockit man

2011-11-16T23:35:00.004+13:00

so, sam was helping set up the stage for the skool assembly today and his music teacher asked if he could play a few chords to intro a song in the rehearsal > which impromptuly turned into a guitar-and-singing-duet in front of 400 peeps.

cos that's how he rolls.

#pleasuretoteach

2011-11-13T10:25:00.012+13:00

part of Bulldog's job is to complete a final edit of skool reports. because i'm such a ~~spelling nazi~~ dediKATEd editor, we usually split the pack and trawl through it together until the wee small hours. last month i won the 'pleasure to teach' medal - that particular phrase was repeated FIVE times on an individual student's report, out of a possible six different entries. as a result i've totally sworn off that particular filler, but i think i've jinxed the universe cos really, how many different ways can ya say "Student has had a hugely successful year in Mathematics and the whole class recently got Excellences so we all had a pizza lunch..?"

this weekend i've already spent about ten hours trying to write individual comments, and i've just noticed that they're all turning into variations of:
"'Student's natural ability, coupled with hard work, has seen her achieve a huge number of successes in Mathematics this year. Student is focused and conscientious in the classroom. She sets goals and works towards them diligently, taking responsibility for her learning. Student grasps new concepts quickly, is able to articulate her mathematical processes clearly, and is a valued contributor in group situations. Congratulations on a superb year’s work."

and there's not a 'pleasure to teach' in sight! but what does it really say? arrrrrgh. and what non-generic NEXT STEPS can i suggest if she's topped the class and got 95+% on every single end-of-topic test? this process is driving me nuts, cos even after all my raving attempts to individualify the universe i find myself playing the forehead stamp game. yes, i really would like an answer, or at least a few suggestions...

friday night, it was late

2011-11-11T23:11:00.000+13:00

it's strange how friendships change. i'd like some things to always remain the same, but it seems that the constant thing about life is its changeability. when we moved to the sunny bay nine years ago, i had no idea how much would change about our world. on the home front, our kids have grown so much. one has left home and gone to university and has even got himself a job to go to in the new year. the second is in her final exams and has just applied to our local university to study teaching. she's gonna save significant pennies by staying at home during her tertiary years - oh goodie, we get to keep our resident chef. the rest of us are still at skool together - i do find it hilarious that we can't really say goodbye to homeskooling.

it's wonderful that even though peeps come and go in our lives, there are always friends we can land with for a few hours. last night saw five of us in the secret garden, sharing some early summer sunshine and sillybrating change - a year of university and new jobs, of success and all-round superhumanness.

i hope these lot stay in my life for a long time hence. x

danny is on university study break and i am 200km down the road writing skool reports and ohlookit! both of us are on facebook and now we're chatting

2011-11-10T14:48:00.000+13:00

Katie: so last night we were rudely awoken at witching hour by KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK...
and someone (or maybe both of us) mumbled "i think someone's knocking at the door.." so dad and i wandered rather drunkenly down the hall (even though we hadn't previously touched a drop) and turned on every single light before opening the door to a blonde lady who looked us up and down and 'splained:
"i'm so sorry to wake you but your letterbox is on fire..."
Danny:
Katie: so i said, "oh, i'll just get a bucket of water.." and wobbled off to the laundry but then dad insisted on finding a torch incase there was something dubious in said letterbox and it jumped out at us when we threw the water on it so it took delirious us ten mins to discover three torches... but alas! none of them had batteries in them... and i was busy having a wee kitten cos what! if! we! have! a! real! emergency! and! we! have! no! batteries! in! our! thousands! of! torches!???
Danny:

which is probably why my son is an almost-qualified-engineer and i am still procrastinating writing skool reports #somethingshinyoverthere

woozie wokstar

2011-11-05T12:18:00.007+13:00

i picked up a new wok today cos i killed my old faithful last night making something that ~~burned cos there was something shiny over there~~ was eventually named 'smouldering mexican' by this dude

(they were going to a moustache party)

the wok we found was $70 reduced to $20 and is ZIP and a heavy 30cm non-stick base and it even has a glass lid. brilliant... and comes with its own wokstar

who is making us pseudo-noodle box for lunch, sans coriander and cashews.

status update

2011-11-03T19:52:00.004+13:00

it's funny how micro-blogging seems taken over the blogiverse. so many peeps i have met through my blogging history (of more than five years! wowsers) have drifted off to facebook and/or twitter. it's funny, too, how much twaddle gets posted online these days. at last, here is the definitive guideline for what to say and where to say it:

i don't use foursquare or linkedin (yet), and after going to a brain-melting conference on social media and 21st century learning i have started uploading here again (even though blogger.com doesn't appear on the above destructions), cos it appears that we are still encouraging kiddos to blog. monkey see, monkey do.

but *ahem* today's REAL status update is: I HAVE A NEW JOB!!! YES!! I WILL HAVE MY VERY OWN BUNCH OF COOL KIDS AND MY VERY OWN CLASSROOM IN 2012!!!!! no more pushing my ~~supermarket~~ trolley 100km around skool every day. i'm just so exciiited! talk about a velveteen rabbit moment. <pops champagne>

birthday boy

2011-10-31T20:29:00.001+13:00

he's been counting down the sleeps

for the last three weeks and is oh!

so very excited to be in double digits.

garage band

2011-10-30T07:20:00.006+13:00

we cleaned out the garage again in the skool hols and took 400kg of shizzit to the tip.

nek minnit...

George and the Golden Moment

2011-10-26T18:02:00.004+13:00

Today I had one of those once-in-a-blue-moon golden moments.

Last year George (not his real name) was in my Year 8 Science class but I only saw him for one or two hours a fortnight because he has ‘learning difficulties’ (translation: he doesn’t learn the same way as the rest of the kiddos in the class) so he spends a lot of time with a teacher aide. George, being ‘on the spectrum', always laughs and lowers his eyes whenever I speak to him (even to say "Hi!" which I still do, even though he’s not in any of my classes this year).

Today I found out thirty seconds before the bell rang that a class needed to be babysat. I was given a stack of blank papers and a stack of sheets with map symbols on them. The kids were to ‘make their own map’. Uh, hello? I need a GPS to find my way home from skool.

When I arrived at the classroom (with my lunch in my hand cos I'd been sewing sparkly stuffs with kiddos at lunchtime) George was there with his teacher aide, and she miraculously turned my shoot-from-the-hip lesson into something manageable for him. Towards the end of the hour, I mooched up to George and looked in his eyes (yeah, I’m so intrusive) and told him what a fabulous map he’d drawn. He grinned, repeating my words to himself, and looked down. So I tried again. “George, what did you think of the gymnastics performance at skool assembly the other day? I saw your sister on stage and I thought she was fabulous! You have such a great sister!”

He looked me in the eyes and said,” YES I DO!!!” and I swear I felt some fairy dust sprinkled on my head. Because after school, George’s teacher aide came to find me and said that it was the first time ever that he’d responded like that.

Which goes to prove that silence isn't always golden.

traffic light curry

2011-10-25T18:31:00.004+13:00

i get teased on facebook for all my i'm-making-this-for-dinner status updates. but when you're a mama of hungry teens, food features rather frequently on your horizon. today was back-to-skool, and we all arrived home feeling like we'd been hit by a train.

enter pj's, a kids' movie, and traffic light curry. i named it myself, pfft... perfick rice, and a usual recipe refabriKATEd with additions of red capsicum + pumpkin + coriander (ooh, lookit, a maths equation).

it looks pretty delish, if i say so myself.

we want cookie!!

2011-10-23T10:37:00.009+13:00

there's a whole lotta stuff going down lately about #occupywallstreet (yeah, i'm back on twitter). i don't have any amazing new ideas to contribute to the occupy chat. in fact, not being a political animal, it took me a while to get my head around what it's all about.
yesterday, i came across a ridiculous situation with a journalist in her evening gown and a tumblr page about occupying education - and lookit!! unskoolers and classroomers are both in the same boat for once ;P
so i was thinking about how to make current events understandable to kids - and then i saw these words (but the original image offended my apostrophic sensibilities so my own kiddos collaborated with me and we made zees guy

aha, i get it now. but wait, there's more: a link to woozie's signature cookie-chip-chocolates, cos we're all about sharing the cookies (chef's tip: scr*w what the recipe says, chop up one and a half blocks of dark ghana choc instead). nom nom.

shopping bag tutorial

2011-10-22T18:02:00.000+13:00

hi, i'm katie. i make stuff.
i wrote this tutorial for a class
of 25 eleven year olds
who had met the sewing machine
and could sew a straight seam.
as soon as the more able kiddos
had done each step,
they became the experts for the others -
Kids Teaching Kids is definitely my style,
especially with a 1:25 teacher-student ratio ;)
and the best thing? re/upcycling a throw-out.

HANDY HINT:
click on each pic to open it *large* + zooooom

i am so impressed with the kids' finished bags:

and so are they :)

hello neglected little heart space

2011-10-06T16:37:00.013+13:00

today's post is brought to us by some gifted turkish bread.

cos this morning i arrived at one of the pooter rooms with thirty leetle mathematicians for a ~~play~~ computer maths session, and lo and behold there was a class in there! so i left my leetle peeps outside in the sunshine with a leetle pairs-problem-solving-game and popped inside - at which point i realised it was occupied by a senior english class (is this double english, or double scottish?) and negotiated them half the period - at which stage we'd invade.

it turns out there was an eleventh-hour-assignment going on (which i completely understand, cos there are three teens living at my place) so i took my leetle people back to our pad and gave them all a chocolate fish for being so unnerstanding.

fast forward an hour later to a shower of gifts bestowed by last period's gorgeous english teacher: lollipops, choc fishies, choc bikkies, carrot cake and TURKISH BREAD. i know. there is an abundance of love in the universe, cos yesterday's tinned spaghetti dinner option was overtaken at the last minute by takeaways.

healthy mommy award right there.

so tonight i am cooking with ~~tequila~~ extra virgin olive oil, onions, happy chicken breasts, moroccan seasoning out of a shake-it jar, an artisan pumpkin + parmesan soup sachet that i found in the fridge, a tin of delmaine chick peas that i found in the pantry.. and i shall call it 'moroccan sunshine chicken' (cos all the best recipes have 'sunshine' in their title) and it shall be eaten with turkish bread that is already topped with fetta and rosie-mary and sundried 'marrrtoes (name's mater, like TOHHH-mater) and steamed frozen beans. and there shall be candles, cos there's one more sleep and one more get up and then - there's holidays.

for today

2011-08-30T19:49:00.008+12:00

waking up in my onezie grinding my teeth

up at five thirty making moussaka and berry crumble, computing

i've been a mummy for two years longer than i've not been a mummy

juggling the steering wheel with raych's vanilla coke lip gloss

following kids all over the skool with the compasses

hey, the red arrow matches the north symbol

it's so funny, you'll fall off your chair it's so funny

kids, you're going to teach the water cycle to the class next wed

so use multiple intelligences and organise it together

would you like to do an experiment to show condensation?

gluing little sparkles to textile arts and rescuing the aims kids

pulling the knife out of his back while eating matching tortillas

emailing katikati to sort the unenrolled tech student

travelling home alone, without the usual learner driver

falling asleep with a glass of red and jason bourne

popping a little blister at the back of my mouth

clarinet sounds from mick's room and his question:

why do you guys have exams?

sam simultaneously singing it's ok, it's ok, it's okayyyyy

his rich tenor breaking with falsetto soprano

charlie's alternate universe convo about n factorial times r

vanilla custard and there are nuts in this, mummy

i think i'm taking life way too seriously.

plastic fantastic

2011-07-15T11:30:00.006+12:00

there are 28 tutor classes at skool - each with thirty pre-teens to late teens in them. yesterday we all had a day out of classes and had an inter-house competition which included wearable arts, tug of war, and house singing.

for the 'arts, each class had to create two outfits out of recycled recyclables - paper, plastic, cans, etc. woozie masterminded a wedding set - inspired by the royals -

made from ironed plastic

sunshiney supermarché bags -

oh how we do love making stuff from rubbish.

there were loads and loads of wonderful creations,

but *drum roll*

woozie's outfit WON!!!

ah, skool's out. au revoir strings of pearls from glassons. bonjour black nail polish from paris.

2011-07-14T15:20:00.002+12:00

take this down, smee

2011-07-13T18:21:00.007+12:00

today's absolutely delish chicken lasagne
quickly captured for ze recipe collection:

(The Weekend Before) Harry Potter and the Deathly Fellows Part 2

2011-07-12T18:25:00.008+12:00

what did ya do in the weekend? oh, we magicked four Death Eater Cloaks for four gorgeous teens who have MIDNIGHT TICKETS for the opening screening of the movie of the year. they're going as Snape, Lucius, Narcissa, and Bellatrix, and there has been much wand airbrushing and mask painting and general shouts of "accio stuffs"...

magicking the tape measure into a cutting edge stick.

we don't do patterns, oh no! we do quadrilaterals.

snipping robe pieces

Narcissa warms up her wand

the silver sniffery

woah. lookin' forty.

and what the heck is that extra tyre doing there?

a little extra from ~~Professor Trelawney~~

Madame Malkin's couturians

artiste at work

monkey + cheese.

these babies have 3.5 - 4 metres of fabric in every swish

Bellatrix gets her face on

(in the last pic i took of these two

they were playing dress ups too!)

homey in the hood

fave pretty pic X

‎[interrupting] Will you shut up and listen to me!

Shut down all the garbage smashers

on the detention level, will ya?

Do you copy? Shut down all the garbage smashers

on the detention level!

Shut down all the garbage mashers

on the detention level!

The Psychedelic Mystery of Benny Factor and the Cast of Groovy Characters

2011-06-18T19:47:00.015+12:00

my babygirl just turned 18 - her daddy wrote a 'host a murder' mystery for her birthday party - it's like a real live cluedo where peeps are written into characters and they arrive and have to discover whodunnit - it was totally groovy - danny did a 24 hour road trip to "sow the seeds of doubt, dude...." and kennyyyyy got his groove on - it does help that he's taught these kids for the last five years - they were hilarious -

welcome to The Commune of Astral Love

Lee Dingman (actor), random hippie photo bomber dude,

Colm Ryter (journo), Anne Bishus (cross-dressing secretary)

fab five

sammo with Ed Strong (2IC of Factor Industries) and Phil O'Krapp (politician)

Lucy Skye-Diamond and Max Factor (wife of the deceased)

Cos McJive (artiste) and Lucy do a spot of yoga in the Astral Lounge

charlie + little sister aka Cami Soul (model)

the hippie dudes

Colm + Cami

Swami Salami throws them off the scent

the exquisite Lucy Sparkles

seb and sammo

gettin' their groove on to some zep

sneaky pic of gorgeousness

she asked for a barbie doll cake with an icecream skirt

the sisterhood/brotherhood of the travelling cigarette

aka Sue Prano, Anne Bishus + L.S.D.

one of many hilarious moments

peace out, dudes X

(yes i am deffo wearing SHORTS under that dress)

fgm

2011-06-11T13:11:00.002+12:00

hi, i'm katie. i make stuff.

2011-06-06T17:23:00.005+12:00

it's been a whole year since i started teaching part time. i think (after the epic four months that was cinderella) i'm coming up for air. we've just had a loooong weekend complete with skool ball (totally magical), and instead of marking maths/science tests, i found a little moment to *make stuff*. and i even coerced fab fullahs

to *make stuff* with me.

i've been thinking about recovering the dining chairs for quite a while now - they've already had one resurrection ten or fifteen years ago - i got some more old curtain samples the other day and voilà - le transformation:

uh huh, each one is unique

but actually, in the daylight, the blue links them all to each other, a bit like a family, yeah.

those flowers are for me'n'him X

backstage at the enchanted dress rehearsal

2011-05-24T16:51:00.001+12:00

backstage at the dress rehearsal -

Butler, Prince, Fairy Godmother, Stepsister

(dress designed and made by Raych!!)

Raych with her fave choir-mistress,

our extremely talented Musical Director

high tea

2011-04-29T13:36:00.011+12:00

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

2011-04-28T21:12:00.006+12:00

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

2011-04-27T15:34:00.004+12:00

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.

2011-04-24T22:30:00.001+12:00

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

2011-04-20T09:38:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-18T09:16:00.001+12:00

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

2011-04-16T08:47:00.004+12:00

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.

2011-04-15T06:00:00.001+12:00

ticks and crosses

2011-04-07T05:59:00.006+12:00

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

2011-04-02T17:51:00.017+13:00

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.

chocklit button panKATEs

2011-03-08T21:09:00.003+13:00

yep, it's our first evah

shrove tuesday attempt...
so easy peasy

and they went down rather well X

a little bleagh-onto-the-screen moment aka the once-was-blogger uploads her flip-top head

2011-02-28T18:29:00.017+13:00

cos BAM!!! five weeks ago, skool started. so this year i'm working half time + one hour, which is perfickly perfect for Keeping Skool @ Skool (it's the new mantra). but ooooof, two kids have three nights a week in rehearsals + sunday morning orchestra rehearsal for the skool show + mummy/woozie are making costumes, there is a piano lesson, a clarinet lesson, a volleyball game, manchoir, iconz nite, two skool meetings for BD, a golf nite, large piles of undone homework, an impending basketball game, and since skool started we've spent three weekends doing the pack-up-and-travel. mmm, BD's beloved pop has passed away, and my dahling bro-and-sis-and-still-in-tummy-bubba have been here!!!!! so our emotions have been all over the show. i must've been clenching my teeth in my sleep cos now one jaw hinge feels like it has arthritis. and i have hayfever. yep, me 'ead's 'angin' awf. and i have about 200 photos to upload.

ha, as i type, there is a pretty little french convo going on between charlie and woozie!

we did get to the supermarché tonight though, which is a good thing, cos apparently ya can't survive on just banana cake all day. and i made a super-boring happy chicken-and-frozen-veggie stir fry on basmati rice for dins, and everyone loved it. ah, so easy to please. and today i also made a super-de-dooper phil de blancs thing for my maths kiddos tomoz, cos they need a wee chat about subtraction with regrouping. and although the skool computers are still driving me bonkers cos they keep disappearing kids stuffs, the fabric kiddos are totally fabby, and my science kiddos are remembering all their vocab words cos they made up a very cool rap about MRSCGREN, and also i have little white daisy stickers on my toenails. so the glass is actually pretty half full. but the wine glass isn't, cos we did the FebFast.

phew, head uploaded X

flashbacks

2011-01-24T21:01:00.012+13:00

i've known fleur for nearly thirty years. we met in skool, and shared our teenage years together. now our kids are teens. this summer, famille fleur ventured to NZ and our two families spent new year's week sleeping marae-styles at our place. even though we see each other only once a year or two, our kiddos have an instant connection, which is pretty amazing, and makes me so happy. these few escapades were captured on fleur's daughter's vintage camera.

these are our kids! and lookit, they're so grown up. their freshness and zest for living make me go all gooey. it's an amazing and wonderful thing to have such beautiful people in our lives, sharing the same sorta antics we used to share. i have that circle of life song from the lion king playing cheesily in my head, but really, i am so blessed.

beautiful bessie

2011-01-17T18:57:00.003+13:00

skwoozle did another photo shoot late last year for fabulous margot of the exquisite hair pretties - she sent some pics through today.

the holly holidays

2011-01-16T23:35:00.010+13:00

we've actually had

a wonderful

summer hols so far -

with lots of peeps

to stay

and lots of peeps

to visit -

these pics are

from yesterday

in the sunshine -

i confess

i saw

a teensy bit

too much sun -

i'm a bit pinky today -

but we all had a brilliant connection with the cuzzies.

katie has a new camera. it's only a canon point-and-shoot, but katie thinks it beats random pxts. so she spent five mins pointing and shooting.

2011-01-07T21:03:00.006+13:00

oooh, lookit. something shiny over there.

i think that my mousey has the most exquisite hair colour in the entire universe.

beautiful raych pulled all sorts of funny faces and then she got the giggles.

this is my view of the world most mornings.

the girl. has chopped. her tresses.

2010-11-20T16:07:00.002+13:00

i remember doing the exact same thing at the same age. except at that age mine had less curl so i looked like princess diana, who was still lady diana.

"i'd like to thank my mother, the op shop, doctor marten, the von trapps, and my auntie..."

2010-11-08T13:00:00.011+13:00

total hilarity at skool this morning:

cos it was the last skool assembly for the year 13 students whose study leave starts this wednesday. they presented the usual certifiKATEs for all of the volunteer students and they'd made a fabulous video of their year group (complete with Mr P's globe jokes and the march of the penguins on the pool diving board).

the *surprise* for me were the TEACHERS AWARDS. there were about eight awards, and i managed to get a nomination for MISS ORIGINALITY and then....

(((drum roll)))

i took out the award for MOST CREATIVE DRESSER!!! so i blushed and clomped across stage in my ten year old disco ball heels and the black lace skirt my auntie picked up from a garage sale a week ago (suz i also have our bracelet on!!!) the most hilarious thing is that i don't even teach these kiddos - i am just their sub - and a hanger-on to Sir's arm for all the functions he goes to. i won a teeny silver cup. i wanna swap it for the gawdy dolly that someone else won lol.

but wait, there's more...

Sir won himself a spiderman watch for MISTER PUNCTUALITY to help him get to class on time.

pink marshmallows

2010-11-06T18:12:00.003+13:00

oh boy i really want a replacement camera. some kids (not these kids) at skool wrecked the last one while taking pics of a class party. this pinkypic was taken the other week when i was ~~marshmallowing~~ marshalling (yeah that's me in the h'official looking orange vest) on the P!NK walk cos we had a hilarious moment when they *SQUEAL!!!!!* found me. i thought of an ingenious scheme to rescue the pic from fb cos no, i won't accept any friend requests from the little people lol.

me, three mathematicians, a scientist,
and a couple of extras.

and also worth mentioning - i am the Mathematician Extraordinaire. YEAH SERIOUSLY!!!!! i *TAUGHT* year 10 maths yesterday!!! yup, i wrote my notes on the board (don’t panic, i used the text book lol) and i even explained shizzit to the kiddos on the hop!!! and then i showed them axis of awesome (because axis is a maths word, you know) on youtube.

and now it's the weekend. this morning we grabbed our beautiful talented pre-exammy kiddos and headed to the beach where we walked and splashed and walked and then we even got maccas. it was perfect. i have the pics in my head.

planted in garden:

2010-10-25T12:15:00.000+13:00

aubergine, basil, capsicum, celery, chives, corn, parsley, spinach, thyme, tomatoes, zucchini. actually, Bulldog did the whole lot. i just put it in alphabetical order and sprinkled the slug slam.

peace out chicken

2010-10-18T22:23:00.004+13:00

saturday nite found us in the big smoke:
wishing love and peace and
a hippy happy birthday to
titania, queen of the fairies!
my dahling mel!!!

and dancing the night away with sir,
who is my favourite dance
partner of all time.
cos he never minds that i just twirl
around and around in circles
while he moves like michael jackson.

in which i thought that something was doomed, but it turned out amazing

2010-10-14T18:14:00.003+13:00

chicken and veggie stir fry for six:

slice an onion lengthways and gently sautée in olive oil, cover with lid to finish steaming.
slice 6 happy boneless skinless chicken thighs (= $1 a person for meat and it's so easy) into thin strips and sautée with the onion until almost cooked.
add a maggi butter chicken sachet/water that ya found in the pantry.
squirt in some ginger from the tube, squeeze in half a lemon, sprinkle over a spoonful of raw sugar.
simmer gently 5 mins, cover until nearly ready to serve.

rinse and slice:
celery (diagon alley)
carrots (super thin using edge of grater)
half a cauliflower from granny and geed
one red red red capsicum
asparagus also from granny and geed
button mushrooms (quarters)
until they fill up an entire stock pot.

rinse and bring to boil 2 1/2 c basmati rice. when the rice lid is on, sort of gently steam veggies, trying to stir occasionally. turn on and off and place lid on and off about four times as ya wonder whether they've cooked enough to take that crispyness away but still be al dente.

when rice is cooked, quickly reheat chicken yummies.
spoon rice into big square bowls. spoon over the luscious spring veggies. spoon over the chicken yummies. that's a lot of spooning.
rescue mushroom and asparagus reofferings from the littlest peeps and EAT IT ALL UP.
~~five~~ six stars X

scruffles

2010-10-13T19:18:00.012+13:00

well, the skool term started with a bang! on monday and i had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. i think it was because my maths class was cancelled and then i taught two surprise classes, one of which was fabby, and the other exhaustingly stink. what is WITH some kiddos' complete REFUSAL to be nice to any teacher who is not wielding the RED PEN? cos i noticed a nutso thing last term: some of my leetle kiddos respond so differently to me as a teacher when they're in "my" classes, than when they're in a class that i'm babysitting. but on monday: hey big kids, we could actually have some fun this hour, but you are being ridiculously rude and disrespectful, and so i am forced to play the power game. nasty precious. and it makes me wonder, what am i doing this for?

but then yesterday and today happened and they were beautiful stars-aligned-days. well, i completely ballsed up one relief lesson cos i got the classroom AND instructions wrong, but the kids had such a cool buzz that they just rolled with it. my "real" classes were absy fabsy and made me think that i might just be remembering how to teach after all. those leetle kids all got caught up in moments of learning and inspiring each other and i could've clapped my hands for the fairies.

and hey, there was love in the universe... one kiddo said, "ooooh, miss, i LOVE your dress! do you think i could borrow it?" and another said, later, "miss! i LOVE the flower in your hair. i think you should give it to me!" yeah, it seems that lollies aren't enough. but the funny-bone-tickle of the day was when one of the kids announced something about the planet mercury and i exclaimed how happy i am about learning a new thing every day, even now that i'm 76! and then i overheard a lad saying, "oh pffft, she's only THIRTY..."

fave new dress, from ~~trelise cooper~~ cheapy-temt-shop.

it has gorgeously crocheted ruffled lace capped sleeves

(woah, descriptor overload)

which are hidden by The Ubiquitous Black Cardy.

DISCLAIMER: the self portrait is
an ode to last october.

and in hindsight, the ONE dress OCTOBER

is too funny, cos this year i've worn
my boots and a black cardy
EVERY DAY FOR THE LAST FOUR MONTHS X

it's good to come home now and then ay bro... eat some ice-creams... do some bombs...

2010-10-08T10:02:00.011+13:00

this is our latest fave: (press play)

cos *wheeeee!!!* we're on the downhill slide of TWO WHOLE WEEKS of skool hols. hoo boy. it's been so grand. i feel like we're homeskooling again, without the skooling part. there's been candles lit. saucers with the espresso cups. loads of laughs. old friends. new friends. people we adore. parties. cleanouts. beach daze. lazy dinners. mountain climbing. stories read. wii played. mountains of whiteware delivered. mould anti-moulded. lego played. cupboards sorted. ice creams eaten. just waiting for a little more heat arrival before the bombs. and oh, my camera's broken, so all i have are the party pics, stolen from various fb albums.

grutty's pre-bash fiftieth bash:

becks's outrageous fortune partay:

i know, i really need to upload some pics of katie-does-the-dishes, or katie-reads-stories-to-her-bubbas, or katie-weeds-the-garden.

but it might spoil my reputation.

in the awww files

2010-09-18T11:45:00.004+12:00

recently-scanned pic from a family'n'friends holiday in whanga 1997 - it's a where's wally moment - three of our kiddos are here - i was pregs with sammy. the kid in the sunglasses just turned twenty four and there are three now-looking-down-the-barrel-at-21 year olds... wowsers brucie.
and this is the month's fave kiddo pic that i snapped on raych's phone a couple of weeks ago just as danny was about to hop in rasputin and travel back to the big smoke. rasputin who is now lazarus. c'est la vie. mick in this pic is a year older than danny was in the first pic. ok, i'll stop with the maths now.

slow food

2010-09-16T20:42:00.003+12:00

so what’s keeping the wheels turning lately is doing the washing at night and biffing stuffs into the slow cooker in the morning. when “i dunno what to do… I dunno what to do…” (guess the movie line) i use a maggi sachet – i know, it’s not quite au naturel but it’s just so easy peasy. today's epic comfortfoodyness: take one bolar roast from a happy moo, defrost on the bench overnight. sear it on all sides in a swoosh of hot olive oil (and forget to wipe up splatters on the bench). pop into slow cooker. open a sachet of ‘maggi beef provençale’ (yeah, i’m a little unconventional – had run out of gravy options), tip sachet contents into a cup and fill to the nearly-brim with two-day-old ngatarawa stables merlot (how that had escaped the eyeballs i do not know). stir, pour over the meatygoodness. quarter a few medium sized pohtaytohs lengthways, sprinkle with ‘tuscan seasoning’ (from a jar = more inorganic naughtyness) and toss them in a little extra olive oil. throw the taters preciouses into the slow cooker so they can snuggle around the meat. wham on lid. cook on low power all day whilst entertaining a hundred and fifty kiddos at skool. arrive home to aromatic deliciousness. scare up some frozen veggies and persuade hubby to assemble it all artfully on plates. eat piggy dins styles whilst watching the weather peeps tell us that a huuuuge storm – the size of austraaaaaalia – is about to descend on leetle en zed. chase kiddos into showers and pop the washing on... X

(nota bene: if/when ya do an onions, meat, mushrooms, tomatoes stroganoff thang: always soften onions in olive oil first. throw all into slow cooker and keep the mushrooms whole otherwise they will shrivel. cook on low eight to ten hours. be careful not to drown it in too much liquid. practice makes ~~perfect~~ delish.)

uh, last term i was told off for not putting science shizzit away, and this term i've just been told off for putting science shizzit away.

2010-09-14T16:23:00.006+12:00

see, this is the whole unscientist thing. after the first hairy scary science experiment when i was busy congratulating self for not setting any walls or kids alight, we left unfortunate shizzit in the sink cos i got my timing all wrong and had to rush the kids out of the lab without my newest trick of offering a *prize* for the tidiest area. but now the kids are so keen to get that prize, they're putting EVERYTHING away, including hot tripods fresh off the bunsen burners.
so there are now four holey plastic tote trays. (and a Big Fat Email Sent Out To All Teachers)
HOLY TOTE TRAYS, BATMAN.
oops, my bad.
betcha i know who won't be offered any science classes next year... the glass beaker is half full, my friend.

suffoKATEd

2010-09-06T17:09:00.005+12:00

i am finding myself becoming a bit negative. i think i'm being affected by classroom politics: the separating of teacher from learner, the unspoken vibe that pits child against adult, and vice versa, and i'm coming home feeling a bit 'kidded out'. all day i'm managing thirty little people hour by blessed hour, trying to keep the peace and keep learning at the centre of it. how ridiculous! learning happens all the time. but oh, we have another test next week. my philosophy of life is clashing badly with the space i've found myself in. what to do?

and life in our own house suddenly seems too loud. i'm finding myself seeking solace in nutty things like ironing. which is a crazy statement in itself. i adore these peeps i'm walking with. our usual vibe is being dampened by my exhaustion. the weekend arrives and i just wanna crawl into a cave.

we did escape to the beach yesterday. me'n' my five kiddos, on danny's last holiday day with us. everyone spread out and went adventuring, jumping off rocks and clinging to cliffs above the crashing surf. my heart stopped once or twice. but it did put the ensuing exams into perspective, for an hour.

so i'm thinking about the possibility of pursuing a full time job next year, or not: will one lot of kiddos and one classroom be easier than four (or fourteen some weeks)? can i really be true to my hippie self (yeah, the kids are still asking)? will i have some niceness left over for my own beautiful people, or will it all get sucked out by some passing dementor?

like a record baby round round

2010-09-01T21:45:00.002+12:00

ah september the first
here you are again with your
tantalising scents of sultry sands
just behind that waking dream i
plop my michelin manness
upon the white elephant and
pedal pedal pedal
in hopes of whittling winter from
my waist counting revolutions
resolving to turn wine back
into water while twee
lines form in my head
memories of my baby's first
21 septembers and fozzie bear
laughs laughs laughs
at the morning radio chorus
lightening blue peeps in
whisked back window organza
the magic minute finally appears
we sleepily swap places you
on the bike and i in the sheets
and i notice a big jumble of
shoes shoes shoes
all over my wardrobe floor
which is strange cos i've worn my
docs every single day.

how to cook perfect rice every time a coconut

2010-08-23T17:42:00.005+12:00

mmm, i have been agonising over this for the last few years, because all-of-a-sudden, the method that i learned in my childhood seemed suddenly not to work, and gluggy rice is such a turn off. it's like the word 'poultice': guaranteed to make you shudder.

it turns out that there is a secret (which my mother told me last month) to nicey ricey, which is that you must start with good quality basmati rice. same old stoooory: what you pay for is what you get. aha, i shall be gifting my cheap'n'nasty old stuff to freerice (that's a joke, cos freerice is a vocabulary/grammar/art/maths website that donates rice for every free answer you give it. so yeah, 350 grains from me are currently fighting world hunger. i tried the french quiz.)

right, let's be having the five easy steps:
1. measure rice (2.5 cups for six hungry people) into large heavy-based pot. rinse and rinse and rinse the rice until the water runs clear. my mother's voice in my head is saying, "the chinese wash their rice nine times..."

2. now pour enough water onto the rice until it measures about two fingers above the level of rice when you lie your hand on top of the rice. easy to show, difficult to write.

3. bring to a furious boil, and evaporate the water (i finally know the scientific explanation for evaporation. ha!) until little 'tunnels' appear on the surface and the water only makes bubbles. try it. you'll see.

4. WHANG the lid on tightly, turn off the gas, and DO NOT TOUCH it for 25 mins (the steam/water is magically cooking the rice: don't let it escape!)

5. after 25 minutes, you may now lift the lid and peek in. and you'll find perfectly fluffy rice. but probably no coconut.

mathematical equation

2010-08-21T09:43:00.002+12:00

outside = rain + rain + rain
inside = pjs + plummy candle + alphabet soup + phanny mcnee (small 'c')(big 'p')

that's my kind of algebra. oh, and the science lesson went surprisingly well. it's just so freaky learning something yourself one week and teaching it the next while being observed by someone who's been teaching it for thirty years. i got stage fright when one of the kids asked a question. blank brain, the whole deal. had to bluff it. grey hair, anti jinx.

i am your density

2010-08-19T17:10:00.002+12:00

uh, was trying to resist vino and pohtaytohs so have found a little shot of liqueur and beans with butter and pretend pohtaytohs and roasted chook from the slow cooker instead. shoot me now, i have a Real Scientist observing me teach unscience tomoz. breathe, just breathe.

oopsy daisies

2010-08-18T18:24:00.004+12:00

today was hilarious cos i was in sir's office gobbling an early lunch and chatting away and another teacher came in and we were all yakking and then she said, it's period 3 eh, and sir looked at me and said, you know you're teaching period 3?? and i WAS!!! but i had thought i was teaching period 4 cos sir had given me an extra class period 5 and it had thrown my calculations out (that's my story and i'm sticking to it. blonde unmathematician). so i grabbed my trolley (yes, a trolley) and sprinted over to the classroom and thankfully another lovely angel teacher was with them - doing maths all beautifully - in absolute silence. five mins later i had apologised to the kiddos for my blondeness and we were all back to our usual noisy chatty selves.

oh but i think i need a volume control miracle... i have no idea how to keep a classroom quiet (apart from all that nasty threatening power-control stuffs) - and unfortunately THAT seems to be the measure of a good teacher - so i might have to bribe the kids for a good performance on tues.... because i have a PRINCIPAL'S VISIT!!!!!!!!!!!! *GASP!!* yes that is all caps.

hoo boy i have finally perfected my mushroom sauce recipe

2010-08-16T18:55:00.006+12:00

gently fry one deliKATEly sliced oignon in a little olive oil, sprinkle with salt. when starting to become clear, add a swish of last night's stables merlot and whang a lid on, turn heat off. leave while waiting for mushrooms to arrive from the shop. sprinkle with a tsp of raw sugar, turn heat back on and add sliced portabello mushrooms. and a couple of chopped garlic cloves. gently fry for a few mins then add another great swoosh of vino (however was there that much left? i think it's cos sir broke out the tullamore dew half way through the evening) and top up with a splash of water. simmer gently for ten mins, reduce. ha! that's called a red wine reduction. i am soooo fahncy. then add a teeny squidge of cream that ya find at the back of the fridge. give it another coupla mins while the rump steak is barbied. mmmmm, there's now half a beast in the freeeeezer. and it's a good thing that i didn't yield to temptation on friday, cos the microwave blew up on saturday.
which means that the only things left on the To Replace List are: fridge/freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer: in that order. oh, and fix the stove clicker, lights in the kitchen ceiling, extractor fan light, and pantry door. this wohm thing definitely has its perks.

she's her own fairy godmother

2010-08-15T14:28:00.009+12:00

Raych designed and made and wore her outfit

to her skool ball last weekend.

and Nelly flew in from oz for the event - perfect!

then she entered her creation in

the Global Connexions competition last night –

you are looking at her vintage-inspired corset top (yes all boned – phew! and laced up the back with black satin ribbon) and organza/tulle skirt which was layers and strips of fabric all gathered onto a dropped waist. she looked amazing, and made it to the final (again) of the evening wear section (but didn’t win a placing) and also to the final of the design section!!! we're very proud of her.

polynesian style raw fish

2010-08-01T16:50:00.006+12:00

rain rain rain. sandy eyeballs. kids going mental. bourne identity. pea'n'ham soup. croissants and espressos. little nana nap for ma and pa. shrieked awake by mental kids. rain rain. trip to watch kite surfers on beach. rain. trip to supermarket for lunch box stuffers. more rain. 100 star jumps on the back deck. still raining. still shrieking. spongebobeeshia youtube (which may need to be taken with a grain of salt). even more rain. nerf guns. showers. bourne supremacy. finally a chill moment. planning a feed of raw fish for dinner cos i was addicted to this stuff during my early pregnancy with sammy and i have only just found a recipe, which i have already modified:

1 kg fresh fish (hoki fillets are on speshal at push'n'shove!!)
1 c lemon juice (from our tree boo yah)

dice fish into small cubes and place in a bowl (apparently wooden bowls are best, but i used a glass bowl. well, i cannot possibly follow *all* the rules). pour lemon juice over, cover, refrigerate for an hour or so until the fillets have turned white. drain lemon juice and discard. add all other ingredients:

4 large tomatoes, cubed
1 telegraph cucumber, cubed
a handful of spring onions, sliced
a big handful of coriander, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp chilli-and-lime (from the jar)
1 can coconut cream
sprinkling of ocean salt and freshly cracked pepper

i think i'm gonna serve this with some poh-tay-toh wedges: you know, like a sunday night fish'n'chips. and we shall be back to the faithful slow-cooker-one-pot-dinner option for the rest of the week... and hopefully a lot less rain...
PS note to self: this makes a massive amount so either halve the quantities or take it to a party. and try the wooden bowl trick next time, cos it took 3 hours to marinate the fish and even then the kids weren't that convinced X

bless my soul, circ was on a roll.

2010-07-30T20:10:00.003+12:00

i am seriously fat. this week has been Te Wiki o te Reo Māori  and one of the teachers put down a  hangi at skool yesterday, and at the end of the day there was a steaming  happy porker (that his uncle had hunted!!!) ON THE BENCH at skool and the crackling was divine (but it  still had some sandpapery hairs in it but i didn't care: saves me deplaquing my tongue later bwahahaha) and the meat was THE BEST  evah piggy, and there was taters precious and the tastiest pumpkin and i  SWEAR it was the BEST hangi  i have EVER TASTED: no grease, just smokey deliciousness. buuuuuuuuuut, oh sweet porker i have a big belly. have not been doing gym or bike or even zumba. i do have a crazily clean house tho.

oh, the other funny thing about the hangi was that the kids' ticket to hangi kai was a can of food, to be donated to i-don't-know-which-fabby-cause, and one of my maths kiddos tried to swap his sandwich with me so that he could nick my can of spaghetti that he was measuring the circumference and diameter of to try to work out an equation that included both.

i am super-impressed with these kiddos: the buzz in the classroom was SO COOL!! and the kids all found out what i was hoping they'd find out, and they are getting closer to finding out the answer/s to The Question, which is: "if every New Zealander (that's four million peeps) all took a big wheelbarrow load of dirt off The Mount, how much Mount would be left?"

i have in my possession a Very CompliKATEd H'explanation which Sir has drawn me. i fink i will need to give it much blonde thought before i can show'n'tell. need to ixnay on the piggy piggy too. eat less, move more. needa sleep more too: am currently on a pre-dawn wake up call. hence the crazily clean house.

science experiment

2010-07-29T13:55:00.003+12:00

i got my science kids with a good whoosh just now. they know i'm ~~kinda jumpy~~ super careful with all the chemicals we're experimenting with, and i make them use the special four-step-instructions-on-OHP (miss, nineteen eighty nine called and wants its OHP back) every time we light the bunsen burners. anyway in one part of the lesson i did a demo of dissolving a solute (copper sulphate) in a solvent (water) to get a solution. didya see all my sciencey words right there? didya? didya?????

yep, skiting now. *so* i sprinkled some copper sulphate (blue stuff) into a test tube of water (clear stuff) and stuffed in the stopper securely and shook it up. and as i started to shake it, i yelled BOOM!!! at which all the girls in the front row jumped and shrieked.
ha! it's an oldie but a goodie...

2010-07-24T20:41:00.009+12:00

❤ my bubbas cos i spent eight HOURS at skool today - yeah, on a saturday - and they patiently read books and cuddled bubbas and hanged out and waited forEVER for me to act the scientist. and i still have six science fair projects to mark. oh but bite me archimedes - i finally understand your principle X

miss, you're my favourite teacher. did you bring lollies? oh that's ok, you're still my favourite teacher. uh, because you talk to us... and stuff.

2010-07-22T17:15:00.008+12:00

disclaimer: that title may seem ridiculously egotistical, but i've had a couple of I'm A Complete Fraudster Days and i need all the pep talks i can get. and of course other teachers TALK to the kids. i know it's really about the lollies, but i'm still writing the luffliness here.

i relieved/substituted a few art classes today. it's money for jam, really. anyway, this morning i rolled into a year 8 classroom, and the kids all called out, hi miss!!! and gave me smiles, and one looked at me aghast and gasped, but you're a MATHS teacher!! and i giggled to myself and looked at the teacher's brief (that's brief, not briefs) which was about drawing a hanging branch. so i got to chat to the kids about The Secret to Excellent Sketching (yeah, the kids all went miraculously quiet when they heard that phrase) which is Drawing What We See, Not What We Think We See (cos i'm such an expert bwahahaha).

and now we're home, with fresh coffee, and a thousand things twirling in the clothes dryer, and i'm bribing my own beautiful kids with an arty-farty slow-cooked chicken curry when their rooms are tidy. and i might even see if i can offer up the vacuuming for dessert...
i did give them a lolly after skool though X

it's time to hack this perfectionism off at the knees

2010-07-19T17:33:00.005+12:00

well, i am totally ahead of my guilt trip because i got up at the crack of dawn and made dinner and folded washing and sat on the bike pedalling and reading the listener and huffing out paragraphs to danger for twenty minutes yes i did and then i went to skool and hyperventilated through the ERO prep and then i wrote a whole lot of shizzit for ERO about my mahvellous ICT programme yes i did and then i read through woozie's eleventh hour art history essay and offered ~~mindless shizzit~~ helpful suggestions yes i did and then i even brought my boys home from skool after they arrived on the bus and then i biffed the crockpot shizzit into the oven and drank ~~a glass~~ two or three glasses but who's counting? of wine yes i did. i am not sure i am cut out for this wohm buzz.

ready freddy

2010-07-18T13:34:00.010+12:00

so i was just about to post a big huge check-off list of all the shizzit i've been engineering to get ready for the onslaught of The Big Skool Restart, which shall include parent interviews and ERO and my appraisal. not to mention three science experiments in the first fortnight with fire and toxic chemicals.

shoot me now.

anyway, the list was all about my massive wardrobe reorganisation and the garage huck out and pantry and nefarious bottom drawer sort (ohk, i paid raych to do those last two) and de-flea-ing the cat and even the mortgage we took out at the supermarché this morning. jeez those kids can eat! and that's only half of it. i feel like i'm staging an assault on a small country.

but then i just checked my emails and there was one from My Techno-Guru floss, which was a reply to my cry for help in teaching my ~~Soft Materials Technology~~ sewing class:
i got into trouble. my year 7s found Mrs Boss's Fabric Stash and sneaked into it during the last class while i was frantically helping kids finish off boxer shorts. actually i was saying things like, “just give it to me and i’ll overlock that seam, i really don’t care how it’s sewn at this stage.” (need tips: we have 15 hours to sew a sample, a drawstring bag, and a pair of boxer shorts. oh, some kiddos managed it, and even finished a sock monkey in that last hour – no pics – oops)
anyway, there’s always SOMETHING i forget to do – left a machine unthreaded, didn’t pick up ALL the presser foots/feet off the floor, broke a needle, one bobbin case missing.
never mind, i have another term to get something right…. X

floss's reply email, entitled Organisational Tips:
Bwahahaha you must be kidding. It's TECHNOLOGY, it's the most disorganised curriculum in the country. All that free choice and follow your bliss and design briefs make for chaos each and every day of the week. You really only have one option...get rid of Mrs Boss. Stage a hostile takeover and force her to retire to Winton, Southland where her organisational skills will be appreciated. I have to tell you this... I did a section in Winton, Southland and thought I was being helpful when I folded the freshly washed tea towels. BUT I folded them wrong and my associate patiently refolded them all the correct way. Mrs Boss would be beloved down there! luv ya xxxx PS Sometimes, near the end of term, if I have a really slow class, I just give up the rush and finish everyone's final seams for them at lunchtime.

so instead of zooming off to clean out the fishtank, i burst out laughing and decided to b-r-e-a-t-h-e. actually, i need a new mantra. something like CHILL THE FREAK OUT AND STOP ALL THIS RIDICULOUS PANIC ABOUT THE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS WITH THE TOXIC CHEMICALS.

baa baa black sheep

2010-07-15T13:49:00.003+12:00

we're actually living in suburbia, but there's a farmlet over our back fence which has a sort of rotation of horses, cows, and sheep. little lambies are starting to be born and lookit...

a real baby baa baa black sheep has appeared!!!
oh, bwahaha, this ad is now in my sidebar:
i've spent my whole life avoiding the knitty thing
but this pink army tank really has my attention.

huka falls

2010-07-12T19:11:00.001+12:00

yeah.

we woz here.
and we love you.
thanks for the memories.
we'll be back, baby.

It Might Get Loud

2010-07-11T08:46:00.003+12:00

oh boy i love the hols. peeps spread out and random teenagers arrive and stay for tea parties and nachos dinners, and music and games and movies and late nights and easy mornings and lots of loudness ensues. we're half way through it - the glass is half full, my friend - and today we're heading off on an adventure to the north pole aka taupo road tripping with our favourite allies - fully loaded we've got snacks and supplies - it's the first family w*nter adventure we've had in i-can't remember-how-long. there are plans floating for lake walking and hot river swimming and snow seeing and general hilaritying. yippee zippee.

Cinderella Skirt

2010-07-07T17:56:00.001+12:00

i have a friend who has a friend who's an interior designer. the other week she was biffing out a great bundle of curtain samples. you know, those things on hangers that ya take home to match with your new carpet? yeah, them. today i got all inspired by this and so i fired up woozie's sewing machine and spent ten glorious hours making my very own Cinderella Skirt...for free. so i've just saved myself $360, which is super fantastic, cos i've got my optics on one of these. PS i love my boots.

2010-07-06T21:49:00.007+12:00

drawing lots for who gets to go food shopping. no takers as yet. i just made some emergency butter from cream. so bulldawg's late-nite-vegemite-toast is now vewy happy. PS marmite ftw X

The Second Day of Rehab

2010-07-04T22:16:00.002+12:00

a very slow start to the morning. the short second life of bree tanner. sneaky café moment. sunshine soup and ginger kisses. chopping my thumb off. rendezvousing with cuzzies. playstation and set and monopoly and singstar. big chinese takeout. berry flambé over french vanilla ice cream. clothes in the dryer. rain outside. more playstation. more huggles.

The First Day of Rehab

2010-07-03T17:25:00.003+12:00

sunshine. croissants with blackberry jam.  espressos. alice in wonderland. backyard soccer. loads of  clean clothes. people i love. much breathing in and out. a soon-to-be  martini. kids making their own dinner. huggles.

ominous anonymous

2010-07-02T20:36:00.013+12:00

funny, in the four whole years i've been safely blogging, i've only had one unsettling comment. oh, and one robot spam, which is why i use word verification. actually, i feel so safe out here in the wonderful wide web that i even set up a class blog for a group of kids last term. it's closed now. and i've rejigged my facebook profile too. cos this wee message just popped into my inbox, unsigned:

ah, but here you are:
(all hail sitemeter)

uh, this is my diary ya'll. and it's the last day of a ridiculously long term. please don't make me feel so vulnerable - if ya scribble a lovely insightful note in the margin, sign it. i ain't gonna bite.

sunday morning cookie monstars

2010-06-27T12:01:00.000+12:00

i'm watching my love grow
i'm watching the kids
go mad and i'm
i'm   watching this
whole thing from above

this is real

this is real

this  is real
 this is as good as it  gets

like father, like son

2010-06-26T19:21:00.004+12:00

ha! danny is back in the bay

to ~~see his mummy~~

go to the next twenty first.
this one's a dressup affair -
he's going as ozzy.

i mean, ozzy.

uh, it turns out that
it's been three whole years since

the ozzy-wig was last donned
talk about a crazy train X

remember sneakily passing notes in class? well, imho, fb wall chat is the new notes passage. anyway, i'm stuffing froiday night's chat in here.

2010-06-25T19:50:00.003+12:00

i saw you dancing, throwing your arms toward the sky. fingers opening like flares, stars were shooting everywhere.

2010-06-23T16:50:00.006+12:00

finally a pic
of my two fave things

ah yes, i wore
my Million Dollar Dress
and my new
Don't Mess With Me Boots
to my dahling girlfriend
mel's beach wedding
which was
on my birthday weekend
in the middle of winter
actually we had
all four seasons lol
but we do so love the beach X

"oooh, mum! are we marking again?!!"

2010-06-23T06:01:00.007+12:00

spot the ex-homeskooling family, all clustering around mama's marking of invitations for her ICT class. cos mama would love to give every kid in the class a Merit/Excellence, so the lads have the officious title of Moderators.

my kids at skool have been so wonderful about me trying out all my ~~unskooling~~ university theories on them: we've run this class on the inquiry model of learning with as much child-directedness as possible with 28 kiddos and only three hours a fortnight. we've based our learning around a class party (which is happening in two days' time!!! squee!! i need to sort my *R* dress ups pronto) which the kids've planned and are going to run. they've each created invitations using microsoft word (that's the ICT bit lol), which as a class we wrote success criteria for, and these are what my own lovely lads are helping to grade. it's funny, for all my anti-grading feelings, kids at skool don't seem to mind it so much.

the hills are alive with the sound of music

2010-06-21T18:45:00.001+12:00

in the last few weeks there've been 230 skools competing for 20 places in the BIG SING national finale - and my Beautiful Smart Talented Daughter's choir GOT A PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which is pretty fabulous for a teeny skool from The Sunny Bay X

what's it all about, alfie? or maybe just count the number of times i've written the word 'test'.

2010-06-16T16:34:00.023+12:00

the performance anxiety's been a bit intense of late. there's these things called pre-tests and post-tests which means that kids' learning is marked and measured and recorded in little boxes. two weeks ago, i was totally ecstatic that my mathsy kiddos averaged a 25% increase in their algebra results. go mrs unmathematician. pfft. i am now fighting the impulse to jigger the geometry post-test results.

at staff meeting today we were given 'self-review buddies' which is teacher-speak for 'someone's gonna observe ya trying to control a classroom bun-fight and tick/cross boxes in red pen.' the kids get tested, the teachers get tested. if it moves, measure it. i did last year's art assignment on anti-that. what a fraud.

but because i'm teaching part time, on days where there's eleven teachers out, Sir asks me to do the odd relief lesson. yeparoonie, i get to spy on how other teachers do it. is everyone else as freaked about the conveyor belt as i am? how do they handle it when some kiddos fail? do their perfectionist tendencies let them sleep at night? or maybe they've just put the jedi mind whammy on it? anyway, yesterday i had a class of seventeen year olds... who did a test.

today's spy mission was last period upstairs in the gym with a bunch of sixteen year old geography students.
kiddo: oh, hello miss, are you our teacher today?
me: no, i'm your very expensive babysitter. i get paid danger money, you know. so who's here? i'll just call the roll...
another kiddo: miss, do you like relieving? cos there's no homework aye.
me: (ah yes, here we go, the stall technique) well, *grin* there's pros and cons. i love the no homework. but sometimes i have a science class who give me grief and i have to channel my inner-hitler.
another kiddo: so are you teaching us tomorrow?

and on it goes, in the hope that they'll escape doing any work. they talk to me about other teachers, the winner winner chicken dinner that they cooked with olly-the-chef yesterday, past and hoped-for geography field trips, and i vibe them to finish their work for today so that they'll be homework-free. we chat about life and how one student wishes she'd continued learning french. they give me some boot-lovings and then three kids leap up at the window and wave frantically to a drama student who is dressed as a cow and for a moment i let them, but then i do the twirly-whirly manoeuvre between them and the window and invite them to finish their work.

but i see no need for the hitler-act cos i have no hidden agenda of a test next week and there's only fourteen kids so the hour turns out rather relaxed and dancy, and i don't even get my red pen out.

happy twenty fifth to me

2010-06-14T20:41:00.002+12:00

feeling incredibly spesh!!! i wore my birthday boots to skool, and i had two birthday songs from sixty beautiful kiddos. sir and i esCAPEd for lunch and we have all just finished an amaaaazing hurry curry birthday dinner and brandy snaps with berries, and bubbles, and jazz music, and a call from the beloved dannyboy, and speeches. i ♥ birthday speeches.

did my first evah zumba class last night. uh yeah, i'm only half a year behind the rest of the world.

2010-06-11T06:47:00.002+12:00

anyway, it was insanely hysterical: a room full of white sheilas, trying to shake da booty like da black chicks. talk about lol. also, i couldn't be sure, but i think the instructor had a teenage mutant ninja turtle tattooed on her arm.

2010-06-10T11:59:00.004+12:00

so i made a *like* page on fb just now, and in the 1.7 seconds it took me to refind and reload the page, 17 other randoms had already 'liked' it.
freaky deaky. how big is facebook anyway? at least i've got today's unfriendliness outta my system. and the bathroom is ridiculously clean.

head over heels

2010-06-08T16:37:00.003+12:00

my birthday boots have arrived.
they pass the sniff and lick test.
i'll finally be mistaken
for rene russo.

rainy weekend + kids = scary fairy monstars

2010-06-06T14:01:00.006+12:00

i ordered this book a couple of weeks ago on the pretext of inspiring my soft materials techno kids, but i haven't been allowed to take it to skool yet... and since it arrived *squee!* no one has any socks left either, cos they've all been refabriKATEd!!!

yep, the kiddos and i've become
addicted to making these critters!!

ok. formal introductions:

meet jeremy, estelle,

red wetty and mister jackson,

who've become instant siblings
for claudie aka squishems and squaddle.

we're the monSTARS!
that's m-o-n.. uh...

skool of rock

2010-06-05T17:00:00.005+12:00

sigh - the biggest bruvva has arrived to ~~see his mummy~~ go to two 21sts and i just looked around now to find that all the lads have drifted into sam's room to make musicskand technical tips and latest chords and riffs of various fleetwood macs and dire straitses and guns and roseses stuffs are vibing outta there, including intros and outros and a glockenspiel that's masquerading as a drum kit and - sigh - all is right with the world.

cos i was right - starting something new is just like having a baby. we've finally reached the magic six-week-mark,

and everyone is coming up for air.

could you please just post out my boots already. that is not a question.

2010-06-04T18:25:00.008+12:00

it was ten days 'til the wedding and buttercup neeeeeeeded the boots.

THE BOOTS. yes. shouting now, can you hear me?
cos hello up there? i ordered them 18 days ago.
and you said they would be shipped within 2 - 5 days.
and they would be on my doorstep within 3 - 11 days.
i have sent THREE emails and STILL haven't been notifiKATEd of shippage.

fourth email sent just now. bad juju boot mojo.
i waaaant them before my birthday!!!
anti-jinx X

dear diary

2010-06-01T17:03:00.001+12:00

it's raining and raining here. edward the vampire is on the telly and corn chowder is nearly on the stove. it's five o'clock but i am resisting opening a bottle. instead i am about to mark tests and write a little bit more on these reports. boy oh boy, the unskooling days seem so far away... X

well that didn't take long: the re-morph into Scary Skoolmarm Barbie is just about complete

2010-05-30T21:58:00.007+12:00

i have been procrastinating writing reports, which are actually due in to my pre-check buddy in four days. cos uh, remember? i just met your kid five weeks ago and i only teach him/her for an hour four times a week... i think i could recognise him/her in a lineup...

so i have come up with are various versions of

Katie is a conscientious student who works diligently during mathematics. She is quick to ask for help to make sure that she understands new concepts. Katie consistently completes weekly homework sheets and has shown a marked improvement with basic facts recall this year.

which pretty much says nuffin'. at least i used capitals. scarily, i am giving the kids another test on tues so i have something to fill in the gaps with. even scarilier, this blarg is turning into a blargy confessional. i hope no one at skool finds it.

i learned how to light a bunsen burner today. which is good cos i'm teaching it on froiday.

2010-05-25T18:27:00.004+12:00

pfft, yeah, still just "one step ahead of you..." and wondering when i'm gonna be found out. but boo yah. rocking it. well, the forty hours preparation for the ten hours teaching are actually paying off - my soft materials techno kids (aka sewing class) did beautifully today with my re-written (and colour-photocopied - hush) re-instructions and the sticky pink post-it notes that i laboriously stuck to each of their stuffs. the maths kids are on target for finishing algebra 2 weeks late, and science lesson was halved today cos we had a visiting group doing a rev up. i have decided to go as kinaesthetic as poss with the science kids - multiple intelligences make ~~life crazy~~ learning easy, ya know. and my other techno kids are actually commenting at our class blog - love that so much!

uh, confession is: i'm still spaced out about connecting with thirty kids in one room every hour - juggling subject knowledge with management and did i mention admin?
woah, i completely forgot about the admin, baby.
cos skool reports are coming up in a week and hello? i just met your children. but i've managed to see all their books (twice) and gonna copy'n'paste comments i think. katie works well in class. pffft.
*brain freeze*

but tonight's Bulldog's and my annual date night at the cinema. yeah, it's been about a year since we hit the screen. nice one, stuey X

i had a great day today. 'twas a bit blonde, but great.

2010-05-19T17:23:00.008+12:00

oh frabjous day! the mathsy kiddos are getting used to my primary skool "if you'd like me to explain that again, bring your books and sit on the mat with me" ways. and i had a good peek-ski in their maths books last night and woohoo, they ALL understand the twicky squicky gradient graph stuffs. AND most homeworks are complete and going so WELL! go us. today's little post-it note moment: i popped in to a class today to drop off some bits, and i overheard one wee poppet telling her friend: "that's mrs g. she's my favourite maths teacher." (uh, she's your only maths teacher, kiddo!) but yeah, not bad for an unmathematician. (yes, Sir and i go over the next day's lesson the night before and he gives me a few extra clues. which must be working, hmm?) seriously, though, i am so relieved that i am not faffing these kids' mathsy-ness up. cos there are some bwainy kids in this class and the jedi mind whammy sometimes blondes me out.

and uh, don't tell anyone: this afternoon i had a massive brain f*rt and got seven peeps to sew and overlock the wrong seams in their boxer shorts. egads! the side seams are now the unside seams and the front seams are in danger of becoming the back seams. oops. don't try this at home, kids. i'm gonna attempt to perform a rescue on the secret. invisibility cape and all that.

whoever the bureaucrat was that decided to stick thirty kiddos in one classroom needs a smack upside the head.

2010-05-18T16:47:00.009+12:00

i have decided that teaching is like having a newborn baby - one day is awesome and the next is a write-off. cos yesterday was amazing. it happened that i only had seventeen kiddos in the maths class and by the end of the lesson most understood y = mx + c and how to tell where the y-intercept is and working out the gradient.

but this morning half of them needed it re-explained. so much for my teaching skillz. so it was a bit uproarious cos i kept switching kids around so i could ability group them and they got all unsettled. added to that the thirteen of yesterday's absent kiddos who needed yesterday's lesson taught today and one said he hates this maths class because i am the Homework Police and last term's teacher let them play maths games on fridays. the thing is, i am so concerned that everyone 'gets it' before we move to the next thing. even then, it turns out that my time frame is just too slow and we needa mooooove on from algebra to geometry within the fortnight at the latest. are you kidding? how the heck will they ace the post-test?

not coping with that at all.

the next class was a total disaster cos we had an epic computer failure - the access to the super-cool interactive blog i'd set up for us was denied and POOF! there went our super-cool interactive ICT lesson. so i had to suddenly wing it with chalk and talk. total *head bash* moment. ended up switcherooing to poster-making in groups. jeez louise. and another teacher walked in on the ensuing chaos and i felt like a complete nah-nah. hello? the door is l-o-c-k-e-d lol.

need a leetle coffee. or maybe a hip flask.

but there was a little sparkle in my day today. one of my science lads who is rather boisterous and finds it difficult to walk past peeps without giving them 'the nudge' had a brilliant science lesson. and i told him so. big pffft moment was when he brought his DIY word find to me to test me on his rather creative clues - 'these are all brainy people, miss' - who split the atom? who yelled eureka and jumped out of the bath? who's the best science teacher at our skool? yeah, total cape moment X

sunday night's knackered chef

2010-05-16T18:25:00.005+12:00

Sir made us this amaaaazing dins tonight - it's homemade happy chicken ninja noodle box for a third of the price of a bought one!! and it only took ten minutes from go to woah! ah so.
i'm gonna jot down the recipe so we can make it again:
6 packets 2 minute nootles - pour boiling water over and let them snuggle for five mins.
into wok, throw 6 happy chicken thighs, sliced. add tsp root ginger, 1/2 tsp chilli, sachet maggi chicken chow mein mix. stir fry for a few mins until cooked.
throw in a packet of fresh stir fry vege - the one with the purple cabbage and mung bean sprouts - and a sprinkle of water. toss for two minutes.
add nootles to chooky-and-veggies, swish swish.

serve in six big white bowls, sprinkle over chopped fresh coriander and roasted unsalted cashews. ah so. biggest ninja nootle surprise - there were absolutely no leftovers to be scavenged...

unscientists ftw

2010-05-14T20:24:00.003+12:00

I feel like Dr Emma Russell in The Saint. There are little yellow post-it notes dotted all over my bathroom mirror, and in my diary, and littering my teaching notes. I've never had so many paper clips in my possession, and I'm constantly talking to myself under my breath. We seem to be in a Groundhog Day sound-groove of Michael Jackson on the way to skool, and Lady Gaga on the drive home. That in itself should cause some concern.

Today I taught all four classes on the trot - with no breaks and scarcely a moment to catch my breath. (I need to remember to project my voice properly, cos I nearly couldn't inhale after four hours.) I dispersed pressies for maths homework done and we marked the week's work and watched a wee mathsy cartoon about "rise over run" which is how gradients are measured (yes, this is still Katie talking) all hushedly gathered around the tiny computer screen cos the projector just would not work. Then the next thirty kiddos finished their huge word processing booklet and some little bright sparks started researching invitations for our end-of-term *R* Party!!! Period three was cuppa tea taste test time - what's the probability of guessing whether milk went into the cup first or tea went in first? It was hilarious. One of the kiddos can calculate percentages faster than the calculator! We even did probability graphs, people. And over half the class understood it. That's a pretty good outcome for our first go at it, I think. And finally I had thirty tweens tangling up the sewing machines. And an unthreadable overlocker. Which I was just about to get the hammer onto 'cept I got sprung by another teacher creeping up behind me just as I was raising said hammer. She did see the smoke exiting my ears though.

This life is almost comparable to homeskooling, except that there are six times the number of kids, we don't get mid-morning texts to meet at the beach, and I feel like I am going on stage every hour. It's not like I can say, What a fabulous wondering, let's...
a) ask Daddy when he gets home
b) skype GD
c) google it
d) all of the above

'cos we only have an hour together and then I'm not gonna see ya for
a) 24 hours
b) 2 days
c) half a week
d) all of the above

So I kinda feel like I have to have answers. And I spent about four hours trying to work out the science lesson before I even went on stage. Anyway, I had an epiphany earlier: it could actually a good thing that I'm such an unscientist. Cos the naturally-sciencey kids are gonna get it despite what I do, and hopefully the unsciencey ones are gonna get it after all my explanations. Or something like that.

i got a cape. yes i did. and i got a job.

2010-05-11T16:13:00.005+12:00

eleventy billion kiwi teachers wanna live here in the beautiful sunny bay. so there ain't many jobs going for wanna-be re-teachers. my tweenagers job was always gonna be slightly temporary. well, freak me out, last week it was suddenly advertised! so i applied, along with who-knows-how-many-wombles. and guess what? i had a scary berry interview today, which i *blonded* my way through and GUESS WHAT again? the phone just rang and i've been offered the job!!! wooo hooo!!!

"I. AM. JOB." (guess the movie line)

i'd like to thank the universe.
i feel like a superwoman!
and i love the feeling of my cape.
it's so swishy,
and it has all kinds of super-powers.

little swapsy

2010-05-08T14:09:00.006+12:00

the subtitle for this blog used to be "finding the sparkle in every day", but it's been rather a while since i made sparkles.
these little blues are for debra, who makes wonderful stuff, which she has generously swapped to replace a wee clown bowl crash. so i've strung together lots of little twos (cos debra has two daughters) with handfuls of blue crystal and mother-of-pearl beads and glass hearts and extra-sparkly bicones.
there's a bracelet, and a necklace, and even some upside down earrings (i hope they float right way up as they travel up the globe). and lookit, my fave butterfly clasps - cos there's always butterflies in blue skies.

PS if you're super-quick, send debra a mug shot (of your fave mug, not your mug-shot, like i did) and you'll be in the draw to win a mug. a real hand-crafted mug.

PPS my michael
is *so* happy!!!

ka pai yous

2010-05-06T17:20:00.003+12:00

while the university graduate and i were studying last year, we spent three hours mid-week learning Māori together. it was an amazing experience. i thought that it'd be all about the language learning: that we'd be sent home each week with lists of verbs to memorise, cos that's been my historical-language-learning experience. but instead, we learned about culture, and respect, and learning, and assessment where we are set up to succeed. it was so non-threatening, and we loved every second. it truly was a mid-week oasis. the sushi and gourmet chocolate lunches were rather ka pai too. today we graduated. it's gonna be the last time i gown up for a while: it's a toss-up whether he'll get a doctorate, or i'll get my masters. i think he'll win, but we'll see.
in the meantime, ka pai us. 
really, really loved our study year. 
arohanui X

and in the superstardom news

2010-04-28T22:50:00.002+12:00

Sir Bulldog flew down the The Capital City today to speak at a conference, and while he was there, he just happened to pop into the pub over the road from The Beehive, where his fave live show is taped EVERY WEDNESDAY NIGHT!!! yeah, this is Pub Politics at its best, a wonderful home-grown show, and guess who got on telly?!!!

Destructions to view: click here to "Back Benches Series 2010, Episode 11, 28 Apr 2010", scroll to just below the screen and click on "CHAPTER 04"... about 20 seconds into the scene Sir walks into the shot from stage right, sees himself on the screen, and strikes a pose - he didn't get a live interview though lol - and sorry about the daft pre-footage ads X

kate5kiwis

hi, i'm katie. i make stuff.

veggie tales

rockit man

#pleasuretoteach

friday night, it was late

danny is on university study break and i am 200km down the road writing skool reports and ohlookit! both of us are on facebook and now we're chatting

woozie wokstar

status update

birthday boy

garage band

George and the Golden Moment

traffic light curry

we want cookie!!

shopping bag tutorial

hello neglected little heart space

for today

plastic fantastic

ah, skool's out. au revoir strings of pearls from glassons. bonjour black nail polish from paris.

take this down, smee

(The Weekend Before) Harry Potter and the Deathly Fellows Part 2

The Psychedelic Mystery of Benny Factor and the Cast of Groovy Characters

fgm

hi, i'm katie. i make stuff.

backstage at the enchanted dress rehearsal

high tea

refabriK8d

putting a jedi mind whammy on this eternally grey weather

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

boy with book

the horse and his boy

floss the boss

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

perfect rainy saturday arvo

chocklit button panKATEs

a little bleagh-onto-the-screen moment aka the once-was-blogger uploads her flip-top head

flashbacks

beautiful bessie

the holly holidays

katie has a new camera. it's only a canon point-and-shoot, but katie thinks it beats random pxts. so she spent five mins pointing and shooting.

the girl. has chopped. her tresses.

"i'd like to thank my mother, the op shop, doctor marten, the von trapps, and my auntie..."

pink marshmallows

planted in garden:

aubergine, basil, capsicum, celery, chives, corn, parsley, spinach, thyme, tomatoes, zucchini. actually, Bulldog did the whole lot. i just put it in alphabetical order and sprinkled the slug slam.

peace out chicken

in which i thought that something was doomed, but it turned out amazing

scruffles

it's good to come home now and then ay bro... eat some ice-creams...﻿ do some bombs...

in the awww files

slow food

uh, last term i was told off for not putting science shizzit away, and this term i've just been told off for putting science shizzit away.

suffoKATEd

like a record baby round round

how to cook perfect rice every time a coconut

mathematical equation

i am your density

uh, was trying to resist vino and pohtaytohs so have found a little shot of liqueur and beans with butter and pretend pohtaytohs and roasted chook from the slow cooker instead. shoot me now, i have a Real Scientist observing me teach unscience tomoz. breathe, just breathe.

oopsy daisies

hoo boy i have finally perfected my mushroom sauce recipe

she's her own fairy godmother

polynesian style raw fish

bless my soul, circ was on a roll.

science experiment

miss, you're my favourite teacher. did you bring lollies? oh that's ok, you're still my favourite teacher. uh, because you talk to us... and stuff.

it's time to hack this perfectionism off at the knees

ready freddy

baa baa black sheep

huka falls

It Might Get Loud

Cinderella Skirt

drawing lots for who gets to go food shopping. no takers as yet. i just made some emergency butter from cream. so bulldawg's late-nite-vegemite-toast is now vewy happy. PS marmite ftw X

The Second Day of Rehab

The First Day of Rehab

ominous anonymous

sunday morning cookie monstars

like father, like son

remember sneakily passing notes in class? well, imho, fb wall chat is the new notes passage. anyway, i'm stuffing froiday night's chat in here.

i saw you dancing, throwing your arms toward the sky. fingers opening like flares, stars were shooting everywhere.

it's good to come home now and then ay bro... eat some ice-creams... do some bombs...