Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Cara-Sue's First Birthday Party


We went to the inlaws in the Free State this weekend, to celebrate my sister-in-law's little girl's first birthday.  I played photographer for the party and had lots of fun doing so! :-)

The party preparation:



Party time:



Birthday Girl, Cara-Sue and family:



Thursday, February 21, 2013

"I want a butterfly"


This morning my heart burst, when Mia was pointing out a butterfly in the book that we were reading, and I told her "yes, such a pretty butterfly!" And I couldn't believe my ears, the next thing she said was:

"I want a butterfly, on my finger!
I will kiss it,
And love it,
And put it in my 'handsak'!"

Oh, bless!
My heart!



xx


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Moms & Tots Class


I took a few snaps with my phone camera at our Moms & Tots class this week.

Mia really enjoys the class, often if I ask her what she wants to do, she says "go to tannie Estie!"  Mia doesn't interact much with the other children, but she does take part in all of the activities, often gets super excited, and can see she loves it.  However, when somebody gives her individual attention, she gets super shy.

Each class starts off with free-play time, where toys/activities/puzzles can be taken off the shelves and played with - but in a structured way - each child has a chair and table, and after each activity the toy must be put away before choosing another one.

Then we go outside for an obstacle course, and then back inside to sing some songs with movement, march in a circle, play with a musical instrument, play dress-up with cat ears, play with big exercise balls, etc.  Each week there is a colour-theme, which Estie then shows them all sorts of things in that colour, and gives them each a little plastic container with those coloured things in for them to explore and look at.

Then it's "Give-mommy-a-Barney-hug" time, which I just love - when Mia was a bit smaller she used to let me hold her, but looked at the other kids more.  Now she hugs me the whole time, with her head on my shoulder, i LOVE it.  Then story time on a blanket.

After story time it's craft time - one of Mia's favourite activities.  They make supercute things each time.
Then it's messy play outside, this often varies, but includes: sand, finger paint, playdough, coloured sand, birdseed, water with dishes to wash or clothes to wash, water with fishies, boats or sponges, koki pens, chalk crayons, iced marie biscuits, cones in icing sugar, big paint boards...  Another of Mia's favourites, of course!

Then we end with juice-and-chippy time, where the kids all sit at a table with their snacks that Estie provides, and the mom's have tea time - we make turns each week who brings something along.

I'm so glad we do this - it's special time for the two of us together, and Mia learns a lot.
:-)
xx


Monday, February 18, 2013

Big girl sleeps in a big bed now!


For a couple of weeks now, I've been telling Mia how it's time for her to sleep in the single bed in her room, and not in the cot - she would hear nothing of it...  The one time I tucked her into the bed and left the room for her to have a nap, she cried and cried.  I told her that one day she will have a baby brother or sister who will need to sleep in the cot, and I asked her, "where will the baby sleep if you sleep in the cot?" to which she replied, "baby can sleep there in the big bed!"

I was worried about her falling off the bed - so we tried removing the bed's base so that the mattress was on the floor.  Mia was NOT happy with "sleeping on the floor".  So we put the base back.  I looked at Baby City, and their guard railing didn't look nice, it had a railing that I just knew Mia would try and climb.  Then I saw a pic of a different mesh kind of bed guard on a friend's photo, asked her where she got it, and off we went to Baby Boom yesterday!

Found the mesh bed guard, and while we were installing it, I told Wyn, you know what, we might as well take the cot out of her room, so that she doesn't have a choice as to where she sleeps.  So we made a big deal out of rearranging her room with her, letting her help us move things, telling her how exciting it is and how pretty her room is, putting her favourite dudu toy, "Bubu" (piglet) on the big bed, etc - and she got caught up in the excitement and loved it all.

Come nap time, she asked me to lie down with her, so I did for a few minutes, but then told her it's dudu time, kissed her and walked out.  I stood with the AngelCare monitor listening, fully expecting to be called within seconds... But she was fast asleep!  Yay!

Bedtime, same thing - I lay down with her while she had her tea bottle, then kissed her and left, and she didn't make a squeak until 6h30 the next morning.  Another yay!

The transition was easier than I expected.  Hold thumbs it stays this way!
xx



Friday, February 15, 2013

Mia the little Gardener!


We had so much fun recently planting a few seedlings.
Mia did most of it herself! 
Putting soil into the pots, putting the seedling on top, filling it up with more soil, and watering it.  
Super cute!
xx


Thursday, February 14, 2013

Weight Watchers - making some progress!


I've had four weigh-in's at Weight Watchers so far.  The results have looked like this:
Week 1: Lost 1kg
Week 2: Gained 0.2kg
Week 3: Lost 1.2kg
Week 4: Lost 0.8kg

Total loss so far: 2.8kg

Very pleased with the progress so far!

I'm not keeping the food diary as diligently as I should be though - but I am being attentive as to my portion sizes and food choices.  I bought a kitchen scale, and can't believe the differences between the actual recommended portion size and my usual guesses...  For example my oats for breakfast, it's recommended to stick to 100g cooked oats - I think I was easily eating double that.  So I think my success thus far is very much due to concentrating on smaller portions, and then adding salads or veg to bulk it up a bit.

I'm taking some weight loss supplements as well - USN Phedracut XT capsules, and Biogen CLA 3000.

Exercise goes well sometimes, other times not so much - last week my energy levels were really down and I just couldn't get myself to try harder.  This week I have been too busy with clients, so I haven't been able to go to the gym as often as I would like to.  Hopefully I can make up for it over the weekend.

I have 8 more weeks to go on the Weight Watchers program, if I can keep up this steady pace, I'll be able to be very close to goal weight by the end of it.  Really hope so!  I need to stay focussed and motivated. 

xx


Monday, February 11, 2013

We made Moon Sand!


This weekend we had some fun making moon sand.

I got the idea from my friend Debs, and looked around on the internet for recipes, and came across two variants, of which Debs did the second one - which turned out to be the better one of the two!

Recipe 1:
4 cups play sand
2 cups corn starch (I used Maizena)
1 cup water

We mixed it all together - and I was a bit disappointed with it - it didn't really have a very "special" texture... Mia ended up adding more water to it, which made it quite gooey, but very very messy.

Recipe 2:
8 cups of flour
1 cup of oil (preferably baby oil, but I used sunflower oil)

This was divine!  It made a soft crumbly texture - it made me understand the term "moon sand".  I'd love to walk on a beach of sand like this!

We built miniature sandcastles with is, although it broke quite easily.  We hid small plastic animals in it.  And we squished it with our hands and feet!

I made a small batch, we just used 4 cups of flour, and just over half a cup of oil.  We put some glitter in it to make it sparkle. :-)

Will definitely do this again soon, I had just as much fun as Mia did, if not more!

I heard it can be put in a sealed container and kept for another time, but we messed so much, it wasn't worth cleaning up, easier to squirt it off the deck with the hosepipe.

Highly recommended for some fun messy play! :-)



Saturday, February 9, 2013

Just had permanent eyeliner done!


I've just had permanent eyeliner done!

I did lots of research about which therapist to go to, to be sure it's somebody who does a good job.  I heard about Lisa from Derma Femme in Centurion from a couple of people, and saw a few examples of what she's done, and knew that's where I must go.

When I arrived, I filled in a complete client card, an indemnity form, and read through all the info regarding permanent makeup.  Then Lisa took some "before" piccies and answered all my questions.  Very clever therapist that she is, she offered that another therapist do a pedicure for me at the same time - yes please! :-)

First she applied a topical anaesthetic cream, and waited a little while.  Then she started the work with her lil needle applicator - I chose to not look at it too closely!  Luckily I could keep my eyes closed all the time.  After she made the first line, she put another anaesthetic gel onto it which works a bit deeper.  And then she started with the black pigment.

It wasn't very painful.  But lots of discomfort, the strange vibrating sensation, and here and there it felt as though the numbing cream hadn't worked as well as everywhere else - and when she reapplied the numbing gel it stung quite a bit.

I originally decided to only do the permanent eyeliner on my bottom lid.  I always only drew eyeliner onto my lower lid, never the top.  Lisa then convinced me to do top and bottom eyeliner, saying that it really enhances the lash line so nicely, and cheaper to do both than decide later on to do the top liner.

I was a bit squeamish at having her work so close to my eye - she had to keep asking me to turn my head back towards her.

Luckily time went by quite fast, the pedicure was divine and a nice distraction!

By the time she was done, I was really glad it was over, my eyelids were feeling super tender.  It took about two hours from arriving until leaving - the actual procedure was maybe just over an hour.

It was R1000 for the eyeliner treatment.

She gave me all the home-care info, like applying some vaseline to it, not picking at it, not soaking it, etc - generally to just treat it as a wound.  Also warned me that it could still become quite puffy and red over the next two days or so.

I'll update this post with any after-thoughts.

I'm so pleased I did this, love the idea of not having to draw my lil line every day and wipe it off every night!  And no more smudgey eye makeup or gloop in the corner of my eyes, yay!

I have a touch-up appointment in about 8 weeks' time - then she can thicken the line, or fix anywhere the line isn't regular or smooth.

Definitely would recommend having it done, and would definitely recommend Lisa to do it.

Before piccie:

After piccie:


*Edit:  The day after the procedure was done, my top lids were very swollen.  When I woke up, my eyes were sticking together - luckily the therapist warned me that could happen.  Used wet earbuds to gently wipe them.
I've needed to apply Vaseline to my eyes a few times when it feels a bit tender - also just gently with a cottonbud.
Two days later - the swelling has gone down, but they're quite scratchy - the scabs are already loosening up! I was warned to NOT PICK at them, so am leaving them alone, just wiping with a wet cottonbud sometimes.  Loving how it looks! :-)

*Edit - a week later:  All the "scabs" have come off, and it looks great.  The top lid line is thin, the way I wanted it - it really just enhances my lashes without looking too obvious.  The bottom lines are maybe a bit thin - I did tell her I wanted the bottom line quite thick.  Also, my left eye's bottom line looks thinner than the right side!  I was actually hoping I would be able to give the touch-up appointment a skip, but will definitely go and have the bottom touched-up.

Pic after 9 days:


Yeah, I want that bottom line a bit more prominent.  Must be worth my while, don't want to end up putting eyeliner on over the permanent eyeliner!

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Mommy I'm a dolphin!


Mia and I went swimming at the gym yesterday morning.



She loved it!  We had the pool to ourselves, and we spent just over half an hour kicking, splashing, jumping in, and floating.  

She kept saying, "So much fun!" and, "Mommy I'm a dolphin!" with squeals of delight and joy.

Yay!  That's what I wanted, that's how swimming should be!

I'll take her once a week, and we can swim this way - there's loads of info on the internet on how to teach kids to swim - I'd really like to teach her myself. :-)

xx

Monday, February 4, 2013

Awesome time at the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert!


On Saturday night, I ticked an item off my bucket list:  To see the Red Hot Chili Peppers live in concert!

I put sparkly star nail wraps on my nails, in celebration of my first rock 'n roll concert!  I went with my parents, my sister, and took a friend along, as my brother had something else on so couldn't use his ticket.  Luckily my dad had bought a parking ticket.

We left here just after five, and getting there took quite a long time - the last 5km into the parking was at a snail-pace - but the vibe was so fun - everybody waving and laughing at each other in the cars coming past each other!

The parking attendants seemed quite overwhelmed - they kept telling us to "just follow those guys" - so after feeling like we were driving all around the stadium, we eventually got to parking spaces still open and it was surprisingly close to the entrance.

I've never seen so many people in one area in my life!  What fun to look at everyone, and how cool that everyone is so happy! 

We got into a queue, it moved quite fast, scanned our tickets, and found somebody to direct us to our seats.  We got some cokes and hotdogs and settled down. However, we sat on the wrong seats at first!  Who knew that there could be another seat KK15 - we had to be in the "blue block" - but we couldn't see this marked anywhere, don't even know which block we were in first - so just had to move a lil way along to the correct KK15 - lil bit closer to the stage, yay!

"Die Antwoord" did the opening act - and they were horrible...  The few songs I have heard of theirs, I knew I wasn't a fan, but gosh, they were quite shocking, with their vulgar lyrics and disturbing images put up on the screens.  Really didn't enjoy their show, and was quite relieved when it ended.  The half-hour wait for the RHCP's to appear was so exciting, everyone waiting in anticipation.  We decided not to go find any wine - the queues looked way too long!

Ah wow, when the RHCP's appeared on stage - we all went mad!  They started with Monarchy of Roses, and then got us all excited with Dani California, and then made me cry with Otherside, one of my fave songs!  I knew most of the songs they did, and was so awesome to sing along, dance and clap and jump and scream! 

Unfortunately the people infront of us were smoking quite a lot, so that bugged me.  Nobody remains sitting - but that was fine - I wanted to dance dance dance - and then be able to sit down on lil breaks now and then, haha!

I stared out at the crowd in amazement every now and then, couldn't believe my eyes at how many people there were!

Wow, they did so many great songs.  Loved Under The Bridge, By the Way, Californication, Don't Stop, Snow, Parallel Universe!  Amazing.  I think I watched the screens more than the stage, coz could see better - but every now and then I felt so in awe to think that's Anthony Kiedis and Flea jiving up there!  Their lighting and visuals were very well done, striking and awesome!

We left before they did their 3 encore songs.  I'm a bit torn about this decision, because although it meant we got out super fast and we were home in like half an hour - this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I guess stampeding out with thousands of people and taking two hours to fight your way out of the parking is what you get for enjoying the full live show!

Super excited to see Bon Jovi in May!


Here is the setlist of the RHCP concert, with links to all the songs: 
http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/red-hot-chili-peppers/2013/fnb-stadium-johannesburg-south-africa-23dbe477.html
So fabulous!! :-)