My Princess is Ill

Not what Wren had planned for today, the poor angel.

She’s had a temperature on and off and dozed her way through the day.
Not to mention headache and general aches & pains.

She has her water bottle and empty ice cream container (in case).

We’re keeping an eye on her and she’s going to sleep in with WonderHubby & I tonight.

No school tomorrow, either.

The school holidays start next weekend, and I’m not having us sick all the way through the two weeks like we were the last time.

Update tomorrow…

Snail Mail with a Twist

I have always loved writing, choosing nice paper, the feel of the pen moving over paper, adding little doodles around the edges.

Writing letters was one thing that kept me sane during what I have come to refer to as the dark years. That time when my health was at it’s worst, when my friends from school were off at uni or first jobs and I was stuck at home in bed, sleeping my life away.

I realised yesterday that somewhere along the line I got so busy that I forgot all about letters, and how much fun it is to send and receive mail.

Don’t you just L.O.V.E. it when it’s not a bill in the letterbox??

Today, when I was stumbling along, I found this site called letterfu where you can print foldable letter/envelope combo’s that you seal shut with a postage stamp.

They call it “letter~writing without envelopes, cutting or glue”, but I did have to trim the page a bit. I thought I’d give it a try by sending one to my niece down South.

I just hope it doesn’t rain between here and her house, because our printer is an inkjet.

FPFF ~ A Space to Sit and Think

Everyone needs somewhere that’s theirs alone to sit and think.

I haven’t really had one for a long time, say about seven and a half years.

But this is my armchair. I curl up here under my blogging rug, with my journal and pen and write out my thoughts, obsessively.

I kind of worry that if I don’t, my head might explode.

Sometimes they end up here on Kidzarama, when I’m particularly impressed by my own cleverness.

I love this chair. It was a freebie from a friend who’d bought a new lounge suite, and long broken~in.
Read “comfortable”.

In Winter, the afternoon sun streams in on me and sends me into a doze.

Are you all jealous yet?

Stop moaning and go visit Carrie, for more of this week’s Phantastic Phriday Photos.

I done got my blogging mojo back.

After weeks of sickness, hosting issues and blah inspiration I am finally back in the groove.

I am inspired, verbose and um, I forgot the word I was going to use next.

Needless to say it wasn’t one that means “I have a great memory”, or indeed any memory at all. Where was I?

Oh yeah, blogging. Mojo.

So nice to walk into a room and be hit with ideas to die for (instead of a coughing fit). I am relieved, because for a while there I thought I might be *gasp* losing interest in blogging.

I know this shocks you, because how could anyone lose interest in blogging???

So I’m sure you’re just as relieved to learn that your world view remains firmly rooted in reality, with nary a sign of being undermined.

It’s important to be realistic.

So realistically, this has a lot to do with the blog makeover that Shauna has been working on for me.
Do you like it so far?

By the way, I hope your blogging is going well for you all, too.
Let me know if you’re having a mental block and I’ll throw you a prompt, free of charge.

My brain is overflowing…

In fact, I’m thinking of adding a daily blogging prompt here. What do you all think of the idea?

What Noise Do Mooses Make?

A great big sloppy thank you kiss goes out today to Willow, who is responsible for my first ever tagging.

I feel like a moose or something.

And no comments about my back end, thank you. We had quite enough of that earlier this week.

As I said, my first thought was of animal tagging, and then I read about something new: Animal tags for people.

Sounds charming.
Is that what you have in mind for me, Willow?

Regardless, here are the 5 beautifully babbling bloggers that I have chosen to tag myself.

1. Trish, for being such a lovely person.
2. Tonya, because I know she’s going through a lot right now.
3. Pauline, who is a very busy girl and needs more stuff to do like a hole in the head.
4. Melisa, my amigurumi guru. ~ Go find out what that word means…
5. Andrea, a blogging newbie who really needs to be corrupted by us crazies.

You have all been tagged, and should expect shortly to be sent to the Kidzarama wildlife preserve in Kenya.

And yes, I know the plural form of moose is moose.
But I still want to know what sound they make.

Book Cover Craft

Wren’s class made these great artworks with watercolours and crayons to cover their school books.

First they painted a yellow wash with watercolours and left it to dry.

The next day, they drew a design in pencil and went over it with red and orange crayons.

Then the artwork and the school books came home to me and I covered them and wrote each child’s name onto the cover with a black permanent marker.

The children were very proud of their creative work, and being able to use the results in a tangible way has been great for their self esteem.

Back End Stuff Gets Down & Dirty

Okay, for those people who found their way here via some strange google search, this is a family blog.

But I don’t want to disappoint you, so here’s something for your trouble…

For all you usual suspects, I’m actually talking about working on the back end of my blog.

The nitty gritty. The coderoo.

Plugins, php & whatnot.

See, WonderHubby found the Wordpress Plugins Directory on Sunday afternoon and sent me a huge email of goodies that we can use to customise our beloved blogs. From 5 metres away.

I’ve been there before, looking for a sitemap doohickey to let me index Kidzarama on google. It looked pretty crowded, with all kinds of wotchermacallits.

Now I know it is.

I have a two page email here, made up entirely of links that have WonderHubby salivating and drooling all over his laptop.

I’m the resident blogging ‘tech~head’ here you see, since I’ve been blogging for all of five months now. So I get the list.

Does that explain what I’ve been doing tonight?

Yes, I’ve been playing with my back end. And fursing profusely.

A Quick Lesson in Fursing

I have never been a big swearer, but when Wren came along seven and a half years ago, it was like going back to primary school.

That’s elementary school for the US audience.

I had to learn to furse all over again.

Fursing is fake cursing, in case you didn’t know. It’s a well known term, invented by me, just now.

Examples include: Sugar! Frig! Buggerigah! (with the gg pronounced the way it shouldn’t)

I also invented new forms of fursing, such as “bu~ottom”, and “fridge”.

And I thought I was doing so well, until Wren was 18mths old and dropped a crust from her highchair.

“Damn!”

That was my angelic little um, angel. Her sweet, innocent lips had uttered their first profanity, and I knew it was my own special gift that I had passed on to her.

It’s a continuing struggle. I was soooo proud of myself when she came home from school last year and asked what effyouseekay spells.

Proud because she hadn’t heard it from me.

I was especially proud of her, too. You see, she’d read it on the school wall.

Gifted. That’s my daughter.

So I’m teaching her to furse, too.

Turning Leaves into Beautiful Blooms

Take a look at this easy way to make gorgeous flowers from maple leaves.

I found a Russian site, Lobzik with an amazing picture tutorial on how to fold and roll the large leaves into surprisingly beautiful bouquets of “blooms”.

I would think you could use any large leaf for this, but since it’s Winter here, we’ll have to wait to test it out until at least October.

If you’re in the Northern hemisphere, please have a try and let me know how your results turn out.