Catching up

I have been really slack with my blogging duties for the last few months. Again I do apologise for this.

It is summer here in Australia and boy has it been hot! Not to mention humid. My hometown of Perth is traditionally hot and dry (which is fine by me), but this summer's humid weather has been totally kicking my butt. Not that I should complain mind you, in Tasmania it seems like half the island has burnt to a cinder, same in the south eastern mainland... and Queensland is flooding yet again. So apart from the odd cyclone in the north of our state we are to be counting our lucky stars.

December was crazy at my job, I spent the entire month with a phone stuck to my ear while simultaneously trying to perform miracles for grumpy/stressed out people while trying not to become a grumpy stressed out person myself ;).

My folks went to Italy for a month over Christmas so my and my brother's families has something of a non-traditional Christmas. We all gathered at our folks house on December 24th to stay together. Our step sister and her fiance stopped in and stayed for dinner. We all got new PJ's and wore them for a family photo on Christmas morning. After making waffles for breakfast (using the waffle maker I got from Santa) we opened all the gifts.

We had a simple lunch (meaning not too much fuss) with BBQ prawns, chicken and ham with salads that were left over from the previous night's dinner. We didn't have loads of desserts like we usually would, just a big platter of fruits. We did have little cakes because it was Miss D's birthday of course.

Mr W and I spent NYE with family friends. We made oliebollen, a traditional Dutch NYE food. We got home at 3am and he was still partying until about 2am before falling asleep with their dog on the sofa.

When I returned to work after the New Year, we learned that one of the shipping companies we deal with has gone bust and their receivers had decided to lock down all the stock that was on their premises. This was very stressful for all concerned and we are still trying to get access to some items several weeks after the business has changed hands. January has been spent mostly on the phone or banging my head on my work desk in between looking for miracles.



Leila... or as I call her Leila-belle

Mr W's 11th birthday was celebrated for about ten days (stretching out his celebrations is a trick he has learned from my mum). He had a family BBQ party, a movie party with his mates and kept sucking us into buying him birthday treats for an entire week... The biggest of which was a new dog! Well a 2 year old third-hand dog anyway. She is a very cute Japanese Spitz. She is terribly sweet, cute and gentle. She has settled in nicely with us in her 'forever home'. She is officially Mr W's pet and he loves saying 'go to doggie grandma' while pointing at me. It took me ages to work out how to post the picture from my new iPad mini to this blog! Honestly I can't work it out at all and feel rather stupid. This shot was taken on our first trip to the country last weekend. Leila is surprisingly good in the car and even had a few little naps sitting next to Mr W. Our previous dogs were terrible travellers, constantly howling and scratching around in the back we had to travel with the windows down just to let the awful noise out of the car and save our ear drums from bursting. They were lovely animals though outside of the car.

 

Items have been flying off the shelves in the temari supply store. I've been running to the post office several times a week and shipping all over the world. I have a good supply of v-rulers and KYO rayon, Cosmo pearl cotton #5, and metallic threads, the book stocks are a little low but there is a new order on the way from Japan.