Snippet(s)

Take one Friday school assembly and a trip to the corner shop on the way home from school and this is what you get...

"Hurry up Mum and open the car and don't put these photos on facebook.  Or your blog!" Em. 

❤

a little glimpse into my day...

A little glimpse into my day...

Christmas already?

Emma bought herself a Lego set last week during the school holidays...a Lego Christmas scene.  How cute is that! She was pretty impressed with it, as are we all...it even has a light that shines in the top of the house! I'm considering it our first official ''Christmas Decoration'' to go up for 2010...I know, I know it's a bit early but it was just too cute to put away downstairs with the other Lego creations.

Oh how I love online shopping!

I've been waiting all day for this package to arrive...online shopping, boy I love it!! AND I love this pretty blue bag...almost too good to open! A few items have arrived for me to tick off the Christmas shopping list, yay...could be something in there for you!

My sweet photo project

Today I've also got a bit of a photo project going on. Selecting a few photos from when the kids were sweet (they're not so sweet now...why do they have to grow up?!) and printing them off in black and white. This is a project I've been meaning to do for about 2 years...better late than never! 

I've got another project on at the moment, well its not actually 'on the go'. Its only in the thinking stage...I'm thinking about cleaning my fridge. Ugh I hate that job!  I saw a blog post recently at Frills in the Hills about your fridge and what it says about you...

What does my fridge say about me...

My favourite fridge magnets...
Have we NO wine here! Black cat Bobby, my Parisian Can Can girls and my Sean frog! 

It's tiny this fridge and cluttered with special moments in time...

*I have so many precious works of art to put on the fridge that I had to expand the gallery to the wall next to the fridge! So, what does mine say about me I wonder. I love having a collage of photos and bits and pieces - couldn't live without my 'fridge stuff'.

Raspberry muffins

Another project I've put off since the weekend...baking some muffins...raspberry ones...mmmm, yummy! Now to make a cuppa and enjoy a little slice of home in the form of the Woman's Weekly. Hoping that my friends and family are enjoying a little glimpse into my day (miss you) and enjoying a cuppa with me too! 

Alison x

ps. sorry I missed the baby shower Lynne...was thinking about you all day on Sunday. xoo. 

streets of our town...

Come with me for a walk through the streets of our neighbourhood on a lovely summer morning...

...a few shots of our neighbourhood taken on a walk to the park with the kids last Friday morning. Hope you enjoyed the walk with us. xx

3 summer birthdays...

For a girl who was born in winter, the past 3 European summer time birthdays have been fun...

turning 9...

turning 10 and it had to be an ice-cream cake which was a bit hard to come across here in Munich...

...and turning 11 today, happy birthday Emma! This year it had to be a marble cake...

So long summer birthdays, back to wintery birthdays for this girl next year!

come out, come out wherever you are...

The week before last the sun came out for 3 days in a row. It was brilliant - literally!! And not to mention it did wonders for the severely deprived vitamin D levels. Everyone in Munich seemed to have their happy faces on, it was so nice - like a breath of fresh air really! 


The downside to those glorious 3 sunny days was the storm that followed the 'heat wave' and then a week of non stop rain. Another week of non stop rain, that is. We have had SO many of them and the forecast for this coming week is... you guessed it more rain. Happy faces have long gone now! 


Chris, Rowena and Bron are coming over for a visit in a few weeks and I can't wait! This will be their ''big'' overseas trip. I've promised her (promise, promise, promise, cross my heart) that we are saving the sun until she gets here. Well, that's what I'm hoping anyway. 


So, I have put up this photo of a gorgeous flower we found in Kensington Gardens during our summer holiday in the UK last year. It's to remind me that summer is coming and not to give up hope. The pink colour actually reminds me of mum. I like that. It's her favourite colour for lipstick and nail polish. Her brand of choice was always Revlon and so I have a special place in my heart for Revlon products. So, I'm about to pop out, with rain jacket and umbrella, to the shops to get myself some nail polish in this colour - to will summer here. Come on summer, you can do it. 

Revlon nail enamel in Plum Seduction

help...

Help! I have searched ALL day (and by all day, I mean ALL day) on the internet to find this picture, but to no avail : (

I saw it this morning on a blog here and it really appealed to me.  I have left a message with Chantelle the lovely blog owner of 'fat mum slim' and I'm hoping that when she has the chance she might get back to me and let me know where she sourced her photo from. Fingers crossed.

If anyone knows of an online market/seller who does this kind of wall hanging/sign, please,please, please get in touch with me. I am DESPERATE for one. It is just so cute. I MUST have one!

thank you

alison xxoo   : )



June 6 - Well, after days and days of searching ....  FOUND IT  - here !!!! Now the challenge is to get one!!

a grey old day and a few things i wanted to share...

I should be doing a number of things right now, but this weather is driving me bonkers. Apparently it has been the coldest May in a very long time and all I want to do is curl up on the lounge (or in front of the computer). Instead of doing those number of things that I should be doing here I am eating strawberries (from Spain), oaty biscuits (my anzac biscuits gone wrong...who would have thought you could go 'wrong' with anzac biscuits...hmmm) and with a nice cuppa out of my Wonder Woman mug (that matthew gave me for my birthday...among other wonderful gifts). So with no plans to venture out into the rainy, cold, grey day, I've rugged up and here I am just sitting at the computer reading my favourite blogs and cruising for new ones! The life of a hausfrau, doesn't get much better, does it?!


I've also got a couple of photos I wanted to share from one of our recent walks around the neighbourhood, the last time is wasn't raining, which from memory was about 20 days ago (ugh!)


So, here they are...

But why does she have to grow up so quickly...

Well, its been 3 days and my Em is coming home tonight from her big adventure to Berlin. The school has been fantastic sending an email each evening with photos and an update of the day...such a relief for anxious parents like myself! It sounds and looks like they have had a fantastic time. It takes about 7 hours to get back to Munich, so she should be on the ICE train right now as I write this...yay!


I was looking for some old photos yesterday. I knew I had kept some aside when packing all of our 'things' (ie my life) into storage for the period of time we are living in Munich. I finally found the ones I was looking for, old school photos of my friend Leanne and I. We both turn 40 any day now (head in the sand...40 is the new 30 right? Right.) and have been taking a walk down memory lane - photographically speaking!  I also found a whole stack of baby photos of Emma. She was sooooo cute. I will have to scan them so I have them stored on the computer. It prompted me to have a good long hard think about how quickly my little girl has grown up. We have been here in Munich for 2 years and in that time her level of maturity has increased so much that it has just blown me away.


While it may sound wonderful to have the opportunity to move to a European country and live for a few years, to be honest it is really hard work with children. To go through the different stages of growth that they have, to have birthdays and other special occasions in their lives without their family and friends, to start over again with making friends, to fit in, to be part of the gang... well it's hard enough for me as an adult to make new friends, but for the kids it has been hard also. I'm proud of her, proud of both of my children for how well they have adjusted to life. Although Sean will never, ever get over the fact that they don't play cricket here, but that's another story. 


Over the last few years my girl has gone from cutie-pie little side kick of mine, to her own individual person who is so incredibly independent that it scares me.  She is about to turn 11 but she seems so much more like a 14 year old. The ferocious hormones have started to kick in. Not only is she obsessed with the boys in the grade above her, but things like I have to remind her that she needs to look after her skin with daily twice daily face washing. Ugh! Breakouts already? Oh come on, I was not prepared for this. I thought it would start happening when she was 14, not now!!  And don't even get me started on buying underwear for my tween! I saw push-up padded bras for 10-11 year olds the other day...I kid you not! So before my eyes and with no way of slowing it down, she is becoming this glorious, self confident, clever, funny, witty, silly, stubborn (obviously gets that from her mother) and frustrating person... so so wonderful to watch, but also so so scary to see it all happen so quickly. 


Because it is all happening so quickly and because I have not prepared myself for it to be happening so quickly (I'm a head in the sand kind of girl), Em and I have had our 'moments' of late but over the last 3 days while she has been away I have missed her like crazy. I knew I would, but I underestimated just how much. I'm the first to admit that I'm not coping well with the 'tween' years and they have only just started. Life really is a roller-coaster at the moment...give me strength to roll with the punches!


So I decided while I have the time on my hands to do it, I would put together a little album of Em photos for myself, just to remind me of how much she has grown up over the past few years. And to remind me that I need to appreciate all the wonderful moments that I have with my girl ... the good, the bad and the ugly.  Because before I know it she will be really, really grown up...

Little princess...

my little ray of sunshine...and her little brother who is always following her around like her shadow. I would always let her choose which cake she wanted me to make for her birthday. She doesn't like eating cake much these days ('It makes you fat you know mum'! Oh please I want my baby back!). I've been baking marble cakes of late and she told me that she quite liked them and that  was her favourite type of cake at the moment. So I made one so she could take some as a snack on the train to Berlin. ''No, i don't like that sort of cake, mum''. Oh well, I can only try...

Graduating preschool and starting Kindergarten...and not too happy about it. Em never did like starting big school. She cried every morning for most of her first year...broke my heart, but made us both stronger (I hope).  This was the first time she ''cut'' her own hair - just before school started! A nice big chop to the fringe right down almost to the scalp! Nice work Em...

 

She was always my helper in the kitchen, but not so much these days unless it involves extra pocket money, and was always my little side kick when out at the shops...her favourite thing was to stop off at Bayswiss for a juice and cupcake....ahhh I loved those days so much.  

Self hair 'cut' number 2...again to the fringe...please can we stop with the hair dressing now Em? 

And her favouritest of all favourite things to do was play schools...usually with her brother, or who ever else she could get to sit still for more than a minute. She still loves to play schools to this day... perhaps a teacher in the making? 

Christmas concert in borrowed dress from Bestie (thanks Issy) and the brand new big bike for birthday no. 7 (she didn't really ride it in the house). Now she is really growing up...the soft little cherub face is starting to disappear and the more mature Em is starting to appear...

Saying goodbye to our house in Sydney and bye bye to her beloved bedroom (well a girl's gotta have her stuff!)...

Saying bye to the school band... last concert played with them...

...saying goodbye to friends...

Saying a big hello to our new home in Munich...it was great to have some air freight boxes to make cubbies out of in our first few days and having a few loved things from home around us made us feel so much better and helped with the homesickness (a little)...

First day at the new international school...awwww, they look so tiny and cute and the school looked so big and imposing, not like our little school at home...and making new friends in our new city...

..but life in an international school means friends come and go so quickly...saying good bye to old-new friends who are moving on means the 3 Amigos were no more! Showing mum and dad around the classroom...

...looking so grown up and acting so grown up...makes me sad and proud all at once....plus a new school year means making new friends again, perhaps 2 peas in a pod! 

My big girl....I discovered just before she set off for Berlin the other day that she has, AGAIN, cut her own hair...I wondered why she had been putting it up ALL the time and pinning her fringe back- the one that we had just managed to grow out so her hair was all the one length...Oh boy, I thought we were over the self hairdressing...but no...it continues to this day...a wonky fringe and chunky ''bangs'' Suzi Quatro mullet style... nice one Em!! A trip to the hairdressers is in order this weekend! 

But I love her so! She is still my little princess.

Someone once told me that it was so important for mothers and daughters to have some special one on one bonding time...to do something together, just the two of you. She was so right. 

Now, to plan something special for me and my girl to do when she gets back from her field trip...