I'm grinchy, on edge and super stabby

When I went on leave last Friday, our assistant was supposed to send a client some documents and copy me.

She had the whole day to do it but she still hadn't done it by 2.45ish when I left.



In terms of SLA, we have to send these things by the 15th of every month. So on Monday the 15th (while on leave), I sent her an SMS to check if it was done.

No reply.

So I thought I'd leave it especially since I was in the sticks and couldn't do anything about it anyway.

On Sunday I checked my work emails and saw that I wasn't copied into anything. It was late at night so I decided to wait for the morning.

Yesterday I sent her another message (this time she's on leave) to check on this thing.

An aside - I normally wouldn't go to these extremes but this is a Very Difficult Client (and I'm being kind here), we've already had run-ins, and ultimately, it's my butt on the line.

Again, no reply immediately but about 4 hours later, she sends me a whatsapp saying all is well and to have faith in her and her work.



So this sends me over the edge.

Once I calmed down a little, I simply thanked her for confirming that the documents were sent and the reason I've been chasing up is we've given him our word and I have heard nothing.

Of course no answer.

I'm going to have to make a meeting with her and document exactly what my expectations are. I can't have this nonsense when I'm trying to build relationships and increase credibility with these clients who are already a little bit unsettled by changes in the company.

 That's one!



The other thing is my kids seriously have stopped listening.

One on one they are angels, but together, they're being "demanding" and they just simply ignore me.

I thought we needed something "fun" to do to decompress so I took the two of them to do a Santa's workshop thing. Biscuits, icing, that kind of thing....

R30 each for 45 minutes, but think of it as babysitting!!!

I had 20 minutes of lovely shopping, went to sit down and ordered a tea and French toast (hadn't had lunch yet). The tea just arrives and I drink about half a cup when I had to go fetch them.

That cup was half cold when I got back and my French toast had arrived.

Aside - why mess with something when it's perfect? Nino's have changed the way they do French toast  - they now dip it in cornflakes and it's deep fried. Horrible. You can't even taste the egg in the bread. If I wasn't shaking from hunger (literally), I'd have sent it back and asked for normal French toast.

Ate about a half a slice when C wanted to go pee.


K said she didn't need to so off I run with a waiter watching the one and my HUGE trolley full of Mr P Home stuff (I'm a fast shopper - I don't dilly-dally).

Get back with C, have ONE slice of toast and half a cup of lukewarm tea and K says she needs to pee.

I said you can wait til we're done and you know what she said? If I pee in my skirt, it's your fault.

FOR THE LOVE!

So I just gave up!

I rushed to the manager, asked for the bill, paid and rushed the kids out of there.

While in the loo, I remembered the trolley, went back and got them home.

This is after they don't want to listen and walk nicely in the parking lot FULL of cars because it's Christmas.



And then it rained.

When we got home, the kids and I rushed in, I obviously tossed my packets on the tiles with a bit too much force and heard it - two of my three lovely little bowls had cracked.

Perfect.

So I put the kids in time-out for not listening, and wrapped the bowls right up.

Isn't that just the perfect end to a "lovely" afternoon?

And now I'm having a time-out writing to all of you.

Once I hit publish, I'm going to have a lovely mug of tea and ignore everyone even if the house burns down around me.

Are you at least full of the joys of Christmas?


PS I caught my new nanny SWEEPING my natural fibre carpets (so all the threads are pulling loose). Of course I freaked out and she said, "Ma'am {that's another story all on its own}, the vacuum cleaner's been broken for three weeks"

FOR THE LOVE!

PPS is my word of the year supposed to be patience?

Insta Sunday... the (mostly) food edition

I'm in that crazy mode of clearing out and cleaning up, and before I deleted some photos from my iphone, I thought I'd post a few photos that didn't get instagrammed, or that needed some extra explaining :)

From left to right, on each row... because I'm too lazy to put numbers on each photo.

1. The official school photos. here are the ones I took in the morning at home.
2. I had lunch with Jeanette mid-November and it was LOVELY. I still need to schedule a follow-up...
3. Finally got my Spanish exam official report.
4. I posted my tomatoes snack on IG and Shayne recommended a spice that I happened to have at home. Well, we now have tomatoes sprinked with Ina Paarman's Rosemary and Olive seasoning all the time. Get it - you will love it :)
5. First batch of biscuits baked for friends. I've scaled down so much from those early years where I baked and baked, and made tins and tins of treats for friends. A lot of people said, "oh, you shouldn't have" and so I didn't :) Anyway, this one was delegated to the new nanny and it's a tried and trusted recipe so impossible to mess up. Well, I packaged and handed this over on a Sat. On the Sun evening I had one with my tea and it was terrible. So I told them I'm making more and this time I personally made the biscuits and they were lovely, as they should be.
6. MandyE's girls send C & K an ornament craft every year. Due to the slow post, it arrives early in the New Year so I pack it up with the Christmas things and it's SUCH a pleasant surprise when we unpack everything. These were the ones they made this year - love them!
7. These were what we did for teachers' gifts. This one is for the security guard so it is plainer than the rest but for the ladies, I put fancy gift tags and "from the kitchen of..." labels too.
8. The second can of biscuits for our friends.
9. A colleague received a gift of 3 individual Woolworths fruit cakes (haha!). She shared them in the office and this was my one. OH MY WORD - delicious. Seriously. But I went to look and they're R80 for the pack so a bit too expensive to buy these for individual servings :(

Have you done any baking this year?

OH!!! I must tell you about something EASY and super-yum I made last month.

Chocolate chip bars

1 packet muffin mix (any brand) - 500 g (I used chocolate)
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 Milky Bar slab (roughly chopped) - optional

Mix it all together.

It is a dense mixture so don't panic - you can't mess it up.... unless you burn it.

Spoon into a greased pan and smooth out so that it's about 1 cm thick.

Bake for about 8 - 10 mins in a standard 180 degree oven. You should check it about 2 mins before the time and stick a toothpick inside to see if cooked through. If not, pop in for a minute at a time and keep checking.

It's easier to keep checking than to burn it - not that I'd know ;)

When you remove from the oven, let cool and cut into slices/ bars/ squares, whatever takes your fancy.

Even D LOVED this and he is not a person who likes sweets!

Let me know if you try it - seriously, it's super easy. You know if I say it's easy, then it's EASY!

Detailed posts to follow but I'm back from holidays

Connor said something amazing (at least to us), "Daddy, isn't it strange how 7 days goes quicker than 4 days away?"

We looked at each other and thought, "FIVE?!"

But that's the truth.

We went to the Drakensberg in April/ May for 4 nights and this time we were away for 7 nights, and I swear this felt shorter.

Connor and I are the same thought - we LOVE being away and we LOVE being back.

We stopped at that ginormous place on the N3 (Bergview) and he said to me, "I wish I could be in Jhb NOW" and I said, "SO DO I".

Because heat + two chattering/ whining twins + heat = discomfort.

When we got back this afternoon, we unpacked the car and my rule is to unpack everything there and then before anything else because I can't bear a house with STUFF lying around without purpose.

D, Connor and I were unpacked within 20 minutes and Kendra took 2 hours....

Story of my life.



I'll be back in the next few days with more tales of the Twins who Lost their Ears, the Mummy who Shouted too much, the GORGEOUS rusty car and all of our 3 best things about being away on holiday.

What were you up to over the last 7 days?
PS Louisa, how was the party?

The search for the jacarandas

People think I like always going on walks but I've said this before, once I'm out the gate, I'm good. I just don't think about it til I get out the gate.

(same with gym - I don't even give myself an option. On a Sat morning I roll out of bed, pull on my gym clothes, brush my teeth, etc. and off I go)

And I always enjoy "having done" the activity.

I find the kids are excellent at keeping me focussed. So if I say, "we really should go for a photowalk to look for jacarandas" they remind me til we do it.

This time, we even got D excited so he drove us to a street where he'd seen "good jacaranda trees" and the kids and I went mad!

purple carpets (imagine how close I was to the ground... and then imagine the people watching us... yes, I don't care at all. I want the pictures!

then we drove to more "good trees" and got out to walk around

isn't this a cool shot? All artsyish

don't worry, we were watching her

So that's it for another year. I just love looking out for these beautiful purple flowers.

What are your spring photo obsessions?

Mine? Any flowers and definitely these beautiful purple trees.

Monochrome Monday and Glamming...

One of my favourite ways to use black and white is when the colours are too busy, nothing complements each other and you almost don't know what to focus on in the photo.

It's really easy for the mother who couldn't care less about the clothes to still have nice pics.

My example... a bit too busy

Much better!

See? Now you don't have to make your kids wear the same/ co-ordinating clothes - just make the pic black and white!


And then that same night (our year-end), the kids took some photos of us.

Both the skew photos (remember when that was all the rage a few years ago? there was even a joke that a skew pic on Instagram got x times as many likes as a straight pic) and that canvas make me twitch but we'll take what we can get with our budding photographers.

In other news, Mandy told me how to access the monochrome setting on my Canon. I'm slightly embarrassed to say I'd never experimented before, and I've had the camera for THREE YEARS!

Boom!

(read your manual if you don't want to be like me)

I posted a pic to FB saying it's been YEARS since we dressed up. I think it was probably 10 years ago at a work function and the two weddings we've been to, we just wear work clothes.

Which means I had to buy the dress.

What about you?
How often do you dress up?

Saturday Snapshots - the looking for beauty edition

I explained a lot here why I wanted to do this post.

So without further jibber jabber, let's get to it.

multi-layered chipped paint

oooh, rust

and some more rust

peeling blue paint on an old door

old wall, old wheelbarrow, chipped paint

Interesting facts...

1. I went straight to my Marcia faves folder to find these.
2. Apparently I have an obsession a thing for chipped paint, old anything and rust :)
3. Many people walked right by these things and when I stopped to take these photos, I got the quizzical look which I love, because they deserve a second look, right?

Can't wait to pop over to see yours BUT I'm going to be wifi-challenged as I'm on HOLIDAYS!

Which is your favourite photo?

And that's our last for the year!

Let's talk about Christmas

Clearly people don't come here for my book choices. There are only 12 views on yesterday's book post :)



I posted about our simple Christmas a few weeks ago so I thought it was time to do a few quick updates and also talk about a few other things we're not doing.

The store-bought advent calendar was very well received by both kids and then about 5 days in, we arrived home to a bit of drama.

One child ate all the other child's chocolates from their calendar.

The "victim" was surprisingly chilled about it and very forgiving (more than I would have been).

Somehow they negotiated and sorted out the rest of the chocolates.

Bottom line - advent calendars are no more. And since willingly giving them chocolate was already a stretch for me, we decided not to replace either of them.

However, my lovely friend at the Se7en blog does a monthly calendar which I normally don't use but this time I printed them out for the kids to colour in.

They spent two evenings happily colouring in both sheets and now they're using that to cross off the days.

SO EASY - I might never go back to the difficult advent calendars again. D and I chatted about this advent calendar thing and he said (and here's where we act really old), in his day, the advent calendar just had a picture behind the window - the fun was in counting down and seeing the picture.



And then let's talk about the elf on the shelf.

Now I have two issues with this elf.

1) Really? The festive season is crazy enough all by itself. Everybody in the world says they're too busy except today I read on one blog that December always feels calm to her. She is the only person I've ever heard say that.

Anyway, so then we want to ADD to the craziness by making this elf do tricks for 25 days? No thanks, I'll say no to the extra crazy.

2) That thing is just creepy. If I were a little child, I'd be freaked out at the thought of something watching me and making sure I'm good.

Do you have an Elf?




Okay, one more thing about Christmas. And for this one, I'm very guilty. I bribe my children too. But it feels wrong. God gives me good gifts DESPITE my behaviour, and so a few nights ago when I said, if you guys are good this week, we'll let you open your Christmas presents on Friday night (mainly so they could charge the cameras before the holiday),that just felt wrong.

I don't want them to feel like they have to earn their gifts. We (not Father Christmas) give good gifts because we love them and feel that they would be delighted by something just like God gives good gifts even when we don't deserve them.

Also, like Mandy said, I'm all for imagination but I don't do all these fantasies like the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas. At school they do Father Christmas and I very reluctantly sent gifts to school and had to ooh and ah when they came home to show me the Lego they got.

Tell me how you approach all this Father Christmas/ Santa/ Mr Kringle business.

PS Don't forget about our Saturday Snapshots tomorrow!
PPS My annual Christmas sale is on - scroll right down the page to see all of the detail.

And then I looked through my Feedly and found this post which ties in very nicely here.

My top books of 2014 - fiction and non-fiction

The end of year is upon us and as you know, I like a lot of recapping, because this is how I think through things, so best I start with some easy things.

Like books.

I'm doing a #DecemberReflections on Instagram. I was honestly stumped to think of the best book of 2014.

So I went through my Goodreads account. To be honest, I've read 73 books so far (my 2014 challenge was 70) and I fully intend to read 7 more this month, so these might change a bit....I'll come back and edit if it does.

Without further ado...

Fiction
I read 5 of Emily Giffin's 7 books this year - the others are above my threshold. (I have a rule - I don't buy books above $11.99 because then I might as well have bought the physical copy and the whole justification for me getting the Kindle was that it was cheaper than my Exclusive Books habit).

Something Borrowed (this was made into a movie which is not at all as good as the book - The Runaway Jury is still the only movie made that is as good as the book - it may or may not be due to John Cusack...) and Something Blue are lighter and more fun.

(Do you like John Cusack?)

But the one that tops my list is Heart of the Matter. It was so thought-provoking and if you're someone who likes to think through issues (especially on working women and staying home and that sort of thing), definitely get it, read it and let's have a chat about it :)

(it's only $7,99 at the moment if you want it)

The Rose Petal Beach - Dorothy Koomson
I've raved about Dorothy Koomson before. I love ALL her books. ALL.

This was her latest one - I've read them all except her recipe book because, well, a recipe book!

(And Louisa, I see I bought my copy on Nicola's birthday last year :))

Still life - Joy Fielding

The last time I read a Joy Fielding was 5 years ago and I forgot how she writes these page-turners. Never mind sleep; I was up at least an hour later than I normally am (1 am and onwards...) for a good 2 - 3 nights.

Well worth it to be so thoroughly captivated.

Most disappointing - I think I love you - Alison Pearson (probably because I loved "I don't know how she does it" so much when I first read it years ago) and How to fall in love - Cecilia Ahern (she just writes so much better usually).

If you've read those two, tell me what you thought.

Special mention - Momfriends - Ariella Papa. Some editing needed which normally annoys me too much but I loved the honesty, authenticity, great characters and story. It's my 4th most enjoyable book which has got to tell you something!!!



And then, non-fiction reads

My goal was to read 15 non-fiction; I read 18 already and will definitely read another 2 this year.

Favourites were...

1. The Nesting Place: It Doesn't Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful - Myquillyn Smith

This is not only a book about decorating... it's so full of beautiful life lessons.

Really, get it and enjoy it with a cup of tea and your highlighter or post-it flags.

2. 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess Jen Hatmaker

Loved! I still want to do a 7 project of my own... and D really liked the sub-title ;)

3. Daring Greatly - Brene Brown

I still liked the other two better, but this one speaks to me a lot now that I'm a parent. Some really great insights.

(Glennon Melton calls Brene Brown "Queen Brene" :))

Most disappointing reads

Is everyone hanging out without me? - I feel a little very annoyed at myself for keeping this on my wish list for 2 - 3 years and paying money to read it. Don't bother unless you're a fan and want some insights to her personality.

Let's all be brave - I read this author's entire courage series for 31 days a few years ago and loved it. This was... not the same. It seemed way too "young" for me, like 2 on the scale of brave things. That sounds ruder than it's intended to be but is why I felt it was maybe intended for a younger audience with not much of life behind them :)

Most fun read -There, Their, They're - a no tears guide to grammar from the Word Nerd. I paid about $2 for this and I was thoroughly entertained. If you're also a Word Nerd (D and I are), you will find yourself nodding away smugly :)

So that's where I'm at!

What were your top fiction and non-fiction reads of 2014?

When you get home a little earlier, what do you do?

I like to have a plan if I miraculously get home a little bit early, a little something extra that I can quickly do with the kids.

So on this particular day a meeting finished early and I decided we should go for a walk.

These photos were taken with my little pink friend #Nikon

Do you ever get home earlier than expected? How do you use the time? Or do you just get straight on with supper?

Looking for beauty

Oops - we forgot about Saturday Snapshots.

I've wanted to do this one for the longest time so I'm going to do it anyway. But this weekend on the 13th.

Our theme is looking for beauty.

Something particularly important for me to realise at this time of year.

I was thinking about this concept as I started working through my goals review for this past year.

This has been one of those years that we want to put behind us as quickly as possible, right?

But through it all, it's important to remember that there's beauty everywhere.

I looked through some of my Instagrams and iphone pics that didn't make it to instagram last year when I worked in the CBD, and there are some AMAZING pics. Now you all know that was a horrible, horrible time in my life but maybe that's why God had to show me beautiful angles, light, snippets of beauty amidst all that drama.

And that's why I want to do this version of Saturday Snapshots.

So let's do it together.

Let's post 5 pics of things that nobody else would spare a second glance at but YOU saw something and captured it!

Those are the ones I want!

Who's in?