General Update

Well, the floor of my craft room has been sanded and they finished today with the varnishing. I will take some pictures this week-end and let you see the next step. Really looks great.

I got some happy mail today. On the Making Memories for You site that I chat on, they had a crop and I won some paper. It was sent to Sophia with something she got and I collected it today. Here are the papers - they are really lovely and not something I have seen here in SA:

I have also been doing a bit of scrapping of late and this particular layout is from a kit that I purchased from Desire's online shoppe. I changed some of the papers and used the same kit layout. I am very pleased with the end result. This is a page of when Sharon, Reg, Dereck an I went to Johannesburg last year to walk in a 12/24 hour circuit walk. We had to walk 2 km round a school and had to achieve at least 60km in the 12 hours to qualify. The event started at 5pm and by 11pm I was so tired, that I went to have a lie down and fell asleep. When I woke up I realised that I would not be able to achieve the required distance, so went back to sleep!!! Sharon and Reg did the required and more!! Here is the layout:

These are a few more that I have completed for Grant's album:

Scrappywalker signing off ...

Spare Room Makeover!

We have a spare room in our house, which is where I normally do my scrapping, sewing, card making and sometimes where a guest would sleep when they came to visit. Now that Leanne has left home, her room is available as a spare room and I decided that I was going to give the original spare room a make over. So, to begin with I wanted the carpets lifted as we have parke flooring underneath and we are having that sanded and varnished. Then I wanted the cupboards out and replaced in a different position in the room. The walls had to be repainted as they were a different colour behind the cupboards.

So this week-end has been spent emptying the cupboards, taking out my desk and sewing cabinet, taking down the cupboards, lifting the carpet and painting the walls. I still need to do some more painting as the new paint I got is slightly darker than what is currently on the wall, and although Dereck and Grant say you can't really notice it, being me, I can. Here are some of the before pictures:

I will carry on tomorrow and finish the painting, once I get home from work.

Keep a lookout for updates as the room progresses.

Paintergirl signing off ...

Grant Graduates

Wednesday, 2 April 2008 was a very proud moment for Dereck and I - Grant was graduating! The ceremony was held at the Jewish Club in Durban and we got there nice and early and got seats 3 rows from the front. Grant passed his IT Programming Diploma with Distinction. This is also a milestone in my life as my "baby" is now all grown up and working!! Bruce Fordyce was the guest speaker and gave a wonderfully humorous talk. Grant even commented on his humour.

Well done Grant we are all very proud of you.

Proud graduate's mom signing off ...

Ubizane Zululand Tree Lodge update 2

We saw quite a few birds, but obviously could not get pictures of them all. Here are a few I managed to get a picture of:

The first one is a type of swallow, the second a red backed shrike, the third a large owl and the fourth a European Roller.

We also saw quite a few animals and below are pictures of them. These were a combination of the animals seen at this lodge as well as the Hluhluwe Reserve which we went to on the Sunday morning:

There were quite a few monkeys around and they were really rather cheeky. They came on to the tables at breakfast and were stealing the sugar and the yoghurts behind the counter!! These are pictures I took on Saturday morning after we had breakfast and were just lazying in our room deciding what to do:We went for a drive into Hluhluwe, but there was really nothing there - just extremely busy with shoppers on a Saturday. We took a drive to see where the Hluhluwe Game Reserve was and then went back to our tree house. I wandered around taking pictures of the buck that were roaming under our tree house and just watched them, then spent quite a while just sitting back enjoying the surroundings and reading a book that I had brought along. At 4pm we went for another game drive, but not before a monkey sneaked into our room and helped itself to all our sugar (second time as they came in the day before and stole it as well):

On Sunday we got up at 05h30 to leave at 6am to go to the Hluhluwe Game Reserve. This was really great and we were hoping to see lion, but that was not to be. We saw quite a few animals (pictures above) which was great. The rhino we saw had a young one with him and he didn't like the fact that the game vehicle was so close and he kept coming towards us. Once the baby had walked into the bush, then the daddy rhino walked away!!

Once we got back, we had breakfast and then started packing up our things. While Dereck was taking a shower I was just chilling on the bed staring out the door and something caught my eye in the tree. I quickly put my zoom lens on the camera and took pictures so that I could see what it was - horrors of horrors it was a snake!! But having had first hand exprience with one in my house a while ago, I recognised it as a Varigated Bush Snake and thankfully it was in a tree not so close to us. Thankfully we were leaving that morning, otherwise I would have wondered where the snake was!!
We really had a great relaxing time. The food was great and we had perfect weather and it was just what we both needed.

Bushed out signing off ...

Ubizane Zululand Tree Lodge

I recently won a week-end away at this wonderful lodge and Dereck and I went there on 28 February 2008 (yes, I know that this is very late to blog, but better late than never - he he!)

We left at about 12h30 on the Friday and arrived at the Lodge at about 3h30 with the beating of drums welcoming us. We were shown our tree lodge which was really great and then we met our guide for the first of our game drives. This man was a bird lover and certainly knew his birds.

See next post for the rest of the update ...