Ariel and friend at the dance

Saturday night was bush dancing night to celebrate one of the homeschool lad's eighteenth birthday. The dress was "Formal" which meant all the young lads and lasses had a great excuse to dress up for the ocassion.
Ariel is standing next to one of her friends showing off their outfits. It was her excellent $1 Op shop value skirt and $1 white shirt. The shawl was an experimental one she made on our friends Tri-loom "to see how it worked." It works pretty well, I reckon.
Ariel had a great time with all the others dancing a variety of bush dances and enjoying the company of almost 200 people.

Karen Couchman Seahorses

These seahorses are designed by Karen Couchman. It was stitched on pale green 18 count Aida. Aida is material specially useful for beginning cross stitch as the weaving is very consistent and you can easily see each square. (18 count means 18 squares per inch. The higher the count the smaller the picture.)

This was part of a selection of patterns I did with an animal theme and is currently adorning our spare bedroom.

Childrens' Comedy Carnival #28

Kim of Life in a Shoe has once more prepared another Carnival of Children's Comedy. I appreciated her quote from the Headmistress of The Common Room regarding finding humour in everyday sitautions, especially when events are actually happening.
Our post on Talking to Grandma is included.

Catch the Wind

Catch the Wind is the first design I stitched from Lavender and Lace/ Butternut Road Designs by MLI. I stitched it back in 1994 when Ariel and Eric wasted their time watching Play School and Sesame Street on Television. This was before we turned the thing off and let the children play.
It is stitched on 32 count offwhite linen. We have been taking photos of most of the completed and framed cross stitches that I have done over the years. Since this chart was done, I have completed six other of her large designs and five of the smaller or free designs she has on her website. Mum has also stitched about ten of her designs, making our houses mini Lavender and Lace display homes!

Having your say

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What makes a good comment?
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Until today we had a very open comments policy only requiring word verification to stop spam (which worked well).

Unfortunately we have now had to introduce Comment Monitoring. This means every comment will need to be approved before appearing on the post. One reader from near Dahlonega Georgia using an Alltel connection had a jolly time last night (US time) over the space of about two hours making a collection of snarky comments all over the blog. Naturally, they were all anonymous which reduced the chance of any interaction to zero.

So now, when you make a comment, its appearance may be delayed until it is approved.

Clingon Assault

As part of our very important cultural Awareness Program we introduced the children to a Star Trek film. After all, how can the children interact with the society around them if they can't understand the references to Spock, Trekkies, "I'm giving her all shes got, Cap'n" in a thick Scottish accent and so on?
Unfortunately this combines with their predilection for puns.
In this photo you can see Rose's method of assisting Eric clean up the table. "Oh No!" cried out Eric, "I've been atacked by a Cling on!"
*Groan*
Lana is sitting at the table, enjoying Rose's assistance.

Firewise

Today our local volunteer bush fire brigade gave a series of talks around the vllage informing residents of the facts about bush fires. The Captain of the brigade (pictured) explained that every resident needs to be fire wise and have a fire and evacuation plan.
Do you stay and protect your property or do you leave? The key is preparation and your personal health.
We will stay and protect our home. We have prepared the property by clearing out all the gutters, ensuring everything flammable is away from the house, we have proper clothing, water storage, and some fire fighting equipment. The main danger is "Ember Attack". The winds both before and after the fire send up clouds of burning embers which land all over the place starting many new spot fires.
When the village was severely damaged by fire in 1965, houses began burning while the fire was still over 15km (10 miles) away and moving towards the village.
As we haven't had a bushfire here since then and Australia is now officially in the worst drought in our nation's history, everyone is very concerned. There are currently major fires raging in various parts of the country, even the Snowy Mountains. The Fire Captain said that this is very unusual, as the Snowy doesn't normally get fires until around January and later. But the land is so dry and the weather is hot earlier than usual, so we are getting ready.
There is a "Drought Index" which measures the severity of the drought. Currently the deficit in New South Wales is 140. This means that the moisture in the soil needs 140mm of rain (around 6 inches) to penetrate into the earth to get where we are supposed to be at this time of year. All that rain in one go wouldn't help as it would just run off. This is equivalent to a good soaking rain over a very long period. Yikes! That is some rain deficit to overcome.

Boots black

Somehow it has ended up as my job to polish the shoes and boots. Maybe it has happened because I always wear black shoes and while I am doing mine I get the honour of doing more.
While my shoes only need a touch up here and there, I captured this image to show you the before and after view of the boys' shoes.
This is a pair of Peter's boots. Can you guess which one is before applying a healthy dose of boot polish?
This style of boot wasn't available in the US. As this is the main style of boots the boys ever wear, one of my missions when I returned to Australia on business was to buy three pairs of boots.
(And lollies too as you can see from my stash I brought home)

Talking to Grandma

We recently celebrated Peter's birthday. Birthdays are always special and we are lucky to celebrate so many of them during the year.
Here is a summary of a typical birthday.
Overnight I lay the table with breakfast bowls covering a selection of lollies (candy) in each person's place. The birthday child's favourite cereal is on the table and any presents are placed in MY place. Yes, that's right. The birthday child gets to sit in MY chair for the whole day. It's quite an honour.
The birthday child also gets to choose their favourite dinner.
Sometime during the day Grandma and Opa (Lana's parents) and Just Grandma(*) and Grandpa (my parents) call on the phone and wish and/or sing Happy Birthday.
Naturally enough, when the grandparents call, all the children want to talk to them. This photo is of Rose listening to Just Grandma and nodding her answers. Unfortunately, it isn't a video phone so the conversation tends to be one sided.

(*) My mum has been called "Just Grandma" since Ariel was three years old. We had started calling her Grandma Bruggie, but she said to Ariel, "No, just Grandma is fine." That was it. When Peter read the card Mum and Dad had sent, James commented, "Just Grandma spelled her name wrong. It only has Grandma."

It's a Catholic Homeschooling Carnival

This post is a litle late but the inaugral Carnival of Catholic Homeschooling debuted at the Love to Learn Blog.
It was a pleasure to see a link to G.K. Chesterton's great poem Lepanto, commemorating the sea battle which saved Europe from the Turkish fleet and rescued around 12,000 Christian galley slaves on 7 October, 1571.

Our series of posts on the Evans Head camp is included.

Pecan Slice

This is a simple recipe that makes a very tasty slice we obtained from one our US parish friends. This was also known as "fatty cake" or "Cornbread cake". When we asked why it was called cornbread cake - as the ingredients were nothing like cornbread - we were told it was because you mix it like cornbread! Just thrown in the ingredients and stir.
Pecan Slice
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Cooking Oil or Melted Butter
4 Eggs
1.5 Cups Self Raising Flour
1 Cup Brown Sugar (Packed)
1 Cup Choped Pecans
1 Teaspoon Vanilla

Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix well with a spoon.
Pour in to a lamington (9x13) tray.
Bake at 180C (350F) for 35 to 40 minutes.
(By the way, here is Rose doing her recipe modelling. The best thing is she can eat the samples!)

Another Carnival of Children's Comedy

Even whilst on vacation Kim of Life in a Shoe does her duty. The 26th Carnival of Children's Comedy strikes again with a humourous collection of tales from the littler people.
I especially enjoyed the challenge of technology in "Raising them the Microsoft Way".
Our expose of Rose modelling as a Peekaboo doll is included.

One year already? Egads!

With great amazement we realised that we have been home one year already. After two years and three months living in the US we returned home last September, wondering how we would settle back in to the old life.
Surprisingly the transition was very quick and efficient. As we came back to our old house and all my existing clients, the intervening time overseas (the Australian term for International) quickly became a collection of fond memories. We became very grateful that I had decided to record our adventures in Bruggie Tales as we now had a great history of our time away. The children and us are able to go back through the blog and reminisce our time spent in a strange land and the wonderful people we met and with whom we became friends.
Our arrival was a short post, but the return experience, with all of it's challenges travelling with around 30 suitcases and 6 children and 30 hours from start to finish is recorded in some detail. The September 2005 page has all the details, jsut scroll down for all the adventures.
If you have ever wondered how that much people and packages would work, this is a great way to learn how we did it. And survived with enough good memories to want to try it again for a holiday in 3 years time with nine people.

Ariel in the Kitchen

Yesterday we celebrated the first anniversary of our return from the US. To commemorate the occasion we invited our homeschooling neighbours over and shared a lamb roast. (yum)
As a treat we had two American desserts. The first was Peach Cobbler topped with ice cream and cream. Tthe recipe for Berry Cobbler is here - we just used peaches instead of berries. The second dessert will be our next post - Pecan slice.
Ariel was in charge of making the dinner with some assistance from Eric. This was a good opprtunity to show another "Style of Ariel".
A simple green T-shirt with bone coloured skirt (a dangerous colour to wear in the kitchgen) with an inexpensive large red bow in her hair. Also her feet matched wonderfully with her "Emperor's new slippers".
Just out of photo range is Rose "helping" by licking the mixing spoon (and putting it back in for a second or third go while I was distracting Ariel.)

Ready for Mass

Today I made Ariel wear a different outfit to Mass so I could take a photo.
This ensemble was obtained from Vinnies (an Australian Thrift Store) for a combined cost of $2.00 ($1.50 US). Initially Ariel thought the different reds wouldn't match, but I thought they went well.
My colour co-ordination opinion rates quite low, but Lana also approved so it must have been OK.

No Thanks, we have our own.

Today we visited Goulburn's Lilac City Festival. It was a beautiful Spring day and lots of people were enjoying the entertainment, rides and stalls in the main park in Goulburn.
We saw the stall on the left displaying "Peek-a-boo Dolls". I looked at them and mentioned to Lana, "We don't need one of those. We have our own."
Sure enough, this evening Rose was denied one of her requests for another piece of licorice. She rushed to a nearby wall and assumed the position. I quickly retrieved my camera and took a photo. Rose looked around and gave me a half serious expression with a trace of smile, and moved further along the hall against the wall on the other side.
I sneaked around and took another photo, so she moved further along the wall. It ended up being a bit of a game and she soon forgot why she was pretending to be a peek-a-boo doll and returned to the rest of the family.
One does have to admit that the doll makers certainly captured the pose very well.

Ballroom blitz

In the dance we mentioned back in July we showed you a glimpse of the dress Ariel and Lana made in action on the dance floor. This photo shows Ariel with two of her friends all dressed with style for the dance. The dress on the right you would have seen on the post for International Fairy Day. Ariel has grown too tall so her friend was able to benefit.
The material for the dress and cape were purchased about two weeks before the dance. Lana and Ariel worked together to adjust the pattern to suit Ariel, then sew and fashion the lot in less than a week. I was sent on a mission whilst I was in the city for the buttons, hooks, eyes and clasps for the cape. These were attached the night before the dance. A bit of effort, but well worth it.

Styles by Ariel - The Hippie Look

I have been told many a time that it isn't possible for Girls to dress with style in today's world. After all, the only clothes girls seem to be able to buy in the stores are those that are too short or have too little fabric for the money. Ariel actually has a fine sense of style and colour, which she must have inherited from Lana.
(She reminds me of this when I dress the little girls - "You can't have purple socks with a red dress Dad!" "Why not? The socks match each other which is a great start!")
I have posted previously on some of Ariel's outfits and this is the first of a series of Ariel's dress styles.
The Hippie Look
We are lucky Lana's sister is on the lookout for nice clothes for Ariel. This ensemble is all from her. (Thanks Gina)
The skirt is of thin material, but has so many pleats that it remains modest, yet light. Being a warm Spring day Ariel has stolen my hat which seems to go with almost anything.
Previous "Styles by Ariel" posts are:
Modest Hunting Gear for Girls
Ariel's all in a spin (Not the best example to look if you want detail)
There is a new drop down menu on the left column which will group all these related posts together.

Kid's Comedy Carnival 25

Kim from Life in a Shoe has posted the latest Carnival of Children's Comedy.
There are three posts from Bruggietales featuring James, Clare and Rose.
I liked this glimpse into the thoughts of a seven year old's appreciation of his mother is at Busy Busy Mommy.

Candle Light Dinner for Eight

This is how we enjoyed our dinner on Sunday Evening at dusk. The children found the whole lack of power thing very exciting and played with glow sticks once it was dark enough.
The power finally came back about 7:00 am Tuesday morning. Luckily the freezer kept cold enough and we lost no food. The phones failed when the battery in the local exchange ran out after only 24 hours without external power.
So the next purchases for us are a mobile (cell) phone for Lana and a backup generator, primarily for the freezer and refrigerator.