Monday, December 23, 2013

Christmas Break

Happy Holidays to everyone in blogland!

We went on our first family mountain bike fun ride last weekend. It was the Twilight ride at the Backsberg Estate. There was a 20km, 10km, and 4km ride with the 20km starting at 6pm. We finished at 7:55pm and then Michaela and I entered the fancy dress competition and won a prize as the Tutu Girls!
AT the start

Took this photo while riding!!
Michaela and I with our race numbers at the fancy dress!

I finally got all my Christmas baking done too....fruit cake and lots of Christmas biscuits!
Batch 1 of Biscuits before the oven

Yesterday was the annual Fenn Cape Point Challenge Surfksi race...an epic 50km surfski paddle starting in Scarborough on the Atlantic side, around Cape Point and ending at Fish Hoek Beach. The first batch of paddlers leave at 5:30am and the winner finished in a tine of 3hr41m! A tradition at the club is that all the Junior Lifeguard girls get given a Fenn bikini and meet the paddlers as they cross the finish line and carry their boats for them! The eldest gannet was a Fenn girl this year!!



The eldest gannet in the middle with the pink bikini!


The youngest gannet was the juice girl...handing out juice to the paddlers as they finished.
 

I'm also taking a blog break until after Christmas and possibly New Year and would like to thank everyone who has visited and inspired me throughout the year! I will be continuing with my 365 days of creativity...I'm almost halfway there now!!


Merry Christmas and a wonderful festive season to everyone
PennyB xx

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Prizegivings and holidays!

Schools out!! Summer holidays have begun and the weather is playing along magnificently. The last week of term was quite hectic with 3 prizegivings in 2 days! Monday night was the Sports Awards, Tuesday morning was the Grade 4-6  Acknowledgement Ceremony and Tuesday night was the Grade 7 Farewell and prizegiving.   I was the photographer for all 3...so I've been busy editing pics before posting them on the school's Facebook page! I'm soooo proud of the youngest gannet!! She won 3 certificates at Gr 4-6 Academic Prizegiving: All-round excellence, Excellence in Music and Drama, 2 certificates at the Sport certificate assembly-for enthusiasm in hockey and leadership in netball, and then a whopping 5 awards at the Sports Awards!



Youngest gannet 4th from right at Gr 4-6 awards



3 team certificates and the trophies for Most Improved Player for Athletics and Player of the Season for Cross Country! Not sure whose smile is the biggest!

On Wednesday after the kids had all left, the staff went for our Christmas lunch. I couldn't resist taking photos - as usual...!


I've been frantically busy the last 2 weeks making  Prayer Shawl for a very dear friend at school. She's had a really rough year with health issues, a couple of falls, her son was in a car accident and her daughter's getting married in the holidays. I found the pattern in a fellow crocheter's book. It's a lattice shawl pattern - the lattice is for structure and strength and offers protection. I managed to finish it for the staff's last day, which was Friday!
The wool changes colours as you crochet and it's over 1.5m long! 

I finished the challenge quite quickly this week...I had inspiration of some sort! LOL!
Challenge #147 done using string 081: L-R...keeko, pots-n-pans, tink, boo-kee, twile, cubine

   We also have a new member to our family. It's been nearly 5 years since our other pooch passed on and my hubby didn't want to get another dog. But...he's been looking for about a month now and on Friday I went to fetch him!

Meet Bandit! He's 8 weeks old and a real mixture....mom is an Australian border collie (brown and white not black and white) and dad is a german shepherd/Labrador!
Bandit meeting Jessie!

And then sadly on Thursday evening our beloved Madiba passed away. South Africa and the world are a better place having known him. May he rest in peace xx