Endings and beginnings

This week marks the end of an era.  An era of the primary and high school education of our girls.  This Friday, Miss G. has her last school assembly which is a bit of an event to say the least.  I know there will be tears of sadness and of happiness.  Sadness because one phase of her life has finished and happiness because there are new things to look forward too, new challenges to face.  There will be changes for me too with no more school drop offs and pick ups.  When I first started taking the girls to kinder, I thought of all those years ahead of me and now I'm at the end of them.   It's truly amazing to think and wonder where the time went

 

It's been a bit of a contemplative time for me these past few weeks so I've been keeping myself occupied in my spare moments with making stars for Christmas bunting.

Working on my giant granny square throw.

I've been enjoying the flowers in the garden.

Bungee snuck into the photo.

The first rose of spring.

Trying to take photos of the elusive and shy Wattle birds feeding from the Chinese Lantern.  This photo is taken through the window and not clear because of the fly screen behind the glass.

Can you see him on the left of the photo with his head upside down.

I've been tidying up the pantry and getting rid of some of the plastic storage containers.  I found these wonderful glass containers at a discount shop for $1.00 and just the perfect size for herbs and spices.  Here they are draining and air drying after a good hot soapy scrub.

This is a very satisfying sight.

I've been making wholemeal Melt and Mix Shortbread to keep the biscuit tin full.

And I've been working on my portrait painting.  I must say I now have mixed feelings about the painting as it has been worked on quite extensively by my teacher.  My teacher is very good but unfortunately gets carried away when showing you how to do a technique which results in important aspects of the face such as the eyes being her work and not mine.  I suppose this sound quite silly, but I really want a painting to be my work with it's imperfections and not my teachers work.  I must sound ungrateful, I really need her to teach me how, just not do it all.  The hair has been worked on extensively by my  teacher too (not yet finished), once again I needed to learn the technique, but not have it all done by her.  Grumble, grumble.  Anyway, here's the painting.

I must admit I fiddled with the eyes just a little when I came home from class.  I softened the lines that make up her eyelid and eyes and darkened the colour of her eyes to a darker brown.  I can see all the imperfections I made to her eyes but I feel better about it having some of my touch.  I will say happily that the nose and mouth are all my work.  I sound very picky, but I am quite passionate and pocessive about my paintings and want them to be my work.  O.k., I think I've said enough on the subject for the moment.

In other news, I can report that Miss C. is going for her drivers test this afternoon.  For all the Australian readers out there, I would have to say that sitting the computerised hazard perception test first is ridiculous.  The computer imagery for the driving conditions and situations is not clear, dodgy at best.  After her 4th attempt, Charlotte finally passed this morning and her Dad is going with her for the test this afternoon.  Fingers crossed for a successful outcome.

I'm off out to get my hair attended too and perhaps check out the delights of Spotlight.

Take care everyone,

Anne  xx