Let's catch up!

How about I catch you up on what I've been up to, 'kay?

I have tickets to see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.

I told you I'm a sucker for the teen stuff! How about you? Are you on board for another episode of sparkly vampires and shirtless werewolves?

Alana and I have read the books and watched the movies. We've chosen our seats and printed out our advance purchase tickets. We're ready to go! Come on November 18!

The kids' passports arrived today.

And guess what? We've booked and paid for our round the world airplane tickets. No way! WAAAAY!

I made a photobook using snapfish.

I used to scrapbook, once upon a time. But then I stopped using film and started taking all my photos digitally. And got really lazy about printing them out. So all my family photos from the last few years are either sitting in a file folder on my computer or in a Facebook album or on this blog. For shame!

I'm getting together with some girls I went to school with in a couple of weeks time. We try to get together once or twice a year. Sometimes we make it a family affair and all bring our partners and kids, but this time we're just doing a girls-only lunch. 

One of the girls suggested that we should each bring along some photos of the kids, and that's what prompted me to get my act together and put together a little album.

I found snapfish easy to use and good value.

How about you? Do you scrapbook? Make digital albums?

I still don't have a permanent library job.

The whole looking-for-work thing is getting me down. I've done some casual work in a library and I loved it. I believe that I did a good job and that my employer would like to give me more work if it becomes available. I also know that if something permanent or some contract work comes up, I'll have to apply and interview along with everyone else. No guarantees.

Jobs that I'm seeing advertised are generally for librarians with a significant amount of experience.

I really don't mind starting at the bottom. I'm just more than ready to get up, get dressed, put my makeup on and go to work in the morning. I also have all kinds of ambitions for my career, and I can't really make a start on it until I have a job!

So there you go, you're all caught up! What have you been up to?  

A nifty knitter

I've gone all crafty.

The weather's gone cold and I like a scarf. It's so easy to add a bit of colour and movement to the plainest of outfits by adding a scarf. Not to mention the added advantage of keeping your neck warm.

I've been toying with the idea of knitting myself a scarf for a week or two, but what gave me the final nudge was when Alana got her knitting out.

Alana and her friend had to write and perform a duologue for a school assignment. They wrote a charming and humorous piece featuring two grandmothers discussing how kids have changed since they were young. It featured such lines as "Is that Helen from Bingo?" and "It looks like he won his drivers license in a raffle!". They even had props.

Hence, the knitting.

Seeing the needles and the wool pushed me over the edge. I just had to go and get myself some wool and get knitting!

I will admit, I had to Youtube "casting on knitting" because I'd forgotten how, but I seem to be going swimmingly now.

I'm actually pretty impressed, the brand of wool that I picked up from Big W has a website with lots of patterns. Go here http://www.seansheep.com/ to see for yourself.

Here's the thing. I didn't have the correct size needles at home so I just used the ones I've got. I just figured that when it comes to a scarf, near enough should probably be good enough. Fingers crossed!

The other thing is that the pattern I'm following has me purling and knitting in a pattern which is supposed to make a sort of ribbed pattern down the scarf. It looked good in the picture online. On my scarf, not so much. I'm really trying to count my stitches carefully and I don't think I'm making mistakes. I wonder why I can't see the pattern? Not that I mind too much, I'm not exactly an expert knitter, I'll be glad to have a scarf that turns out the right size and shape! But I am a little bit disappointed that I'm taking the trouble to follow the pattern and nothing's happening. Advice anyone?

I Heart Instagram!

I have found a super-dee-dooper iPhone app that I looooooove. It's called Instagram and it's free!

If you have an iPhone you MUST zip to the app store immediately and download it!

Instagram is a photo-sharing platform. Take a photo, then apply one of the filters to give it that arty-farty look.

Here's a photo I just took in my back yard. See along the bottom of the screen there are a whole lot of sneakers? They're the different filters I can choose to apply to my photo.

I've chosen the one called "Lomo-fi" here:

See how it makes my photo look ever so much more "special"?

Then I click "share" and all my followers get to see my photo. Easy! There are options to share your photo to Twitter or Facebook too.

I can follow others so I get to see all their photos. It's like having an ever-changing photography exhibition in your pocket!

So get to it all you budding photographers out there - it's easy and oh-so-fun!