Share Your Country Swap - USA and overview of swap

in my Share your country swap I also swapped with the lovely Dawn. (you can see what she has written about what I sent her too. We are swapping more wool, as she and friends have gone ga-ga over wool with possum in it!)
Dawn is a clever clogs - she lives on a farm in Maine and spins and dyes wool from her sheep, makes soap, and lipbalms and shops at very cool local farmy businesses. I'd love to do that in NZ - we are a huge farming country, but I know of very little businesses that sell local,in other shops, other than at farmers markets. Dawn sent an awesome big bag from a local festival, gorgeous smelling soap, a lotion bar and lipbalm,Cadbury Easter eggs (I had no idea Cadbury was in the USA either, but we do not get these eggs here - I can find UK made ones though) - might or might not share with the boys :) , and some of her beautiful, beautiful wool. And a keyring too. (i love key rings and have a multitude of them on my lanyard! Keys are very important at school!)

I loved hosting this swap. Thank you dawn for a thoughtful package.
Go here, here, here, here, to see what others sent and received in my swap so far. There are so many creative, amazing , generous bloggers out there. I have serious craft skills jealousy!

Bullies

are nasty people. Part of my day was spent trying not to cry while chatting to a couple of managers today. Workplace bullies are nasty. I wish it was a lot easier to get rid of people who terrorise other people and play mind games with others. >br> I've come home and walked around looking at things that make me happy at home. Here they are.

Share your country swap - France!

*** My lap top screen. It is the teenagers old one - around 6 years old, so has actually done very well - just a bit hard to type an assignment on!*** ,br> feeling very, very, very jaded today with education and life in general. I'll get over it, but after this, might just go and plonk myself on my deck with my uni work and a glass of red wine!
Alison has been very patient waiting for me to blog bout what I received from her in my "Share Your Country Swap." >br> It is so much fun getting packages at school from overseas - most weeks for me with my volume of book buying!
Alison made the most incredible "zentangled" Eiffel Tower picture. I have climbed it , panicking most of the way as I am hugely scared of heights, but i was not standing in the queue which seemed miles long, to take the lift up!
The mints are very very strong.. I had a few and the boys had the rest.
Amazing handmade cards, one of which I will use for a birthday in a few weeks, a spotty pen too - on my desk at school.
a fab magnet with a good mantra to live by
and a wonderful , very French, teatowel. I have driven a lot around France, but must say Iremember very little from 20 odd years ago! Visited Paris 3-4 times too, but if I went back now, I think it would be like a first visit! Thanks Alison for a fab swap! She also made a bookmark too, which I seem to have mislaid in my piles of paper somewhere.... Has anyone received any amazing swap goodies yet? I keep on looking at blogs...

little willpower

I am totally useless. The De-stash market was part of Crafternoon Tea this morning. I was doing so well with my will power for all of 10 minutes and NOT going to go... but kept on getting texts from friends saying I must come down, I MUST come down! It is so close to home.... well, all my will power went out of the window!

fabric and vintage teatowels... All at $2-3 a piece/bundle

Wool for $13 (and this week I gave away a reusable supermarket bag full of wool to a workmate to knit baby clothes with)

Sweet hearts for $1 each.

English bone china plate and cotton bargains - all For $12. Head along to St Peter's College Fair tomorrow in Epsom from 11 am - the craft stall is AMAZING - yours truly has made some things for them (no assoication with school apart from having a bunch of my son's mates who go there.)

Yay for Spotlight

Driving home after school today and I heard Spotlight had 30% off storewide today. Whipped up the motorway earlier tonight and came with cushion inners and groovy fabric. Sewing cushions for the library had long been on my agenda nd one and half hours later, I have five very very cool cushions made. Even the boys are eyeing them up. I wish I had bought mroe of the number fabric which was only $5 a metre BEFORE the discount! I have enough materials to make another five too. I can see the teachers lining up for me to sew them some for their classrooms. :) Not bad for an investment of $108! I think I know what I will be making for niece/newphew birthdays this year!

A Little Storm

Well Cyclone Lusi did not pack as much punch as we assumed it would in our part of the city. Actually it was rather pathetic and we have had much stronger wind and rain other times. Other parts on the city and up north fared a lot less better than us.
Husband away in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and China for work... I am on my own for a while. I get through. I always get through and things possibly are a lot more lenient but hey, that is what works for me. Everyone knows that arguments are not tolerated and they may not get fed as well ;), but we get there. I hate the school drives' the weeks conflicting with things like parent teacher interviews, 4 hour first aid course after school, school board meetings... the kids are left on their own quite a bit.... few family members to help..... luckily one is old enough to babysit! >br> Achieved today - good visit to adidas store - fussy dressers my kids; vege garden planted and a few new pots bought which now have cheery potted colour in , inside and outside. Yay.
Weekend winner - knitting my first ever pair of baby booties - awwh - so sweet and tiny! And starting another sock. Yay.
Bit of study achieved too! Good weekend. Even a decent dinner tonight - need to learn how to carve up a chook - do you know how?

Calm before the storm

Cyclone Lusi is due to hit us later tonight. We are being warned that we could have no power, flooding, high winds etc. We won't be affected by flooding where we are but the other things could eventuate. I stocked up very well at the supermarket last night - to last us over a week, but more because the husband will be in Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia.... Might be more of a storm here in one way. gets very tricky trying to get everywhere and relying on others when I have little family to call on, especially when I will be doing a 10 hour day at school. Thankfully school interviews are in another week and I have a child old enough to stay home and look after the others when I will not be around!
This weekend I plan on eating Happy's Chinese, knitting, study, study, study, study, knitting. I have had a week of little motivation and too busy thinking about other stuff! Huge amounts achieved at school - outside of school and at home, very very little!
Have a great weekend.

Maths angst

Maths angst from the mother! Fronting up at a school tomorrow due to a summons to see HOD Maths and maths teacher. Kid is failing big time. Can't do it. No interest in doing it. Probably years behind. Struggled for years. How can a kid go from a stanine 7 at one place to a stanine 4 the next year??????? Kid, due to this, places no realiability on any formal testing anymore. A smart kid who is well above the average kid, but who is also mild aspergers, but you really wouldn't know it outwardly.
Problem is a very low processing function of 16%...... never finished a maths exam and never will. All up there but just takes a loooooooong time to think and write it down! No matter how many times you go over something, it does not stick... Big year and big exams. >br> We spend hours and hours helping him but it fails. School bending over backwards to help (and always have.) I think our Numeracy project is possibly failing thousands of kids and the way maths is being taught I am getting very frustrated over. His school hates the numeracy project and swears all the newbies are turning up confused.
Big problem kids moving from one school to next schooling level and being taught differently too. I have seen many formerly thought they were great at maths kids fall down in the self esteem level and it is not good.
All I will say is 4 years of spanish is over so one school stress gone but maths...
seriouslt getting to the point where he quits maths at the end of year 11....
SIGH...............................

Miscellaneous 1

Internal wardrobe end put up - yay for )capsule) winter wardrobe in same room! Still need to buy some pull out drawers.

Gorgeous new stitch markers. Finished this hat quick fast.

A few hours spent at the Irish Club St Patrick's Day festivities (we have Irish ancestry and hopefully passports soon :)

Up on the bedroom wall now - husband thinks it is silly putting an alphabet sampler in the lounge....

The long summer continues.. we must be going to be told we are in a drought soon??!!

Winding wool spun by a great friend - now knitting her fingerless gloves.
And NOT much university work going on.... oh dear! All my mail is all caught up which pleases me much!

Colour

After a frustrating half an queuing in the post office and trying to sort out the "Real Me" thing with them (needed to do a passport renewal on-line) and being told by the chick that my hair was not equal on both sides for the photo (what the???) , I took myself off impulse shopping at good old Esprit. I can walk around and around the shopping centre trying to find something I like and that fits and always end up at Esprit where I can find huge amounts that I like and that fits!
$20.93 tees - why thank you Esprit. I'll have the same one in 3 more colours to add to my yellow one! Love it when i find something I really like and at a great price! (30% off this weekend for all tees if you have an Espirt card or otherwise 25%). They have lots of nice plain ones too and stripey ones in as well.

And the dear husband finished the other side of the walk in wardrobe today (the right hand bit)for my winter clothing. I have a wee winter capsule wardrobe, which I mix and match with plain or striped merino jerseys (usually bought from The Warehouse). I love my winter wardrobe with my woollen tights and boots. I might need to knit a new jersey to add some colour into it though!

Share your Country Swap

Whew. FRIDAY> This week has been a muck up with me on jury service. For me, that involved sitting around in a room for 3 days waiting for my name to be pulled out of the ballot. It never was. I was discharged Thursday morning. I learnt how rubbish day time tv is and also did lots of uni work.
I returned to school yesterday to a massive backlog. No there is no-one to replace me when I have gone.... I know I am needed! :)
Sitting in the office was a big parcel from Zara.
A rather glorious parcel which several of us oohed and ared over at the end of the day.

The most gorgeous bunting from vintage tea towels.

A very cool table cloth.

A tea towel (why can I never find such gems like these items in op shops???)

A Yardage design bag (oh! I have followed this designer for such a looong time and am thrilled to won something!).
Everything was in this bag. Including a pen for me, a "K" notepad, chocolate and apple rock -

(10 year old stealing it!) rocklea road and this cracked me up - WALLABY bites. How gorgeous! (No wallabies were harmed in the making of this product.) Thank you so much Zara - loved it all. A fab representation of Australia! This is what I sent to Zara -