claudine at st clare's Op-Shop Show-Off Jan 29th 2013

naughty-but-nice, naught in the way only an enid blyton character could be-stealing strawberries from a garden, pushing someone horrid into a swimming pool, she was my heroine as a pre-teen (imagine, an enid blyton heroine, what a wild child i was!) i filed her exotic-sounding name away for future girl baby use. i found i still loved the name 3 decades later when i dredged it up from my mind and it trumped verity as the name for our first born. i've been collecting editions of the book, the fifth from a series of nine, staight-laced and stilted boarding school stories for her. i particularly treasure the eldest copy, from 1954 (it was first published in 1944) which terry inscribed and gave me on the valentines after claud was born to celebrate our first year as a family. the later copy is the cover version i read all those decades ago.

so thus i have these editions, from 1954, 1982, 1972, 1996, 2005, and i am always on the hunt in second hand bookstores with a kids section and op-shops for further editions with different covers. do keep your eye peeled for me.

are you collecting anything you would like us to keep our eyes peeled for?

where did your childs name come from?

are you an op-shop show-off?

it’s charitable, green, cheap, exciting, fun, nostalgia inducing, potentially lucrative and often just plain necessary. whatever your reason for op-shopping we’d love it if you joined us on Tuesdays here at blackbirdhasspoken.blogspot.com for Op-Shop Show-Off day, a linky open to all, all week, to link up a blog post about any aspect of your second-hand shopping life.

tell us your op-shopping philosophy, or divulge your secret hunting techniques. let us know about your wants, or skite (English translation= “show-off “) about your amazing finds. review the best op-shopping spots in your town, or request or give information on your fascinating finds, you’ll always be talking to an appreciative audience here.


How to link up?
1.   post your blog post.

2.   link to Op-Shop Show-Off in your blog post, so your blog readers can come over
      and peruse or post in the linky too

3.   scroll to the bottom of my latest Tuesday Op-Shop Show-Off post and click on the  
      linky tool, then follow the 3 easy steps


4.   don't forget to leave me a comment to let me know you linked up

5..  grab the Op-Shop Show-Off Button from my sidebar to decorate yours (paste the
     code into a HTML gadget under the 'add a gadget' part of the layout section in
     blogger and save)

4/52 portraits of my children

Claudine-mermaids are to the fore in clauds imagination since discovering mermaid hair (a thin, beautiful seaweed) at the beach. Did you know that waikuku beach is where all the mermaids come for their hairdressing needs?!

Joining jodis portrait project

pink flowers & blue-green jars Op-Shop Show-Off-Jan 22nd 2013

my granddad made me love gardens. below the fields at his back gate he had a large rose garden set out like a chess board with a paving stone between each bush; opposite a market garden sized vegge patch, then layers of hedging, flower gardens, jungle, chooks, rabbits, goat and lawns. we, the hoard of cousins who congregated there every saturday afternoon, eating hand dug veg raw, jumping hedges, raiding the preserves and making bonfires, played amongst the roses too. slow, careful races;  rose petal shower fights, perfume making. our mothers all left late afternoon with with a sunburnt kids, a palm prickle of roses and a clink of preserve jars.
i feel very close to my grandad when i garden, especially when i do anything with roses. and i love pink roses in blue-green jars. pink any flower in blue-green jars. all jars op-shopped of course.

are you an Op-Shop Show-Off?

it’s charitable, green, cheap, exciting, fun, nostalgia inducing, potentially lucrative and often just plain necessary. whatever your reason for op-shopping we’d love it if you joined us on Tuesdays here at blackbirdhasspoken.blogspot.com for Op-Shop Show-Off day, a linky open to all, all week, to link up a blog post about any aspect of your second-hand shopping life.

tell us your op-shopping philosophy, or divulge your secret hunting techniques. let us know about your wants, or skite (English translation= “show-off “) about your amazing finds. review the best op-shopping spots in your town, or request or give information on your fascinating finds, you’ll always be talking to an appreciative audience here.


How to link up?
1.   post your blog post.

2.   link to Op-Shop Show-Off in your blog post, so your blog readers can come over
      and peruse or post in the linky too

3.   scroll to the bottom of my latest Tuesday Op-Shop Show-Off post and click on the  
      linky tool, then follow the 3 easy steps


4.   don't forget to leave me a comment to let me know you linked up

5..  grab the Op-Shop Show-Off Button from my sidebar to decorate yours (paste the
     code into a HTML gadget under the 'add a gadget' part of the layout section in
     blogger and save)

3/52 a portrait of my children

Claudine-petting 'princess ballerina' makes her contemplative, a welcome rest from general 3 year old delirium!

joining the portrait project at che & fidel

best EVER find. Op-Shop Show-Off -15 Jan 2013

not a new find, an old find, circa 2010. but easily the most frequently used and admired by us find. once on our save up so one day we can buy it list, we truly couldn't have been happier if we'd have found a pillar box red kitchen aid, new in its box for $15!

a roll of chef knives.  zwilling j a henckels, solingen, germany.  ominiously, one missing...


after brief speculation that the missing knife had been used in a bloody homicide, we settled on the rather more plausible theory, given our sleepy little town hasn't had a murder in 20 odd years, that the missing one had been left behind when the original owner (an  's. chapman' according to the engraving on one of the knives) hastily took off with his knife roll under his arm in a Gorden Ramsey-esk strop, that knife perhaps still perched in the trout he was descaling or somesuch when his cheffy integrity was challenged (before abandoning his roll and his whites at his lodgings, rent unpaid, and going bush.

anyway, they make food prep, and story making-up, a pleasure, even if we don't know what some of them are for!


what was your best-ever second hand find?


Op-Shop Show-Off is a linky, so do feel free to link up your latest or greatest find, i'd love to see it!

are you an Op-Shop Show-Off?

it’s charitable, green, cheap, exciting, fun, nostalgia inducing, potentially lucrative and often just plain necessary. whatever your reason for op-shopping we’d love it if you joined us on Tuesdays here at blackbirdhasspoken.blogspot.com for Op-Shop Show-Off day, a linky open to all, all week, to link up a blog post about any aspect of your second-hand shopping life.

tell us your op-shopping philosophy, or divulge your secret hunting techniques. let us know about your wants, or skite (English translation= “show-off “) about your amazing finds. review the best op-shopping spots in your town, or request or give information on your fascinating finds, you’ll always be talking to an appreciative audience here.


How to link up?
1.   post your blog post. 

2.   link to Op-Shop Show-Off in your blog post, so your blog readers can come over
      and peruse or post in the linky too

3.   scroll to the bottom of my latest Tuesday Op-Shop Show-Off post and click on the    
      linky tool, then follow the 3 easy steps


4.   don't forget to leave me a comment to let me know you linked up

5..  grab the Op-Shop Show-Off Button from my sidebar to decorate yours (paste the
     code into a HTML gadget under the 'add a gadget' part of the layout section in 
     blogger and save)

2/52 a portrait of my children

Every week for a year. Joining in with the portrait project at che and fidel.

Claudine:utterly non-plussed at the dismantling of her toys, bedroom and home because, (in high pitched tones) "we're going to live at the beach!"

knitwit

i've been alfresco knitting a test square for a pair of boy-baby winter trousers this week. the mother in law op-shopped the wool which feels carpet wool like to me. i'm impervious to the itchyness of wool as a rule myself, but given they are for new baby soft skin i shall line them with brushed cotton. if i succeed in producing them. the test square subsequently went wrong. humph. i always drop a stitch when i have to undo a row of stitches and never seem to be able to pick them up again properly. ah so, back to the face cloths and you-tube until i get the hang of it. 
i'm proud of the pink face cloth in the 'icantbelieveimadethatitlookssocomplicated' kind of way. brief periods of mastery always make up for lengthy stretches of failure (intermittent reinforcement i believe it is called). just one of the joys of learning something new. sitting in the garden, feet up, knitting in time to the bird song being one of the others. soothing, slow. you don't get that with doll housing. i'm going to like knitting.



do show show and tell your creative space, i'd love to see. and if your knitting you can yarn along here too x

The Op-Shop Show-Off Jan 8th 2013

lets talk presents. specifically op-shopped presents. secondhand present giving-is it ok? is it something you do?

our family are op-shopping enthusiasts through the generations (the mother-in-law even volunteers at our local salvation army shop) and so we make a point of giving each other an op-shopped present for christmas, and we are in no way adverse to them at any other gift-giving time of year either!

most of my friends and family will have at some point received an op-shopped gift from me, though they may not always have known it. some just can't see the amazing, cool, just-what-they-wanted gift for their secondhand phobia and i have a compulsion to covert them (by stealth if need be!).

anyways, here's what we gave-and-got this christmas :-

for me from him, a couple of sweet wee kokeshi's for the sweet wee kokeshi collection. 

especially welcome after i decided over a year ago to collect them after these finds and subsequently hadn't found a single one. maybe Julia linking her kokeshi finds a couple of weeks brought some kokeshi finding luck to these parts!

for him from me a national trust 'his lordship' mug. turned into a tourist by the
stately homes on our last trip to the england he coveted these impossible to adequately photograph mugs at the time.

for her this beautiful children's book which explains wabi sabi (as discovered here). 
a pleasant surprise to find out that Fishpond, the NZ online bookseller do secondhand ($5 and free post vs RRP about $40 new, is my kind of second hand bargain!).

are you an Op-Shop Show-Off?

it’s charitable, green, cheap, exciting, fun, nostalgia inducing, potentially lucrative and often just plain necessary. whatever your reason for op-shopping we’d love it if you joined us on Tuesdays here at blackbirdhasspoken.blogspot.com for Op-Shop Show-Off day, a linky open to all, all week, to link up a blog post about any aspect of your second-hand shopping life.

tell us your op-shopping philosophy, or divulge your secret hunting techniques. let us know about your wants, or skite (English translation= “show-off “) about your amazing finds. review the best op-shopping spots in your town, or request or give information on your fascinating finds, you’ll always be talking to an appreciative audience here.


How to link up?
1.   post your blog post. 

2.   link to Op-Shop Show-Off in your blog post, so your blog readers can come over
      and peruse or post in the linky too

3.   scroll down to the end of my latest Tuesday Op-Shop Show-Off 
      post, then click on the linky tool invite and follow the simple instructions.

4.   don't forget to leave me a comment to let me know you linked up

5..  grab the Op-Shop Show-Off Button from my sidebar to decorate yours (paste the
     code into a HTML gadget under the 'add a gadget' part of the layout section in 
     blogger and save)

1/52 portraits of my children

a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2013

claudine; full of picnic, in anticipation of fishing off the diamond harbour wharf with the pink rod father christmas gave her. watching dada attach the bait. she caught her first fish on her first trip on boxing day and is hooked!

i finally saved up enough for a new camera and it's in the mail (this is an iphone photo), a canon eos 600D. perfect timing for a new, newborn compatible creative project for 2013.

inspiration at this lovely linky 

want to see something cool?

no, not the yule log. that's more yum than cool




and no. not the kid. she's more cute than cool

i  know! isn't it the best gift for a person who thinks the occasional, judicious, injection of a rude word into convo is cool!

Kylie you rock (and did you see it on Design Sponge today?)

i did try it out on the mother-in-law. unfortunately she didn't have her glasses on, sigh! however once we pointed it out to her and she moved on from her hiding -my-amusement-school-marm-moment she asked to loan it to take food to her fishing club pot luck dinner. heh!

platter from douglas and hope 

a creative way to get greens into your kid

i blame the lasting cold ground, the partially shaded planting spot and planting the seeds too deep for the slow growth of this years home made christmas present for claud, which only today, Jan 3rd, had sufficient climbing sugar snap peas and green coverage to classify it as an inhabitable, edible den. peas subsequently planted 10 day after the initial planting have dotted it with pretty white flowers and will keep up the flow of pea pods for this insatiable eater of greens a little longer, if i resist the urge to put them in a vase.

claud squealed "oh this is so sweet" at the unveiling. subsequent responses have been muffled by chomping noises, my interpretation "it was worth the wait mama". 

i'm only slightly worried about the neightbours hearing claud refer to her den as the P-house (p is a nasty drug here in NZ which frequently results in houses being blown up in it's production).

as it's been a real hit we plan to make this an annual project, instead in the sunny uncultivated part of the garden among the wild strawberries, so she doesn't have to do fairy steps through the vegetables to get there. we'll also lower and widen the cane frame to accommodate a growing girl who would benefit from more den elbow room since the peas didn't made it all the way up to the top. and i might try planting it a week or so earlier than the 10 weeks we gave it this year too.

the DIY tree swing is last years homemade birthday present.

 i am show and tell-ing and creative spacing this happy, sunny thursday x

the house has been emptied for earthquake repairs and we are off to a bach at waikuku beach for 3 weeks

funded by the insurance company-yay! with no internet access-yikes! in principal it's my ideal holiday though i am a little nervous about the closeness of the boy-baby due date, but i'll do anything to get the earthquake commission out of our lives ASAP, even birth at a beach shack endure a long drive to womens hospital.

i do hope to do the Op-Shop Show-Off as usual, but otherwise i imagine i will be absent from blog reading, commenting and posting for the most part unless i can find the right combo of tree climbing, arm waving and breath holding that may enable me to pick up the 3g signal here!


wish you were here x div>

the winner takes it all

i'm feeling rather bloated. not from too much christmas pud, or even the heat plus advancing pregnancy. it's the best kind of bloat (yes there is a good kind), gift bloat! presents are falling from the sky like confetti around here.

hot on the heels of the 'a present a day for 25' days advent swap and claudine's 3rd birthday, and later interspersed by christmas presents,  i had the good fortune to win the Baby Space (blog featuring "...whimsical, quirky and beautiful interior spaces for wee ones...which  features real children's bedrooms and play areas as well as products and crafts for babies and children") christmas give-away, and have had a parcel in the mail almost everyday since from the various prize givers (with more to come!). 

three years into single income parenthood, the saving evaporated, i had struggled a bit with not buying all brand new-organic-locally made (ie the in-walking distance Cariboo)-baby-everything for the impending boy baby as we did for claudine. i had got there, especially as we've saved everything of hers and didn't ever do pink in those early years, and as i've taught myself to knit. but it is wonderful to have some beautiful new things to give him, especially since they are of just the kind, environment kindly organic and handmade, i would have bought myself; with some lovely wee things for myself and the girl too. how lucky am i?!!

beautiful biodegradable bamboo dinner set from LoveMae
(plus an underwater themed version for when the boy baby comes of baby led weaning age)




organic cotton newborn kit set, of fantastic non-tacky boy design (hurrah!).
from New Zealand's company-most-likely-to-lure me-from-frugality Nature Baby.




handmade baby toy and a worry doll from Once I Was



modern kiwiana tea towel by 326 and platypus toy from two little banshees both via the cool-stuff-from-down-under online store Antipodean Love.

more to LoveMae for. merry christmas bunting and modern snowflake reusable wall decals. 

the hat i can only dream of making for the boy baby at this early stage in my knitting education, 

 from Typically Red who's blog is as lovely as her knitting and well worth a 'follow' button press!

Fable, Melbourne, via down that little lane. organic cotton newborn trousers (chosen from a great range, if you have a girl tell me you resisted buying one of those cardigans and i won't believe you!)

Burp!

(pardon me!)

            have you ever got lucky like this?     what did you win?      which is your favourite thing here?

p.s no resolutions here as usual. i'm more of a spontaneous i'll give-that-interesting-idea-a-go-anytime-of-the year kinda gal, plus i'll have a newborn soon and that's all i can worry think about (wheres that dolly...)