Say Cheese!

As some of you may know, I've been doing a photography night course at one of the local high schools. I've borrowed Mum's Pentax SLR camera. Dad bought it when they went to Canada, which was 1973 I think!

Anyway, I went to the Hamilton Gardens in the weekend to try to test some of my skills. Please note, these are first time shots, so there is plenty of improvement to be made!

Celebrating

It was my Mum's birthday on the 20th Oct, so I took the day off (lieu time rocks!).

Mum came over to Hamilton and we had a girly day! I've never really had one of these, come to think of it! We went shopping in the morning, then got our nails done together. From there we went out for lunch. After lunch, we did more shopping!

Late afternoon was spent ohhh-ing and ahhh-ing over Louise's new baby boy - Boyd. He is due this week but is already 5 weeks old! How is that for premature!

In the evening we met up with Jo and Cameron and all went out for dinner at Gengy's. Love that place. My new favourite stirfry is chicken and shirmp with honey soy sauce! YUM!

The next morning Mum and I got up, had a special breakfast treat of cream cheese and salmon on bagels!!! Then we went shopping again! Man that was fun!

Our shopping trip was basically to find costumes for our upcoming Camp Quality Escarpade. We are going to look "HOT"!! Don't worry, I will get plenty of photos.

On Sat 21st, Cam, Jo and I headed up to Tobi's in Auckland to help him celebrate his birthday! We all gathered for a BBQ and seeing as no one was allocated to bring salad, all we had was meat, bread and more meat. Do POTATO chips count as vegetables?! And we had ONION dip! It was a fun evening, and it was interesting to meet some of Tobi's mates and eat his food for a change, instead of the other way around! HAHA kidding!

The rest of Labour weekend was spent relaxing at home, not doing too much at all.

I'm appreciated!

Last week, we had Appreciate your Workmate week at work. This is like the secret admirer thing, but didn't want to call it something like that for a workplace. We put our names in a draw and then we got someone's form back. Our forms just had helpful things like favourite colour, food, flower, etc.

I got quite spoilt, and I was really impressed by how thoughtful my person was who was secretly appreciating me. I was slightly difficult and put my favourite colour as metallic blue. I do love that colour, but it always makes for a challenge. On the Monday morning, I got a lovely METALLIC BLUE piece of cloth! Think it's a serviette, but I've used it as a small table cover. Looks lovely! And my person followed on all week with my favourites!!

The person I secretly appreciated was someone I don't actually see too often, so I didn't know how she was reacting to her gifts. So I'd get one of my friends to deliver it and get her to come back with the reaction! My person had a fantastic week, and for me, that was what it was all about.

We all gathered at the social club bar on the Friday after work, and we all revealed who we've been appreciating. Was very interesting to see who was doing who! It was a FANTASTIC week!!