New York Holiday 2006

I can't believe it has been four years already since we went to New York, I was flipping through our many 100's of photographs of the holiday and thought that I must put some of them up on my blog, this was definitely not a relaxing holiday by any means but was definitely a fun filled, completely packed, hectic go, go, go kind of holiday. It is true what they say about New York, it really is the city that never sleeps, it has to be the noisiest place I have ever been, between the constant hooting of cars/taxi's and sirens wailing, even on the 42nd floor of our hotel, we still heard this constant noise all night. This was an adventure, we shopped, we saw sights, we ate, we lived the New York life for 6 days and then made our way over the ocean to spend some time in London & Scotland. I am very grateful to have been able to visit.

Till next time

xoxo

Arriving at JFK

Jordy playing on the floor piano at FAO Schwarz, same one Tom Hanks played on in "Big"

Standing in front of the Flatiron building

Drinks at the famous Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station

Hotdogs from a street vendor, best we have ever had

Saks 5th Avenue, retail therapy heaven

East 42nd & Third, just outside our hotel

Battery Park, the most peaceful place in New York

Chrysler Building, next to our hotel

Times SquareTimes Square at night, this was taken on the way back to the hotel after dinner, as you can see it is still mobbed Look at the number of people at 10:30 at night

Flatiron Building

walking towards Times Square

Relaxing for a bit

The view from our hotel room (can you believe this was four star)

Ground Zero

Statue of Liberty

View from the Empire State Building, New York is enormous

Another view of Manhattan (you can see the flatiron building on the right of this picture)

View of Central Park from Empire State Building (those are sky scrapers lining the left hand side of the park, just to give you a feel of how massive the park is)

this bridge in Central Park has been used in many moviesA Horse carriage ride in central park

Are you ready for your close up Jordyn-Leigh

My brother-in-law Glen & Laura, a friend of his, have started a business called Purple Iris (purpleirisphotography@gmail.com), they do professional photo shoots for teenage parties. As part of Jordy's birthday pressy, Glen said he would do a photo shoot for Jordy and her friends, so on Saturday, Ashleigh, Ayanda & Micaela, joined Jordy for a photo shoot. They laughed (or should I say gigled) solidly for two hours whilst Laura styled them and showed them how to pose and Glen took some absolutely amazing photo's of all of them. This is such a brilliant idea for teenage girls, they had an absolute ball and they get to have professional photo's taken of them. I would highly recomend the experience.
Once all the photo shoot fun was had, we moved on to holding Glen's birthday party. He brought a warthog (yes you heard me correctly) which was cooked on the spit, I must admit, although certain people wouldn't even contemplate trying it (Glen had brought along normal pork ribs as well, so no one went hungry), I gave it a go and I found that as long as you cut off the skin, as it was a little tough, the warthog was actually really tasty. So much fun and merriment was had by all. Happy Birthday Glen, hope you enjoyed your evening.
Till next time
xoxo

a very strange thing

Fridge with a beer tap, i know some people who would really like this
transparent refrigerator, no more having to open the door to see what's inside

Never heard of this dog before, it is called a Komondor dog, seriously looks like a very matted mop, or some kind of macrame gone wrong

apparently China is planning transportation buses that cars can actually ride through underneath, not sure how well this would work around corners.

It's been a while

Last week Tuesday we were at a school event (info sharing session on subject choices, as Jordy has to choose her subjects for next year by 3 September) They had Grade 12 art work displayed and let me tell you, there are some exceptionally talented young people at that school, I wish I had taken more pictures but I got caught up saying hello to people and then the talk started, I did however manage to take pictures of two of them. Can not believe these were done by 17 year olds.
On Wednesday I went on conference, usually I detest being on conference, what with being away from my family and having to listen to endless hours of presentations on the strategy for the upcoming year, new initiatives and all the other goodly buzz words one hears. however this conference was a conference with a difference. Yes we had the obligatory presentations (but even these were kept to a minimum) but we kicked off the entertainment on night one with a cook off, given a potjie pot, some ingredients and a team of HR practitioners to work together to, wait for it, yes, actually make our own dinner. So if we messed up, we were all going hungry. I was more concerned with the hygiene factor of this, so kept instructed the whole team to keep washing their hands at each stage of the cook off, I also decided I was definitely not going to be tasting from the other pots as I didn't know what hygiene methods they had been using. Anyhoo, we ended up winning the cook off, and it was truly a pot of diversity as we had the Scots, English, Afrikaans, Indian & African influence over this pot, so the rainbow nation dinner won out. Onto day two of the conference where we were split into yet another group of teams, given a video camera, a topic, some props and effectively three hours to produce , direct, etc two movies (albeit 3 & 4 minute long movies, move over Steven Spielberg) what fun we had, giggling most of the time, then hurriedly filming the movie at the very last moment. Entertainment for night two was the Annual HR awards that had been set up like the Oscars (black tie, formal dress, that was fun too, getting all dressed up for a change, I wore a dress I had made the weekend before the conference) apart from the well deserved winners of the HR awards receiving their certificates & trophies, they played each teams movies during the event, we killed ourselves laughing (I hear we are getting copies of these movies and I swear it will never see the light of day, acting is definitely not my forte in life, there is a reason I work in HR) our team somehow, however, won the Oscar for best fun movie (who said making an absolute numpty of yourself, doesn't pay off), we received chocolate Oscars and dinner vouchers for two. On day three of the conference we all went off to Bokkie Park (out near Springs, I think) and took 190 underprivileged children there for a party (we all donated the money for the party and the left over money after the party went to the school). To be very honest I was dreading this, I was petrified that we were outnumbered by almost 3 to one and I was very concerned something may happen to these poor tykes. However all my fears were unfounded, these children, who have very little in life, were the cutest, most well behaved children I have ever come across, we cooked, fed them, played with them and had a great time all round. We then sent them home with pressy's (outfits) each, all covered in ice-cream & cake (ourselves included). It was so heartwarming to know we had added some joy to the wee souls, even if it was just for one day. The only downside to all this fun that was had at the conference was, that on Wednesday night, I fell on my nose (yes I know, what a silly thing to do) not quite sure why I didn't let go of my handbag as I was falling and allowed my self to fall flat on my nose, but that is what I did. So all this conference fun was had with a pounding pain in my nose. However on Friday the Doc said that taking an xray would be a waste of time as it was probably broken and there would be nothing they could do about it, so trusting their wisdom, I went home and proceeded to take pain killers. However by Sunday I felt like some vice grip had taken hold of my head and was surely going to squeeze my skull until my brain popped out the top. So back to the Doc I went on Monday, had xrays taken, and what a surprise, I had indeed broken my nose (note the sarcasm) but now I had a whopping sinus infection in all my sinuses to accompany the broken nose. Therefore the last two days have been spent lying in bed picturing the end of the world (ok maybe a little dramatic) but flip feeling like you have two very large metal rods piercing your brain is not the nicest way to spend you days. Glad to report the pain eventually started to subside last night and I am almost back to feeling human again. Must just point out here that through all of this I didn't decide to take up smoking again, so here I am on day 14 of being a non smoker (did anyone ever tell you how smelly smokers smell, can not believe I walked around smelling like that for so long, eeeuuuuuwwww, Note to self "I will not become one of THOSE ex smoker types") and to top the week off, one of my favourite trees in the garden started sprouting beautiful blossoms last week, so spring is definately on it's way. My all time favourite time of the year.

Till next time

xoxo

Crawford art work

Some more Crawford art work

Night at the Oscars

Our amazing team, Fatima, Leigh-Anne, Wisaal, Inez, Zeenat, Stephanie & Nomvula (Thibisile MIA) The kids having a blast Nomvula, Zeenat, Fatima, Wisaal, Stephanie, Thabisile taking a rest (Inez & Leigh-Anne MIA)

Cutting the cake to send home with the kids

Awie, sat down to rest a bit and the kids piled on top of him to eat ice-creams

These two were so adorable

How to keep many happy, all at the same time

They loved the blow up slide

and the island

waiting for lunch

The start of the spring blossoms

Chocolate cake in under 5 minutes

I came across this today on the internet, and am really intrigued, I am also very scared of what will happen if chocolate cake is only 5 minutes away at any point of time.
This is made in a mug and microwaved.

4 Tbls flour
4 Tbls sugar
2 Tbls cocoa
1 egg
3 Tbls milk
3 Tbls oil
3 Tbls chocolate chips (optional)
a splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug (microwave proof)

Mix dry ingredients in the mug, add the egg and mix thoroughly, pour in milk and oil, whilst mixing. add chocolate chips and vanilla extract and stir. Place in microwave cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts, it will rise above the edge of the mug. Allow to cool.
et voila chocolate cake all ready to eat. As I said previously, this scares me, how easy does this seem (even for the baking challenged like me). I unfortunately am on diet at the moment, so don't even want to tempt myself by trying this out. If anybody else gives it a go, let me know how it turned out
till next time
xoxo

Oh how darling - shoes and a little bit more

Browzing the internet I came across these lovelies, pity they are all from outside South Africa, the customs duties are just too exhorbitant to discuss. We can but wish though.
Till next time
xoxo