Autumny Family Bits

Well it's that time again already!

The Virginia Creeper on the back of the cottage is turning pink. 

The days are cooling off, allowing for later cups of tee on mum's verandah enjoying the lushness of her garden and the changing colours of her trees...

I especially enjoyed our cuppa with my good friend, Amy.  So did Angus.  He LOVED Amy and had to get up on the table to get closer to the pats.  :)  No we don't care if he does that. We don't have entirely undisciplined dogs, but we had one boy who we'd get up there to have massages for his sore back, and the habit of letting them up there kind of stuck.   I appreciate that it can be a bit surprising for guests, but Amy took it in good spirit, as she does everything in life. 

I started writing my eleventh novel today!  I've had a few months away from actual first draft writing and it took a little while to get back on the horse. New chair, updated Open Office programme... stuff like that can really put you off your game. It's all about letting yourself write onto the screen with as little interference to the creative flow as possible, so the less you have to think about in other ways is very helpful.

Anyway, Land of Giants is on it's way.  1299 words, and already interesting stuff is happening that I hadn't planned.  I love writing novels!

It's going to be very hard not to share the story as I go, but that's not how I work best.  I do best by keeping it to myself and just writing as steadily as I can, so I can get to the pleasure of people enjoying my finished novel at the end.  I think sharing too much along the way makes me lose that urgency.

Insert picture of hunky hubby's amazing arm muscles.  Yummo!   

 
 And his very sexy red braces...

Double Yummo!  How lucky am I?

In more creative news, we went and saw my middle niece in a play on Friday night, Shrek Jr.  It was so funny and lively.   Gee it is lovely to see all those kids, so talented, so bright and clever.  Go see some kids in an amateur play if you are worried about the future of our youth.  :)  I'll see if I can get a pic of Molly for a future post but here's Niamh with some of the cast after the play.

Look at all those lovely bright faces. They all sang, danced and remembered amazing amounts of lines. Excellent work from everyone involved!

Hang, on stop press!  Sis sent me a pic of the whole cast.  Molly is one of the guards in orange and blue on the right hand side of the pic, the one in front.

They're still playing at Roleystone Theatre all this week if you are local and want to go see them. 
     
Niamh and I did more art the other week but I haven't done a newsy post since then. First we did the different proportions of the face from front on and profile, looking at how the average faces divides up.  She drew this lady, who she calls an Emo.  :)

 

Then we had Andrew as our life model.  She did a great job of drawing him.

See, you can hardly tell the difference!

Mum and Angus went to their first retrieving trial of the year yesterday and won the restricted class. Well done Mum and Angus!  That's them out of restricted for good now, so they will only be able to run in the tougher all-age trials, but hopefully now he's had 'brain surgery' he can concentrate a bit better and it will be their year to shine!

In other news, Rosie is happy.

   
And Cyrano assured me that the roll hanging over the yarn there was purely made of fur!