Pilgrims’ Progress

Upon hearing about our upcoming silent auction, a lady who had purchased homemade flower presses from our Entrepreneur Son a couple of years ago, asked if there would be any more at the auction. Ever-the-Entrepreneur readily agreed to make more - not that he’d been planning on it. Word got round and within a few days orders were in for forty presses. Previous production runs have not exceeded a dozen, so this is Serious Business. Everyone big enough to hold a piece of sandpaper is pitching in - and the smaller ones are decorating Thank You Cards for the friends who have lent Proper Tools. If the banks don’t crash, and everyone pays up, these presses will signify two important milestones.

Firstly, the children will have achieved their savings goal to go to Disneyland! Their fund was boosted recently by the somewhat sacrificial decision to forgo Easter eggs (that one took a few days of negotiations amongst the kids to reach a consensus), and a few of them have opted to wear winter PJs that are too short so that they can contribute what we Would Have Spent on new ones to the greater goal. At that point the shortfall was $40.
And with orders for 40 presses, with “wages” being paid at a rate of $1 per press, Disneyland is in their sights.

Secondly, a book party is accomplished. After paying for wages, materials and contracting fees (they bought chocolate bars for the friends who lent them a drop saw and drill press), there ought to be a clear profit of More Than Enough for the book party….the remainder will go into the Book Publishing Fund (see tickers above).

But not wanting to count their chickens before they are hatched, nothing is being added to the tickers until the money actually appears in the bank!

Thanks to everyone who has placed orders:)
Here’s sneak preview of Mark II

Thoroughly frustrated, but confident that the late hour was a contributor to our inability to *make it work*, we went to bed.

It should have been a simple matter. Passport photos for all.
Of course we could have gone into a Passport-Making-Place and let them do it.
But we knew it would be spendy that way.
Besides, we have always done it ourselves in the past, so why not this time?
I still don’t fully understand what the problem was (I mean it has happened as if by magic every other time….you know….you just have to stand there concentrating really hard on trying to not look like a terrorist even though you know that all passport photos make you look like one…..then Rob has waved his wand and we’ve had photos). But I do know that last night, clutching a camera in one hand and the 14-page-how-to-get-a-passport-document in the other (for consultation purposes, because there are RULES, you know),we found ourselves a light-coloured wall and snapped off shots of everyone (eyes open, mouth closed, no hat, no reflection in glasses, no sunglasses, no red-eye, no altering the photo to get rid of any aforementioned problems, head straight, neutral expression, clear, sharp, in focus, no shadow, no hair on your face with head size of 32-36mm, no more, no less….I told you there are rules) before I went out for the evening and when I returned there was A Problem. We played round with ratios and formulas and caluculators for another hour before deciding to find an online-passport-maker-with-a-magic-wand. Easy - they certainly exist, but boy oh boy do they come at a price. $7.95 for half a dozen pictures. I’ll let you do the maths - we need at least two strips each and there are ten of us so you can kiss good-bye to $150. Well, we haven’t scrimped and saved to turn around and throw money away now…..hence the decision to Sleep On It.

This morning Rob-the-Genius sprang out of bed, knowing exactly what to do. He did *it*, I sent the files off and we’ll have twenty photos of each of us very soon. Cost? $5 That’s not $5 each, that’s $5 all up for 200 photos!

We like cheap, but even cheap comes with a price tag…….the photo software was not working and I had to spend HOURS uploading images. In fact it took so long that I decided to “blog it”, and realising we only kept the good photos from last night, we had another photo shoot, which left us with a feeling of dejavu, so I guess you can say it was authentic.
It’s very hard to keep a straight face:

…but he managed to look like a terrorist in the end. (Although I must ask which character would you rather take travelling with you?)

BabyGirl had trouble keeping her mouth closed and eyes open too:

At the time we thought we were silly deciding to embark on a photoshoot just before bedtime……..but in reality it was more successful than this morning’s one! If her photo gets rejected by any official anyone anywhere in the world, I’m going to drag out this one and ask them if they are sure it’s not acceptable.

So we completed the photoshoot, uploaded the pics, created a collage, knit a few rounds of the latest work-in-progress, went out to the fruit and vege shop and when we returned it was finally DONE.

We don’t actually have those little itty-bitty piccies in our wee hot hands yet, but hopefully, thus endeth the Saga of Two Hundred Passport Photos.

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