Pearl Market - For Sale

I went to the Pearl Market today and bought 16 necklaces to sell while back home in Oz during July and August. I don't get paid during July/August and so need to generate some funds to survive! I am posting them now so that you can leave me a message if you like any of them. All the pearls featured are fresh water pearls.

The one above has some small pearls on it.

This one has dark pearl shells, pearl and clear beads.

This one is a small dark pearl and black bead necklace.

This is pearl necklace that I designed. It is made of pearls deformed into shells and put to size, it is one piece and made on a silver metal string necklace. I have 2 of these, I liked them so much.

This is purple and green pearl, with clear beads and clear string.

These are tiny pearls with white string.

This is high quality dark blue/purple necklace. This is gorgeous and of double length.

This is a three string necklace with shell formed pearls of varying size.

This necklace has no pearls and is grey, black and clear beads.

This is a single high quality pearl on a silver necklace of my own design. Very elegant.

This is a high quality necklace of dark plum/almost brown tinge.

This is a blue/green high quality pearl necklace.

This is a high quality light purple/dark pink pearl necklace.

This is a simple pearl and clear bead necklace.

This is a velvet strap with blue beads.

If you like any of them, email me at kellyrippon@hotmail.com for prices

We have more visitors!

We have had a busy week. Time flies

It's amazing how the week starts and then voo....o..om..... The weekend is here :)

We have had some injuries this week. Kane played rugby on Wednesday night and ended up with huge blisters. So he has been a walking mess. Dawn (Kane's Mum) attacked them with scissors, much to Kane's disgust, and cut all the dead skin off. He still wanted to play soccer last night though.

I went and saw my magic healer again and he did acupuncture on my sore bits from swimming. I love this guy.

Dawn and Gary have come to visit for a week. I have had heaps of advice about the wedding, and done heaps catching up. I've heard heaps about how wonderful the Maldive sound too, sounds Divine.

We are going to Downtown Suzhou today for a look and I have organised a tour for both of them to visit some famous places with a car and a English speaking tour guide.

Howdee

G'day everyone,

It's almost hump day and in 2 days Kane's Mum and Step Dad will be here. We are almost prepared for the visit. I am making Kane's Grandma's Carrot Cake for the couple tomorrow night. It is a favourite and it is one of the cakes I actually know how to make from scratch!

I went to a new Western Food Market yesterday afternoon. Oh - Did I have fun! I bought timtams for a friend, beef mince (so hard to find here), tomato pizza sauce, (for tonight's dinner), tomato paste, English muffins, pita bread, philli cream cheese, butter, edam cheese, ham and few other things. It cost a bit, but there is a great variety. The shop is found in one of the up-market compounds and so many people shop solely there. It must cost them a lot of money (Chinese Standard).

S0... We had pita pizzas for dinner tonight, yummy - Don't it look good? I made 5 of them, I had 2 and Kane had 3.

And for dessert, we get banana pancakes. A really simple recipe from my Low-fat Cookbook.

1 Cup Wholemeal Flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 2 mashed very ripe bananas, 1 tbls male syrup, 1 cup milk, 2 tsp Cinnamon, 1 pinch nutmeg. Mix together and sit for 1 hour and cook in a fry pan. YUMMY

A friend of ours, Bruce who recently got married had his birthday yesterday and didn't want his flowers. So he gave them to me - How lucky! Biggest bunch I've ever received from a boy. I think there are 2 dozen pink roses there. Watch out Kane ;)

Zaijian!

(Mean's goodbye in Chinese)

Kelly

xxx

Our Funky Table

Evening ladies and gentlemen,

Kane and I went shopping yesterday. We have been wanting to buy a table and chair setting for our highly used balcony, and we made the big purchase yesterday afternoon. It's a funky orange plastic contraption, but it's kinda cool. Exactly what we needed for such a small space. It was sooooo cheap, 199RMB, so around $30AU. We've had breakfast, lunch and dinner on it today.

And check this out... I found feta cheese at a western food shop yesterday and so for lunch and dinner today, we've had Greek salad - Yum. Here are some piccies:

The table and chairs on the balcony

Lunch is served - How divine does it look? Greek salad, stir-fired chicken breast with seeded mustard sauce and grapes to snack on.

The chief eater and the proud chef :)

I have spoken to my gorgeous friend Narelle on the phone today, she is only 5 weeks away from giving birth to her and husband Cam's first child. Good luck Narelle, and I'll see you in August :)


We are off to the dentist tomorrow afternoon, we are going to get a clean and polish and find out if we need to have any fillings, hopefully not, but I'm not counting on it.

We have mostly finished our reports today. I was amazed at how fast I could do them. Mind you, they're not all unique!


Hope you're have a great weekend

KK

End of another week

How fast the end of the school year is approaching. It felt like only yesterday that it had snowed heavily and we were escaping to Vietnam/Cambodia. Now it's rush to get reports done, rush to exercise, find time to relax, the days fly and they turn into weeks, and soon months and by the time we have time to breathe we will be home visiting all that we love and miss...



We are buying a table and chair set for the balcony this weekend in preparation to Kane's mother coming with her husband Gary. The weather has been divine lately and it would be a pity to waste the wonderful balcony we have just for drying our washing.



Everything (as much as possible) has returned to normal after my family came, rush, rush, rush.



Have a great weekend everyone. We think of you all often, keep sharing your new with us as we love hearing it.



Kelly

We're OK!

Hi Everyone,


Thank you for your well wishes about the Chinese Earthquake. We are fine. The Earthquake was a few thousand km's away I think, well, it takes about 2 hours to reach where the centre of the quake was in Chengdu by plane, I didn't even feel a shudder!

Below is a link to one of the stories:


http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=thousands-feared-dead-in


We have started raising money at school to donate and we will have a casual clothes day on Friday where the children will be asked to donate at least 10RMB to the cause.



My parents left China yesterday and arrived safely back in Australia at 9.35am. They came home to sad news, their cat, fat cat, had died just after they left. She had been hit by a car. It is scary as Leo, my cat is still living at there house, he has now lost 2 cats in his life.




I loved having my family over to visit... but I also love having my house less crowded and organised. 6 people in our apartment is a squeeze. (How spoilt am I saying that though really!) Kane's Mum Dawn and Gary will come over next Thursday for one week. They are going to the Maldives first and then onto Shanghai and will return home on the 31st of June. 4 weeks before we come home!!!!





Kane was in a triathlon on the weekend. He did really well, getting out of the pool in 3rd place while not feeling that great. He has a chesty cold and so was breathing every stroke. The man who beat him was only 2 laps in front and he was doing tumble turns too. If Kane had been 100%, I think he would have given him a run for his money. He did his 30 laps/750m in 13.42. I was really proud, next year he wants to do the whole thing 750 swim, 10km ride, 5 km run.

Kane is finishing in the middle of this picture. He is about 1 metre away from the edge.

Tired after his race, and sick. Don't you love the footy shorts????

Bye everyone.

Terracotta Soldiers and the Great Wall

We left late Friday for Xian, which was once the capital of China. We arrived at the Bell Tower Hotel very late and decided on a late start to the next day. Here are some photo's of the Soldiers.


The next day we walked around Xian visiting the Bell Tower, Drum Tower, Muslin Quarter and the old wall that was built to protect the city.



We headed to Beijing on the Monday and settled into our apartment, walking across the road to get some dinner and Papa John's for dinner.

On Tuesday we headed out to the Great Wall at Jinshanling. Kane, Dave and the boys headed to on side of the hill and Mum and I headed for the other.


Mum and I met up with the Olivia Newton John Great Wall walk to Beijing right at the end. We got some photos with Sir Cliff Richard and James Reyne, there were heaps of celebs and cancer survivors there. Visit the site here: http://live.greatwalktobeijing.com/


After that we headed to the Summer Palace and home past the new Olympic Stadium.


On the Wednesday we met our tour guide who took us to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. After we went to the Forbidden City we headed through a park to see a Tea Ceremony. How yummy some of the teas were. Mum got heaps! After we headed to the hutong, old style streets on a pedicab and also to an old style home.

Thursday we woke up and went to the Temple of Heaven and to the Hongqiao pearl market for some shopping. The men got bored, so mum and I went back on Friday morning for some more retail therapy before flying out around 7pm.

Kane and Dave and the boys are at the Shanghai Moto GP today. It was raining, but it has dried up now. Kane did call so I could hear the roar of motorbikes (how exciting :))

Valentino Rossi won!