Sunset

I had plans for the year recap/Paterson's birthday/ end of year post... but like most things in my life it didn't pan out...! I'll leave you with a picture from today, sunset over Shoalhaven Heads. See you next year.

Lillies make me smile...

I love the windows at the National Library...

A new venture...

So I've thought of a new venture... it is small but could be big.

http://elevation-getlifted.blogspot.com

What do you think? Wanna help me?

Time, time, time, see what's become of me...

Whoa. Its been a while. I've often thought of things to post, but I've been away and busy and I guess just life-y. Anyhoo, I'm cashing in a time-off-in-lieu day today and while its quiet I thought I'd get back into it.

Lily had her first school concert - she was a kookaburra and was very enthusiastic!


Shortly afterwards we went to my grandparents as saw a real kookaburra. My grandfather is a bit like Dr Dolittle, he always has animals at his beck and call...

We had lots of rain and beautiful sunsets...


Which has meant lots of spring flowers...


And spring fruit! This lovely pear was a prize from Olivia at Dreaming all the time. It is one of my most treasured possessions now...

With fruits come fruit-bats. I've just about had my fill of them now.



It was my Mum's 60th in early November and my sister and I made a croquenbouche for her party. Well, my sister made the profiteroles and I helped her put it together. It was a labor of love, it was messy, and time consuming, but it sure packed a punch.


Then came my birthday.

And again my sister excelled herself. You should have heard the ooohs and aaahs when we cut into this masterpiece! I had a lovely day, breakfast with friends, a nap in the afternoon and dinner with family.

And I've been doing a little crafting. I bought a craft punch of a christmas tree and used some green and red manila folders to make little trees then sewed them together. Cool eh? I'll also be using the punch for my freezer paper to make some christmas napkins at Brown Owls on Sunday.

And now its warm i feel a little silly continuing with my lovely Flair cardy. But I'm determined to finish my first ever adult size item. I love the yarn - Cascade 220 Heathers. The colour looks crap here, but you get the idea.

Anyhoo. I'm off. The postman has just delivered a lovely package and I don't recognise the address - a mystery to be unravelled!

Hope to see you again soon!

P.S apologies for the dodge composition of this post. I'm obviously out of practice and can't fix it up. Should be a bit better now!

Hey

Sorry I've been gone for a while. I'll be back soon. In the meantime - how much do you love these word clouds?



They're from http://www.tagxedo.com/

Warts?

So I just popped over to the lovely Ruby Two Shoes blog and I noticed I was on the blogroll - thanks chickie! So i hovered over my blog link and this little preview box came up with the last few posts on it, and some suggested links (advertising). Nothing odd with that in this day and age. Except that I found one of the suggestions a little offensive.

Observe.

So I get the exercise bike and the anxiety disorder links - I've blogged about them before - but warts??? What are they implying? The metal detector is just weird.... Anyhoo. I'm off travelling again tomorrow; stay tuned for news of my divorce :)

P.S Love you honey and thanks for 'letting' me go away...

Cliche alert...

Spring has sprung!

Gone batty...

Spectacled Flying-foxes at Cairns Library.


I've been up in Cairns for the last couple of days... And returned tonight somewhat thawed after a couple of 20+ degree days. While I was in heaven, Nath's been through hell. Poor kidlets have been sick, and poor husband is much tired by the experience. I'm not going to be allowed to go away for quite a while...

Letters

I love mail. Well, I used to love mail when I got nice mail like letters from friends and postcards and stuff. Mostly its just bills now and that makes me sad. I think the reason so many of us order stuff online now is just so we get something nice in the mail.


I can remember at Expo '88 there was an Australia Post pavilion that had a penpal generator - you put your age and gender in and it would spit out the address of some similar child from another country. 'David'* from Scotland and I corresponded for quite some time. It was always exciting to get an international letter.

Do you like letters? If you do, comment below and I'll randomly pick five folks (from anywhere) to send a letter to (make sure you leave an email address or some way I can contact you). It'll be like having and old school pen pal.

See ya - I'm off to check the post...

*perhaps not his real name - I can't remember to be honest...

There's lots of me to go around.

I don't like having my photo taken. Occasionally someone will take a photo I don't mind, and it will likely be a head-only shot*. Cos I don't like the rest of the package being photographed. The neck-down bit. Too bulgy. You know? Of course you do. Most of us have body image issues. And I've never been 'down' with exercising, and even less so since we had kids. And I like fatty, carb-loaded and sweet stuff. And for some reason I don't lose weight. Der!!! Not really a surprise. One of my recent favourite quotes (i collect them) is "Nothing will change, if I don’t do anything different".

So I'm giving this whole eat less crap, exercise more thing a go. I found an exercise that appeals to me (exercise bike in front of the tv in the warmth) and a process to avoid avoidance (get into exercise clothes before I put kids to bed so I can get straight on bike afterwards) and logging most of my food at calorieking.com.au which gives me a bit better of an idea of the nutritional value of the food that I'm eating. Like that hot chips are 450 calories. Ouch. I mean, I knew they were not great, but when I'm aiming for 1400 calories a day that's a fair whack of calories. Especially when you add the red licorice... and a finger bun. But I digress. I'm not going to harp on about this, but for the first time possibly in my life I'm exercising with a focus and while not exactly enjoying it, I'm proud of myself for doing it. 10km a night on the bike. Yay.

So maybe sometime in the next year I might like seeing a full-length photo of myself. And that might be nice.

*I even stopped liking head-shots recently due to my hair dresser refusing to remedy a lullet (lady mullet) that was developing at the base of my skull. I've now had it seen to and can be allowed out in public again.

Mama's got a brand new toy...

We popped down to Nowra this weekend to check on my grandparents and to see Nathan's aunt and uncle.

Nan and Pa are in slow decline; moving slower, thinking slower. Nan's going in for surgery again this week and each time it takes her longer to recover. She's so depressed that everything hurts nowdays. Its hard to watch. And hard to listen to, but no one else (ie her husband or children) want to hear that she's tired of feeling bad and thinks her time is near. I don't want to face it either, but she needs to talk. Anyhoo, circle of life I guess.

After that we went to see Nath's aunt and uncle. And boy did they have a surprise for me. I have long coveted Uncle Dave's camera. Every time I see him I take the camera out for a spin, playing with all the features and stuff - stuff my (more than adequate) camera doesn't do. And I've toyed with the idea of buying one, but can't justify the cost. Uncle Dave said that his mate was selling an old camera which was a similar model, and I asked him to check it out for me. Then forgot about it. Then yesterday he gave me his camera to play with. When I finished he asked if I noticed anything different. I didn't. Then he pulled out his camera and said 'mine's a bit different from yours'. Mine???? He and Aunty Jayne had bought it for me. Oh. My. Gosh. I was floored. In awe. Aware that it was too much and knowing I couldn't accept it, but in no way willing to give it back! How much do they rock? Heaps. So the rest of the weekend I spent playing with Barry (the camera). We took long walks, I looked into his eye and told him how beautiful he was. He responded by taking beautiful photos for me.




When we left this afternoon we drove back and finally stopped in at the Fedra Olive Grove and Grandma's Little Bakery near Collector.


We've watch the olive groves grow lo these many years we've been driving up the highway to Nowra. It was nice to stop in and see it. We very rarely break the journey. The homemade bread, dip (singular), dukkah, oil and a couple of olives was a sparse but lovely. And the pastry platter was a lot of pastry (as the name would suggest) but we took home what was left and I've been munching this evening. Yum.

Then we drove for another 15 minutes and stopped to see the zebra. Looks like they're going to stick around - and a good thing too! The rest stop was full which means people are breaking their journeys and resting. Stop Revive Survive people! Um, perhaps I should take my own advice.


And of course the windmill. Hmm. Not sure how I feel about them - but they are pretty to look at. Especially through Barry's zoom lense.


Anyhoo, back home. Ready to start a new school term (Lily) and brave the caretaker period (me and Nath). Have a great week!

Six is sooo big...

But not too big for a fairy castle cake (thanks Aunty Nicole).


Aunty Nicole is ace at choosing presents that cause maximum conflict with the children. Sure its a pink barbie car - but its a CAR. Paddy's down with anything car related. You'll note there's actually a car driving the car...


After everyone had gone the cats came out. They're still not jump-on-your-lap-for-a-nap type kitties, but they're warming up.


And just a cute picture of surprise personified. I can't remember what he was surprised at. Its just a cute shot!

Its a long way from here...

Today I traveled. A long way. Relatively anyway; we're pretty good travelers, us Aussies. But still, here I sit, 947km from home (according to google).


View Larger Map

And now I'm here I find myself at a bit of a loose end (here is lovely by the way).



There are no children to feed or bathe. Nothing to clean or maintain. Just me and free broadband internet. So I've downloaded some photos and I'm ready to bombard you with them. A potted history of our June, if you will.

Lily lost her first tooth! She's been walking around bearing her teeth at anyone who will look... Its pretty disturbing.

We got two new family members - Meggs on the left and Sophie on the right. Meggs is named for the Australian cartoon Ginger Meggs; and Sophie for the main character in Mamma Mia. Lily named Sophie. We tried to dissuade her from that name, but its stuck. Paddy calls them 'Meh' and 'Sousie'. They're still pretty timid - especially Meggs - but they're warming up slowly.

I made this hat for Nath. I love it. Its Marram by Eskimimmi (rav link). Its a really clever pattern that looks far more complex than it is. Only problem is that its too short. Based on comments on rav I added another repeat, but its still too short. Oh well. I'm still really proud of it.


I also knitted this cowl for a colleague at work. He loved it, however my cast off may have been a little tight... like, he got it on then couldn't get it off for quite some time... A little unpicking and looser cast off fixed it though and he's pretty chuffed. The middle pattern is a row of double yarn overs which means that when its on the yarn folds towards the neck, making it extra warm.

Lily and I found the most enormous strawberry in a punnet the other day... it must have been a couple that just grew together... but it was pretty stunning! Guess who had the best lunchbox that day...


And a picture of Paddy as you'll most likely find him nowadays. If you ask him to do something he closes his eyes. If you ask him to stop doing something he closes his eyes. Its his way of pretending to not hear you. He does it alot at dinner time...

So there you go. Amazing what kind of posts you can do with a bit of time... I've still got tomorrow night away - but its the final of Project Runway so I see myself holed up in my 'spa bure' with some chocolate and the remote... See ya!

First Female Australian Prime Minister

OMG – Australia has its first female Prime Minister – so very exciting! Congratulation Julia Gillard!

Trippin'

During my work life I've been pretty lucky with work and work trips; working with a mining industry body saw me in an underground mine; I saw heaps of regional Victoria and east-coast Australia working with a Senator; got to live on the Brisbane/Sunshine Coast for six months with CHOGM and meet the Queen.

But the most diverse and wonderful ones have been with my current employer (10 years this year!). They've sent me to Johannesburg for a month, on a tour of far north Queensland's recycled oil reclamation facilities (mostly rubbish dumps and a sewerage facility!), lots of Zoos and recently lots of parts of Australia I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Now that I have a family I don't like to travel too much - it puts too much pressure on Nath and its draining. Work travel isn't really very glamorous and usually cuts into personal time more than you expect. So next week I'll be heading to northern NSW and losing most of my Sunday in order to get to a pretty regional location for a meeting. As a result I'm going to stay somewhere nice. Nicer than I'd normally stay at but still within my travel allowance.

I think it will help ease the pain a little... and I'm kinda looking forward to it.

Gifties

I don't have the energy to really blog about these bits - I'm proud of them and they were both gifts for colleagues. The details are on rav.


Kimono for Monica it was pretty but really dense resulting fabric.



And this foxy cowl for a lovely lady who helped me at work.


I've still got a few more gifts for lovely folks. I'm really enjoying knitting at the moment.

Lost and running

I was looking over at One Crafty Mother and she's just posted about a song her son made up and was singing in the car

"Sometimes, you open your eyes but you can't see da world." Finn sings from the backseat. "You open your eyeeeess but you can't seeeeeee da world."

I ask him what he is singing, but he doesn't answer, just keeps on singing: "and dat's just da way it is, sometimes, wif da world."

It made me think that sometimes kids make you stop and think about where you're going and how you're getting there. It also made me think about the time I was singing "Lost and Running" by Powderfinger in the car when Lil asked me about the lyrics

Oh I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
No I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough
No I'm still lost and running
Somewhere I lay down my arms
Oh I'm still lost and running
I can't get enough

She asked me what 'lost and running' meant and I said sometimes we don't know where we're going and it might not be the right way but we're going there fast. She asked me if i felt like that sometimes. I said "yeah, sometimes" while thinking "yeah, all the fricken' time". She said "don't worry, you're going the right way." Could've been that we were nearly home, or that she thought I was doing ok. I choose the later. And felt a little bit better.

Little Dutch girl

My father was born in the Netherlands. He arrived in Australia at four and my grandparents fully integrated into the Australian lifestyle. A bit too much I think. We never really heard much about Holland from my grandparents, which makes me sad. My Beppe was obviously crafty and I think she could have shared lots with me about her life in Friesland. Of course we often realise these things too late. Since she died I've developed more of an interest in Dutch things and have been finding lots of lovely, lovely Dutch bloggers. Here are some:

Grietjekarwietje
This lovely lady likes a bit of upcycling, a bit of drawing, a bit of crafting, and a bit of waldorf doll making...


guusjes-appeltaart
This lass does lovely screenprint art, and a bit of cooking, and posts photos of the most gorgeous children!


Under Dutch Skies
An American (I think?) in Holland, a knitter, online yarn shop owner and an observer of things...


Little Z handmade
Oh my she has some lovely stuff... A thrifter and a crafter.

These two little fellas are transfers - how cute would they be on kids shirts?


Even though I don't understand much of the text on these sites (despite Google Translator!) I love clicking through and checking out where they link to.