Turkey stuffing

After a number of lovely family meals, we continued the delicious Christmas culinary festivities with Leslie, Dave and 7-week-old Zach. We've eaten so much ham, turkey, seafood, salad, fruit, mousse, gingerbread and trifle this week we can hardly even think about food at the moment.





Little Zach is a sweet pea.

Christmas break

G managed to get 4 days off in a row - bliss! It's great when he has time to hang out at home.

Do you see what I see?

Dropped into the local supermarket to buy a few ingredients for a simple salad last week (cucumber, snow peas, mixed greens etc.).

Checkout guy put the radishes through as 'beetroots'.

Me: "Um... they're not beetroots ..."
Checkout-Guy: "... huh??... What are they then?"

Today I went to buy more vegies. Checkout girl had some difficulty identifying the radishes and made a match based on colour, I guess.

Me: "Um, excuse me ... they're not rhubarb!"
Checkout-Girl: "... oh ... ok ...(then after a long pause)..... they're turnips, right?"

Choking

Can't imagine being in the highlands today...


Photos from The Age website and Michael Blamey

Wild plums

So sweet!

Hazy

Bushfires again ....




Melbourne is hot and smoky.

Goldlust

My dad sent me a link to Pete Goldlust's website. He creates a wonderful range of artworks, including these fabulous installations.


I also like his carved crayons.

Canary cages at the GPO

Wise old cat, silly young dog

Tinderbox

I'm always struck by the dryness of our landscape ....





Today smells like fire.

Exploding Dog

I just revisited the Exploding Dog website for the first time in months. Still love those wistful drawings!

Cotton

This week we celebrated our second anniversary (cotton!). Someone asked me recently for photos of our wedding and I remembered that I had loaded some onto a different site a while ago.

The site also has pics from Thailand, friends, and Dudley , among other things.


(rest his fuzzy little soul)

Three Buttons

I did a one-day pattern-making course at the CAE last weekend, where I met Angela. She recently started a lovely little blog called Three Buttons.

I love old style buttons. Repro Depot sells some cute ones.

Tiny

Who doesn't love tiny food?!

I pity the fool!

I found a great sock monkey version of Mr T today at craftster.org.

I also like these knitted toys, but I don't know where the pictures are from. Can anyone help?

Cloudehill

The weather has been crazy this Spring... We had temperatures in the 30s even in September and a 37-degree day in the first week of October. Then last week for several days it hailed (and snowed in Ballarat and the Dandenongs) - it's nearly summer! Now it's heating up again, with temperatures in the high 30s.... Very odd.

It was so hot on Sunday we decided to escape to milder climes and drive up to Olinda. Cloudehill looks beautiful at any time of year and is a welcome relief from the parched Melbourne landscape (.....all the fountains in Melbourne have been turned off and drained again - I think we've only been able to enjoy about one year of public water features in the past 6 years or so). It sure does make a difference sitting near green grass and water.

Facelift urgently required!

Eek! It's been two months since I last updated this blog. I got a bit snowed under with study, but now I've finished I can get back to all the stuff on my 'To Do' list.

Earlier this year we spent several weekends chipping away at the old paint that had combined with the plaster in our kitchen, after I decided that our house needed a facelift in brighter, fresher colours.

I really love the way the light streams into the kitchen, making it glow (especially when it was yellow) .... the white didn't turn out as we had hoped, so we'll have to try again when we work out a better colour scheme.

Here are a few pics from our first attempt early this year:



That stubborn paint/plaster mix


really takes it out of you


Site manager Gus guards the back door

Frothy and fabulous

Each Spring I'm reminded of the wonderful final television interview Dennis Potter did with Melvyn Bragg, a few days before he died. It was sad and poignant, but he also described the wonderful appreciation he had acquired for the small things in the world, for example, really seeing for first time on the cherry trees outside his window "...the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be".






These blossoms may not be white but I love the frothy explosions of colour and fluttering swirls that fill our gardens and streetscapes at this time of year.